Market Insights
Opportunity knocks for those with trading in their DNA.
Curiosity creates opportunity. Insights create strategy. Born traders create their destiny.
Big Tech Earnings Begin Tonight
Second-quarter earnings season has begun with technology leading the stock market to new highs. Companies like Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA) have rallied more than 15 percent in the last month as investors look for more AI growth. Most of these major...
Quadruple Witching Dates for 2022: How Can They Impact Stock and Futures Trading?
Quadruple witching is an event in financial markets when four different sets of futures and options expire on the same day. Futures and options are derivatives, linked to underlying stock prices. When derivatives expire, traders must close or adjust positions. That...
The Nasdaq-100 Rebounds After a Brutal January: What Does the Chart Say?
The Nasdaq-100 has rebounded following a sharp drop. It's a good time to consider where things stand with the tech-heavy index. First, Wednesday's close represented almost exactly a 50 percent retracement of the decline from December 28 through January 24. Second,...
Energy Stocks Aren’t The Only Companies Riding the Inflationary Trend Higher
Inflation is a key theme for investors this year. Aside from lifting energy stocks, it's also boosting a lesser known corner of the market: agriculture. Companies like Deere (DE), Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Mosaic (MOS) have outperformed the market by a wide...
Options Alert: Giant Neutral Strategy Targets Intel Following Sharp Drop
Intel's been dropping for nine months, but one big options trader is looking for the semiconductor giant to stabilize. This large transaction involving short calls and short puts occurred yesterday as INTC tried to hold its lowest level in over a year: 30,000 March 50...
Stocks Cling to Support as the Fed’s Hawks Go to Work. Growth Heads for Worst Month in 20 Years.
Stocks clung to support last week as investors brace for a series of rate hikes by the Federal Reserve. The S&P 500 spent most of the period in negative territory, but rallied sharply in the final 90 minutes on Friday, January 28. That resulted in a 0.8 percent...
Don’t Fight the Fed? Powell’s New Hawkishness Is Making Investors Reprice the Stock Market
Stocks are tumbling as the Federal Reserve's tighter monetary policy forces investors to rethink the entire stock market. The S&P 500 is down 9.2 percent in January, its worst month since coronavirus shuttered the economy in March 2020. High-multiple growth stocks...
Technology & Communication
Options Alert: Bearish Traders Could Be Sticking With Western Digital
Western Digital tried to bounce after a big drop, but the bears don't seem to be going away. Check out this unusual options activity in the maker of data-storage products: A block of 7,500 October 36 puts was sold for $2.05.A trader bought an equal number of October...
Options 101: Hedging With Ratio Spreads
This post is part of an educational series on equity derivatives. Want to learn more? Sign up for our Options Stars 2018 symposium in Chicago next month. Sometimes I love trading options so much I forget they were invented to be used in tandem with stocks. This post...
Your Favorite Sector’s Getting Reshuffled
Everyone loves tech. Did you know the sector's about to get reshuffled? Over the years, "technology" has become an increasingly ambiguous term. What do semiconductors have in common with phone companies? Why should routers and photocopiers get lumped alongside social...
Good Tech, Bad Tech: Options Activity Recap
Call volume spiked noticeably in two different technology stocks yesterday, with two very different meanings. Just look at Broadcom (AVGO). The chip maker went from a darling to a pariah two months ago by purchasing software maker CA (CA). Investors, confused by the...
Some Potentially Bullish Chart Patterns, Sept. 14
With volatility so low, it can be hard to find movement in the big indexes. So today we'll look at some individual stocks with potential opportunities. We found these using methods and tools highlighted in our weekly Market Action webinar. Be sure to sign up for...