From the Desk of Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

The "news" is designed to be a distraction for investors.

Earlier in the week, Bitcoin made some noise as the price soared 10% amid rumors of the approval of BlackRock's Spot Bitcoin ETF.

At the height of this speculation, Cointelegraph apologized, stating the rumors were false, resulting in the liquidation of $65 million BTC within minutes.

When we look at the chart, Bitcoin continues to press against the same overhead supply level it’s struggled with all year. It’s really that simple.

With earnings in the biggest bank names mostly out of the way, the time is now for banks to put up or shut up.

And today's trade is in one of the "junkiest" banks out there we know -- Bank of America. Sorry, not sorry.

With a nearby risk management level, we're gonna make the put buyers pay for our bullish calls.

We've adjusted a position in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Joseph Edelman's Perceived Advisors hedge fund.

The investment firm reported a purchase of roughly $20 million in Cerevel Therapeutics Holdings $CERE.

This is the video recording of the October 2023 Mid-month Conference Call.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Buyers drove home their precious metals stance for a second week.

Gold and silver posted wide-bodied bars, rocketing higher on the open and closing near the day’s peaks. 

Bullish momentum thrusts like these tend to spark sustained rallies.

That's right!

It could be off to the races for these shiny rocks, especially given the crucial levels recovered last Friday...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended October 14, 2023. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with The Minor Leaguers.

What we do here is analyze the most popular stocks during the week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.

We use a variety of sources to generate the list of most popular names.

There are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: a list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

This is one of our favorite bottom-up scans: Follow the Flow.

In this note, we simply create a universe of stocks that experienced the most unusual options activity — either bullish or bearish, but not both.

We utilize options experts, both internally and through our partnership with The TradeXchange. Then, we dig through the level 2 details and do all the work upfront for our clients.

Our goal is to isolate only those options market splashes that represent levered and high-conviction, directional bets.

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

Buyers drove home their precious metals stance for a second week.

Gold and silver posted wide-bodied bars, rocketing higher on the open and closing near the day’s peaks. 

Bullish momentum thrusts like these tend to spark sustained rallies.

That’s right!

It could be off to the races for these shiny rocks, especially given the crucial levels recovered last Friday…

Gold futures ripped higher, gaining more than 3% Friday while reclaiming a critical area of former support at approximately 1,910:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Artal Group.

The firm reported a purchase of $15 million in Scholar Rock Holding Corporation $SRRK.

Have you noticed how everyone forgot about Healthcare stocks?

All it took was 2 years of no progress for everyone to lose track of just what a monster this trade has been for so long.

Just to put things in perspective, here's what Healthcare as a sector has done over the past 20 years: