We’ve talked a lot about the unusual options activity in commodity stocks like Freeport-McMoRan $FCX in recent weeks and months.
Yesterday, we saw more of the same, as options traders made some major splashes in April monthly calls for both the oil services giant Schlumberger $SLB and the British integrated oil and gas name Shell Plc $SHEL.
To the surprise of no one, the Federal Reserve voted to raise its target fed funds rate at yesterday’s FOMC meeting. The 25 basis-point rate hike was fully priced into the futures market. There was only one dissenting vote – St. Louis Fed President Jim Bullard expressed a preference for a 50 basis point hike at this meeting.
I’ll admit I was surprised that neither Esther George (from the Kansas City Fed) or Loretta Mester (from the Cleveland Fed) joined Bullard in his dissent. At the end of the day, the Fed is now in tightening mode, and the pace of tightening is likely to pick up over the course of the year between the combined effects of interest rate hikes and balance sheet drawdowns.
I’m not going to parse the FOMC statement, dissect the dot plot, or break down the summary economic projections. Much of what needs to be said (and a lot of what didn’t need to be said) about the Fed’s decision has been offered in print, over the airwaves, and in our virtual communities.
One of the key themes we've been monitoring in the crypto ecosystem is the movement to a new era dominated by an increasing number of derivative vehicles at investors' disposal.
In previous Bitcoin cycles, investors primarily moved to cash through selling spot.
Now, with a liquid futures market, savvy traders have been hedging their positions (today's equivalent of going to cash) by shorting calendar futures.
This constant selling pressure in calendar futures has driven the term structure lower over the last few months and is a reliable metric for both long and short time frame analysis.
We debuted a new scan recently which goes by the name- All Star Momentum.
All Star Momentum is a brand new scan that guides us towards the very best stocks in the market. This time around, we have incorporated our stock universe of Nifty 500 as the base. Among the 500 stocks that we follow, this scan will pump out names that are most likely to outperform the market.
Key Takeaway: There is abundant focus on weekly and monthly surveys showing evidence of investor pessimism with regard to equities. This is at odds with the strategic positioning indicators showing that stocks are expensive and households are historically over-exposed to equities (relative to bonds, but also relative to bonds plus cash). The last two times that II bears exceeded bulls (in 2019 and 2020), household asset allocation data showed only 53% exposure to equities. As of the end of 2021, it was at 62%, an all-time high. So while investors may be identifying themselves as bearish, there is little evidence that investable cash is on the sidelines. With the Fed now raising rates and the market re-considering valuation levels, this lack of available firepower could weigh on equities. Whether today’s pessimism represents a cyclical extreme remains to be seen.
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.
The move in metals, commodities, and materials was pretty rapid during the last couple of months. Given that, it's little surprise we've seen a pullback in a lot of these names over the past week or so.
One name that was recently on our Hall of Famers report rose rapidly with everyone else. And now it feels like it overshot a bit on it's pullback and it's offering a nice tactical opportunity to swoop in and steal some profits.
You might not know this about me, but I’m a “graduate” of Chicago’s famed Second City Training Center. This is the school where all of Second City’s famous improv comedy graduates got their start before they became regulars on the main stage, and then went on to Saturday Night Live and beyond.
My first apartment in Chicago was a mere one block away from the Second City theater and on my way home from my office at the Chicago Board of Trade, I’d always pass by the theater doors and see advertisements for their training program. One day, in a fit of curiosity and inspiration, I said: “why not?” With no plan, I walked in the door, found the right person with the right information, filled out a form, ran my credit card, and just like that I was signed up to begin classes when the next training started in just a couple of weeks!
It was as if a spirit had possessed me and dragged me through those doors. When I walked back outside and was hit with the typical frigid Chicago wind of early January, it suddenly hit me – I was scared! What had I done?
