Expert technical analysis of financial markets by JC Parets
If you’ve been involved with crypto, you’ve probably heard the term “whales” thrown around countless times. There’s an almost conspiracy-like aura surrounding this cohort of Bitcoin holders.
With an incredible amount of attention placed on this trader cohort, it’s important to understand their role in driving price action, macro trends, and more importantly, following their movements.
So, first things first, what even is a “whale”?
[10/19/23: updated stop to 155]
We’re taking a Leap here.
The overwhelming majority of options trades we put on at All Star Options tend to be structured in a way to participate in moves that should take place within 2-8 months. The shorter duration trades are usually trades where we are net short premium (naked puts, short strangles, bear call spreads, etc), whereas our longer-term trades tend to be ones where we are net long premium at attractive prices (in volatility terms).
Today, we’re doing something we’ve never done here. We’re making a long-term bet utilizing LEAP options.
“LEAP” is an acronym for Long-Term Equity Anticipation Securities. Essentially, this means we’re taking a position in options that have greater than a year until expiration.
If you were on the @allstarcharts twitter SPACES chat this morning (every trading day at 11:30ET), you heard us riffing on today’s trade. [Read more…]
This is the video recording of our February 1st Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session
From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley
Commodities and cyclical assets have remained resilient, defying headwinds from the US dollar for nearly a year.
But the US Dollar Index $DXY is sliding lower as evidence mounts in favor of further weakness…
Could those headwinds soon fade away?
Today, we’re going to highlight some critical developments and discuss what they mean for the US dollar, stocks, and commodities in the weeks and months ahead.
Let’s dive in!
I was chatting with an All Star Options member this morning and he asked me a very insightful question:
“Sean, I’d be very interested in your thoughts on why you choose not to make a trade in certain setups?”
He went on to elaborate that he’d like to know the things I look for that are possible “red flags” that prevent me from pulling the trigger in otherwise good stock setups.
The overwhelming majority of trades I put on for All Star Options subscribers are in stocks that the All Star Charts team has identified as stocks we want to be in (either long or short).
The most common reason I won’t pull the trigger is [Read more…]
From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza
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.
