One thing I learned years ago is that you need bulls for there to be a bull market.

In other words, as bull markets progress, stocks stop falling in price, and continue to appreciate despite all the negativity.

This is the beginning of the acceptance phase. It's perfectly normal.

There's nothing like price to change sentiment.

And that's exactly what we have in the current environment.

Today's most significant insider transaction is a 13G filing by Jennison Associates LLC. 

The asset manager revealed an initial stake of 16.80% in Mobileye Global Inc $MBLY.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Futures up a tad this morning.

The market awaits tomorrow's CPI print.

We have Phillip Streible on the show today.

I'm a big fan of Phil's work. He's the Chief Market Strategist at Blue Line Futures and a market veteran with more than 20 years of experience trading futures and forex.

Today, Phil shares with us his technical perspective on precious metals and discusses key fundamental drivers at play right now.

Check it out:

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The pieces of the puzzle are falling into place. 

Gold priced in USD has finally joined other global currencies, closing last week at an all-time high. Silver, the high-beta play, is outperforming its more reserved cousin (gold). And gold mining stocks are breaking out.

Many of our trade ideas over the past few weeks are working. I believe this trend has just begun and could last for months – or even quarters.

Especially when I consider this next chart…

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Price action was sloppy early and then, around midday, the indices started to trend higher.

The morning trading was trying to squeeze dry lemons.

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 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.

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...

[9/21: moved stop to 88]

Fair warning: today's trade is in a company that will be reporting earnings early next week. I generally try to avoid entering trades ahead of earnings. But its that time of the season where its kinda hard to avoid earnings. They are happening. We just have to deal with it.

That said, we'll control what we can control: The amount of risk we take, and our time duration for the position to recover, if needed.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The pieces of the puzzle are falling into place. 

Gold priced in USD has finally joined other global currencies, closing last week at an all-time high. Silver, the high-beta play, is outperforming its more reserved cousin (gold). And gold mining stocks are breaking out.

Many of our trade ideas over the past few weeks are working. I believe this trend has just begun and could last for months – or even quarters.

Especially when I consider this next chart…

Check out the VanEck Gold Miners ETF $GDX filling the first of a series of downside gaps:

These gaps represent strong selling pressure during the early stages of last year’s sell-off when the bears were in full control. But in the interim, GDX carved out a multi-month base, repairing the damage. 

Now that the gold bugs have filled the first gap, I’m focusing on the 37 level. A decisive break above that level signifies a close of the breakaway gap that kicked off last year’s downtrend. 

It also coincides with fresh 52-week highs for GDX, lending credence to the bearish-to-bullish trend reversal underway –...

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

Today's most significant insider transaction is a Form 4 filing by Edgar Smith, director at Business First Bancshares $BFST. 

Smith  reported a purchase of BFST shares worth $400,219.