We've adjusted a position in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

The regional banking panic that began last week has caused a drastic repricing of financial stocks. 

As selling pressure accelerates for a variety of vulnerable banks, executives are coming out and buying shares in an effort to shore up the volatility and put a vote of confidence in their stock.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We've got CPI up at bat this morning.

I'm sure we'll see wild swings, so it's hard for me to pick a stock before the data.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Strength begets strength.

Buyers taking control of a market heading into the weekend exude confidence. That describes gold bulls last Friday as they drove prices higher into the close.

To no surprise, Gold kicked off the new week gapping higher and rallying more than 2.5%. We call this bullish follow-through. 

So what’s next for precious metals?

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...

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 Kimmy Sokoloff

Overall, I'll give the market credit: It hung on most of the day.

Tomorrow morning we have a CPI report, so that may be a different story.

We continue to be on the hunt for premium selling opportunities in this tape. It feels almost irresponsible not to be.

And we're heading back to a name we trust.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Strength begets strength.

Buyers taking control of a market heading into the weekend exude confidence. That describes gold bulls last Friday as they drove prices higher into the close.

To no surprise, Gold kicked off the new week gapping higher and rallying more than 2.5%. We call this bullish follow-through. 

So what’s next for precious metals?

Most likely… More strength!

Check out the daily chart of Gold, highlighting last Friday’s candle in addition to that of the Friday, Nov. 4th session:

Both these candlestick formations are a visual representation of buyers’ willingness to take home additional risk over the weekend.

A sustained rally into an overwhelming amount of supply marked by the 2011 highs followed the bullish candle from Nov. 4th. 

Based on today’s action, Gold appears to be kicking off another leg higher… In fact, short-term momentum for Gold – measured by the short-term rate of change, has not been this high in almost three years. 

Here’s a look at Gold futures with the 2-day ROC, showing the highest reading since early 2020. This...

We've adjusted a position in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

Historically they’re all usually just making a big deal about things that are not a big deal.

It's their job to make noise. And in some cases, it's not even their job, humans just like to overreact and make a lot of noise.

As investors, it's our job to ignore.

We don't care about their fed policies. We're not interested in arguing about wars. I don't care who the president is. And a "bank crisis" is laughable these days, compared to what I had a front row seat to back in 2008.

They make noise. We ignore. It's that simple.

Late last week when people were panicking, I was right here telling you we wanted to buy stocks.

Why?

Because in bull markets, it pays well to own stocks.

Besides, the Dollar was falling apart. So if stocks were about to collapse and this was 1929 all over again (lol btw), then the...

The most significant insider transaction on today’s list comes in a 13D from Carl Icahn reporting an increase in his Southwest Gas Holdings $SWX stake.

Icahn now owns 12.64% of outstanding shares, a significant change from the 9.8% he reported on October 26.