The Brothers Warner can't seem to get out of their own way. At least, that's what the price of Warner Brothers Discovery stock $WBD is telling us.

Look at this dog:

And recently, we've seen some aggressive put buyers step into the fray, as was discussed in a recent Follow the Flow Report. Here's what Strazza had to say about it:

It's hard not to notice the strength we've been seeing in the metals space lately. This surely is getting the Gold Bugs excited.

We wouldn't consider ourselves any kind of "bug," but it's fair to say we're biased toward charts that trend. If line goes up, we like to buy. If line goes down, we like to sell. Simple.

If we can get into an emerging trend early -- so much the better!

"Poor man's gold" (as JC called it), might just be starting a big relative outperformance trend that could spell a big opportunity for us.

No matter what the market, geopolitics, weather, congress, The President, retail demand, the news cycle, or even the price of the commodity itself throws at oil stocks, they just... keep... winning.

These are not trends I like to fight.

And it seems options markets aren't willing to fight it either as today's trade is in an oil sector bellwether that is now pricing in the lowest volatility in over 9 months as the stock flirts with post-Covid highs.

After we got past sharing each others' Thanksgiving dinner menus, wine pairings, and recipe swaps, the All Star Charts gang got back to business this morning hunting for trade ideas.

We arrived at today's idea in a roundabout way:

"Discretionary stocks have been the 'least shitty' performers as of late."

"We're seeing relative strength in 'da homies. [Homebuilders]"

"In that sector, Lennar $LEN is showing the best relative strength relative to the others."

...and that is a taste of how the Thanksgiving sausage is made.

So let's dig into some visuals to highlight what we're seeing.

While bargain clothes shoppers seem to be driving profits in a way Wall Street likes, it takes a certain kind of trader to buy stock in the company when it's making new All-Time Highs.

Well, I just happen to be that type of trader! In fact, one of my favorite setups is to buy stocks making fresh all-time highs. There is no overhead supply of bagholders looking to dump the stock to get back to even. Nothing but blue skies ahead.

And when options premium has collapsed, we can buy long calls to put ourselves in a position to enjoy the possibility of unlimited gains.

Let's go shopping!

After some pretty significant broad market moves in both directions in recent weeks, it's starting to feel like market participants are a bit tired. And can we blame them?

While volatility is often beneficial to active traders who have a good game plan to pounce at opportunities that are presented in such environments, eventually, we get tired. It's exhausting.

Knowing this, we can take advantage of this potential situation by crafting trades that take advantage of the likely decrease of options premiums that often takes place when traders are tired and stocks and indexes start trading in smaller ranges.

So let's use the Utilities sector to express a bet on compressing ranges...

So we were talking about a guy who's apparently subsisting only on McDonald's patties for the next 30 days. Just the patty --- no bun, no condiments, no lettuce. He's trying to prove some kind of point that it's not McDonald's burgers that are unhealthy, it's everything else in a typical American's McDonald's order at the drive-thru window.

Ok. Whatever.

But all this "healthy McDonald's" talk got us thinking about the even healthier looking chart of its stock $MCD in recent weeks:

We've got an oil stock on the doorstep of multi-year highs, a recent shakeout that probably rinsed out the hot-money crowd that came into the stock following their latest earnings report, and implied volatility plumbing new yearly depths.

This sets up an excellent opportunity to take a flyer on a simple long calls trade.

Let's dig in!

There’s a profound mental shift that happens when you flip from being in positions where bad luck could damage or ruin your trading account, to being in a position where the unexpected might actually make you a ton of money!

For options traders, an excellent example of these two positions is a short straddle vs. a long straddle.

In a short straddle, a trader is naked short an equal amount of calls and puts at the same strike and expiration. The PnL graph of a hypothetical 100-strike short straddle looks like this:

You’ll notice that as long as the underlying price (as displayed along the x-axis) stays +/- $20 from today’s price of $100, the trader will likely earn a profit as options expiration approaches.

Traders like these trades because they are high-probability bets, meaning that one has a better-than-average likelihood of earning a profit. Of course, when winning odds are favorable, the payoff usually isn’t all that high. And even worse, if the unexpected happens and a large directional move materializes, not...

“Why do you rob banks?” authorities asked notorious bank thief Willie Sutton.

His response: “Because that’s where the money is.”

We're not planning on robbing anybody, but if today's trade plays out like we think it can, it might feel like we're stealing. Only, we won't need to worry about the authorities coming after us, nor will we need to feel bad about it.

Our Analyst Willie Delwiche says that a basic requirement for many bullish ideas right now is that any stock or ETF in question needs to be above August highs. Anything below August highs is subject to a rude reversal. I'm on board with this line of thinking.

So, today's trade is in an American bank that is above its August high and showing signs of wanting more.