I feel like this has been the lead for many blog posts recently, but the trend continues: options volatilities continue to remain elevated across the board with $VIX holding above 30, and this makes me want to continue favoring strategies that are net short options premium.
But with the trade today, we're going to leverage options premiums to help us finance a bullish bet on NASDAQ stocks.
It started out with JC and I wanting to simply sell premium, but when we looked into $QQQ options it became pretty clear that we could get paid handsomely if recent lows end up becoming a pivot to higher prices and we took some put premiums to buy out-of-the-money calls.
There's quite literally an infinite amount of strategies, systems, and indicators you can integrate into your process.
But, at the end of the day, mastering just a select few will likely generate alpha as opposed to creating inconsistency in your approach.
Think about it: If you go to the gym, you have a structured program. You don't go to the gym and aimlessly decide on random exercises. You have a rigid plan that you're going to build on top of the lifts you did the workout before.
Trading's the same.
You don't need to switch between every time frame, make every decision using a different indicator from the last, or follow someone else with different objectives from yourself into our trade.
You find repeatable setups where you can find your edge.
For instance, you may only trade in the aftermath of liquidity cascade events that take place a handful of times every year. Mastered well enough, a few well-calculated trades in similar conditions can make your entire year.
In day-to-day life, being a "Jack of all trades, master of none" might serve you well.
From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley
Currency markets are reacting to the war that’s broken out in Europe.
In the past four trading sessions, the Russian ruble has dropped more than 1,000 pips against the US dollar.
And, with fear growing that these initial days of fighting will turn into a protracted conflict, weakness is striking the euro as well.
Let’s take a look at the EUR/USD cross and outline the levels we’re monitoring in the coming weeks and months.
Here's a daily chart of the EUR/USD going back to the pandemic lows:
After completing a large distribution pattern last September, the EUR/USD pair has been consolidating for the past several months and trading in a range between 1.1483 and 1.1121.
You can either profit and help your family because of higher energy and commodities costs.
Or you can complain about it.
I've been through enough cycles at this point, that there will always be that group who just complains and complains.
But for those of you who are proactive, and took advantage of the trends in place, then there's really nothing to complain about.
To the contrary, these are great days! Some of the best days, in fact.
It's funny, because you have those people who bought into that scam of so called "passive" investing. It's ridiculous that some investors still fall for that old trap.
Just because you buy and hold major indexes doesn't make you a "passive" investor. You have to be really really really bad at math to believe that.
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.
We recently decided to expand our universe to include some mid-caps…
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.
The way we did this is simple…
To make the cut for our new Minor Leaguers list, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.
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.
It's hard to ignore the fact that some of the worst stocks on the planet are near old support levels.
One group that stands out for sure are the Marijuana stocks. We've seen a ton of activity from C-suite executives buying their own company's stocks recently. And not just exercising options, but going out in the open market and buying the stock just like you or I would.
Look at the Alternative Harvest Index Fund all the way down to those former lows from early 2020:
These are the registration details for our Live Monthly Candlestick Strategy Session for Premium Members of All Star Charts.
This month’s Video Conference Call will be held on Tuesday March 1st @ 6PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.
