Click here to sign up for our free “Chart of the Week”

All Star Charts

Expert technical analysis of financial markets by JC Parets

Recipe for Better Sleep: Lower Volatility + Higher Returns

by

In the Spring of 2022, JC came to me and said: “What do you think about managing an options income portfolio for me? I’m looking for some more strategy diversification in my portfolios. It doesn’t need to be anything sexy, just steady.”

Ok, I’m probably paraphrasing a bit, but that was the gist of his ask.

So I got to work on putting a plan together for him. When we looked at it together, it became obvious that we should offer this portfolio to the All Star Charts community who might also be interested in some further diversification. Even if people don’t take our trades, it could be a productive learning experience for everyone.

So we got to work and we launched the All Star Options Paid-to-Play (P2P) service in May 2022.

Each trading day, we either enter a new delta-neutral options credit spread in a liquid ETF (from a list of the most liquid Index and Sectors ETFs), or we play defense on an open position with an adjustment to put us in a better position to win. And we leave resting GTC (good-till-canceled) limit orders to close our credit spreads at profit targets which get filled periodically at the whim of the markets.

So far, so good.

Here is our calendar year 2022 Performance (launch date May 11th) with an overlay of S&P 500 performance: [Read more…]

Stocks Start 2023 Very Strong

by

First Santa Claus showed up for his rally.

Now the “First 5 Days” of the year were up (+1.37%).

That’s 2 for 2 so far in the January Trifecta.

So now what’s next?

The January Barometer is the last leg of the early year triple crown.

“As January goes, so goes the rest of the year”. According to my handy Stock Trader’s Almanac, the S&P500 has an 83.3% hit rate for the full year when January is in the green.

So with more and more positive signs for stocks, it really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.

The trend for most stocks has been up and to the right. That was a strong back half of 2022 and a very strong 4th quarter.

And not just in the U.S., but we’re seeing breadth expansion internationally.

The weaker Dollar has certainly helped.

And while our Neutral approach for the S&P500 remains intact, underneath the surface things look so much better.

[Read more…]

Under the Hood (01-09-2023)

by

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to Under the Hood, where we’ll cover all the action for the week ended January 6, 2023. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with The Minor Leaguers.

What we do here is analyze the most popular stocks during the week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.

We use a variety of sources to generate the list of most popular names.

There are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: a list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

Click here for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual options activity, or simply our proprietary lists of trending tickers, there’s a lot of overlap.

[Read more…]

Follow the Flow (01-09-2023)

by

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

Then we flip through our list of stocks flashing unusual activity and pick the best setups using many of the same technical filters we do for our other scans.

And, just like that, we’ll follow the money flow and fatten our own pockets along with some of the world’s most powerful financial institutions.

[Read more…]

Recent Posts

Tag Cloud

$AAPL $CL_F $DIA $DX_F $EEM $FXE $GC_F $GLD $IWM $ng_f $QQQ $si_F $SLV $SPX $SPY $TLT $tran $UUP $XLB $XLE $XLF $XLI $XLP $XLU $XLV $XLY djia es_f eurusd ewz fxi fxy gdx HG_f iyt kre mdy rut tnx ung usdjpy uso xlk zb_f zn_f
Real Time Analytics