From the Desk of Willie Delwiche.

Firms are still hiring but with average weekly hours being curtailed, aggregate hours worked appear to have peaked in Q4.

Why It Matters: Talk of a soft landing has intensified, but the data paint a different picture. Real spending peaked in Q1. Housing starts in Q2. Industrial production in Q3. Payrolls are still expanding and layoffs are near historically low levels. Given the structural imbalance between unfilled jobs and unemployed workers, those metrics are unlikely to be useful indicators of what lies ahead for the economy. Don’t even start with the unemployment rate, which has long been considered a lagging indicator. Rather than firing workers who were hard to hire in the first place, firms are keeping their payrolls largely intact. They are responding to softening demand by curtailing hours worked. Payrolls and initial jobless claims are noise in this environment. The news is that the economy is weakening, inflation is lingering, and the Fed is still raising rates.       

We had a resting GTC order filled at our profit target in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

Me and Strazza did The Flow show earlier in the week, and one of the names we discussed as being a possible trade to get into has finally popped its head above the trigger I was waiting for.

This one has the potential to be a quick mover, so let's get right to it!

The next new position in our Paid-to-Play portfolio is:

The most significant transaction on today’s Hot List is a Form 4 filing from Brent Baird.

Baird disclosed a purchase of 11,661 shares of Servotronics Inc $SVT, equivalent to $130,671.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Currently, $SPY is in a trading range between 391.20 and 386.

We can base more before the next move occurs.

A funny thing happened last summer.

Financials as a sector successfully retested the highs in price from just before the start of the Great Financial Crisis.

Look at the 2007 peak in Financials. After testing that level and failing in 2018 and 2020, prices ultimately broke out.

Last summer was the retest.

Former Resistance turned into Support:

It's the weekly bond edition of What the FICC?

The relative strength of Emerging Market bonds shores up the ongoing bottoming process for risk assets.

Check it out!

From the Desk of Ian Culley

It’s impossible to ignore – investors are reaching for risk.

Biotech stocks are catching higher. Copper futures are working on their tenth up-day in a row. Even the Emerging Market HY Bond ETF $EMHY is breaking to 7-month highs as it completes a multi-month base. 

And don’t forget about Silver! Gold’s crazy cousin has proven by far the best-performing asset since the US dollar peaked last fall. Strength among these market areas indicates a healthy risk appetite.

I can’t overlook these signs of a constructive bottoming process, especially considering the next chart…

Check out the Emerging Market Bond ETF $EMB relative to the US Treasuries ETF $IEF:

There’s plenty to unpack here…

First, the EMB/IEF ratio is challenging fresh 7-month highs after posting a higher high and a higher low last fall. A bearish to bullish trend reversal is underway for this important risk-on ratio.

You can add this to the growing list of...

I got a lot of feedback on my last letter where I suggested active traders need to stop trading Covered Call spreads for tactical trades and instead do a simple Naked Puts trade.

Thank you to everyone who engaged.

Anyway, here’s one question [edited to the important parts] I got from a reader where I thought my answer might be instructive to more of you:

Hi Sean,

I read your information on naked puts. When I intend to buy a stock, I would like to sell a put. I just don't know how to go about it. I just don't know where the strike price would be. I understand that I would have to buy the stock at that price (whether it is better or worse than hoped).

If you could give me an example that would help.

Cheers!

This is a great question, but one without a clear-cut answer. Here was my response:

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

It was very whippy price action today in individual names.

We saw a lot of stop outs in the morning, then some recovery later on.