In today's Flow Show, Steve Strazza and I discuss our growing frustrations with the current market environment. Seems neither our bullish bets nor our bearish bets are gaining any traction in this tape.

What can we do with this information?

Watch the show below to see how we arrived at the details for today's trade.

Here's the Play:

I like entering into a $FCX February 30/35/45/50 Iron Condor for an approximately 70-cent net credit. This means I'll be short equal amounts of the February 35 puts and 45 calls, and long the same amount of 30 puts and 50 calls to cap my maximum risk:

As long as $FCX stays inside the range of our short strikes (above $35 per share and below $45 per share), we'll profit in this trade. 

I'll leave a resting order to close this entire spread for a 30 cents net debit to book my profit. This will represent a capture of a little greater than 50% of the premium I collected up front from...

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

1. No new positions today.
2. Defensive adjustment to TLT position.
3. Exited XLI position.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

We're back on The Morning Show today LIVE on Stock Market TV!

If you want to know what's moving markets this week, and how we're thinking about profiting from it, then the Morning Show is for you!

Today's guest is Jay Woods, New York Stock Exchange Floor Governor and Chief Global Strategist at Freedom Capital Markets. He messaged me that he disagrees with my take on the market so we're about to debate LIVE on the show. You're not going to want to miss this one!

...

If you're bullish on gold and silver mining, it's time to BUY BUY BUY.

Gold was the best-performing asset class in 2024, far outpacing precious metal stocks. 

We wouldn't be surprised to see the mining stocks catchup in 2025. Why?

Sector rotation is the lifeblood of a bull market. 

This chart suggests it's time for some mean reversion 👇

Writing to let everyone know that the next ASC Premium Mid-Month Strategy Session will be next Monday January 20 at 8 pm ET. 

With $VIX currently sporting a 20-handle, it feels like a good time to add some delta-neutral exposure to the portfolio.

So I'm scanning the list of liquid sector ETFs to see which one's offer good premiums and potential range-bound trading action.

Here's what I found:

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

1. No new positions today.
2. Defensive adjustment to XLE position.
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 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...

We're back on The Morning Show today LIVE on Stock Market TV!

If you want to know what's moving markets this week, and how we're thinking about profiting from it, then the Morning Show is for you!

Today's guest is fellow twin-boy dad Todd Gordon, Portfolio Manager at Inside Edge Capital. Todd is an old pal, veteran trader and world class skier. You're not going to want to miss this conversation!

Join us today...

The Mötley Crüe song title comes to mind: Same Ol' Situation. 

It's always the same questions. Every bull market.

How much higher can stocks possibly go? Was that last high the top? Why is the economy not as strong as the stock market? 

That's the thing. We want to pay attention to what's happening around us. Because we've seen it before and we'll see it again. It's just humans being humans. 

I like to turn to the data and weigh the evidence so we can try to make the most informed decisions possible.

The way I see it, this has been a bull market for quite some time, well into year 3 now. Whenever a lagging sector has been most vulnerable to break down from a major top, the opposite has happened.

The money has come in and bought them up. We just saw that in Consumer Discretionary in the back half of last year...