As a trader, I’ve grown comfortable with losing.

Losing money is part of winning over the long run.

There is no winning without losing. Sounds crazy, but traders know this to be true.

We’ve all heard that losses are lessons. They are expensive lessons, but often the most valuable. Nothing valuable comes cheaply.

During the triage phase of dissecting what went wrong, we often have “a-ha!” moments that lead to new rules and new promises, and renewed confidence. “Next time,” we tell ourselves, “the outcome will be drastically different!”

This is all well and good.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our February Monthly Strategy Session last week. Premium Members can access and rewatch it here.

Non-members can get a quick recap of the call simply by reading this post each month.

By focusing on long-term, monthly charts, the idea is to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends. This is easily one of our most valuable exercises as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and simply examine markets from a “big-picture” point of view.

With that as our backdrop, let’s dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month’s call.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The $SPX was saved by its 21-day moving average around 4,080 and is now trying to hold above its eight-day moving average at 4,124.

Tomorrow is monthly options expiration, so we should see more volatility.

This is the video recording of the February 16th, 2023, Weekly Town Hall w/ Willie Delwiche.

2/16/23 2:00 PM ET

We retired our "Five Bull Market Barometers" in 2020 to make room for a new weekly post that's focused on the three most important charts for the week ahead.

This is that post, so let's jump into this week's edition.

This week, we are focusing on the Information Technology (IT) sector.

From the Desk of Ian Culley 

I prefer to focus on price when analyzing markets. 

It’s what pays us at the end of the day. And it bakes in all the news and lagging economic data I tend to ignore.

A few weeks ago, I urged investors to track trends, not inflation.

Honestly, I was only half serious. I pay attention to the Fed and CPI data – mainly to stay aware of the increased volatility accompanying important release dates. 

But price is king. And when I look at my charts, the narrative of easing inflation appears suspect...

Check out the overlay chart of the Metals and Mining ETF $XME and the TIPs vs. US Treasuries ratio $TIP / $IEF:

These two charts move tick for tick at first glance. And a closer look at the lower pane reveals an overwhelmingly positive correlation over the trailing 126 trading days. This is why we focus on XME.

The tight correlation...

We had a resting GTC order filled at our profit target in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

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

Different market environments are conducive to certain scans and less so to others.

Coming off this perilous winter, strategies identifying short opportunities have been greatly rewarded. And, throughout the pandemic, it was the complete opposite.

Like we said in yesterday's note, half the battle is in understanding how to directionally position in the underlying trend. The simple fact of that matter is that many have been caught offside betting against names in substantial drawdowns.

Names like Coinbase, Marathon Digital, and, most recently, Silvergate have all sported notable short interest coming off this bear market.

Identifying this skew, we reintroduced our Freshly Squeezed scan. The idea is rather intuitive; we're simply looking for stocks that people are betting against. When a stock is heavily shorted, we know there are incremental buyers waiting in the wings.

As Strazza said in the latest Freshly Squeezed report,

We love this as new buyers are the one true catalyst for higher prices. When shorts are proven wrong, they have to buy their shares back to close out their...

It's the weekly currency edition of What the FICC?

Despite the overarching range-bound action and intraday indecision across the currency markets, I continue to find trade setups with well-defined risks.

Check it out!

Director Richard F. Wallman filed a Form 4 revealing the acquisition of 1,000 shares of Roper Technologies $ROP, valued at roughly $424,950.

There was a 13G filed by Millennium Management, which reported a passive ownership stake of 5.90% in Evolus $EOLS.