All Star Options Articles

If I had to trade just one setup for the rest of my career—only one—it would be this:

Buying simple long calls on stocks making fresh all-time highs.

That’s it.

Clean. Pure. Effective.

Sure, there would be stretches of time where this setup doesn’t work. I get stopped out, or the trade fizzles, or nothing on my watchlist is breaking out. That’s part of the game. But then—every so often—I catch a monster. The kind of move that can pay for weeks or even months of waiting.

That’s what makes it all worth it.

Here’s why I love stocks at all-time highs: There are no bagholders.

Nobody is underwater. Nobody’s stuck saying, “If it just gets back to my entry, I’ll sell.” Everyone holding the stock is making money. That’s bullish behavior fuel. When people are winning, they don’t typically hit the sell button—they let it ride.

And then there’s the other side: the shorts.

Every single person short a stock at all-time highs is losing. And the higher it goes, the worse it gets. That pain? It’s real. It forces action. Shorts start to cover, often in a panic, creating an additional...

More and more stocks are flirting with all time highs. Today's trade has all-timers in sight, as well as a possible Hundred-dolla-roll -- two things that make me incredibly bullish.

With the markets starting to act a bit more “normal” again—whatever that even means anymore—I’ve been feeling more willing to put some risk on.

And when I say “put some risk on,” I don’t mean getting reckless. I mean firing my favorite kind of shot: long calls.

That’s my go-to trade when conditions line up. Simple, directional, defined risk, and explosive when it works.

And this week, the setups were speaking loud and clear. So I took action.

Here’s where I pulled the trigger:

A Canadian Bank – Clean technical setup, strong trend, and some fresh momentum behind it. No need to overcomplicate it.

A Crypto Platform – Bitcoin strength continues to be a rising tide, and this name was well-positioned to benefit.

An Agricultural Business...

With Bitcoin holding high in the 107-108K neighborhood, above last year's resistance, it feels like the stage is being set for another crypto bull. Not just for bitcoin, but for many of the so-called "alt-coins" as well. And today's trade is in the company that is best positioned to take advantage of a resurgence of alt-coin activity. 

And following a recent gap move higher, the consolidation over the past couple weeks and today's morning dip provide a great entry point.

I first cut my teeth as a high-volume, intra-day stock trader.

My earliest trading lessons came from staring at charts, watching price levels, and learning (often the hard way) how momentum behaves. I became obsessed with breakouts, pullbacks, volume surges—anything that would give me an edge on timing a move.

Sometimes that edge consisted of consuming multiple cans of Yoohoo!

(I know, gross.)  

Anyway, back then it was simple: find an intraday trend, hop on, and manage risk. That foundation still informs everything I do.

Eventually, that trend-following mindset led me into commodities. I loved the purity of it. There’s something clean and honest about commodity trends—they either work or they don’t, and often they run much farther than you’d expect. Studying seasonality, macro cycles, and supply/demand dynamics helped me spot inflection points in a way that complimented the chart work I’d learned from stocks.

But there were dry spells, too—periods where the trends would stall or chop. That’s when I started exploring premium selling strategies in options.

One of my trading buddies...

This past week, I sat down for an interview with the author of Options Trading for Dummies, Joe Duarte, and my friend Jason Perz. We covered a wide range of topics geared toward helping newer traders get more comfortable with options. But what stuck with me most wasn’t a technical point or a strategy—it was an unexpected insight that hit me like a flash of clarity.

It came from something Jason said in passing, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since:

Options traders are always fighting time.

And that works against us in two major ways.

1. Options Force Us to Time the Market

We’ve all heard it: “You can’t time the market.” And yet, if you’re trading options, you’re doing exactly that—whether you mean to or not.

Every options trade comes with an expiration date. That means your thesis has to not only be directionally correct, but correct within a specific window of time. If the stock moves in your favor after your contracts expire, you were still right—but it won’t matter. You’ll be left holding the bag.

Most of us aren’t wired for that kind of precision...

The banking sector in Canada is vastly different than the U.S. For one thing, there are far fewer of them! And there's really only a handful that matter.

One of those that matters is currently doing something that matters -- it's breaking out to new all-time highs! 

It's time to get involved.

It's been awhile since I've talked about one of my favorite setups: The Hundred-Dolla-Roll!

Stocks that are making fresh-all time highs above $80 per share tend to run to $100. Not all in one day. But the tractor beam, magnet, whatever you want to call the collective market mindset that is responsible for moves just seems to pull stocks to that big, round, sexy number.

Markets and prices are driven by humans (and the algorithms we write), and human behavior is sometimes so predictably reliable.

We've got a trade today that is taking advantage of this reliability.

What are the biggest mistakes new options traders make? 

Who better to answer that question than the guy who wrote the book. Joe Duarte is the author of Options Trading For Dummies, and he's seen it all. 

I'll be talking with Joe, along with ASC Gold Rush Analyst Jason Perz, to answer that very question. 

Tune in LIVE Thursday, May 22 at 2:30 pm ET.

I can't wait to ask him about: 

• All the classic ways newer or undisciplined options traders blow themselves up.
• Strategies that newbie options traders should use
• What to watch out for when selling premium

While most of the heavyweights have already reported their quarterly earnings, there are still plenty of names left on the docket. And as always, earnings reports can be a powerful catalyst.

I used to fear earnings season. The old stock trader in me had it drilled in early: don’t hold into earnings. The risk of an overnight blow-up always loomed too large.

But now? I see it differently.

As an options trader, I can define my risk. And that’s a game-changer. I no longer automatically avoid stocks with earnings coming up. In fact, I often lean intothose setups now—especially when I see a trend that looks like it’s just waiting on a spark to resume.

Case in point: I’m putting on a new trade today in a stock from the global life sciences sector. It has earnings coming up, yes—but it also has a...

Today's trade is in a $39B leading provider of software solutions for the global life sciences sector that is on the verge of breaking multi-year highs with an eye towards making a run at all-time highs.

There is an earnings release coming up soon which I think will be the catalyst to get the move underway.

Like the rest of the All Star Charts team, I spent last week in New Orleans. It was hot. It was muggy. But the food—oh man, the food—made it all worth it.

I think I hit all the cornerstones of New Orleans cuisine:

Crawfish. Muffuletta Sandwich. Gumbo. Jambalaya. Shrimp Ettoufee, Alligator Po-Boy sandwich. Lousiana Fried Catfish. Red Beans and Rice. Grilled Oysters. Andouille Sausage. Beignets. Bananas Foster.

I even enjoyed a non-alcoholic Hurricane. I was told it was a "Category 1". LOL

This trip was also a first for me: my first time visiting New Orleans sober. And let me tell you, it didn’t change my love for the city one bit. I still soaked in the music, the architecture, the culture, and that ever-present sense of celebration that pulses through every corner of the French Quarter.

But being clear-eyed did sharpen my awareness of some of the more absurd—and uniquely American—aspects of the experience. Lets just say I raised my eyebrow more than once at some of the things I observed...

The contrast was never more apparent than on the days we held our Portfolio Accelerator meetings in our hotel, right on Bourbon Street.

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