It's not going to be finished in my lifetime or in yours or my kids' or grandkids'. That's not the point. The point is to get it started.

~ Korczak Ziolkowski

Last weekend, I took a little six-hour road trip to South Dakota to spend a full day hiking in Badlands National Park. It was amazing. The landscape is stunning and challenging to describe. It’s not quite desert. It’s not quite grassland. It’s not quite mountainous. It’s remote. Some have likened it to a moonscape. But even that doesn’t quite capture it.

You just have to go and experience it for yourself. Trust me – it’s worth it.

I also took advantage of my proximity to Mt. Rushmore to arrive at 7 a.m. the next day. I was one of the only people in the park and was lucky to have Mt. Rushmore to myself for the better part of an hour....

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

"Buy stocks if the US Dollar Index $DXY trades below 105!"

Simple and straightforward. That was our roadmap back in early March.

Now, almost three months later, the dollar is putting that strategy to the test as it approaches 105 from below.

That multi-month consolidation with “continuation pattern” written all over it never continued lower.

Instead, the dollar index has chopped sideways within a tight range for almost six months. And the evidence is beginning to support a possible upside resolution…

The lack of broad US dollar weakness caught my attention back in April. 

Our G-10 currency index and US dollar advance-decline line were printing potential higher lows, while DXY was on the verge of undercutting pivot lows from earlier in the year. The divergence suggested burgeoning USD strength.

Interestingly, DXY has gained roughly 3.5% since.

The G-10 index is now posting a series of higher...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

All-time highs remain out of reach for gold bugs.

But not all is lost. In fact, I still see constructive consolidations on longer time frames. 

It’s messy. But I’m impressed with gold's and silver’s resilience as they twist and bend beneath supply.

But how low can they go before they break…

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market seemed very slow today after a long holiday weekend.

As of now, the indices are consolidating.

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

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

All-time highs remain out of reach for gold bugs.

But not all is lost. In fact, I still see constructive consolidations on longer time frames. 

It’s messy. But I’m impressed with gold’s and silver’s resilience as they twist and bend beneath supply.

But how low can they go before they break…

For gold, I’m focusing on the prior commodity supercycle peak at roughly 1,924. 

If it loses those former highs, the key retracement level at approximately 1,825 highlights the next potential support area:

I like this level for two reasons.

It marks a former polarity zone, coinciding with last summer’s pivot highs and the March pivot lows earlier this year. And it gives gold room to dance.

Gold futures are simply shimmying within a multi-year range as long as they hold above the March lows. 

I imagine the gold bugs find the sideways action frustrating. Regardless, the bull case remains intact from an intermediate-term perspective. 

On the other hand, the bullish argument becomes increasingly thin on a break below 1,825 as the lower bounds of the...

The next new position in our Paid-to-Play portfolio is:

The largest insider buy on today's list comes in a Form 4 filing by Carl Icahn, who revealed a purchase of $11.2 million in Southwest Gas Holdings $SWX.

Icahn now owns 15.65% of outstanding shares of SWX.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

As I write this note, $SPY has finally filled its gap pre-market at 421.22.

The push higher was brought on by the debt ceiling deal.

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...

You're hearing a lot these days about weakening market breadth.

But if you've noticed, those lies are only coming from journalists and other types of people with no formal training or experience in technical analysis.

That's like me pretending to be an expert in chess because I watched some people playing this one time in Washington Square Park.

If you think that the Equally-weighted S&P500 underperforming is evidence of deteriorating market breadth, you fall into this category of the misinformed and confused.

It's not a market breadth thing. It's simply a sector rotation thing.

In bull markets historically there's less of a need, or no need at all, for the safest stocks.

These defensive sectors include areas like Consumer Staples, Utilities, Healthcare and stocks with Low Volatility.

All of them made new 52-week lows on Friday relative to the S&P500: