This is still the one folks.

I've been in the camp that we're only getting bull markets in stocks around here if the Dollar is falling.

And well, a funny thing happened last month: The Dollar started falling, particularly against the most important crosses.

This happened once the journalists finally realized the Dollar had been so strong. And you know what tends to happen when they finally get the memo ;)

Take a look at the Dollar rolling over vs both the Euro and British Pounds:

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Two heavy hitters, $GOOGL and $MSFT, reported last night, and they both traded lower after hours.

Futures seem to be holding steady.

The largest insider transaction on today’s list was reported in a Form 4 filing by the Swiss investment company BB Biotech AG.

The biotechnology-focused fund reported a purchase worth roughly $2.2 million in MacroGenics $MGNX.

Many stocks are no where near their all-time highs.

The S&P500 still needs to rally 25% just to get back to its former highs. And that's after the 10% rally that we've already seen in October.

The Nasdaq100 would need to go up another 43% from here just to get back to its highs. And again, that's after it already ripped 12% off its lows this month.

Remember, the average Nasdaq stock fell 44% from its highs during the bear market. The average small & micro cap stock dropped about 50%.

And since most stocks are so far from their highs, investors are having a hard time calling this a bull market.

"They need to make new all-time highs for it to be a bull market", they say to me.

So ok, let's play that game.

None of these prices here below were new all-time highs. So was this a bear market then?

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

That was a nice follow-through day for the indices.

The SPX hit resistance around the 3,850 level, and you have the 50-day moving average at roughly 3,868.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market held overnight, which is a good sign.

We're now back to the levels seen in early October on the SPX. Support for the $SPY is at 374.8, with resistance at 380, then 386.

The largest insider transaction on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by FB Financial Corporation $FBK Chairman of the Board James Ayers.

Ayers reported a purchase worth roughly $1.9 million.

How do we know if we're in a bull market or not?

Generally speaking, more stocks are going up than going down in bull markets.

And sure, there are a lot of different ways to quantify it, but this is really the gist of it: Are more stocks going up or are more of them going down?

It really is that simple.

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...

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.

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.

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...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We opened up on the indices, and they came back down to fill their respective gaps.

We trended higher the rest of the day, but it was a pretty volatile morning.

Where is the defensive rotation?

I was told US Stocks were in a bear market.

For those keeping score at home, the NYSE new lows list peaked in June. That was over 4 months ago.

But Consumer Staples have been underperforming since May!