“The Iron Condor is a risky trade!”

This comment was shared today during my appearance on the Morning Show with JC and Strazza.

We were discussing this trade in $TSLA we put on yesterday.

Sure, this trade might have some risk in it. 

Newsflash: ALL trades have risk. If there was no risk, there would be no potential reward!

An Iron Condor is a four-legged options spread consisting of equal amounts of short out–of-the-money puts and calls, and long further out-of-the-money puts and calls that protect the position and define the risk.

Here’s the PnL Graph for the $TSLA trade and this is a pretty common structure for an Iron Condor trade:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Dividend Aristocrats are easily some of the most desirable investments on Wall Street. These are the names that have increased dividends for at least 25 years, providing steadily increasing income to long-term-minded shareholders.

As you can imagine, the companies making up this prestigious list are some of the most recognizable brands in the world. Coca-Cola, Walmart, and Johnson & Johnson are just a few of the household names making the cut.

Here at All Star Charts, we like to stay ahead of the curve. That's why we're turning our attention to the future aristocrats. In an effort to seek out the next generation of the cream-of-the-crop dividend plays, we're curating a list of stocks that have raised their payouts every year for five to nine years.

We call them the Young Aristocrats, and the idea is that these are "stocks that pay you to make money." Imagine if years of consistent dividend growth and high momentum and relative strength had a baby, leaving you with the best of the emerging dividend giants that are outperforming the averages.

In today's Daily Digest, we'll review:

1. No new position today.
2. Adjustment today in XLU.
3. Exit in XLV.
4. Current status of open campaigns.

Let's dig in!

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes via Form 4 filings by Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway.

Buffett and Berkshire reported purchases in The Liberty SiriusXM Group  for a total amount of $84,970,847.

I wouldn't say that volatility is high, but it is higher than what we've grown accustomed to over the past few months.

Tesla has earnings coming up and the animal spirits are out.

Traders do not have patience. They are willing to pay a high number to own call options, and put options as well.

So we're taking advantage of their poor spending habits and happily accepting their donations.

Look at this mess. Can you find me a messier stock?

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we've been working on internally is using various bottom-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach.

It's really been working for us!

One way we're doing this is by identifying the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small- to mid- to large- and, ultimately, to mega-cap status (over $200B).

Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B), they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.

But the scan doesn't just end there.

We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market, as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

US dollar bulls are in control. 

Fresh highs dot the US Dollar Index $DXY chart. Sellers are nowhere to be found.

The question is, when – or where – will buying pressure ease?

If I had to guess (which I do), I’d focus on 104.25:

A key retracement level and former resistance zone mark my spot.

Plus, price has respected that retracement over the past six months, adding to my conviction.

How long sellers will defend 104.25  – if price even reaches it – is anyone's guess.

I don’t have a Magic 8-Ball. (Wait, actually I do, and it says, “Ask again later.”)

Look what we have here: a $VIX popping its head up to two-month highs.

Are investors getting a little spooked by the prospect of a tricky earnings season?

We'll be able to figure all that out after the fact. In the meantime, we will use these elevated options premiums to help us ride out some portfolio profitability.

I asked my analysts to find me a big cap name that is trading sloppy.

And the one they came with is a widely followed mega-cap name that has been flopping around in a sideways choppy range which, coupled with upcoming earnings, is helping to juice options premiums.

Here's everyone's favorite EV car maker Tesla $TSLA:

In today's Daily Digest, we'll review:

1. No new position today.
2. Adjustment today in XLB.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.

Let's dig in!

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes via a handful of filings by the CEO and chairman of OPKO Health $OPK, Phillip Frost.

Frost reported a total purchase of 1,000,000 OPK shares, equivalent to $954,300.

Many Small-caps have been leaders from the very beginning of this bull market.

Even through the first couple of weeks of 2024, which haven't been great, Small-cap Industrials are still up over 42% since the Summer '22 lows. Small-cap Consumer Discretionary is up over 37%.

Both of these have outperformed even the S&P500 during this period.

So maybe the "Russell2000" has underperformed. But that doesn't mean that "Small-caps" have underperformed.

It's on a case by case basis.

Here is a list of our Minor Leaguers, for example, which include the strongest stocks between $1 Billion - $4 Billion in market cap:

One of the areas I’ve identified where I can improve my trading is in trade selection. Specifically, my trade avoidance.

Due to my early trading experience as a stock trader, it was ingrained in me during my formative trading years to avoid positioning in stocks that are about to announce earnings.

And for good reason.

Once a stock trade is on, our only real defense against punishing losses is to have a stop-loss order working. That’s fine if you trust yourself to always honor your mental stops. But for most of us mere mortals, the good-til-canceled stop-loss order is our best protection.

99% of the time, a stop-loss order works as intended. Sure, we might suffer a little slippage here and there. But it works like a charm in preventing disaster. Especially for intraday trades.

But for overnight holds, a stop-loss order has its limits. And these limits are fully exposed in the event of a binary news release – most notably earnings announcements.