If this blog post was served up to you when you were searching for the latest scare porn on the omicron covid pandemic, I'm sorry to disappoint. But if you'd like to draw a correlation between the rising omicron cases and rising share prices of Micron technology stock --- you wouldn't be the first person to commit a #ChartCrime in service of a good story.

Micron Technology $MU is a stock that's been on my radar since the team published the Under the Hood report around Christmas highlighting the setup.

Here's what they had to say:

The All Star Charts team put a report out about the Metals sector end of last week, highlighting undercurrents investors should be keeping an eye on. Not everything is sending "all-clear" signals yet. But there is one particular name that definitely has my attention and is offering a good reward-to-risk opportunity to get involved.

I'll spare you any further preamble and we'll get right into the money quote that has me interested:

We’re buying an $MPC Feb/Apr 70 Call Calendar Spread for around a $1.10 debit. This means we’ll be short the February 70 calls and long an equal amount of April 70 calls for a net debit

Check out our short video with the thought process behind these trades:

I'll spare you the suspense -- we're getting long Marathon Petroleum $MPC here.

The title of today's post is not a trite pun. We are indeed positioning for a bullish move, but it may take a little bit to develop the way we want it to.

Thankfully, the beauty of options trading is that we can craft a strategy that takes advantage of a slow-developing play. So let's get right to it.

Well, we're on Day 1 of the Santa Rally and so far the fat man is delivering bigly!

Speaking of deliveries, it's likely your 2021 Holiday Season featured the services of our trade today.

Let's get right to it!

What a difference a few days makes, eh?

On Monday morning, if you were on twitter or watching the teevee you'd have assumed the stock market was about to get cut in half and the pitchforks were going to be lining up outside the Federal Reserve building in Washington, D.C.

Then, the market did what the market does and now here we are with the S&P 500 looking like it wants to make another run at all-time highs.

Forget about market volatility --- how about trader's emotional volatility?!

With this in mind, there is still some nice options premium being priced into individual names that offer us some unique tactical opportunities for some quick gains.

One nice thing about recent stock market volatility is that there are some bullish setups we can take advantage of with some clearly defined nearby risk levels, which give us entries with solid reward-to-risk scenarios.

And of course, in a theme we've been repeating over the past week, this volatility is also helping us more easily find where the hidden relative strength is.

So let's dive right into an idea that was surfaced in the recent Hall of Famers report.

The wild ride in the stock markets this week is nothing if not revealing to us where the relative strength is hidden!

There's always a silver lining to volatility. The vulnerable stocks get exposed, the weak hands get shaken out, and what we're often left with is a pretty clear picture of where the strength is and which names are likely to lead us higher when things calm back down.

With this in mind, today's trade comes from the latest Under the Hood Report.

We have a new Options trade up this week.

We're buying an $MMC April 170/200 Bull Call Spread for around a $7.50 debit all in. This means we’re long the 170 calls and short an equal amount of 200 calls..

Check out our short video with the thought process behind these trades:

During this morning's internal strategy session with the All Star Charts team, one theme we hit upon was that many of the stocks we want to be long have already had big runs making it irresponsible to get long here, and all the stocks we want to get short have already had big recent legs down and we don't want to chase those either!

I mean, to give you an idea, just look at the charts of healthcare ETF $XLV which is made up of many small-cap names, and $IWM -- the Russell 2000 small-cap index -- both are going in completely opposite directions! That pretty much sums up the predicament we find ourselves in right now.

It's a messy market out there!

So, naturally, we should look at companies that manage risk as their business!

With the S&P 500 wrestling with the 4700 level, I've been turning my eyes to some of our more favorable bullish setups.

On Friday, the ASC team published their latest International Hall of Famers List report. This list is composed of the 50 largest US-listed international stocks or ADRs. The team takes the 50 largest names each week and then applies technical filters in a way that the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

The name from this list that caught my attention just saw a dramatic collapse in options volatility, making call options cheaper. And with the stock above the trigger level, it's time for us to get involved.