Today’s Hot Corner list is a short one.

Director John D. Harkey, Jr. revealed a purchase of 100,000 shares, equivalent to $852,000, in Lions Gate Entertainment Corp $LGF.B.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

It's another new day, and maybe more new highs.

It's getting harder to find longs.

We do get opportunities, but it's more difficult with things stretched like this.

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

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The US dollar is approaching a slippery slope. 

And few markets embrace a falling dollar quite like precious metals.

Yet gold’s response to a weakening dollar so far has been subdued, perhaps due to elevated real yields.

But gold’s crazy cousin, silver, has enjoyed quite the boost…

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.

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 highs in...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

It was kind of a range-bound day, though some names had nice movement.

$IWM and $QQQ led the way.

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...

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

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The US dollar is approaching a slippery slope. 

And few markets embrace a falling dollar quite like precious metals.

Yet gold’s response to a weakening dollar so far has been subdued, perhaps due to elevated real yields.

But gold’s crazy cousin, silver, has enjoyed quite the boost…

Here’s silver reclaiming a critical seven-month polarity zone:

While gold rose 1.6% last week, silver ripped more than 8% – hence the “crazy” descriptor. 

Silver’s explosive gains highlight a crucial takeaway aside from its high-beta status: investor willingness to accept greater risk in precious metals.

Notice gold futures and the silver-to-gold ratio tend to track one another:

Silver outperforming gold represents a healthy risk-on development that supports higher gold prices.

The silver-to-gold ratio led off the bottom last fall… and gold followed, climbing 28% to its May high.

On the flip side, the ratio failed to post a higher high this spring as gold retested an area of overhead supply (and all-time highs).

The silver-to-gold ratio’s bearish divergence...

Today’s Hot Corner list is a short one.

The CEO of Calavo Growers $CVGW reported a purchase of 75,000 shares, equivalent to $2,275,500.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We saw decent reversals in a lot of names on Friday. I would think it was warranted, as a lot of names are extended.

I'll watch $SPY to see if it stays below the 449.60 level.

It's hard for me to have a conversation about the stock market without bringing up what's happening in bonds.

Think about it like this, the market cap of all US Stocks is somewhere around $40 Trillion. For the bond market it's over $120 Trillion.

Volatility in bonds tends to trickle down to other asset classes, especially stocks.

US Stocks really got going in the 4th quarter last year, once the US 10-year Note stopped falling in price.

I don't believe that was a coincidence.

But at this point, Large Speculators have on their most aggressive short position in bonds ever.

So in other words, what is historically the "dumb money", particularly at turning points, are betting more aggressively than ever that bond prices are going to fall and rates will now continue higher: