It’s no secret the oil and energy sectors have been outperforming in 2022.

Of course, when a trend like that is no secret, it tends to become a crowded trade. And we’ve seen a taste of the ramifications of that in recent weeks. There were some vicious pullbacks in all the biggest winners about two weeks ago.

Fast forward to today, and the smoke has cleared a bit. Many of these names survived the exits of hot money and are now showing signs of resuming their prior uptrends.

At the top of this list right now is Exxon Mobil $XOM.

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Looking across the landscape of broken charts, it’s hard to put capital to work here right now.

When zooming out, there are some larger trends that are still intact, but man — you gotta be really bold to step in here.

There are only two stocks on our board that are in our buy zone: Suncor $SU and Host Hotels & Resorts $HST. Unfortunately, both have earnings coming up this week. We’d be forcing it to get involved here. And I don’t like being forced into anything.

We say it all the time: There are no called third strikes on Wall Street. We can stand at the plate with the bat on our shoulder for as long as we like until we find a pitch we want to take a swing at. And right now, that feels like the most prudent stance.

So we’re going to chill out and wait for new bases to form, relative strength to reveal itself, and setups to appear.

We’ve got plenty to keep ourselves busy with. Many of our open positions are getting tested. I exited two of them this morning (BTU and CCJ).

Mama said there’d be days like these…

~ @chicagosean