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...
Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we're covering all the action for the week ended March 17, 2023. 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...
Due to the recent bank failures, this week has been all about the financial sector and the selling pressure taking place there.
However, the price action for energy stocks has been even worse by some measures.
The Energy Sector SPDR $XLE is on pace to fall -6.8% this week, while the Financials Sector SPDR is only lower by about -5.8%.
When we look at energy futures, the outlook only worsens with crude oil registering its largest weekly loss since trading into negative territory in April 2020.
So, what does this all mean for the bull market in energy?
The sector has been so resilient, showing steady leadership for several years now. Is it all over?
Maybe not, but there is some serious damage that will require immediate repair work.