Gold miners keep squeezing higher.

Why the short sellers are betting against this uptrend is beyond us.

As the great market analyst, Charlie Munger said:

"If people weren't so often wrong, we wouldn't be so rich."

Thank you, short sellers... We love you!

With a slew of important earnings coming up over the next few weeks, we're going to start getting a real sense of the negative impacts of the f-d up policy communication strategy out of "The Administration."

We're going to see more dialed back forward guidance, and meaningful impacts to bottom lines.

I think Amazon might soon find itself at the front lines of this discussion. Their earnings release, scheduled for May 1st, may kickstart that conversation. And I don't think it goes well.

How could it?

When D.C. can’t get its act together, Wall Street feels it.

I’ve seen it happen more times than I care to count: confusion out of the White House sets off a chain reaction that ripples all the way down to public company earnings—and right into your portfolio.

It starts with poor policy direction or, worse, unclear communication. When nobody really knows what the administration’s long-term plan is (or if there even is one), businesses get stuck. It’s not just annoying for executives—it’s paralyzing. You can’t confidently launch a new product line, expand into new regions, or hire that next wave of talent if you don’t know whether the...

With a slew of important earnings coming up over the next few weeks, we're going to start getting a real sense of the negative impacts of the f-d up policy communication strategy out of "The Administration."

We're going to see more dialed back forward guidance, and meaningful impacts to bottom lines.

I think Amazon might soon find itself at the front lines of this discussion. Their earnings release, scheduled for May 1st, may kickstart that conversation. And I don't think it goes well.

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.

Nowadays, to make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list, 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...

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. Adding new position in TLT.
2. No adjustments are needed today.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

This is the weekly post that aggregates all the charts we put together throughout the week and organizes them all into one, easy to flip through deck.

There's so much happening in the commodities markets right now. 

Orange Juice futures just ripped 50% in several days and triggered our buy signal.

Crude Oil futures have resolved a textbook multi-year distribution pattern and triggered our sell signal.

To name a few...

We're also on the cusp of getting a fresh buy signal in Soybean Oil futures.

"Big Oil" wants more renewable diesel - from 3.3 to over 5 billion gallons.

If that's the case, demand will skyrocket for grains across the board.

The first week of 2025 was the largest 1-week rate of change since 1983 for Soybean Oil futures.

We love to call the beginning of each year "whipsaw hunting season."

This is where trends that are overextended, in either direction, tend to...

Wow. This conversation with Trading Psychologist Andrew Menaker covered so much meaningful ground — if you’re a trader who’s serious about leveling up, emotionally and mentally, this one is a must-listen.

Here are just a few of the highlights we explored:

🔹 Intention vs. Expectations – We talked about the subtle but critical difference between trading with intention versus trading with expectation. Intention keeps you grounded in process and presence, while expectations often drag you into attachment, disappointment, and emotional volatility. They may look similar, but they feel very different — and the difference matters.

🔹 Intuition as a Signal – One of the most powerful themes was learning to identify and trust your own intuition. Not as a mystical force, but as a reflection of your accumulated pattern...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 150 largest US-based stocks.

These stocks range from the mega-cap growth behemoths like Apple and Microsoft – with market caps in excess of $2T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Moderna, Square, and Snap.

It has all the big names and more.

It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry; we developed a separate universe for that. Click here to check it out.

The Hall of Famers is simple.

We take our list of 150 names and then apply our technical filters so the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Let’s dive right in and check out what these big boys are up to.

Here’s this week’s list:

*Click table to enlarge view

We filter out any laggards that are down -5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month.

Then, we...

So, we’re well off the highs in the VIX—but a 30-handle is still considered elevated by historical standards.

Why does that matter?

VIX above 30 typically signals that there’s still plenty of undigested stress and uncertainty swirling around in the markets. It tells us that fear hasn’t fully cleared, and the waters are still too choppy for comfort. Historically, when VIX is at these levels, it’s often during periods of heightened news-driven volatility, unclear macro narratives, or disorderly price action.

And more importantly—for me, at least—it signals that taking anything other than shorter-term trades can be problematic. Swing trades that might normally take weeks to play out can get chopped up or invalidated in hours. Markets at these volatility levels are unforgiving to those who overstay their welcome.

This is the market we have, and we have to trade it as it is, not as we wish it would be.

In today’s Options Jam Session, I cover this in more depth—along with a great teaching moment from two recent trades that moved in opposite directions. Both trades used variations of a calendar/diagonal spread strategy, and the contrasting...