It's that time of the quarter where we options swing traders need to be extra mindful of pending earnings releases. The last thing we want to do is place a directional bet in a stock or it's options heading into a binary event that could decapitate us in a heartbeat.

This is frustrating us right now because most of the charts we like best (both the bullish and bearish ones) are in stocks with earnings slated to be released in the next week or two.

During our morning Analyst meeting today, we discussed the fact that many of the banking/financial sector stocks have already reported earnings by now, therefore, this is a place we should look.

Specifically, we like the big money center mega/multinational banks that are represented best by the $KBE ETF. Here is a chart that paints a pretty good picture of why we like it:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is working on its 3rd straight week of gains.

In case you missed it, you have to see the look on Maria Bartiromo's face after I told her Friday that we're 4 months into a new bull market.

Priceless.

I think she was into it though. Check out the full clip on Fox Business here: Mornings with Maria

This weekend I published a note about how underrated I find the Dow Jones...

You hear it every day.

Are you bullish or bearish?

Like, what does that question even mean?

Which asset class are we talking about?

What time frame?

What sector?

It's a question that only journalists should ask. People with skin in the game understand that strong opinions will always be weakly held when money is on the line.

Our opinion never matters. What does matter is how we adapt our approach as new evidence comes in that either corroborates or contradicts our initial thesis.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ending October 14, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated 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...

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...

I don't know how you were taught to approach markets.

But I still have Ralph Acampora in my head. I can still hear him yelling, "Don't Fight Papa Dow!!"

He's referring, of course, to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and respecting the direction of its trend, and its components.

We just saw back to back positive weeks for the Dow Industrials for only the 4th time in 2022. See here.

This weekend I published a note about how underrated I find the Dow Jones Industrial Average to be among traders and investors.

Not sure why people get so upset about the Dow. I find it really valuable and shared some of my favorite hacks here.

The Dow is not something I want to fight. In fact, I was specifically taught not to.

So here's what this looks like. You can see the Pre-Covid highs that were taken out in Q4 2020. And now here we are, back to the scene of the crime.

...

Friday morning I was in the city chopping it up with Maria Bartiromo.

She was surprised at what I had to say.

But I think she was intrigued.

Also, huge shoutout to Fox Business on their 15th Anniversary. It's been amazing to watch them continue to dominate financial TV.

Congrats all around.

Check out the full clip from Friday morning:

There is a constant conversation among market participants about which indexes are the better representation of the stock market, particularly in the United States.

While the media often quotes the Dow Jones Industrial Average daily changes, professionals tend to steer towards the S&P500.

The argument normally revolves around the price-weighted nature of the Dow Jones Industrial Average vs the market-cap driven S&P500.

The diversity of 500 stocks in the S&P is also a key point when compared to just 30 stocks for the Dow.

Today, I just wanted to remind everyone why I think the Dow Jones Industrial Average is underrated and why I think it is still one of the most useful indexes for any stock market participant.

First of all, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P500 have a very high positive correlation to one another.

In yesterday's note we talked about how the Dow Jones Industrial Average went up in price for the 2nd consecutive week. This isn't something we've seen happen too often in 2022.

But what else happened this week?

Well, we got fewer stocks making new 52-week lows on the NYSE. The peak in new lows was back in June, which was 4 months ago.

You can see it in shorter-time horizons as well. Look at the S&P500 new 63 day low list continuing to deteriorate (63 days = 3 months = 1 quarter):

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.

These are the registration details for our live mid-month conference call for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

Our next Live Call will be held on Tuesday October 18th at 6PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.

Here are the details for Tuesday night: