I imagine it’s not uncommon for people to realize sooner or later that the person they thought they were is not at all who they really are. Perhaps not even close.

Are you being yourself?

Think hard about this. And be careful. Because your conclusion might have important ramifications beyond your day-to-day daydreaming through life. It will also likely have significant impacts on who you are as a trader and how you approach your relationship with risk – even your courtship of success (or lack thereof).

Everyone’s path to personal discovery will have its own speed limit, hills and valleys, and complements of sharp turns and extreme weather conditions.

The visibility isn’t always clear. For me, the wiper-fluid that cleaned my windows and sharpened my vision was my elimination of alcohol from my routine.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market took a decent dive early today, but after lunch time we saw a decent bounce. Perhaps it was short covering.

We don't know which way the market will go tomorrow after the Fed's interest rate announcement.

Time will tell.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

"The bigger the base, the higher in space."

That’s how I learned it from JC.

But he wasn’t the technician who coined the adage. It was actually handed down from Lousie Yamada, who studied under the legendary Alan Shaw.

It was amazing to connect with technicians from around the world last week at the 50th Annual CMTA Symposium.

I have a great deal of gratitude for all those who made last week possible and to the founding members who paved the way for technical analysis. 

The experience was humbling, as it exposed my roots and reminded me where I come from.

It's just like the Swiss franc reminds us that observations from more than a hundred years ago continue to play out across today’s markets…

Check out the monster base in Swiss franc futures:

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

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Impinj, Inc. $PI director Steve Sanghi.

Sanghi reported a purchase of PI shares worth $1,997,500.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

$SPY bumped right against its Bollinger band yesterday and dropped.

We had a pretty decent-sized move last week, and I think the indices will wait till tomorrow to get going again.

It's that time of the year again.

I keep being told to 'Sell in May and Go Away'.

But where is it exactly that I'm supposed to go?

Investors continue to be rewarded for owning stocks as both the S&P500 and Nasdaq100 closed out April with their highest Monthly close in a year.

This is the video recording of our May 1st Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

It’s still messy out there, no matter where you look.

Signs of strength are fleeting, whether we’re discussing gold, the S&P 500, or US Treasuries. It’s one of the few observations everyone agreed upon last week at the 50th annual CMTA Symposium. (I'll have more on that later this week.)

Despite failed breakouts and trading ranges ruling the market environment, one bullish data point stand out regarding precious metals…

Silver!

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market is still trucking along and going higher.

$SPY does have potential to the February high at 418.31.

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.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended April 28, 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.