These feel like unprecedented times. And when that happens, we need new tactics. New tools. New mindsets.

Today, I'm beginning a campaign of undetermined length, in an attempt to harvest some of these monster options premiums.

Seven days after Liberation Day things are working out just about as expected in the equity markets. Chaos!

Until this afternoon's 90 day delay announcement every rally met supply. Rumors were quickly squashed and the White House vowed to hold the line on anything other than full victory. And just like that, there was a 90 day delay. Would it have been easier to just delay the tariffs 90 days in the first place? Stop overthinking it.

We have 90 days and have undone a lot of the damage done over the last week. It's a welcome piece of new news and one of the items on the 3-step Wish List I shared with Spencer earlier this week. But it doesn't change much. If you were over-levered this morning it might be time to take a little off the table and give thanks. Uncertainty will be back but for now it certainly is nice for stocks to be irrational in the other direction. 

Long-term, China, Vietnam and Indonesia are something of the Big Three in shoes and apparel. I believe but am not sure China and the US are still pushing a combined 200% tariff level. Let's just say a lot of merchants and vendors doing business in the mall are rooting for the Vietnam...

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. No new positions today.
2. Rolled XLC position to June.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

In this scan, we look to identify the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small- to mid- to large- and, ultimately, to mega cap status (over $200B).

Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B), they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.

But the scan doesn't just end there.

We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market, as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, and myriad others – would have been on this list at some point during their journey to becoming the market behemoths they are today.

When you look at the stocks in our table, you'll notice we're only focused on Technology and Growth industry groups such as Software, Semiconductors, Online...

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives were active again, with Rep. Gilberto Cisneros of California disclosed purchases in a wide range of sectors. 

His filings included trades in:

📌 Ferguson $FERG;

📌 Johnson & Johnson $JNJ;

📌 PTC $PTC; and

📌 UnitedHealth $UNH.

Each disclosure fell in the $15,001-to-$50,000 range. While these aren’t massive trades individually, the diversification and consistent activity say a lot about where some lawmakers see opportunity.

📌 Rep. Tony Wied also disclosed purchases in both Advanced Micro Devices $AMD and Trade Desk $TTD.

Here’s The Hot Corner, with data from April 8, 2025:

Click the table to enlarge it.

📌 On the institutional front, Apollo Global Management...

You can see the defensive rotation taking place as equity markets have sold off. Consumer staples and utilities are the two best areas of the market under our power rankings. Meanwhile, the poster child of the secular bull market, technology, is deep in the red.

A key chart to monitor is Consumer Staples $XLP priced in the S&P 500 $SPY. When this line is moving higher, it indicates that consumer staples are outperforming, which is a bearish signal.

Right now, the ratio is at a key inflection point.

I think with the indexes having retested their 2021 highs, the higher probability outcome is that consumer staples begin underperforming as money flows back into risk during an aggressive counter trend rally.

It's not often we see staples perform so well against the benchmark, and if this ratio were to continue ripping higher, it would be a cautionary signal to anticipate further downside in stocks.

Today's number is... 50%

More than 50% of the stocks in the S&P 500 are currently in oversold conditions.

Here’s the chart:

Let's break down what the chart shows:

• The blue line in the top panel is the S&P 500 index price.
• The black line in the bottom panel is the percentage of S&P 500 stocks oversold (Daily RSI14 less than 30) 
• The gray lines indicate when the percentage of S&P 500 stocks oversold crosses above 50.

The Takeaway: The recent environment has not encouraged risk-seeking behavior. We have now entered a phase where many risk assets have broken lower from topping formations and are now retesting prior cycle highs.

When we take a look under the hood, we find that over 50% of the stocks in the S&P 500 are now oversold (Daily RSI falling below 30). This level of oversold conditions has not been seen since the market crash of 2020.

So, I dug into the data to see what typically happens to the market when the majority of S&P 500 stocks become...

Sign up for my free note here.

The S&P 500 has already fallen 20% from its highs.

The VIX spiked into the 50s.

Panic and fear have taken over, and investors have been in for a roller coaster ride.

Volatility isn’t going away — that’s a given. But broadly speaking, I think the worst is behind us.

Now, we’re seeing key indexes and sectors retesting their prior cycle highs from 2021.

For long-term investors, this is what you wait for.

These kinds of “resets” often create historic opportunities.

But the goal isn’t to catch a falling knife. The...

With $VIX showing signs that perhaps yesterday was a blow off top, I'm going to gingerly wade into the premium selling pond with a defined-risk Iron Condor trade on a semiconductor stock that may be entering a wide range of sideways chop.

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. No new positions today.
2. Adjustment to XLB position.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

It's been a great week down in Miami visiting family.

We had our first child in the middle of covid, and then had twins 2 years ago. So traveling hasn't exactly been at the top of the priority list, like it used to be for us before kids.

In fact, this is actually the first time I've come back home to Miami with my entire family, including all 3 kids. 

It's been awesome.

Sunday night I got to sneak out after the kids went to bed and met Steve Strazza for sushi at a new spot on Brickell.

I've also hung out with old high school buddies and cousins. I don't get to do these things as much as I used to back in the day.

This morning I wanted to pass along two charts that I think all investors need to keep front and center right now. 

These charts, in my opinion, literally define this bull market, and whether or not it's over, like we all keep being told it is.

We call this behavior: "Polarity".

It's when former resistance turns into support. In other words, where there were more sellers than buyers (at the prior cycle's peak), there are now (so far) more buyers that sellers.

You're seeing this polarity play out in...

Two standout moves are turning heads:

📌 GameStop $GME

President, CEO, and Chairman Ryan Cohen filed a Form 4 revealing a $10.78 million purchase.

What makes this even more intriguing is the timing—right on the heels of GameStop floating a MicroStrategy-style Bitcoin strategy.

📌 Applied Materials $AMAT

President and CEO Gary E. Dickerson just stepped up with a $6.87 million open market buy in Applied Materials $AMAT—his first insider purchase since 2015.

When a top executive makes their first buy in nearly a decade, it’s not something to gloss over. 

When someone with the deepest insights into the business steps in with a sizable buy after a decade on the sidelines, it’s a message worth listening to.

Here’s The Hot Corner, with data from April 7, 2025:

Today's number is... 28.5

My 'Fear or Strength' model has shifted into tactical bullish mode because the Volatility Index (VIX) is above 28.5.

Here’s the chart:

Let's break down what the chart shows:

• The black line in the top panel is the S&P 500 index price.
• The green shading highlights the model is in bullish mode.
• The red shading highlights the model is in bearish mode.
• The black line in the middle panel is the 10-day average of the NYSE+NASDAQ net new high advance-decline line - The model's ‘strength’ component. The gray shading represents the AD line is rising.
• The black line in the bottom panel is the Volatility Index, which is the model's ‘fear’ component. The gray shading represents the VIX reading above 28.5.

The Takeaway: The ‘fear’ component of this model has been triggered as the VIX reading is above 28.5. 

But why is the 28.5 threshold...

Many key indexes have retested their 2021 highs following Trump's market crash.

Here's the S&P 500 $SPY revisiting its breakout level.

And here's the same story in the Nasdaq 100 $QQQ.

And similarly in the Dow Jones Industrial Average $DIA.

After market crashes, we often see sharp, aggressive countertrend moves. With the indexes now having fully retested their 2021 highs, this could be the point where we start seeing a notable rebound.

In other words, we've had the crash, and now I'm anticipating the sharp rebound.

As for where that will lead or whether Trump will back down—it’s tough to say. We can’t predict if we’re entering a more sustained bear market. But in the short term, a countertrend rally here seems to be a logical expectation.

Sign up for my free note here.

Volatility just took over the market in a big way.

Nothing has been safe—Tech, China, Europe, even Bitcoin got slammed.

This has been a full-blown flush.

The bears didn’t leave anything behind.

So now what?

Where’s the support?

Where can this thing stop bleeding?

For the S&P 500, I’m keeping an eye on those former cycle highs from 2021, right around 480. 

This looks like a good place to start—at least for a short-term bounce.

If there’s a line in the sand, 480 feels like the right spot where bulls...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Minor Leaguers.

We've had some great trades come out of this small-cap-focused column since we launched it back in 2020 and started rotating it with our flagship bottom-up scan, Under the Hood.

For the first year or so, we focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1 and $2B.

That was fun, but we wanted to branch out a bit and allow some new stocks to find their way onto our list.

We expanded our universe to include some mid-caps.

Nowadays, to make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

And it doesn't have to be a Russell component — it can be any US-listed equity. With participation expanding around the globe, we want all those ADRs in our universe.

The same price and liquidity filters are applied. Then, as always, we sort by proximity to new...

The publicly traded markets around the world are experiencing some of their most volatile periods ever.

Since its February peak, the S&P 500 has declined by over 20%. 

Meanwhile, Gold has shown a tremendous amount of relative strength. It's only down 6% from its all-time high...

This isn't anything new, though. We've been discussing this outperformance for years, and we don't think it will change anytime soon.

Why? Because tariffs create immediate uncertainty. They slow growth, tighten financial conditions, and drive a flight to safety — all of which are bond bullish in the short term. We’ve seen this playbook before: geopolitical tension or trade stress leads to a bid for duration.

The chart’s not there yet — but it’s starting to shape up. Bonds still have work to do before we can talk new 52-week highs. For $TLT, that means clearing this massive base and getting above 100.40 with some momentum behind it. That’s the line in the sand. Get through that, and the squeeze could start to build.

But here’s the catch — the long-term impact is different.

Tariffs raise input costs. They squeeze supply chains. And they don’t reduce demand — they just make things more expensive. Over time, that feeds into inflation. So while bonds may catch a near-term bid on fears of economic slowdown, the structural risk is higher inflation down the road.

It’s the classic setup: short-term deflationary shock, long-term inflationary shift.

So yes — bonds could break out. But if this pressure...

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In real bear markets, they come for everything. 

There are no survivors. It’s just how it goes. 

In the middle of last week, there were still pockets of strength. 

Things like Financials and Europe were holding up great. 

Then they both had their worst day in years. On Friday, they got absolutely slaughtered.

These massive failed breakouts in MSCI Germany and the SPDR Banks ETF really tell the story. 

The bears finally came for these leaders. 

And how about the defensive groups that have been showing relative strength all year?

Things like Healthcare, Staples, Real Estate, and Utilities. They seemed like a good place to hide. 

Then they got crushed last week like everything else. 

Low volatility stocks suffered their worst day and worst week since the pandemic lows....