From the Desk of Ian Culley @Ianculley

Don’t let credit spreads fool you. 

High-yield debt hasn’t blown out relative to Treasuries. Regardless, the largest markets in the world are buckling under pressure.

You have to look outside the US and beyond high-yield corporate bonds to see the stress. Here are three cautionary data points to consider: European sovereign spreads, US bond market volatility, and the steep decline in investment-grade bonds.

When you weigh the evidence, it’s clear risks are rising for US markets. 

Let’s look at the charts!

First, here's a look at European sovereign spreads:

At first glance, these spreads look similar to high-yield spreads. They’re chopping sideways at or near their peaks from the 2020 crash. Nothing alarming or unusual from the countries at the highest risk of default – Spain, Italy, or Portugal. 

It’s a different story when it comes to the UK, as the spread between the UK-...

You see what just a little bit of Dollar weakness does to this market?

I'm telling you. I'm not making this up.

Now here's the thing. Let's remember that extreme volatility IN BOTH DIRECTIONS is commonly found near turning points.

Last time the US Dollar Index had a single day GAIN as large as Friday's was 3/19/20.

Last time the US Dollar Index had a single day LOSS as large as Wednesday's was 3/26/20.

The Dollar Index peaked on 3/20/20. Stocks bottomed the very next trading day on 3/23/20.

Here's a look:

For this week's trade, we're Selling the BRKB November 260 Puts Naked

Get the full details, risk management procedures and targets for this trade here:

Here we are back to the June lows in both the S&P500 and Nasdaq100.

Support held for a few days this week at the same prices that it held 3 months ago:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to the 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we've been working on internally is using various bottom-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach. It's really been working for us!

One way we're doing this is by identifying the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small- to mid- to large- and, ultimately, to mega-cap status (over $200B).

Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B), they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.

But the scan doesn't just end there.

We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market, as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, and myriad others – would have been on this list at some point during their journey...

...Berkshire "B" shares, to be precise.

One of JC's favorite trades when volatility is spiking and bearish sentiment seems a little overdone on the downside is to either buy stock in Berkshire Hathaway $BRK.B or even better -- sell some naked puts to fade the fear.

During our morning meeting today, JC was feeling that the time was right to pull the trigger on this idea again.

Selling naked puts is the move for us today, but we have to be aware that earnings are on the horizon in early November -- which may be accounting for some of the extra premium in November monthly expiration options.

As you can see from this chart, $BRK.B has undercut a significant level ever so slightly, but if this move is false, the whipsaw back up should be swift:

From the Desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

There's a lot that we can learn from Warren Buffett, who many consider to be one of the greatest investors of all time.

One of the most important lessons of all of them is that there are no called strikes on Wall Street. In other words, in liquid markets, you're not penalized for “missing” a trade.

The market doesn't guarantee traders much. But we can be certain there will always be future opportunities. We're not venture capitalists running rounds on private companies where a single deal can make or break our year.

Instead, we operate in public markets, where there will always be a multitude of setups.

In other words, we're not penalized for not swinging like we are in baseball.

With Bonds getting destroyed this year, it's put pressure on growth stocks, because of their long-duration characteristics.

As rates rise, it puts a lot of pressure on growth stocks. That's why historically the more Value oriented stocks and sectors tend to outperform when rates are rising.

When rates are falling that's when growth stocks usually thrive the most.

We all know this. The data is free.

BUT, a funny thing has happened over the last few months.

With bonds continuing to collapse and breaking those summer lows, the Nasdaq has been outperforming the S&P500.

What does the stock market know that we don't?

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The calls for a dollar top are growing louder as analysts claim the advance is overextended. 

They’re right. But pushing further into overbought territory is exactly what parabolic rallies do. And many of the technical tools supporting the thesis that the dollar is topping do not apply. 

In practice, mean reversion tools such as oversold/overbought conditions, price exceeding the upper bounds of a Bollinger Band, or the percentage gain above the moving average du jour are best used in trendless markets. 

Does the dollar look trendless? Absolutely not! 

Don’t let these data points distract you. Let’s instead put the current DXY advance into perspective by focusing on historical price action. 

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

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 the stock is about to move in their direction and make them a pretty...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest Minor Leaguers report.

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.

This year, we expanded our universe to include some mid-caps.

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 highs in order to focus on the best players.

But, instead of all-time highs, we're sorting by 52-week highs these days, as we don't want to discriminate against energy or other cyclical stocks.

...

These are the registration details for our Live Monthly Candlestick Strategy Session for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

This month’s Video Conference Call will be held on Monday October 3rd @ 6PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.

Here are the details for Monday evening: