Another strong day for Brazil/Oil trade. $VALE from yesterday already up 8%, $PBR up 3%. $XLE itself not up that much, so Brazil is definitely the bigger factor.

Adding to last month's long Brazil/Oil theme with $VALE to the existing $PBR, $MUR, $EEP, $EQT. Tech Trader is still overall very neutral in exposure (55% long, 40% short), but it'll be interesting to see if this starts to change and especially if it's via energy bets.  You can see in the sector exposure chart at the bottom that Energy is now leading for both most exposure (still a modest 20%) and marginally the most P&L for the year (excluding ETFs).

Healthcare theme playing out well from last week.  $MDVN, $BSX, $EGRX, and even an older one $INSY each up 2-7%.

$WWE, which had a bullish risk reversal on April 18x calls/puts last week, is in rumors to have a buyout offer.  This is the options activity from last week:
WWE 4/15/2016 18x Calls, 1655@$0.8999
MV: $0.1M | $Not.: $1.4M | OI: 1094 | 8.6% TotalOI
22.8% StockVolume | 27.3% OptionVolume
Leg: WWE 4/15/2016 18x Puts, 1655 on OI of 2516

$OMF, which had Apr 31x call buying, just sold 47% stake in SpringCastle. See if this is the news the buyer wanted.

Activity in individual stocks picking up. $BSX, $EGRX, $MDVN all bought this week. $WUBA, $FNGN, $KBWB shorted.  $OMF rebought this month after already trading it last month.

Overall positioning looks like a continuation of the long Brazil/oil theme but now also with healthcare while selectively buying and shorting financial names.  It seems like there's a lot of anticipation on catalysts coming up on many of these names ranging from healthcare events to potential acquisitions on other names.

Brazil trade working out especially well today after Fed again. Names like $PBR up above $6 now from Tech Trader's entry around $5.

Tech Trader coming alive again w/ an intraday bottom on $XLK at $43.35.  Only one so far - like first shots fired to test the waters.


More interestingly, Tech Trader's 100% hitrate once-in-a-blue-moon SPY buy signal might trigger today as well.  All of us here are watching excitingly to see if we'll get yet another signal this year only 3 months into the year, which is very unusual and points to just how different the current market is from the last few years.

The long Brazil and $AMD themes continuing strongly from yesterday.  Last one we're waiting on is $INSY (marijuana) with its conference today.

Brazil theme finally playing out in size after Fed, with names like PBR, ITUB, and EWZ up 8-10% a piece today.  AMD also up 5% on talks about Intel licensing their GPU patents.  Last theme to watch would be the marijuana one with INSY, which is presenting at a conference tomorrow.

Been a rather uneventful couple of months, but it looks like Tech Trader is finally building a couple themes here, first with Brazil (note that it cut ITUB and RIO though), then marijuana (INSY), and now potentially virtual reality with AMD.  These are longer medium term plays, so we'll see how these play out.

Marijuana stocks breaking out today, mainly following GWPH which jumped over 100%.  Tech Trader in particular holding INSY from last week based on call buying around $16; INSY has about 80% short interest and 23 days to cover.

Tech Trader adding to its long Brazil theme with BBVA today.

Much of the market flat today after all the whipsaw, but IHUB and PBR from a couple days ago are up about 5% a piece.  Not really sure why, but interesting to watch.

Starting to finally see some shakiness in the market.  The XLU long and SMH short call from last week is starting to play out pretty well now.

Some other interesting observations are that Brazillian names in particular are being picked up on the long side.  Tech Trader overall is still net short though.

Excellent data worth considering. Thanks

XLU up over a percent since the bottom call a couple days ago, which is just weird since it's the opposite of what you'd expect with how rates are moving on the stronger than expected job numbers, but we'll take what we can get.

Tech Trader still net short (50% cash, 20% long, 50% short)  but pretty much holding flat in performance despite the market rally.  It's basically choosing to sidestep the rally out of caution.  Some older strategies that are not traded live but we still monitor are also flagging extremely bearish, namely our RSI2 stocks which very rarely is over 100% short is currently 130% short and continuing to add.  Main takeaway is the market is coming off very overbought and risk is high to the downside.

Below is the current exposure of the older RSI2 stocks strategy; it's not traded live for the obvious volatility in performance, but the peak exposure periods have a hitrate of 90% with those periods only happening a couple times a year.

CS and OMF up about 2-3% each.  Not sure why; we're watching closely just to see what happens, as often times these can be frontrunning some kind of news.

Tech Trader overall getting net short again though both by shorting more and getting out of existing long positions.  It is also getting more defensive with what it has left over in long names. SMH just got shorted and XLU is being bought on intraday bottom, both of which are defensive signs.

Some really interesting activity happening in the finance sector just now.  Someone coming into CS (Credit Suisse) with heavy call buying at what appears to be recession lows.  OMF, a name with call buying earlier last month, also just started spiking up (literally going straight up on the 1 min chart).

Tech Trader out of its remaining intraday bottom trades from Tuesday.  Sold healthcare/biotech ETFs XBI and IBB this morning.  Total trade gain about 5% each.  Tech Trader's overall exposure back to about 50% cash and neutral now.

Tech Trader out of its intraday bottom trades on DIA and XLF as well.  SPY, DIA, XLF trades all about 2% gains.  Only healthcare/biotech ETFs XBI and IBB still being held now.

Tech Trader coming back to life with intraday bottom signals on SPY, DIA, XLF, IBB, XBI just now after being about 60% cash and 10-20% net short for the last couple weeks on individual stocks.  Again intraday bottom signals are just first responders, so we could still keep going down, just that we're close enough to start scaling in.  The big one would be the once-in-a-blue-moon RSI2 SPY daily signal as usual.

SPY intraday bottom at $189.66.

Tech Trader out of its SPY RSI2 buy from $185.20 to $186.60 for 0.6%.  Speaks to the environment that Tech Trader is not willing to hold longer.  On the next sharp move up or down, Tech Trader will continue range trading SPY.  Should be fun.

Without SPY, Tech Trader is actually now 25% net short (21% long by 46% short).  We haven't seen Tech Trader this net short since 2011 of the debt ceiling crisis.  The biggest sector exposures are 11% short technology, followed by 7% short utilities.  However, keep in mind that it is not actually short the index, just select names, and that it is still almost 60% in cash.



Tech Trader's overall portfolio still performing flat for the year, with S&P now down 8.5%.