The old saying from our friend Jeff Hirsch goes, "Buy in October and Get yourself Sober".

Did you listen?

And it's not so much about literally buying blindly in October, and more about the fact that stocks tend to end their seasonal corrections around that time, before going on to rally into the end of the year.

And that's exactly what we've seen.

Here is the 4-year seasonal cycle, which of course, suggested strength in equities since mid-term elections last year. And we certainly saw it.

Then the ...

It's stupidly easy to get swept away in narratives.

From the constant buzz about ETFs to the rise of random meme coins and the infamous halvening, it's hard to escape the storytelling.

It's amusing how people confidently share fundamental narratives during bullish markets, only to resort to drawing lines when sellers enter the scene.

Understanding why a market is trending is normal, but is it really helpful?

Not so much.

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.

We also weed out hedging activity and ensure there are no offsetting trades that either neutralize or cap the risk on these unusual options trades.

What remains is a list of stocks that large financial institutions are putting big money behind.

And they’re doing so for one reason only: because they think...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

If it wasn't at the very top of the list, the Japanese yen was certainly among the best shorts of 2022.

But the times they are a-changin’.

King Dollar has ducked down a dark alley.

And it doesn't take a weatherman to tell us to buy the yen.

Here are Japanese yen futures carving out a year-long base following fresh 30-year lows:

I like buying strength on a breakout of this bottoming formation. But the yen has quite a way to travel before completing this possible double bottom. 

I don’t want to miss those potential gains, so let’s get tactical by taking a closer look… 

Check out the daily chart with a Fibonacci retracement framing the 2023 decline:

I’m long Japanese yen futures against 0.7075 (the 38....

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

1. No new position today.
2. Defensive adjustment in TLT.
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 first transaction on today’s list comes from a Form 4 filing by Olema Pharmaceuticals Inc $OLMA director Graham Walmsley.

Walmsley reported a purchase of OLMA shares with a total value of $6.8 million.

During bull markets, the leading stocks tend to remain leaders longer than most investors can fathom.

That's just how markets work.

This cycle Nvidia has been a big winner. It was one of the first to break out to new all-time highs. And it's been one of the best performers, despite its massive $1.2 Trillion market cap.

That's the exact definition of a market leader. And our bet is that it continues to hold that title:

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

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Minor Leaguers.

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 now, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

And it doesn't have to be a Russell component — it can be any US-listed equity. With participation expanding around the globe, we want all those ADRs in our universe.

The same price and liquidity filters are applied. Then, as always, we sort by proximity to new highs in order to...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

I’ve had palladium on my mind for a while – long before gold posted a new all-time high.

Why palladium?

It all started with an extreme Commitment of Traders (COT) profile…

One of the things we like to do repeatedly at All Star Charts is position ourselves in leading stocks in leading sectors. Just writing that out may sound completely obvious to some, but too often I see traders trying to get cute to find the "undiscovered gems" that will be the next big winner.

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer getting involved in stocks that are already doing what we want them to do, and I want to let inertia take over.

Today's trade in Southern Copper is one in which both inertia and "magnets" may play a part in delivering gains to us.

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

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

Let's dig in!