Chef Scott Redler Shares His Secret Turkey Recipe
Family + friends + food + football + fitness (say that 10 times quick!) makes Thanksgiving one of my favorite holidays. And believe it or not, I’m pretty handy in the kitchen. I cook like I trade, and I trade like I cook. I keep things simple, and I go with what works. I’ve been using this turkey recipe since my parents moved to Florida 14 years ago, and it’s what I’ll be serving my family on Thursday afternoon. Ingredients List Turkey 3-4 long celery sticks 2 sticks of butter 2 oranges 3-4 lemons 2 sticks of butter 4 whole onions 3 big hunks of garlic Salt Pepper Paprika Ms. Dash seasoning 1 can of pineapples 1 jar of orange or apricot jam The quantity of ingredients depends on the size of your turkey. Just scale up or down as you see fit. We usually get a frozen 20-pounder. And oh yeah — make sure you have a quality knife! It will make your life a lot easier. I’ll take the bird out of the freezer Monday morning so it will be defrosted by Wednesday evening, when I do my prep work. You know me. Whether I’m trading, running, or cooking, I never show up for battle unprepared. If you start getting things ready before Thanksgiving, you’ll get better results with less stress on Thanksgiving… just like in trading! I’ll dice up 4 whole onions and 3 big hunks of garlic, and toss them in a large bowl. I then add salt, pepper, paprika, some Mrs. Dash seasoning, and mix it all up. Then, I’ll stuff it into the turkey. I’ll also put half a can of pineapples in there, and jam a stick of butter right in the middle of all. Then, I pour some orange juice and lemon juice over the turkey skin — just enough to get it wet. In a separate bowl, I’ll mix up more salt, pepper, and paprika for the skin. I spread it all over, making sure to get in all the nooks and crevices. Don’t be cheap! Then, I’ll wrap the turkey in a big bag and leave it in the refrigerator overnight. On Thanksgiving morning, I’ll cut a few long celery sticks in half and put them on the bottom of the pan. Then, I take the turkey out of the bag and place it on the pan. There will be a lot of juice in the bag. Transfer it to the bottom of the pan, and be careful not to spill any. It’s a real pain to clean up! Then I’ll mix up more salt, pepper, and paprika, and sprinkle it on top of the turkey. Now it’s time to stick the bird in the oven. After an hour, start basting it every 15-20 minutes. Take juices from the cavity and squeeze it on top of the turkey. Also, rotate the pan every hour or so. It should take about 4 hours to cook. Just follow what your meat thermometer says. When there is about 20 minutes to go, pour a jar of orange or apricot jam in a bowl, and add a softened stick of butter to it. Mix it together, and brush the turkey with it. Stick the turkey back in, but keep a close eye on it. We want a nice crispy skin, but we don’t want to burn it. Once the turkey’s done, take it out and let it sit for an hour before you carve it. By the way, if you’re not experienced in the art of carving up a turkey, this video will help you get it right and impress your family: Delay your carving as long as you can — turkey tastes best just when it’s cut! If you give this recipe a shot, take a picture, post it on Twitter, and tag me (@reddogT3) so I can see it! Have a great week, and an even better Thanksgiving!
Continue Reading -->Sami Abusaad: Swing Trade Management in an Explosive Earnings Season
P.S. Earnings Season is still going strong. Be sure to check out this FREE Earnings Season resource: The Ultimate Guide to Trading Earnings Season ** In this special video, Nightly Game Plan Moderator Sami Abusaad walks you through his open swing trade positions so you can see how an expert trader manages an active trading portfolio. Sami goes through: A breakout/1-2-3 combination in American Outdoor Brands (AOBC) A climactic play in Newell Brands (NWL) Maiden Holdings (MHLD), which Sami is retargeting after a $5,449.09 profit two weeks ago The Weekly Sell Setup in Unisys (UIS) The Earnings Play in Twitter (TWTR) And MORE! By the way, have you seen last week’s video, which shows Sami’s actual account statements with $78,059.89 in profits since October 16? Watch it here: Watch this video and see: Sami’s $78,059.89 in total gains realized this earning season, which you can see in his actual online account statements The exact chart setup in MTSI that delivered a $4,506 profit in one day Another successful trade in Universal Corp. (UVV)
Continue Reading -->How to Fix Broken Trading
Are you too busy trying to be right to make any money… Once you understand, and USE this lesson, everything changes.If you’re like me, you word hard. Every day you scan hundreds of charts looking for money, and looking for the clues you missed. Clues that would have indicated “hold this trade longer,” “don’t take this trade,” that type of stuff.You believe if you find the answer THEN you will be profitable. I have news for you, I did that for years, and never found it.But I DID stumble into how to fix my inconsistency. It was practically an accident. I wanted to build a list of stocks to scan, my software required me to add shares to the portfolio, so I gave all 100 stocks 100 shares.Every day I logged in and scanned for ideas, completely ignoring the actual portfolio because I was only looking for setups.One day I noticed the portfolio was profitable. There were A LOT of losing trades, but the aggregate was profitable. I sat up and said, “huh, that’s interesting.”Normally I would find a few stocks to trade. If they met my criteria I would cherry -pick which ones I believed would be good trades.After my discovery, I tried something different, I traded every stock in my list, for 100 shares, with real money. When I got a signal, I entered without hesitating.No second-guessing, just enter them all.A funny thing happened. When I released myself from “being right,” and just let my edge do the work, trading became more profitable, AND LESS STRESSFUL. That was the day everything changed. Trading became fun again, and I finally felt like I could do this for a living. I no longer I felt like an impostor.Now I had control. The more trades I made, the more I earned. I was allowing my strategy to do the heavy lifting.Making this work of course, requires good trades, high-probability ideas. Now that you know HOW to fix broken trading, I’d like to ask you to give us 30 days.Give us 30 days to find your next $1,000.If you aren’t hitting your goals, if you’re trading is boom or bust, invest $7 for the next 30 days and get up to 200 high-probability trade ideas.Join the Daily Market Report with Jeff Cooper. Just $7 for the next 30 days. Get started here…
Continue Reading -->Volatility Returned. But Is There Any Fear Out There?
Volatility is finally picking up! The VIX hit 3-month highs on Wednesday, and we’ve had 4 down days in the last 6. And traders are finally starting to believe we’re on the verge of seeing the first real shakeup since the 2016 Presidential election. So let’s take a fresh look at our sentiment indicators to see how traders are feeling after the shakeup. (click here for a primer on the sentiment indicators below) 1) VIX Spread – Bullish As noted above, the VIX hit a 3-month high on Thursday. It’s since come back down towards 11 on Friday. This gives us a 3-month spread of about +3.60, which means traders are moderately bullish. As you can see in the chart below, the VIX may be breaking out above its depressed 50 day moving average the way it did in August: (click here for a primer on the VIX spread) 2) CNN Fear & Greed Index – Neutral The Fear & Greed Index is at 50. This index operates on a 0-100 scale, so a reading of 50 is perfectly neutral. Before Thursday’s big reversal, it was actually at 35. On October 6, it hit multi-year highs at 95, so it’s obviously come back down to earth. Funny — a lot of folks thought that 95 reading meant we were peaking. But markets kept pushing higher, showing how difficult it is to time market moves from sentiment indicators. 3) AAII Sentiment – Bearish. The latest AAII Sentiment Survey shows that 29.3% of individual investors are bullish. This is a major collapse from last week’s 45.1% level, which itself was the highest since since January 5, 2017. The long-term average is 38.5%. 4) CBOE Equity Put-Call – Neutral The CBOE Equity-Put Call ratio was at 0.64 on Thursday, slightly below the 0.655 long-term average. The 10-day moving average is 0.652, which is right in-line with the long-term average. So it doesn’t get more neutral than this. Conclusion Out of 4 sentiment indicators, we have: 1 bullish (down from 3 last week) 2 neutral (up from 1 last week) 1 bearish (up from 0 last week) The permabears are still saying that everone’s all-in bullish and 100% complacent… but the numbers tell another story. If you want to see full-on bullish insanity, go back to October 6 when I declared the following: “Let’s not mince words: the bulls are clearly insane. They think they’re destined to ride into the sunset on a magic carpet made of cold hard cash.” Of course, I hedged myself by adding that “the bulls may be insane… but they may also be right.” And the bulls were right, with the major indices continuing to march higher. Trader aren’t bearish. We all know that. But based on the numbers, it’s fair to call the crowd neutral. This is ultimately good for the bulls. The more doubt there is, the more potential upside firepower. In particular, if the Russell 2000 can stage a comeback, we could see a major spike in confidence… along with a major spike in price. Just remember, sentiment follows the action, which makes it awfully tricky to use to time trades. Plus, sentiment can stay at extreme levels for far longer than you think is reasonable. So always use this information as color — not as specific buy/sell signals.
