Microsoft $MSFT announced earnings last night, and while the stock gapped higher at the open, it has spent most of the morning giving back much of those gains.

It looks to me that the prior trading range for $MSFT is acting as a powerful magnet. And the broader market weakness sure is helping things along in that regard.

At the end of the day, the market is telling us that the latest earnings report hasn't really changed any minds of Microsoft bulls or bears, and therefore, we're likely to remain stuck in this range until some new information reveals itself:

We options traders can benefit from this scenario.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Economists, columnists, and pundits are calling for an economic recession and even the possibility of deflation. 

Yet the US dollar is consolidating above a critical support zone.

Nothing bearish about that!

In fact, it’s standard price behavior within an ongoing uptrend. 

Sure, the pundits might be right. But both scenarios involve a swift decline in the US dollar.

And that’s simply not what’s happening today.   

In fact, forex markets are providing new opportunities to buy US dollars and sell other major currencies…

Check out the EUR/USD pair pulling back to a logical resistance level:

If you missed selling the breakdown in September, the market is giving you another shot.

The EUR/USD is...

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 Ian Culley @IanCulley

Gold and silver are pushing higher after posting potential failed breakdowns earlier this month.

If the October lows mark a critical inflection point – and it’s still a big “if” – the following three names will be ripping above our risk levels…

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest Minor Leaguers report.

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.

To make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list now, 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 highs in...

Aren't we supposed to get a rally into the end of the year?

That's what the seasonal trends throughout history would suggest.

I mean, we got the seasonal strength earlier this year, as the Nasdaq put up the greatest first half to the year ever.

And then the typical Q3 Pre-election year weakness came, which could not have been more normal.

Now this is about the time where stocks get going into year end.

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.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Monday night we held our September Monthly Conference Call, which Premium Members can access and rewatch here.

In this post, we’ll do our best to summarize it by highlighting five of the most important charts and/or themes we covered, along with commentary on each.

Let’s get right into it!

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Investors navigate a market of stocks, not a “stock market.”

Equity indexes slide, and US treasuries collapse against a rapid rise in interest rates. Unfortunately for the bulls, the charts show no signs of an imminent change in these underlying trends. 

That’s the environment, and there’s no use fighting it.

Have no fear: We can still lean into market areas that enjoy a rising rate environment, mainly energy.

Here’s the US 30-year yield breaking to its highest level since the summer of ‘07:

Rising rates are the market’s golden thread.

Owning the stock market averages will prove difficult as long as yields press higher.

The same story applies to bonds, as rising yields directly equate to falling bond prices.

Check out the US 30-year bond futures flashing one sell signal after another:

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Survey says… 

Buy commodities!

The multi-year secular uptrend in commodities remains intact on absolute and relative terms. Commodities are outperforming the S&P 500 and US Treasury bonds. And cattle, sugar, cocoa, and orange juice are all ripping.

While some of these explosive rallies pause, other areas of the commodity space are forming tactical reversal patterns.

Let’s check out one of my favorites,…

Corn.

Here’s the December corn contract carving out a ten-week base:

I bought yesterday’s close above 500’0. That’s our risk level. As long as corn trades above that level, I like it long toward the July high at approximately 570’0.

However, during today's session, I was abruptly stopped out of my position.

I’ll give December corn another shot in the coming weeks. But only if it’s trading above our risk level.

Commodities are working. I imagine corn futures and...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 150 largest US-based stocks.

These stocks range from the mega-cap growth behemoths like Apple and Microsoft – with market caps in excess of $2T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Moderna, Square, and Snap.

It has all the big names and more.

It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry; we developed a separate universe for that. Click here to check it out.

The Hall of Famers is simple.

We take our list of 150 names and then apply our technical filters so the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Let’s dive right in and check out what these big boys are up to.

Here’s this week’s list:

*Click table to enlarge view

We filter out any laggards that are down -5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month.

Then, we sort the remaining names by their proximity to new 52-week highs.

This leaves...