Market Insights
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This New S&P 500 Member Leading in 2025. Why?
Palantir Technologies has been soaring as investors come to appreciate its fast-growing data-crunching software products.
Chart of the Day: Is This Forgotten Agricultural Stock Quietly Breaking Out?
The rise of inflation has investors quietly returning to many commodity-related stocks that were popular 2003-2007. One of them is Bunge. Earlier this month, the soybean processor touched its highest level in over 13 years. It pulled back but is trying to stabilize...
Stocks Break Support as Bears Spread from Big Tech to the Broader Market
Stocks just had their worst week since early in the pandemic as big indexes knifed through key support zones. The S&P 500 plunged 5.7 percent in the holiday-shortened week between Friday, January 14, and Friday, January 21. It was the biggest drop since mid-March...
Sifting Through the Wreckage Amid a Market Pullback: TradeStation Platform Tutorial
The stock market just had its deepest pullback in over a year, which may create opportunities for dip buyers. This post explores some ways to quickly sift through the wreckage with TradeStation's award-winning platform. We'll consider three basic methods using the...
With Volatility Increasing, Here Are Key Index-Based Futures and ETFs to Know About
Volatility has risen in the stock market, potentially increasing the importance of indexed products. This post will cover some basic points you may want to know. What Is Volatility? What is volatility, and why does it matter? Volatility measures how much a stock or...
Silver Attempts a Pre-Fed Breakout: Technical Analysis
Silver has been dead money since the summer as the U.S. dollar ripped higher. But now it’s attempting a breakout -- despite next week’s looming Federal Reserve meeting. Notice how the iShares Silver Trust (SLV) made a higher low on January 6 versus its nadir the...
The S&P 500 Has Gone a Long Time Without Doing This. Will It Bring a Historic Buying Opportunity?
Most investors know the stock market has enjoyed a powerful rally since mid-2020. But they may not realize it's nearing some historic milestones. The S&P 500 has been above its 200-day moving average for 392 sessions, according to TradeStation data. That's the...
Technology & Communication
Call Volume Spikes in Nikola Before Shareholder Vote
After a big slide, one big options trader is looking for a rebound in Nikola. Large blocks of calls changed hands yesterday in the electric-truck developer. A block of 40,000 July 5.50 calls were bought for $0.22. The investor sold a matching number of July 6.50 calls...
Cloud IPO Available to TradeStation Clients
A cloud-computing IPO could be coming your way, if you act fast. Software company SolarWinds (SWI) is going public this week, and we've just learned it will be available on our partner ClickIPO. As many clients know, ClickIPO provides direct access to initial public...
Long-Term Bulls Are Active Today: Options Recap
Cell phones and natural gas. Those are some big trades in the options market today. Let's start with Sprint (S), which saw the purchase of 20,000 May 7 calls for $0.50 and the sale of 40,000 May 8 calls for $0.21. It's a little complicated, so here's a breakdown of...
History May Favor Bulls This Quarter, Despite Volatility
Stocks are coming off their worst week since March, but history may favor the bulls. After all, we're in the fourth quarter -- a time of the year with a strong bias to the upside. Consider some of these points we crunched from TradeStation's wealth of chart data: The...
Basics of Hedging, Part 3: Buying Vs. Selling Options
We recently outlined protective puts and covered calls as common hedging techniques. This brings us to the important question of selling options versus buying options. To understand the these two basic kinds of transactions, traders need to recognize the difference...