 Hey everybody, Lee Lowell here, smartopsincell.com. How's everyone doing? Today's Friday, December 24th, 2021. Christmas Eve for many of you. I thought I'd make this video one day early. Markets are closed today. December 24th, I typically do these on Saturday. We do our Saturday synopsis. So this is the Friday version of the Saturday synopsis. Get it in a day early while the markets are closed. Don't want to bombard you all on Saturday Christmas with a video. So I thought I'd do it a day early. So let's jump in. Let's talk about what we do. I look at the charts. We do technical analysis here on the Saturday synopsis. I like to show you what I'm seeing on my charts, what I've been looking at, been doing this for 30 years. So I try to impart some of that knowledge on you. For some of you who are just starting out wanting to get into technical analysis, we look at our charts. We look at our technical indicators. We look at moving averages, support and resistance levels. I try to show you what I do when I'm ready to get into or out of a trade. One of the smartest things you can do when you're starting to look at charts is you want to look at the overall market, the broad market. What's it doing as a whole? And that includes the Dow industrials, the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ. Those are the three main indexes. So we track those first and then we dial down to the individual stocks. So what we're seeing here on your screen is the SPY, the exchange traded fund for the S&P 500 index. We look at that first. For those of you that are new, I quickly go over what I have on my charts. I look at a daily bar chart, open, high, low, close is what they're called versus candlesticks. I don't look at candlesticks. Each one of these lines is one day is worth a trading bar chart. I have three moving averages that I look at. A 20-day, 50-day, 200-day, all simple moving averages. And down here is the RSI indicator. 14-day RSI indicator, overbought, oversold indicator fluctuates between zero and 100. It never really gets to zero or 100. In most cases, these two horizontal lines are my overbought, oversold levels at the 20 and 80. You can move those to any level you like. The default is 2575. So I gauge this down here, see if a stock index is overbought, oversold. And up here, I look for support and resistance levels. I draw these charts in here. These pictures got W pattern triangles, channels. This is all part of technical now. So these are things that help me gauge whether a stock is ready to move up or down. So we look at the overall market first. We look at the S&P 500. And what we've noticed that yesterday, so Thursday, December 23rd, was the final day of trading for this week. And we can see right here, let me open this up a little bit. So here's Thursday's trading, December 23rd, this bar right here. So as you can see, the S&P 500 is just getting ready to break all-time new highs right here. We're getting all along this triple top here. One, two, three. Some people will call that a triple top. Sometimes that acts as a barrier or a resistance level where a stock index can't get through. It might knock it back down. It's possible. But what I like is that we've gone up and we're ready to take out all-time new highs. Here is the last all-time new high right here. And this was back on November 22nd. If we get enough boost, enough oomph, this could push through and start on all-time new highs. Maybe it won't happen next week. It's sort of a dull week, the last trading week of the year between Christmas and New Year. It's not a lot of activity. So this may have to wait until the New Year starts where we get through this. But let's go back to the monthly chart. This is all-time going back to 1993 or so. We can see just the market has just gone straight up. Let me pull it out a little bit here. So from 2008, 2009, when we had the financial meltdown since then, last 13 years or so, we've just gone straight up. So this is the monthly chart. We concentrate on the daily chart. So this is where we are now. Getting ready to make all-time new highs. So you can sort of see maybe a little bit of a W pattern here. You can see it much bigger. W pattern, if you want to draw it possible, also triple top here. So we've got a couple things going. The W pattern is typically a bullish pattern, but you've got the triple top waiting above it. Got the resistance line here. So we may get a little bit of a pullback. But I think in the New Year, we're still dealing with COVID and Omicron. But we've got the vaccine. So that's not really an issue as far as the market goes. Inflation yet is on. Yes, is here. The U.S. Federal Reserve is going to be tackling that by raising interest rates. So the market already knows that that's going to happen. And if it hasn't really sold off too much yet, then I don't really see that happening in the future. I'm just waiting for this resistance to pop. And I think the market will continue on to more all-time new highs, maybe even in the first week of the New Year. So market looks strong. We had these two pullbacks of late. We had this pullback here, pullback here. Got people nervous about it. If you look in the entirety of where the market's gone, these little teeny pullbacks mean absolutely nothing. They're just a little blip. But you've got a lot of short-term traders, a lot of people that buy up near the tops and they get scared out. They don't have the patience to hold. And they sell out. We get these little pullbacks. And that scares the market a little bit. And the reason how we know that the market gets scared is we look at the VIX. This is the VIX daily chart of the VIX. The VIX is basically what's called the fear indicator. It's a measure of implied volatilities of the front month S&P 500 options contracts. And when there's a downturn in the market, there's a lot of fear. People buy put options for protection, buy and put options, protects you on a downside move. So when the market starts to go down, this VIX indicator starts to go up. So you can see here, so this was right during the pandemic, March 2020, where the fear really ramped up in the market and the VIX spiked up. But since then, the market has been just going straight up since March 2020. So that meant the fear started to come down in the overall market. But you get these spikes, you can see these spikes along the way. And that's when the market has a little bit of a quick downturn. So the last two downturns we had in the market just recently, you can see we had these kind of spikes here in the VIX. So people got scared. People always get scared when we have a little bit of a downturn. So we'll go back to the S&P 500. You can see here, let me open it up a little bit more. So this little down move here, and this little down move here caused the VIX to spike, but it rallies right back up. So I'm a bull for the long term. The market goes up over time. It doesn't matter what's happening in the market, rising interest rates, pandemics, wars. Those things are short term scary, yes, but in the long run, the market is still a vehicle made up of profitable companies, creating profitable products that people buy and quarter after quarter, these companies make money. And the stock market has to go up over time as long as the market is made up of these profitable companies. So yes, we can get pullbacks. That's all part of the market. You get pullbacks, but it picks itself back up and goes up again. I'm in for the long haul, decades. I buy S&P 500 funds, SPY, hold for a long term. Our short term trading here at the smart option seller is typically one to three months whole time. So it's a little shorter. It's actually a lot shorter than decades. So we have to be a little bit more precise with our trading when we get in and when we get out. So we really have to rely on our technical analysis skills and chart reading. And so we look at these patterns. You can see this channel here that was drawn. So it bounces along the channel. We try to get into a bullish play when it's coming along the bottom edge of the channel or when it's bouncing off a moving average line. Here we looked for the channel. We waited for it to pop out of the channel. And so this is when we would get into a bullish trade right around here. When it moves outside of the channel and gets above the 50 day moving average and starts to move up. So those are some things we look at when we're trying to decide when and or if to get into a trade or when to get out. Let's take a look at the NASDAQ. And that is represented by the QQQ NASDAQ just like the S&P 500. Here was the last all time high back in November 22nd. On November 22nd we had these two pullbacks. So the NASDAQ's got a little bit more to go until it hits this all time high here. And what can we glean from this? Well it's hugging right along the 50 day moving average. A very popular moving average is 50 day. A lot of people follow that. So when a stock is making a move along the 50 day a lot of people will initiate the same kind of transaction. So if they see it bouncing a lot of people are going to buy and that'll push the momentum. Stocks move on momentum. If they're going up it will keep going up until something pushes it in the other direction. So you watch you know we drew this long channel here so obviously you can see the NASDAQ's in a nice uptrend. It bounces off the top comes down a little it can either bounce off the 50 day moving average or the bottom edge. Right now it bounced pretty good. You know it came down below the 50 day a little bit but had a nice bounce. So just like the S&P 500 I can I really really see this thing going up making all time new highs probably soon after the new year rolls around. So market looks good. Let's go to the Dow Jones. We use the Diamonds the DIA. This is the DIA just like the QQQ and SPY. This tracks the the index. This tracks the Dow Jones index. This is the DIA. I don't have it written down here. Same thing pullback pullback bounce bounce. This one bounced off the this is the Mac Daddy. This is the 200 day moving average right here. This is really like one of the last lines in the sand. You want to see you want to see support hold and it held it held here held here and what when I mean held you know a couple of days worth of trading maybe a week you know it could bounce below it for a little bit but typically it's not going to stay down below it for too long. So the Dow here's the all time new highs back here. So the Dow's got a little work to do as well but I can only see it going higher from here. There's what would be there to stop it in the long run. Yeah we got inflation we got interest rates that are going to be raised but that that's only a temporary type of pullback that we may see at that time. It'll scare some people out people that don't really know what moves the market long run long run the market will go up. So we like the market as a whole. Now when we look at some individual stocks you have to be pretty careful because individual stocks will tend to follow the indexes but they also move on their own because they have their own earnings they have earnings announcements every every three months and you have to watch out for those. So you really have to pay more attention to the individual stocks. Let's take a look at Apple. We look at them. We look at the popular stocks here because that's what a lot of people trade. That's what they're interested in. So Apple has made all time new highs pretty recently. This was back on December 13th right here a little over $180 a share. So Apple has you know has been going up the overall trend you can see is upwards but it had a lot of ups and downs ups and downs channels downwards upwards downwards but you can see it's been hugging along the 20 day the blue line is the 20 day moving average and it bounced right here the other day bounced right on the 20 day moving average. Apple I mean we all know Apple great company great products it's going to keep going. I mean it has fits and starts but in the long run that you know people just keep buying buying their products stocks gonna stock has to go up you know as long as they keep putting out rising earnings quarter after quarter the stock has nowhere to go but up. So take a longer term perspective Apple will keep going up it's it's bullish it's bouncing here it's going to go and make all time new highs I would say in the very near future. Let's look at Tesla we like to look at Tesla. Tesla is just a beast you know it's just a beast of a stock. It can be really scary and volatile to trade this thing. I mean if you're trading Tesla intraday my hat is off to you because that's something that I cannot do that's I could never trade short term like that couldn't trade intraday I just it wasn't for me so I go longer term but I like to watch it because it's fun to watch because it makes massive moves we've had channels drawn here channels drawn here it just went ballistic here was super overbought for a short period of time and then it came back down made the triangle congestion pattern dropped through it. You know here was some support lines it's really hard to get a gauge on Tesla trying to draw support because it just moves all over the place it's almost like technical analysis is a really hard thing to do with Tesla. So that's why I don't trade it because it's just so erratic and so volatile you can see all the lines that I've drawn on the chart that you know sometimes it may work for a couple days but then it just turns around and goes the other direction so play at your own risk it's fun to watch for sure I like to sell some way out of the money put options on Tesla way way down here you know down here you can you can sell put options with these strike prices down here make a little bit of money but that's the only way I would play it because it's too volatile for me all right so let's take a quick look at some other stocks I want to show you Clorox because Clorox is a stock that we talk about almost every week here now let's go back to the pandemic and the pandemic Clorox was a was a darling it was just going up massively and then the summer of 2020 it started to come down into this down trending channel you can see the long blue lines and then it had these little little up trending channels along with the the big downtrend you can have pullbacks and and rallies within the channel and but it had been in the sideways channel for a number of months now and I've been saying that I needed to see Clorox trade between 17580 for me to sort of get a little bullish and maybe it's it's it's finally finding its footing and getting ready to move to the bullish side had been in the sideways channel has the downtrending 200 day moving or so here right here this little move these last couple days it popped outside of the the sideways channel got above the 200 day moving average so I nibbled a little bit I bought around 175 176 dollars a share but a couple shares just to see what would happen was hoping that it would continue on upwards and and create a new trend well you know didn't work so didn't work so well so far it has come back down below the 200 day moving average and has come back down into the sideways channel so this is where it ended right here around 170 dollars a share so I'm currently underwater on the shares that I bought but I'm hopeful that what we can see here is you know maybe we have the beginning of the ultimate beginning of the uptrend the starting of a new long-term uptrend here okay so it maybe it found its footing finally starting a new uptrend got knocked back down but I'm hoping here's the 20 day moving average here's the bottom edge of the channel I'm hoping at this point it'll it'll continue on upwards so I'm I'm moderately and hopefully bullish here due to the the little break out here got knocked back down but it's sort of in this uptrending channel so these are the things that I look for I didn't go all in you know I start to nibble when you see something starting move and looking like it's ready to make the next wave or next jump to whatever the if you're if you're bullish or bearish on a stock then you know you nibble you nibble a little bit don't go all in so I nibble a little bit bought a handful of shares waiting to see what will happen so right now I'm underwater but I'm hopeful that Clorox will will start to move up let's take a look at some other stocks let's go to our list here and see what I've got let me move some stuff over here so I can get to my thing here okay so here's my list let's see what some stocks we have Oracle was a stock that we played recently in the smart option seller newsletter we sold some naked puts on Oracle and the reason why I love Oracle was in this nice has been in this nice uptrend right here this huge gap up see this air pocket right here earnings came out and and Oracle just went off like a rocket went from $90 up to 105 and it has since pulled all the way back fill the gap which is what we like to see on charts what that means is when you have an air pocket like this you want to see the stock close the gap eventually and the stocks come all the way down to its original breakout point so it filled up this gap that's what's called filling the gap and it's right back down to right near $90 a share I like Oracle I'm glad it's come back down gave us a chance to get in so we sold some put options on Oracle I like the stock long term and so we we sold some put options which is a bullishly oriented strategy so that's Oracle let's see what else we got going on here AMD we love AMD I love AMD we also have sold some we sold a put spread in our other newsletter bullish trade as well love the bounce right here I like tell AMD pulled back right to the 50 day moving average right here so we got in right around here right when it was bouncing off the you know $135 level and so it bounced here and that was our cue to get into a trade wait for the pullback wait for the bounce off the 50 day moving average and this is when we got in so it's working for us it had to bounce now it's around $146 a share so we like that um what else are we doing let me look at our stocks here on the list move this up here so that's Oracle AMD Apple Amazon we look at still still stuck in the in the long channel so there's really nothing happening with Amazon let's look at Netflix because we do have a position on Netflix we sold put options spread with these really high price stocks we can sell put options spreads bullish trades and and it locks in our maximum loss and we like to do that spreads are another way or a way to get into a trade if you have limited funds we sell put spreads so what we did is we got into Netflix when it was around $650 a share we're waiting for it came down here we're waiting for it to bounce thought it would track up higher but it has since moved down but the good thing about the way that we do it is we sell put spreads way out of the money gives us a lot of cushion so this trade is actually making money for us even though the stock's moving in the wrong direction that's one thing I harp on when I teach my students is that by using out of the money options when you sell out of the money options it gives you a lot of cushion against directional error we're all going to be wrong at some point when we when we try to figure out which way stock's going to move and if you are wrong on the stock direction it doesn't mean that your option trade is going to lose because when you sell out of the money put options that time decay will work in your favor if you understand what that means so even though the stock's moved in the wrong direction for us we're still making money on the option position because time decay is working in our favor so that's Netflix let's see what other stocks we can look at here Cisco was you know I missed the trade on Cisco back here I wish I had gotten in it's just rallied since Cisco is getting up there hoping for pullback in Cisco proctor and gamble just a strong stock we don't have anything there let's look at Walmart we'd like to talk about Walmart here's the line the support line right here around $135 a share I got in some shares here nibbled I was waiting to get in at $135 again here didn't come all the way down still have my order open to buy again at $135 came down again to about $137 and a half so it's kind of lingering between $135 $140 here it's got the support right at $135 we know Walmart's a great company could sell out of the money put options on Walmart those should work for you sell out of the money put spreads I'm waiting to get into a trade here as well if it gets back down to $135 I like to wait see if it bounces and then that's my cue to get in for some more let's look at Disney real quick Disney's a stock we've talked about nibbled down here as well got way oversold here's the RSI got way way oversold even below my 20 level so that was my cue to nibble on some shares it's rallied up a little pulled back a little it's kind of making the W pattern you can see here so it may be a move above maybe 155 156 could could rally it to this to the downtrending 50 day moving average if it gets through that it should continue to go you know Disney's a great company it's not going out of business buying down here probably could be a pretty good thing if you want to nibble on some Disney but I have to believe the bottom may have been found here and it could either trade sideways or or continue to slowly move up but I I like Disney here you know just know that none of these are the actual recommendations these are just things that I'm seeing things that we're doing in our newsletter but you know buying Disney here it's probably a safe bet because of the the support that it's got probably trying to find itself a bottom here so Disney's something that we like what other stocks can we look at here look to Tesla so the pharmaceuticals are mostly going higher Eli Lilly Bristol Myers Pfizer now we have a position in Merck as well another put option that we sold now here's another case where the stock moved against us now the Merck is surprising to me because all the others are have been strong but Merck's just been kind of languishing we got in around I don't know somewhere up here so it puts but the position is still making money even though the stocks moved against us hoping to it's finding some congestion here hoping that it's just going to rally back up in the near term so we can close out of our positions Kellogg stuck in the middle range for rising let's talk about Verizon because we've talked about Verizon a long time I love Verizon but I said it's not time to get in yet because it's just been in this downtrend for so long but something happened last week had this massive move higher just just rallied good couple dollars so our is Verizon out of the woods yet yet to be seen here let's let's redraw this line right here and draw in a new so we can kind of connect some of the tops here so now it's sort of at the top edge of the new line here and if it gets above this somewhere between you know 53-54 dollars a share maybe Verizon's ready to finally make that turn to the upside to try to you know get back to some of these levels up here low 60s same thing with AT&T it seems like AT&T Verizon sort of had the same idea last week had a decent massive rally so maybe the maybe the telecoms are finally found a bottom so I'm I'm feeling pretty good you know I want to get into Verizon but had to wait for the downtrend to stop are we out of the woods I don't know we've got this this upper channel here just kind of waiting above maybe it might knock it all the way back down again not sure yet need to see it trade outside of and above this downtrending line before I feel a little bit more confident so I'm gonna wait in C mode for Verizon let's see what else we have let's go down through the list PayPal PayPal I am starting to get a little anxious excited about PayPal starting to make some sideways action when you see sideways action that kind of means that the stock is been finding its footing after a down move or if it had been an up move and went sideways it's deciding what the next move should be so PayPal has been in this downtrend for a while now but the sideways action is telling me that maybe it's finally found some equilibrium maybe found its footing here so you know it bounced off the it got oversold here and it's just barely above the 20-day moving average so let's keep an eye I'm keeping an eye on PayPal this could be could be the bottom here and maybe it'll start to go back up square same category I love the payment sector the online payment sector PayPal and square the two biggies here square doesn't look as strong or as bottoming as PayPal does if I had to choose between the two right now I'd probably pick PayPal square still kind of looks like it it's trying to find it's trying to find its footing here hasn't really done it yet could be a little more downside I like PayPal better as far as making more of a bottom so keep an eye on both of these Coca-Cola is another one that I personally have bought some shares in of late bought some down here where did I get into the low 50s I think when it was trading underneath the the 200-day moving average and then pop back up so Coca-Cola hanging up here looking pretty good here let's go back to the monthly see where if coke is yep coke is hit all-time new highs back in early 2020 just before the meltdown for the pandemic so almost ready to take out all-time new highs for coke Pepsi talked about Pepsi one of our other synopsis here I like I like how Pepsi's just kind of stair stepping its way higher hugging along the 20-day or the 50-day moving average Pepsi looks bullish it's got nice a nice uptrending move it's hugging along the moving average the moving averages are up sloping as well so that's a good sign you want the moving averages up sloping if you're bullish so Pepsi looks good what else do we got in here what others Google is Google could be ready to go as well getting ready to make more all-time new highs Google just keeps going up can't hold Google back we got the the Bitcoin stocks talked about riot hanging along right along that $25 level marathon digital another Bitcoin stock talked about that it's it's more of an uptrend than than riot is trying to find its footing let's open this up here trying to find its footing right at the 200-day moving average if Bitcoin starts to go back up which it has in the last couple days Mar should keep going up as well and let's look at one or two more Peloton still getting hit to the downside I know people are trying to pick bottoms people email me Lee is it time to get into Peloton should I start buying here it's come down a long way I mean it's got hit pretty hard 165 $170 on the high here all the way down to under $40 that's that's a big haircut is it finding support what I do like about Peloton if I had to if I'm doing my synopsis here when you see the stock price moving down but the RSI moving up that's what's called divergence bullish divergence so even though the stock is selling off a little bit more each day the RSI is moving up meaning that the the the pace of the selling has been slowing down there's less sellers out there than there was prior so Peloton could be starting to maybe finally find the bottom of the selling RSI moving up so this is the divergence that you would want to see if you're if you're thinking about getting long Peloton this is a good sign this upwards motion in in the RSI so I don't think Peloton is going to drop a lot more it may linger down here a little bit more but but the but the down moves should should be subsided at this point so maybe nibbling down here could work until until you see a confirmed uptrend begin but this is a good sign for those Peloton bulls out there let's take a look maybe one or two others eBay we also have a position in eBay we had we had sold some put options when it was bouncing off the bottom of the channel but it has since moved down but our position the so put options that we sold are making money because time decay is working in our favor which is a good thing so even though the stock's moving against our preferred movement the option position is making money that's why we concentrate on out of the money selling out of the money strikes when we concentrate on our put options and put options spreads that we sell all right so that pretty much does it here for this synopsis let's one more time open up the SPY overall market looks strong I know it's going to blast through this this resistance at some point it may get knocked back back down in the next week maybe just because slow week not a lot of players out there but you can't hold it back for too long it's going to blast through this this line at some point and move to more all-time new highs all right so that's it for the Saturday synopsis let's quickly go to our website smartoptionseller.com if you want to learn more about put option selling what we do here at smart option seller go to our put selling basics link right here at the top or along the heading here scroll down put your name and email address at this is at the bottom of the page we'll send you a free copy learn about put selling our services here we have two newsletters we got a naked put selling service we sell also sell put option spreads and we have our one-on-one coaching to help you get up to speed if you need a little help all right so that's it that's it for the christmas saturday synopsis edition on the friday if you like this video if you think this has been some decent information give me a thumbs up leave me a comment i love hearing from you i always answer your your comments here send me an email too if you if you like try to help you out there as well all right so that's all for me i'm wishing everyone happy holidays not sure if we'll have a a synopsis next saturday it is new year's day it will be new year's day then so i'm not sure if i'm going to do one or not but i will be back in the new year that's for sure coming back to you with some new educational videos and these saturday synopsis videos all right so that's all for me today wishing everyone happy holidays this is lee lowell signing off