Today's number is... six

With only a few days left in November, let’s dive into some S&P 500 December seasonality. 

When looking back over the last six elections, December has shown a positive return. Will this trend continue in 2024?

Here’s the chart:

(right-click and open image in new tab to zoom in)

Let's break down what the chart shows:

The green bars indicate a positive return for December in an election year.

The red bars indicate a negative return for December in an election year.

The Takeaway: Stocks often perform well as the year comes to a close, and it wouldn't be surprising if buying pressure continues for the remainder of the year.

Since 1952, the S&P 500 has experienced positive returns in 15 out of the 18 Decembers during an election year.

That’s 83% of the time! - The highest reading of any month.

Zooming in on the past two decades, the last six elections have all resulted in positive returns in December.

On average, December during an...

Have you heard about the new mega trend in golf?

The game of golf is growing faster than any other sport around the globe.

Interest in golf surged during the pandemic and its popularity has continued to gain momentum in the years since. 

There are now over 65 million on-course golfers around the world, up 44% from 2016.

And golf is different from other sports. There is a deep consumer economy growing around it. There is always something new to pay for, from clubs to balls, to the latest apparel. 

It is a money pit of a hobby. Trust me on this one.

It is a consumerism story. It’s a demographics story. It is an emerging Asia story. 

All the good stuff in one.

And my favorite vehicle to play it is a monopoly story.

Here’s Acushnet Holdings $GOLF breaking out to new all-time highs.

Acushnet is the holding company for dominant golf brands such as Titleist and Footjoy.

Over a third of company sales come from selling golf balls. That’s right. This is a golf ball business, first and...

In this market, it’s becoming clear that some of the best opportunities are coming from the underdogs—those lagging groups finally starting to turn things around.

One name that stands out to me is Lovesac $LOVE.

The stock is setting up nicely, breaking out of a textbook inverted head-and-shoulders pattern.

The price didn’t just break out of the range—it also reclaimed the anchored VWAP from its all-time high in 2021. I love how these levels of interest coincide, adding conviction to this pattern resolution.

This kind of price action tells us buyers are stepping in and taking control of the primary trend for the first time in three years, suggesting the path of least resistance is now higher.

What makes this setup even juicier is the 29% short interest paired with a 14x days-to-cover ratio. This scenario bodes well for a short squeeze, fueling the rally and creating a tailwind for even higher prices in the future.

*BREAKING NEWS* $BTC printing fresh all-time highs priced in every fiat currency is NOT bearish for gold.

We recently recorded a video with our in-house crypto analyst, Louis Sykes, to discuss the connections between bitcoin and gold. 

The relationship isn't perfect, but it would be irresponsible of us as investors to ignore the correlation between 2 of the most significant hard-money assets in the world.

Last month, we discussed the correlation between digital and physical gold becoming positive again. 

Before we knew it, $BTC had resolved its base and followed gold to new all-time highs.

This suggests to us the bull market is still young:

Bitcoin and Gold, they’ve got some things in common, but let’s not kid ourselves. 

The differences are just as striking as the similarities. Sometimes they move together, other times they couldn’t be further apart. It’s a love-hate relationship, and it’s fascinating to watch.

In this video, we dive into these correlations, when Bitcoin, Gold, and even Bonds align, and when they decide to part ways. 

Why does this happen, and what does it mean for traders?

Joining me is Louis Sykes, our in house crypto killer. Louis has been crushing it in the crypto markets for years, and today he’s breaking down the connections between Bitcoin and Gold. But it’s more than just charts and correlations…

We’re getting into the big picture and where Bitcoin might be headed next.

I’ve wanted to do this ever since I met Louis at our Portfolio Accelerator event in Cali. The guy’s an out of the box thinker, and this conversation didn’t disappoint.

Hit play and...

Below is the 7th ASC Mastermind Course. In this course, I discuss incorporating moving averages into your analysis.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the two weeks ended November 22, 2024. This report is published bi-weekly, in rotation 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, or simply our proprietary lists of trending tickers, there...