Continue Reading -->Did Rolling Stone Jinx Tesla with the Magazine Cover Indicator?
So at 10:45 a.m. yesterday, I got an email with the subject line “The Most Important Person of Our Generation.” It came from Neil Strauss, author of the infamous pick-up artist memoir The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists: I know what you’re about to ask… And I can neither confirm nor deny that I read The Game. So, to whom was Neil referring as “The Most Important Person of Our Generation.”? Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, whom Neil just profiled for a Rolling Stone cover story: Rolling Stone covers focus on entertainers, followed by politicians and athletes. I looked at hundreds of Rolling Stone covers going back to 1990 and I found exactly one CEO cover story… and it was about an even bigger tech icon. It was the October 27, 2011 issue commemorating Apple (AAPL) founder Steve Jobs, who had died 3 weeks earlier: Even in the late 1990’s dot-com boom, there wasn’t a single tech-focused Rolling Stone cover story, let alone a CEO story. And of course, this has me thinking about the magazine cover indicator. The magazine cover indicator says that a dramatic magazine cover story (typically a major business magazine like Fortune or BusinessWeek) can be a contrary indicator. The most famous example is BusinessWeek’s The Death of Equities cover in August 1979, which preceded the biggest bull market known to man. Chart from FinancialSense.com So did Rolling Stone ‘jinx’ Tesla? And the wider world of technology of stocks? Let’s see. In Neil Strauss email, he said he “spent the last nine months in and out of his world, working on this profile…” 9 months back from November 15 is February 15. Let’s assume that Rolling Stone spent a month before slating Musk for a cover story. In January, Tesla traded between $210.96 and $258.46. It hit $389.61 in September before pulling back to $312.49 when the story hit. Here’s what the stock chart looks like: Since Tesla’s at a bit of a crossroads now, only time will tell if Rolling Stone put in the ‘jinx.’ Or maybe I should put it another way. Only time will tell if Elon Musk marked a top in his ego — and by extension his Tesla/Solar City/Space X juggernaut — by agreeing to a Rolling Stone cover in the first place. So we’ll see. But what about technology overall? We know it’s been ripping since the election. But here’s a 20-year monthly chart of the S&P Technology ETF (XLK): Let me be clear: the magazine cover indicator should not be mixed up with actual science or rational analysis. It’s mostly valuable to permabears desperate for attention on Twitter. But I can’t help but ask: wouldn’t it be funny if tech topped out just as Rolling Stone broke tradition to put Elon Musk on the cover?
Continue Reading -->Trader’s Digest: The 10 Stories We’re Reading Right Now
Wonder what traders are talking about today?We’re here with the top 10 stories we’re sharing with colleagues today, covering topics like:Where the GOP Tax Plan standsWhy Target is collapsing aheadHow Sami Abusaad Made $72,867.08 During Earnings SeasonAnd more!So check out these links right now and get up to speed:1) Here’s Where the GOP Tax Plan Stands Right Now (Bloomberg) House leaders cleared the way for a Thursday vote on their tax-overhaul bill as Senate tax writers released a late-night draft that would make many individual breaks temporary and repeal a key part of the Obamacare law.Read the Story ==>2) Target shares sink as promotions darken holiday outlook (Reuters) Target Corp’s profit forecast for the key holiday quarter fell short of analyst expectations, sending its shares down nearly 10 percent, as the retailer continues to cut prices and invest in its delivery options to attract more customers.Read the Story ==>3) Sami Abusaad: How I Made $72,867.08 During Earnings Season (T3 Live) Sami made a profit of $5,449.09 in MHLD last week — a nice paycheck for 30 minutes of work. But this was just one of Sami’s great trades this earnings season. Watch the video and get a look at Sami’s actual account statements so you can see his $72,867.08 in total gains from this earnings season.Continued Reading ==>4) China is about to take the entire global economy for a wild ride (Business Insider) For now, Wall Street is wailing about a lack of volatility in global markets. Give it a few weeks, and that will all change. China is about to take us all for a wild ride. We’ve taken this ride at the end of every year since 2014, and all of the elements for a repeat are coming together.Continued Reading ==>5) Forex Outlook | EURUSD Breaks Resistance (T3 Live) In this special video, T3 Forex Strategist Kurt Capra take a live look at the EURUSD after it broke through resistance and triggered a pattern that could last into the end of the year.Continued Reading ==>6) A Record Number Of Investors Are Exposed To “Higher Than Normal Risk” (ValueWalk)With the stock market coming into November with another strong gain for the S&P 500 – the market was up for the statistically improbable 12th month in a row in October – investors are becoming aware of the increased risk exposure.Continue Reading ==>7) Snapchat’s New Test: Grow Like Facebook, Without the Baggage (T3 Live) In today’s social media industry, you essentially have two options: Die young, or live long enough to turn into Facebook. Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, appears to be headed down the latter path.Continue Reading ==>8) 7 Things to Know Before You Place Your First Options Trade (T3 Live) Today, we’re going to close out our Introduction to Options series with 7 key things you need to know before you place your first options trade.Continue Reading ==>9) Wall Street’s new bitcoin play: Square rises after saying it’s testing support of the cryptocurrency (CNBC) Traders have another potential stock play on bitcoin: Square. Jack Dorsey’s company is testing support for bitcoin through its Cash payments app.Continue Reading ==> 10) How to Become a Millionaire in 3 Years (Daniel Ally/YouTube) Learn how entrepreneur Daniel Ally became a millionaire at the age of 24. Watch this video and get Daniel’s 3 key principles for success:
Continue Reading -->7 Things to Know Before Your First Options Trade
Welcome back to our Introduction to Options series! By now we’ve covered: 1) The ABC’s of Puts and Calls 2) How Implied Volatility Works 3) Theta: The Options Trader’s Kryponite 4) 3 Simple Options Strategies Beginners Should Know Today, we’re going to close out our series with 7 key things you need to know before you place your first options trade. These simple tips will help avoid common pitfalls that can destroy your profitability, so we hope you enjoy it! 1) Start with 1 Contract Yes, you want to swing for the fences and make a big fat pile of cold hard cash with your first options trade. But winning traders know that we’re not in a spring. We’re in a marathon. We recommend that you start slowly. So if you want to buy call options, just start with 1 contract, and carefully track your trade’s progress. Likewise, if you’re interested in multi-leg strategies like bull/bear call spreads or iron condors, just use one contract for each leg of your trades. A big part of your options trading education will come from actual trading — so make that education as inexpensive as possible! It’s very easy to make mistakes with options trading, particularly when it comes to order entry, and it’s best to start with small dollar amounts and work your way up. 2) Be Careful Getting in the Pool Naked Think twice before putting on naked short options positions. A naked short position is one in which you are short call or put options without an offsetting trade that limits your risk. The risk is astronomical and if the underlying stock makes a big move against you, your account will be damaged. So before putting on trades, consider the risk-reward, and makes sure the odds are in your favor. Shorting options can be very lucrative — especially in a volatile market when premiums are high — but you must be very careful. We recommend getting the guidance of a more experienced options trader before considering such a trade. Shorting options is especially risky ahead of earnings and other events. Case in point: take a look at this chart of online retail giant Amazon.com (AMZN). As you can see, it gapped up on 10/27/2017, the day after it reported a stellar third-quarter earnings report: Let’s say that when Amazon was trading around $980, you thought there was no way it could get above $1000. Ahead of earnings, you could have shorted the December $1,000 calls for around $28. So for each call you shorted, you would receive a credit of $2,800. Let’s look at what happened to this option’s price after earnings. The December $1,000 call closed at $25.15 on October 26 before the earnings report hit. And after Amazon beat expectations and skyrocketed, the option opened at $70.80. It then went over $100. It’s now trading at $131. Let’s assume you covered at $100 on the dot to keep things simple. This means you: Went short at $28 ($2,700 per contract) Covered the short at $100 ($10,000 per contract) That’s a net loss of $71, or $7,200 PER CONTRACT. A 3-contract trade would have put you out $21,600! So please, know what you are getting into when shorting options. And watch the calendar so you are aware of any stock-moving events. 3) Don’t Go Overboard with Out-of-the-Money Options In our last article on basic options strategies, we showed you this table explaining the differences between in-the-money options and out-of-the-money options: As you can see, out-of-the-money options have a higher chance of expiring worthless. But many new options traders love them because they have a lower up front cost. Beginners especially love far-out-of-the money options because they look so darn cheap. But there’s a reason they look so cheap… it’s because they’re lottery tickets. They don’t cost much, and there’s a low chance they’ll actually pay off. That’s not to say they’re inherently bad. Just be aware that with out-of-the-money options, especially those that are far-out-of-the-money, you’re rolling the dice. Plus, be aware that far out-of-the-money options can be very illiquid. It’s not unusual to get in a position (often at a bad price, because market makers often jack up the prices on out-of-the-money options), and be unable to get out because no one is interested in buying your particular options. It’s just like the roach motel: you check in but you don’t check out! 4) Be Careful with Your Entry Prices Like stocks, options have a bid and ask price. (the ‘ask’ is also called the ‘offer’) The bid is the price buyers are willing to pay. The ask is the price at which sellers are willing to sell. But if you are always buying at the ask and selling at the ask, you’re getting ripped off. Let’s look at red hot streaming media play Roku (ROKU). With the stock trading at $45.27, here are the prices of the December $44, $45, $46, and $47 calls. This is an extreme example so you can see just how easily you can get fooled by looking at the bid and ask. Let’s say we’re looking at the $44 calls. The market maker would LOVE to sell us those options at $6.80 (the ask). That’s like walking into a used car dealership and taking the first price the salesman offers up. Odds are we can actually get filled somewhere near the middle of the bid and ask. The midpoint of the $5.50 bid and $6.80 offer is $6.15. So if we bid $6.20-$6.30 or so, odds are we’d get filled. Heck, we may even get filled at the exact midpoint of $6.15. But let’s say we got filled at $6.30. That’s a savings of $0.50, or $50 per contract. On a 10-contract trade, that’s a difference of $500. This is an extreme example. Roku is a fast-moving new IPO. Options on tThese types of stocks typically have extremely wide-bid ask spreads. But we want you to understand the importance of not blindly placing orders at the bid
Continue Reading -->3 Options Strategies for New Traders
Welcome back to our Introduction to Options series! By now we’ve covered: 1) The ABC’s of Puts and Calls 2) How Implied Volatility Works 3) Theta: The Options Trader’s Kryponite Now we’re going to dig into 3 basic options trading strategies that are perfect for beginners. We’re going to teach you 3 options trading strategies that allow you to speculate on 3 scenarios: A stock making a big move higher A stock making a small move higher A stock doing nothing But before you start, there’s one thing you must understand about options trading: for every stock scenario you can think of, there are 1 million ways to play it with options. Let’s say Amazon.com (AMZN) is trading at $1,000, and you think it’s going to $1,500 in one year. Here are 7 ways a trader could use options to speculate that move: Buy call options Buy bull call spreads Sell put options Sell bull put spreads Buy a butterfly spread Buy a risk reversal Buy a call back spread Every strategy has pros and cons, and no single one is best. Please note that all examples in this article are pure hypotheticals — they are not endorsements of these particular trades. Strategy #1: Buying Call Options to Speculate on a Big Rally At the time we’re writing this, Gilead (GILD) was trading at $75.00 Let’s assume we are very bullish on the stock, and believe it can hit $100 in the next 12 months. The simplest way to speculate on such a movement is to buy call options. You’re probably asking yourself yeah, but which ones? We can choose between in-the-money, at-the-money, and out-of-the-money calls. As a quick reminder, for call options, in-the-money options have strike prices below the current stock price. At-the-money options have strike prices that are about the same as the current stock price. And out-of-the-money options have strike prices above the current strike price. You can see relationship here: So which one is best? In the money, at the money, or out of the money calls? The answer is… none of them and all of them. Let’s look at the differences. Here’s a table detailing the major differences between in and out-of-the-money options: Let’s look at some numbers to illustrate these differences. Here are the prices of GILD call options with 24 days to expiration, with the stock trading at $75: The at-the-money $75 call is priced at $1.98. The in-the-money $70 call is $5.40. And the out-of-the-money $80 call is just $0.65. And as you can see, the in-the-money options cost more up front, and the out-of-the-money options cost less. This is because the in-the-money options have intrinsic value, and have a higher chance of being in the money at expiration. And that’s the tradeoff: you pay more for in-the-money options, but the option has a higher likelihood of being in the money. On the flipside, out-of-the-money options cost less up front, but give you a lower likelihood of success. And because they cost less, out-of-the-money options can give you a bigger percentage gain if the underlying stock makes a big move in your favor. Let’s take a look at possible payoffs of each option at expiration under a variety of price scenarios. On this table, here is what each option would be worth at expiration under different price scenarios: Let’s assume GILD goes flat, and is at $75 at expiration. Focus on the middle column of that table. As you can see, if GILD went to $75, the $65 calls would still be worth $10 ($75 – $65) — just a little less than the $10.77 cost. And the $75, $80, and $85 calls would be worth zero. Now let’s take a look at the P&L of these options: As you can see on the right column on the table, if GILD is at $85 at expiration, the $65, $70, $75, and $80 calls would have value: The $85 calls would expire out of the money and be worthless, giving a 100% loss of the $0.19 premium paid. The $65 calls would give you the largest dollar profit at $9.23. Here’s a third table showing the P&L on a on a percentage basis: As you can see, the $80 calls would give you the highest profit at $669% They cost just $0.65, and rose to $4.35. But remember the trade offs we discussed earlier: Out-of-the-money options cost less up front, but give you a lower chance of success. And because they cost less, out-of-the-money options can give you a bigger percentage gain if the underlying stock moves in your favor. We can also choose between shorter-dated and longer-dated options. If you recall from our article on time’s role in options pricing, longer-dated options cost more than shorter-dated options. As you can see on this chart, the more days there are to expiration, the higher the price of the option is: The call option expiring in 3 days costs just $0.88. And the one with 31 days to expiration costs $2.77. Through this options series, we’ve compared options to car insurance. A call option is an insurance contract that pays off when the stock rises. Ask yourself this: would it cost more to insure your car for 1 year? Or 2 years? Obviously, you pay more for 2 years of insurance coverage than 1. Why? Because over a 2-year period, there’s a much greater chance of something happening than over 1 year. So how should you choose which call options to trade? There is no simple answer. We recommend figuring out where you think the underlying stock could go within a certain time frame. Then, decide what’s more important: paying more money up front with a higher chance of success (in or at-the-money options), or paying less up front with a lower chance of success (out of the money options). Strategy #2: Buying a Bull Call Spread to Speculate on a Small Rally At the time of this writing on November 9, 2017, shares of
Continue Reading -->Sami Abusaad: How I Made $72,867.08 During Earnings Season
In this special video, Sami Abuaad of the Strategic Swing Trader Program takes you through an Earnings Play in insurance company Maiden Holdings (MHLD). This is a great example of just how lucrative trading during earnings season can be. Just before the market close on Wednesday, MHLD showed an “awesome” Weekly Sell setup, and Sami went short at $8.40 into earnings. The stock gapped down and Sami got out at $6.525 for a fast gain of 22%. In real dollar terms, Sami made a profit of $5,449.09 — a nice paycheck for 30 minutes of work. But this was just one of Sami’s great trades this earnings season. Watch the video and get a look at Sami’s actual account statements so you can see his $72,867.08 in total gains from this earnings season. (click here to join the Strategic Swing Trader Program and join Sami in these incredible trades!) Watch this video and see: Sami’s $72,867.08 in total gains realized this earning season, which you can see in his actual online account statements Why the MHLD daily chart showed a potential gap down after earnings Sami’s actual statements from his trading account this week How Sami also made highly profitable trades in names like TripAdvisor (TRIP) Mallinckrodt (MNK), and Textainer Group (TGH) Interesting in getting Sami’s next big swing trade? Click here to learn about Sami’s Nightly Game Plan P.S. Earnings Season is still going strong. Be sure to check out this FREE Earnings Season resource: The Ultimate Guide to Trading Earnings Season
Continue Reading -->Did Traders Wake Up with the Shake Up?
On Thursday, we had our first hint of real volatility since October 25. The the SPX dropped -1.1% to an intraday low of 2566.33 before a bounce up to close at 2584.62. The VIX also rose over 20% to 12.19 before faltering. This came on the heels of some minor equity market deterioration as small caps and banks retreated. So let’s take a fresh look at our sentiment indicators to see how traders are feeling after the shakeup. (click here for a primer on the sentiment indicators below) 1) VIX Spread – Bullish As noted above, the VIX spiked over 20% on Thursday before coming back down, and it was at 11 Friday morning. This gives us a 3-month spread of about +3.50, which means traders are moderately. (click here for a primer on the VIX spread) 2) CNN Fear & Greed Index – Bullish The Fear & Greed Index is at 54. This index operates on a 0-100 scale, so a reading of 54 is almost perfectly neutral. 5 weeks ago, the index hit multi-year highs at 95, but it’s come back down to earth. Funny — a lot of folks thought that 95 reading meant we were peaking. But markets kept pushing higher, showing how difficult it is to time market moves from sentiment indicators. 3) AAII Sentiment – Bullish The latest AAII Sentiment Survey shows that 45.1% of individual investors are bullish, flat from last week.. This is above the long-term average of 38.5%, so it shows bullishness. In fact, this 45.1% level is the highest reading since January 5, 2017. AAII sentiment has been depressed throughout 2017 despite the market hitting a nonstop streak of all-time highs. This seems like a notable change. 4) CBOE Equity Put-Call – Bullish The CBOE Equity-Put Call ratio was at 0.64 on Thursday, slightly below the 0.655 long-term average. The 10-day moving average is 0.631, which is slightly above the long-term average, indicating higher-than-normal demand for put options. I would call this very slightly bullish. So it looks like the little Thursday shakeup has had little to no impact on traders’ general bullishness Conclusion Out of 4 sentiment indicators, we have: 3 bullish (down from 4 last week) 1 neutral (up from 0 last week) 0 bearish (flat last week) Make no mistake, the crowd is bullish. But it’s less bullish than last week, and certainly less bullish than 5 weeks ago, when the CNN Fear & Greed Index was hitting multiyear highs. Incidentally, the VIX was setting new all-time records for weakness. So while the permabears are still saying the crowd is complacent, I’m not convinced. On October 6, I said this: Let’s not mince words: the bulls are clearly insane. They think they’re destined to ride into the sunset on a magic carpet made of cold hard cash. Turns out those bull were right, though they’ve backed down from their optimism just a bit. Now we’re about to see if sentiment has pulled back enough to set the stage for another rally. I’d keep a close eye on the Russell 2000. It it rockets back up, the bulls are bound to go gaga once again. For now, it looks like a failed bull flag pattern is on the table: In an ideal world, the bulls will at least push it back into that upper range. Then again, the bulls haven’t needed an ideal world to find reasons to keep on buying. We’ll see if that changes.
Continue Reading -->