From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

That was a very slow day.

Fortunately, we did have some decent winners inside the live trading room.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

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.

What remains is a list of stocks that large financial institutions are putting big money behind.

And they’re doing so for one reason only: because they think...

You go on the twitter and all you see are people complaining about what a bad year this is for stocks, how bad the stock market is, recessions, bear markets, the Fed, blah blah blah.

I don't understand. What's everyone so angry about?

Stocks continue to do well. In fact, the back half of this year has been one of the better ones that we've ever seen.

Look how well most sectors have done since the market bottomed in June:

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

From the Desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

Merry Christmas!

I hope you enjoyed these last few days shutting off, spending time with your family, and eating good food.

Unlike most of the world, it's summer in New Zealand. Over here, we spend our Christmases in the hot sun, swimming, and enjoying the outdoors.

It's a great vibe.

But let's get a little crypto out of the way before our New Year's celebrations.

We'll keep this short, as there's simply nothing to update.

The most significant insider transaction on today’s list comes in a 13D from Deerfield Asset Management’s James Flynn.

Flynn increased his ownership stake in Terns Pharmaceuticals $TERN by 1%.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Futures are indicating higher this morning. I'll be watching to see how they hold up.

It's a short week, and probably a light week as far as trading volume.

We tend to think in US Dollars.

And this is for good reason, don't get me wrong.

The US Dollar is the world's dominant reserve currency.

But what if we treated Gold like another currency instead of a commodity?

It certainly acts more like a currency. Just look at the recent moves in Commodities, both up and down. Gold hasn't exactly followed along....

So if Gold wants to behave like a currency, maybe we should treat it like one.

Here's Gold priced in some very important currencies. In other words, this is what Gold looks like if you remove your US Dollar bias:

On Christmas or on any other day of the year, the goal is to sell things at higher prices than where we buy them.

And as great as Stocks have been performing, precious metals have done even better!

That relative strength is something we like to see in assets we own.

Now, when you zoom out in Gold, doesn't this time remind you of that time 20 years ago?

This is the weekly post that aggregates all the charts we put together throughout the week and organizes them all into one, easy to flip through deck.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Tuesday night we held our December Monthly Conference Call, which Premium Members can access and rewatch here.

In this post, we’ll do our best to summarize it by highlighting five of the most important charts and/or themes we covered, along with commentary on each

Let’s get right into it!

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Have you noticed commodities are breaking out?

No, not crude oil or copper. I’m talking about sugar, live cattle, and soybean meal.

Though these contracts rarely find themselves on the front page, their upside resolutions provide an important commodity-trading roadmap heading into 2023. 

Plus, their relative strength reveals insight into the underlying nature of the current market environment.

Check out commodity subgroup performances anchored from Sept. 26, when  the US Dollar Index $DXY peaked:

I chose to anchor from this date for two reasons: to highlight the trailing three months and to show how a weaker dollar tends to benefit commodity prices.

One might expect the entire commodity...