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

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

Let’s dig in!

The price of $FXI is going in the wrong direction. And as we know, only price pays. Price is truth.

Due to two previous "covered call" premium sales against our long January 2026 35-strike calls and more than one year until our long calls expire, I'm going to get creative with our position to keep the dream alive. I think we can afford to be patient.

I'm confident in doing so because ending the campaign here would only result in a small loss. So there's no panic.

Here's a visual of where we are now:

The purple circle is where I purchased both my long January 2026 calls and sold Dec 35 calls against it. The green circle shows where I rolled my Dec 35 calls to Feb 35 calls for a credit. At the moment, my net cost (max risk) for these Jan 2026 $35 calls is $2.05. This is derived by subtracting the credits for the two short call sales from the cost of the long calls.

I've still got a lot of time until January 2026, and while the chart of FXI is currently disagreeing with me, I can make time my friend. Time heals all wounds, right? We'll see.

Here's the Play:

I like rolling the...

If you're not making a lot of money in this Bull Market then you're doing it wrong.

When it's money making time, the idea is to make as much money as possible to be able to withstand those periods where it's "money keeping" time. 

Tuesday @ 4PM ET I will be hosting a LIVE event with Steve Strazza to walk through the Breakout Multiplier Strategy that everyone is talking about. I've never seen something work this well, this consistently in my entire career. 

You're not going to want to miss this....

Director Michael J. Angelakis, CEO of the investment company Atairos Group, and former CFO of Comcast, has acquired 3,465,000 shares of Clarivate Plc $CLVT.

We always take note when executives with a CFO background make significant insider purchases, as their financial insight provides us some of the best Hot Corner buy signals.  

The co-founder and vice chairman of Oscar Health $OSCR reported a purchase of $3.1 million of his own stock in a recent Form 4.

Here’s The Hot Corner, with data from November 22, 2024:

RA Capital Management filed a 13G for Arcellx Inc $ACLX revealing an initial stake of 5.20%.

RA Capital's expertise is particularly recognized in the biotech space, where they help companies move from concept to commercialization, making them influential in driving value in the life sciences industry.

The firm's top holdings are Ascendis Pharma $ASND, Vaxcyte $PCVX...

Today's number is... 0.8

The bears have fumbled the ball once again.

The most recent flare-up of new lows we experienced from the other week has already disappeared, and it appears that they are retreating into hibernation once again, as only 0.8% of S&P 500 stocks are at 1-month lows.

Here’s the chart:

(right-click and open image in new tab to zoom in)

Let's break down what the chart shows:

The blue line in the top panel shows the price of the S&P 500 index.

The black line at the bottom represents the percentage of S&P 500 stocks at 1-month lows.

The Takeaway: Over the past two years, we have seen deterioration in the new lows list characterized by lower highs, while the S&P 500 index keeps posting higher highs and higher lows in price. This is exactly what you expect to see during a bull market.

With only 0.8% of S&P 500 stocks hitting 1-month lows, it is virtually impossible to enter a bear market or experience a significant correction without the presence of new...

Fed rate cut probabilities are shrinking fast. Just a few months ago, the market was pricing in over 100bps between the 2 year and the Fed funds rate. 

Editor’s Note: Click here to download the Hot Corner Insider Baker Bros FREE Special Report.

Small-caps are hitting new all-time highs, joining all those Large-cap and Mid-cap Indexes that have already being doing that for most of the year.

Here is the S&P600 Small-cap Index, officially completing this multi-year base and now beginning its new leg higher:

And so when I think "Small-caps", I think about a ton of Regional Bank stocks and even more Biotechnology stocks.

Together they make up a quarter of the entire Small-cap universe. 

...

This is the weekly post that aggregates all the charts we put together throughout the week and organizes them all into one, easy to flip through deck.