On today's Flow Show, me and Steve Strazza put our heads together to follow the wave into the Steel sector.

Sector trends are showing us where capital is flowing and that led us to a trade idea in steel manufacturing company Reliance Inc $RS.

Here's the chart highlighting a high consolidation that often portends to rapid near term price acceleration:

For those of us who are comfortable with risking higher dollar amounts in trades, I'd be a straight buyer of the September 350 calls.

But I prefer keeping my costs a little lower per unit of risk, so I'll be employing a call spread here to express our bullish opinion.

Here's the Play:

So we're going to fix that.

And here's why:

It’s the perfect environment to buy mining stocks following gold’s breakout.

The plan is simple: Buy the strongest names on absolute and relative terms – if and when they trade above our risk levels.

That is from my Commodities Analyst Ian Cully in a recent post about the Gold sector.

Today's trade is in a mining name that is above the risk levels, signaling its time to get involved.

I received a great, and well-meaning question from a new All Star Options subscriber about a recent trade we entered in $VLO that offers a great lesson or reminder to those who need it.

Question:

What...

One sector that I feel a bit underexposed to right now is real estate -- particularly REITs. And when a dominant player in New York City's commercial real estate sector pops up in our scans with a beautiful chart, it feels to me like this one might be set to surprise a lot of people.

Every once in a while, I’ll put on what I call “all or nothing” trades.

What this means in practice is that I’ll put on a defined risk options trade knowing full well that the trade is either going to net a profit, or it’s going to be a zero – a full loss of invested capital. There’s no in-between.

Usually, this happens because I love a setup, but the price level on the chart that would invalidate my thesis is pretty far away. If we get there, it’s more than likely that whatever premium I paid to enter the trade will have nearly evaporated. There will be nothing left to sell, even if I want to.

Two trades with March expiration options have concluded for me this week that demonstrate the yin and yang of these types of trades.

On Feb. 14, I put on a bearish bet in Hormel Foods $HRL. I bought the March 25 puts for 15 cents. This trade was put on at a time when I was looking to add some bearish exposure to my portfolio to help balance out the heavy long exposure I had in other...

Steve Strazza and I hosted another Flow Show today on Stock Market TV and discussed opportunities in the Biotech space.

Starting at an index level, we see that biotechs are clearing a base and appear set on breaking out:

From there, we started diving into some individual biotech names to play the breakout, but many of the charts offered unique challenges that made it tricky to pick one to take the most advantage or the sector breakout.

So when that happens, sometimes the best move is simply to buy the index!

And that's what we're going to do here, using the sector ETF $XBI as a vehicle for expressing our bet.

Here's the Play:

Today's trade is a bet on the speculative juices continuing to flow through the summer. This stock has been performing fantastically since the November stock market explosion, but if we're a believer that this stock is simply tracing out the right side of a larger base, then we've still got plenty of upside to go.

Here's a chart of DoorDash $DASH:

Today's trade is in a name that has the potential to really rip. Of course, the nature of this type of trade is that it has a lower probability of success.

But if we get it right, our potential gains will likely be exponentially higher than any heat we're likely to take in this trade if we're early or wrong.

So let's get right to it.

I’m reading Annie Duke’s latest book “Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away.” Though I’m only about halfway through it I can already confidently recommend this book to traders.

The book isn’t addressed to traders, though it frequently references our profession in its anecdotes and many of the stories are very relatable.

And it certainly has me thinking about better ways to decide to quit a trade, quit a strategy, or quit a product.

I frequently go down rabbit holes, experimenting with models to extract consistent, repeatable, acceptably risk-adjusted returns via index options. I’ve written about my near-constant...

This morning, my Head Technical Analyst Steve Strazza joined me on The Flow Show to put our heads together on a new trade:

Strazza loves the Energy sector here, and of all the charts he likes, I liked this one in Valero Energy $VLO the best:

Best of all, options premiums are near the lowest levels of the year for $VLO:

This isn't entirely surprising. The stock has been consolidating just below all-time highs since early 2022. And the consolidation has been continually tightening.

Sideways markets may not stop you out of your positions, but they are likely to wear you out. And when traders are exiting their positions giving up on the thought of any directional movement, options premiums tend to decline because few participants feel the need to protect their positions or aggressively bet on accelerating...

The speculative fever is returning in a big way.

Today's trade is in one of those names that has already benefited from the recent surge in stocks and crypto prices and is likely to continue thriving if this brewing mania is here to stay for a while longer.

Here's something we don't do very often -- we're going to patiently leg into a position.

Bottoms are a process, and we're taking a position that is betting on a turn on a much-maligned overseas market.

We think the turn can be messy and sloppy sideways for a little longer, which will allow us to get better prices if we go into it with a plan.