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Chip Selloff Hammers Growth Stocks. Is the AI Boom Over?
by David Russell | Apr 22, 2024
Chip stocks like Nvidia led the market to new highs last earnings season. The opposite could be happening this time. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 9.2 percent between Friday, April 12, and Friday, April 19. It was the index's biggest weekly drop in almost...
Are Bulls Getting Complacent as the Market Keeps Hitting New Highs? Here Are 5 Risks to Watch
by David Russell | Dec 7, 2020
Stocks kept hitting new highs last week, but some risks could be brewing. The S&P 500 rose 1.7 percent between Friday, November 27, and Friday, December 4. It was the index's fourth gain in the last five weeks. Other key benchmarks including the Dow Jones...
Tesla Keeps Getting More Respect as Elon Musk’s Vision Goes Mainstream
by David Russell | Dec 4, 2020
Tesla closed at a new all-time high yesterday as Elon Musk's electric-car maker keeps getting more respect. An upgrade by Goldman Sachs was the latest catalyst for the stock, already up 609 percent this year. Analyst Mark Delaney based his call on macro and micro...
Chipmaker Industry Group Sees Another Strong Year in 2021
by David Russell | Dec 4, 2020
Semiconductors have been one of the strongest groups this year. Now a trade group sees more gains in 2021. The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) yesterday said worldwide chip sales will increase 8.4 percent in 2021 from this year's estimated $433.1 billion...
Survey: Bears Are Now Officially on the Run
by David Russell | Dec 3, 2020
Each week we check the American Association of Individual Investors sentiment survey. This week, only 22.7 percent of respondents were "bearish." It was the lowest negative reading since January 2. It's also noteworthy that CNN's Fear and Greed index remains in...
Stunner! Alphabet Is Leading the Nasdaq
by David Russell | Dec 3, 2020
Most of the high profile "FANG" stocks haven't done much recently. That is, aside from Alphabet (GOOGL), which is leaving them all in the dust. Click here to view the related idea and chart analysis on TradingView.
Market Pulse: Coronavirus Vaccine Could Be Bad News for Housing Stocks
by David Russell | Dec 3, 2020
Housing stocks benefited from the coronavirus pandemic, and now are looking sickly as hopes of a vaccine spread. This chart shows the iShares US Home Construction ETF (ITB), with a potential head and shoulders reversal pattern. It's one of the worst-performing corners...
Top Stocks for Options Trading
Technology & Communication
Facebook, Amazon.com Miss, Apple Struggles with Supply Chain, Microsoft Jumps: Earnings This Week
by David Russell | Oct 29, 2021
Quarterly results from Apple, Amazon.com and Facebook came up short this week, but Microsoft and Alphabet jumped to new highs. It was the busiest period of earnings season, with five of the market's six biggest companies issuing numbers. (Tesla was last week.) Most...
Long-Term Bulls Are Active Today: Options Recap
by David Russell | Oct 15, 2018
Cell phones and natural gas. Those are some big trades in the options market today. Let's start with Sprint (S), which saw the purchase of 20,000 May 7 calls for $0.50 and the sale of 40,000 May 8 calls for $0.21. It's a little complicated, so here's a breakdown of...
History May Favor Bulls This Quarter, Despite Volatility
by David Russell | Oct 15, 2018
Stocks are coming off their worst week since March, but history may favor the bulls. After all, we're in the fourth quarter -- a time of the year with a strong bias to the upside. Consider some of these points we crunched from TradeStation's wealth of chart data: The...
Basics of Hedging, Part 3: Buying Vs. Selling Options
by David Russell | Oct 12, 2018
We recently outlined protective puts and covered calls as common hedging techniques. This brings us to the important question of selling options versus buying options. To understand the these two basic kinds of transactions, traders need to recognize the difference...
Nasdaq Gets Slammed as Rates Shoot Higher
by David Russell | Oct 8, 2018
Stocks began the fourth quarter in the red as interest rates spiked and money streamed out of the technology sector. The S&P 500 slid 1 percent between Friday, September 28, and Friday, October 5. But that was nothing compared with the Nasdaq-100's 3 percent drop...