Well, once again we saw a little downside action this week and the noise-makers on the twitter and the teevee got all revved up. Cool. Whatever drives clicks, you maniacs.

Meanwhile, those of us who keep our heads about us while others are going insane are looking for opportunities to sell some premium into the somewhat elevated volatility premiums we see in options during times like this.

So, I did my periodic scan across the ETF landscape to see which sectors were sporting the highest relative implied volatilities while also showing the potential for rangebound activity over the next several weeks.

And I like what turned up...

Today's post has inspired today's musical soundtrack that is oozing out my speakers as I type this.

The Rolling Stones' album Exile on Main St marked a turning point in the trajectory of Rolling Stones lore.

And it feels fitting as today's trade idea has Main Street in its name and it, too, is exhibiting classic characteristics of a major breakout.

That's right, I'm on the couch, settled in for a nice rom-com with the wife, passing the chip dip, and thinking about the stock dip I'm about to buy.

Sometimes, this is where and when my best ideas hit me. How about you?

But in the case, it just so happens the All Star team was already one step ahead of me on today's idea as they covered it in their recent Monthly Charts Strategy Session last week. At least now I get to enter at a better price!

I'm already groaning at the Dad Pun I'm trying to pull off here with this post's title.

The team put out a new The Short Report highlighting stocks that are ripe for getting short. Yes, we might be in a bull market, but its a "market of stocks" and if you look hard enough, you can always find stocks going in either direction, regardless of the macro market environment.

And the idea from the report that stands out best to me is now the victim of my bad pun.

Ok, so technically Microstrategy $MSTR is not a bitcoin ETF.

But for those of you paying attention to this space, you know that the CEO Michael Saylor has gotten very long and very loud about his company investing significant portions of its operating capital in Bitcoin. And because of this, the share price of $MSTR stock has since become highly correlated to the price action of Bitcoin.

We were chatting about it this morning and the one thing the team all agreed on is 10 years from now, Saylor is either going to go down as the Greatest Fool in History, or, The Greatest Investing Genius in History. There's really no other outcomes here for him. And you know what? I say cheers to you, Michael Saylor! Way to put your cohones on the line for something you so passionately believe in. Your investors will either one day elevate you to Sainthood or sue you into oblivion. Godspeed.

We've got our popcorn ready and we'll be watching!

Anyway, all of the above makes for fun coffee table conversation. But we traders only care about the price action and how we can profit from it. So let's get right to it.

The ASC team put out their latest International Hall of Famers list late last week. Here's what you need to know about these stocks: These are the 50 largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs, which the team has applied technical filters to in a way that the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

And one that caught my interest just recently got its last quarterly earnings reveal out of the way and it is now trading above the level where we want to take action.

The team is out with a bearish piece on US Treasuries this week. Have a read. In it, they lay out the case why we should be looking to position for further downside trading action in a variety of Treasury instruments.

It's been a while since I've had an opportunity to put a Bear Put Spread on, and these setups look like good candidates for them.

Feels good to be back from vacation! And I'm glad to see the stock market fared nicely while I was gone.

Looking around, we're seeing lots of fresh setups. But with earnings calls on deck, I'll have to be patient with many of my favorite ideas to let the event pass so as not to caught offsides by a sudden move in the wrong direction.

However, one of my favorite setups just got its latest earnings release out of the way this morning and thankfully it basically amounted to a non-event. Its recent breakaway gap continues to hold above its prior 3-year resistance level. And with the binary earnings event out of the way, options premiums have been evaporating throughout the day. This sets us up for taking a longer-term position at advantageous prices.

(While on vacation until Oct 26th, I’m going to be sharing some anecdotes on my favorite trading strategies: why I use them, when, and how I manage them once they are on.)

A Vertical Spread is one where you are long options at one strike and short an equal amount of options at another strike, both in the same expiration series. These can be done both for debits or credits, depending on whether you purchased the more expensive option (debit) or sold short the more expensive option (credit). And these can be done with either all calls or all puts.

But my favorite version of the vertical spread is a Bull Call Spread, where I purchase an at- or slightly out-the-money call and sell a further out-of-the-money call against it to lower my net purchase price.

(While on vacation until Oct 26th, I’m going to be sharing some anecdotes on my favorite trading strategies: why I use them, when, and how I manage them once they are on.)

Ok, so perhaps there's some recency bias here as the most recent bullish Risk Reversals I've put on have worked. Really though, all that has done is remind me that I should probably do more of these trades.

In a nutshell, a bullish Risk Reversal is a trade where we short naked puts and use those proceeds to pay for long calls. That's right, the market pays me to get long!

The trade is put on for a small net credit (ideally), and the short term goal is to ride an increase in the value of the calls which will allow us to sell a portion of them and use those proceeds to buy-to-close all the naked short puts. This then leaves us long the remaining portion of our calls for free! The calls could eventually reverse on us and go to zero, but we'll still keep the credit we received when we originally put the trade on (plus whatever credit we may have gained when we sold some calls to close all the puts). This is a great situation to be in!

(While on vacation until Oct 26th, I’m going to be sharing some anecdotes on my favorite trading strategies: why I use them, when, and how I manage them once they are on.)

The majority of trades we do here with All Star Options tend to be directional in nature. And why not? We're leveraging best-in-class technical analysis to give us an uncommon edge to participate in emerging and/or continuing trends. And if we know anything as Traders, we know that if we have an edge, we should attempt to execute against that edge as often as possible.

Meanwhile, I recognize there is an entire cottage industry around "selling options premium" and for good reason -- it works! That doesn't mean it always works nor does it mean it's easy. I just don't like to make it my only thing.

That said, one of my favorite strategies is to sell premium via Short Strangles.

(While on vacation until Oct 26th, I'm going to be sharing you some anecdotes on my favorite trading strategies: why I use them, when, and how I manage them once they are on.)

Here's the thing about options trading: you can make it as complicated as your heart's content. And there are plenty of incredibly smart practitioners out there who run amazingly complex strategies involving all kinds of volatility and statistical arbitrage.

They analyze 3D volatility surface graphs, use lesser understood greeks, and interpret things like "volatility smile" and dispersion.

If that works for you, great! I always say: if it works, do more of it!

But another beautiful thing about options trading is that there are many different ways to pull profits out of the market, and most of them aren't as complicated as they may sound -- even if the strategies have exotic sounding names like "iron condor" or "broken-wing butterfly."

And my absolute favorite options strategy isn't even really a strategy at all -- it's simply buying long calls when I'm bullish!