Risk Ratios Intro Many years ago, I was working on ways to identify market trends using what I called “Risk Ratios.” The idea was to use ratio analysis of major market indices or index ETF products to gauge things like inflation expectations, market valuation, cyclical trends and large-scale short c
Small Thanksgiving Eve Decline (Tesla Rallies Again!) 70% of the time stocks rise the day before Thanksgiving, but they didn’t on Wednesday. Some investors don’t make anything of this decline. The market is overbought and few speculative stocks are dramatically too high. This decline doesn’t mean th
Early Jobless Claims Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, jobless claims came out a day early, and they were terrible. This is the 2nd week of bad numbers which signals the labor market is getting worse because of COVID-19. This won’t be a double dip recession. But December will be a bad month for t
TLT Unusual Option Activity Report As Joe Biden continues to lay out his cabinet selections, one selection may have bond bears looking at the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (NASDAQ: TLT). The selection of Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary is one that should be good news for inflationists. The d
This Is A Bubble There is a ton of euphoria in the market. Reopening stocks are on fire and the overall indexes keep hitting records outside of the Nasdaq which is 16 basis points from a record. This isn’t exactly how we expected this to play out as many were bearish on large cap growth
We May See 2% Holiday Shopping Growth The consumer will probably weaken in the next few weeks as the spread of COVID-19 is coming at the worst time for the economy. Some thought the expectation for 3.6% to 5.2% growth was too high. There will be low single digit growth. That will specifically call f
Is This The Greatest Market For Short Sellers Ever? Yes, this is the greatest market for short sellers ever. To be clear, that doesn’t mean the overall market is going to fall by the most ever. Shorting the overall market is generally a hedge. Short sellers find bad companies that are valued too hig
Consumer Is A Mystery Undoubtedly, this is the hardest holiday shopping season to predict ever. Normally, retail sales are hard to predict, but usually it’s not difficult to get within a couple of percentage points of the result. This current season is an order of magnitude tougher. As a hypothetica
Dividends Meet Options If you’ve made an option trade, you’ve probably seen the disclaimer warning of potential dividend risk. Most probably gloss over that information and never consider how their option trades could be impacted. However, we got flooded with emails last week asking questions about
PLUG Unusual Option Activity Report It hasn’t been a week since Plug Power Inc (NASDAQ: PLUG) dropped around 8%. The reason for the decline was on news of a $750 million share offering. However, that was then, and this is now. The share price surged 10.3% on Monday as Baron’s discussed the PLUG as a
