From the Desk of Steve Strazza

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Cormorant Asset Management LP.

The hedge fund reported a purchase of roughly $19.6 million in Ambrx Biopharma Inc $AMAM.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

It was a slow day, and the market just drifted lower.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow after the FOMC announcement.

We've adjusted a position in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Thurman John Rodgers, director of Enphase Energy Inc $ENPH.

Rodgers reported a purchase of $4 million in ENPH.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The indices are stuck under their respective moving averages.

This is making it harder to find opportunities to trade.

Is this the world's most important trend that no one is talking about?

How many people do you know would tell you that stocks are already in their 4th year of a downtrend relative to commodities?

In other words, how many people do you know that would argue we are now in year 4 of a Commodities Supercycle?

Here's what this looks like:

This is the video recording of the September 2023 Mid-month Conference Call.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Precious metals represent an opportunity cost.

The entire complex – gold, silver, platinum, and palladium – has gone nowhere for the past few years.

Yet I can’t overlook the resilience of gold and silver as interest rates and the US dollar rise – two significant headwinds for these shiny rocks. 

Perhaps they deserve the benefit of the doubt.  

I believe they do.

But extending these lackluster metals with a favorable outlook does not equate to taking a long position.

It’s far from it.

Price must prove buying precious metals offers a rewarding proposition.

The following two intermarket ratios will undoubtedly rise if and when it does.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended September 15, 2023. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with The Minor Leaguers.

What we do here is analyze the most popular stocks during the week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.

We use a variety of sources to generate the list of most popular names.

There are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: a list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

Click here for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual options activity,...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

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...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

This is a very choppy market.

$SPY bumped up to resistance at 445 then dropped lower.

We can stay volatile this whole week.

We had a resting GTC order filled at our profit target in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Thurman John Rodgers, director of Enphase Energy Inc $ENPH.

Rodgers reported a purchase of $4 million in ENPH.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The indices are stuck under their respective moving averages.

This is making it harder to find opportunities to trade.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

This is a very choppy market.

$SPY bumped up to resistance at 445 then dropped lower.

We can stay volatile this whole week.

While the stock market continues to digest its recent run and weave through this sideways consolidation, we're starting to get some pretty clear hints on which stocks will likely be leaders if/when the bull market resumes.

Today's trade is an early bullish bet on one of those names.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Precious metals represent an opportunity cost.

The entire complex – gold, silver, platinum, and palladium – has gone nowhere for the past few years.

Yet I can’t overlook the resilience of gold and silver as interest rates and the US dollar rise – two significant headwinds for these shiny rocks. 

Perhaps they deserve the benefit of the doubt.  

I believe they do.

But extending these lackluster metals with a favorable outlook does not equate to taking a long position.

It’s far from it.

Price must prove buying precious metals offers a rewarding proposition.

The following two intermarket ratios will undoubtedly rise if and when it does.

I covered these ratio charts in late July as they neared key inflection points or critical former support levels.

Fast-forward to today, and both are bouncing higher after posting fresh lows.

Check out the Gold Miners ETF $GDX versus the S&P 500 ETF $SPY:

Now is the time, and the shelf of former lows marks the place for gold miners to assume a leadership role.

That was the...

We've adjusted a position in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The most significant insider purchase on today's list comes from Wayne P. Rothbaum, director of Iovance Biotherapeutics $IOVA.

Rothbaum declared a $26.5 million IOVA purchase in a Form 4 filing.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Let's see what this week brings, as we have the FOMC on Wednesday.

Next support down on $SPY is 440.