From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

When it rains, it pours.

Markets chop sideways most of the time. This has been the reality for forex markets for much of the year.

But that’s starting to change as numerous US dollar pairs reach new 10-month highs. The dollar is taking down crucial levels while the US Dollar Index $DXY retests a year-to-date downtrend line and key former highs.

The peculiar coincidence sets up some potentially critical resolutions for these USD pairs.

If they fail, the dollar rally is likely over. 

If they hold and additional USD breakouts materialize, selling pressure will intensify for many risk assets.

As of today, quite a few forex pairs are on the verge of supporting a sustained US dollar rally…

Let’s start with the second largest component of the DXY (13.6%), the US dollar-Japanese yen:

The largest insider transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filed by Boxer Capital LLC.

The investment fund reported a purchase of roughly $35 million in Mirati Therapeutics $MRTX.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

$SPY finally closed its gap down to 442.97.

There are lots of gaps below, but I was looking for this nearby gap to get filled.

Today we have the minutes from the July FOMC meeting.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market pretty much drifted lower all day.

It erased yesterday's bounce, and $SPY closed to its respective gap below.

Is now the time to get long equities?

If you kept up with the headlines and what the sell side analysts have to say, you'd think it would be.

Fortunately we try to stay ahead of the curve around here.

Yesterday we discussed the recent sentiment shift among permabears, wall street analysts, hedge funds and financial media.

You can read that again here.

To add to that sentiment shift, here is the our internal sentiment composite which includes data from Individual Investors, Advisories, Active Investment Managers, Volatility and the Options Market.

As you can see last year saw some of the most pessimistic levels in history, giving us one of the greatest buying opportunities we've ever seen.

Today, Sentiment is at the opposite extreme:

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

The largest insider transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filed by Michael Andrew Chambers, director of Sarepta Therapeutics $SRPT.

Chambers reported an additional purchase of 23,686 SRPT shares, equivalent to $2.5 million.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The indices ran right to resistance yesterday only to get slammed overnight.

It's a little bit of a tug of war right here between the bulls and the bears.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest Minor Leaguers report.

We've had some great trades come out of this small-cap-focused column since we launched it back in 2020 and started rotating it with our flagship bottom-up scan, Under the Hood.

For the first year or so, we focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1 and $2B.

That was fun, but we wanted to branch out a bit and allow some new stocks to find their way onto our list.

We expanded our universe to include some mid-caps.

To make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

One of my favorite scenes from "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is when we get to meet the in-house surf instructor, played by Paul Rudd.

Rudd’s character, Chuck, a transplant local, imparts sage advice, “When life gives you lemons, just say f@&k the lemons and bail!”

I always laugh at that one, even as I write this note.

That’s probably because  I’ve spent the better part of the past twenty years chasing waves – but I don’t share this Hollywood version of a stoner-surfer ethos regarding life.

But I do follow this mindset when it comes to markets…

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

$SPY and $QQQ are stuck under a lot of resistance levels.

There's a possibility we break above those levels this week, but we must keep stops tight.

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.