As January gets under way, it’s time to review positions with January options that remain open (haven’t already hit profit targets or been stopped out).

Most trades I put on for All Star Options tend to have a minimum duration of 30 days (short premium plays) and often as long as 6-8 months (for long premium plays). As options approach expiration, greeks like theta and gamma start to become my enemy and whipsaw my P/L. Therefore, as options and spreads get into the expiration month, my best practice is to put each position on notice — it’s time to take action.

This is the video recording and slides from the All Star Options Monthly Conference Call: December 30, 2020.

Do you want to know my cheat code?

It's the Monthly Candlesticks.

I'm telling you. That's my secret. And it's been starring at us right in the face at the end of every single month.

It takes me about half an hour to go through my Monthly Charts. When you add that up over 12 months, it's only 6 hours of work. There is no 6 hours the rest of the entire year that even comes close to the value I get from this monthly exercise.

Is this not a breakout from a 21 month base? 

Here is a list of trade ideas organized by date, ticker symbol and directional bias. Please make sure you have clicked on the link and read the details surrounding the trade before acting upon any of them. Also, make sure you have checked with your financial advisor and tax accountants to make sure you are suitable to be executing what is discussed on this website. The risk management procedures and targets are detailed for each idea. Please read and review the terms and conditions page before making any trades of your own.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Typically on Tuesdays, I post a Mystery Chart, but I expect participation to be lacking this week and I've not found a chart I think is worthy of the exercise...I don't want to make it too easy on you guys.

Instead, I want to look at a few charts that are all suggesting we may be due for a period of consolidation over the next few weeks.

These are the registration details for the monthly conference call for Premium Members of All Star Charts. In this call we will discuss the global market environment and how to profit from it. As always, this will include Stocks, Interest Rates, Commodities and Currencies. The video of the call will be archived in the members section to re-watch any time and the PDF of the charts will be made available as well.

This month’s Conference Call will be held on Thursday January 2nd at 7PM ET. Here are the details for the call:

I was down in New York City this week and dropped by the Nasdaq to chat with my old pal Frances Horodelski on BNN Bloomberg. Frances and I have been rapping about the markets for the better part of the past decade. It was great to chat with her once again.

In this short clip, we talk about the new bull market for stocks, rotation into Emerging Markets and Energy, where we think gold goes and how bad bonds are going to get hit if interest rates get to the 3% mark we're looking for in the US 10-year Yield.

Here's the clip in full:

I received an email recently from a newish trader who was asking for some trading career advice. I thought I'd turn my response to him into a blog post because there are probably many out there with the same or similar questions.

And considering my trading career has been anything but a smooth upward assent, I feel like I can empathetically relate to the urgency of his questions because I have some serious misgivings about where I spent energies early in my career, and more importantly where I did not.

Here are his two questions:

1. If you had to start all over again, what would be the 20% you would focus on in order to make up for 80% of your results?
2. What are the things you'd absolutely avoid being a beginner in swing trading?

My answer to both might surprise you

There seems to be more data available than ever as we head into the end of this decade. It's up to us to decide how we use it, or ignore it in many cases.

I have my process and everyone else has theirs. But one thing that is a common denominator among all of us is this current period of resetting before we begin a new year.

This week I asked Phil if this calendar thing was something we made up as humans or if this is something real that we should embrace. This was his response:

Rebirth is a universal theme. Dates are milestones adding rhythmic structure. Not "required" but common across cultures and eras."

I'm glad he said that because I enjoy this time of the year. I like thinking about the things we're thinking about.

We'll have a lot more charts and trade ideas this week, of course, as we approach our Monthly Conference Call Thursday (email me if you have not registered).

But for now, I have a question. No one ever talks about 1974 being the start of the bull market, which was the low of that period. You tell me it was 1982, once they finally broke out. Which makes...

It's that time of the year again. They all keep calling and emailing me asking for my "predictions" for 2020.

What do you want me to say?

I have no way of knowing what's in store for next year, yet alone what to expect in December of 2020. And I think it's really important to reiterate that. This idea of the unknown unknowns gets lost in the shuffle.

Sure, we were fortunate to make some good calls this year. Our customers have only sent us positive feedback. But as Babe Ruth once said, "Yesterday's home runs don't win today's games".

The BRICKS are breaking out, but India is being left behind due to a lack of breadth. Large-Caps continue to perform, but when they pause there are not enough stocks to pick up the slack...so what we get is a messy, choppy 2-year range in the Nifty 500.

As a result, we've been focusing on the stocks showing relative strength...making money on the long side by sticking with the names that continue to trend, and playing the short side when the reward/risk is ridiculously skewed in our favor.

Unfortunately, it looks like we're going to close out the year/decade with the same gameplan as charts like the one below are a symptom of the weak breadth problem India's had for two years.