I get a lot of questions from folks who want to get into crypto, but are often overwhelmed.

It seems like this whole new thing that's so different from what they've touched before.

"Louis, where do I start?"

"How can I know these exchanges are safe?"

"What platforms can I reliably use?"

These are all great questions - and I get it, it's confusing touching a whole new asset class.

But let me reassure you; you can think of these cryptos as complex-sounding software stocks. And don't just take my word for it because Bitcoin trades EXACLY like software.

Bitcoin $IBIT is the yellow line while the iShares Software ETF $IGV is the black one. Pretty damn similar, right?

This asset class has never been so accessible to outsiders. I remember back in the day, you had to go through these shaky exchanges and when you sent your hard earned funds over, it felt like it disappeared into the aether.

Well, no longer...

My go-to exchange/platform that I guide a lot of people to is Coinbase; they're doing everything right.

They're a publicly traded company under SEC oversight, operate within U.S. regulatory frameworks, and are...

While the market has been rising early in the week, I've been less than impressed. The volumes in the indexes just isn't there. At least not enough for me to issue an 'all clear' signal to get back to our regularly scheduled Bull Market.

And so, I've been keeping an eye on some weak stocks to see how they'd recover in any broader market bounces.

For today's trade, this stock had every opportunity to reverse course. But it just can't find its footing, which makes me think the next big move is lower again. 

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. No new positions today.
2. Rolling XLC to May options.
3. Exited XLE and XRT.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

In case you missed it, we're amid a raging precious metals bull market.

Gold miners are playing catch-up, and they keep making new highs.

Silver is on the cusp of resolving a historical base that dates back to 1980 when the Hunt Brothers tried to corner the market.

All the while, the yellow metal is soaring versus every fiat currency in the universe.

Tesla is ripping this morning, up 10% so far on news that the tampon guy gets his rocks off when TSLA stock falls in price. 

This is a former Vice Presidential Candidate up on stage rooting against an American institution that employs over 125,000 Americans. 

What a loser.

Fortunately, he did his little dance right at the 61.8% retracement of the entire TSLA rally off the late 2022 lows. 

It was almost too perfect. 

We obviously put on the trade.

To not buy Tesla on that kind of silliness would have been irresponsible. 

So far so good.

Meanwhile, speaking of crazies, the sentiment towards Michael Saylor has also spiked towards the pessimistic side.

I love that.

This was a beautiful bear trap:

We discussed all the details on the entry for the Tesla trade and...

With today's early rally and VIX on its way back down the recent mountain, now feels like the right time to capture some options premium in a wide Iron Condor in the QQQs.

I'm not calling that the bottom is in, but I'm open to it. Either way, it's unlikely we V-Bottom out of this morass, which is why betting on a wide, sloppy, sideways range feels right to me.

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. New position in XLB.
2. No adjustments are needed today.
3. Exited XLB and EEM at profit targets.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Minor Leaguers.

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.

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.

We expanded our universe to include some mid-caps.

Nowadays, to make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

And it doesn't have to be a Russell component — it can be any US-listed equity. With participation expanding around the globe, we want all those ADRs in our universe.

The same price and liquidity filters are applied. Then, as always, we sort by proximity to new...

I hope you're having a nice weekend.

Before I head out for the day I wanted to share a few thoughts about the market and what I'm seeing out there.

This week I laid out all my thoughts and favorite trades during our LIVE Conference Call. So today's note is about a few other things I didn't talk about on the call. 

The first one is this big 2100 level in Ethereum. Remember that despite all the underperformance from this one, ETH still carries a $240 Billion market-cap and is still the 2nd largest token on the planet.

If we're back above last year's lows, I would really start to get interested in this one. Look for the Bitcoin dominance to come off if Ethereum starts to outperform again. ETH can really help the Alts...

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.

We don't have bull markets without Financials. It's just how the market works, both in the United States and Internationally. 

European Banks keep ripping. Japanese Banks keep ripping.

And you're seeing it in the United States as well. Berkshire Hathaway is the largest component of the S&P Financials Index, and BRKA just went out at new all-time highs again this week.

Here are the exchanges, still dominating as well. Both the CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange are hitting new all-time highs:

If this is your first bull market, I would encourage you to go back and study former bull markets throughout history. 

You'll notice similar behavior from Financials.

It's when things are making a turn for the bad that Financials really struggle.

We're currently seeing the opposite.

By my work, it's really the more "Value" oriented areas of the market that keep dominating returns, while the "Growth" areas have corrected.

Here is a list of the very best of the biggest companies in America. Notice all the Financials, Industrials, Healthcare and Energy.

This list is sorted by relative strength and the "...