 Hey everyone, Lee Lowell here from smartoptionseller.com. Welcome to another edition of our Saturday Synopsis. Today is Saturday, July 2nd, 2022. We're moving on halfway through the year. It's gone by so fast. Can't believe how fast things are moving. What do we do here at the Saturday Synopsis? Well, if you've been with us for a while, you know that we look at charts. I'm a technical analyst. Charting is how I make my trades. It tells me when to get in and when to get out. So I make these free YouTube videos to try to teach you a little bit about what I've been doing, what I'm seeing, and how I'm looking at the charts and how it's helping me get into and out of the markets. We run a couple of newsletters. We have options newsletters. And what we do is we sell put options and we sell put option credit spreads. They're mostly bullish types of trades because in my opinion, over the last 100 years or so, the market spends more time going up than down. But if you are a market enthusiast and a market watcher, you know that this year 2022, the first six months of 2022 have been the worst first half of a year in like 50 years or a very long time. This year, the first six months of 2022 have been very difficult for bullish investors or investors who are along the market. The market's basically been going down since January 1st of this year. So it has been a really bad first half of the year. And most people know that and a lot of people know that people talking about it. We talk about it all the time and make these videos just about every weekend. And it's pretty much the same thing every weekend. We look at the charts and we see the market's been going down, down, down. I get lots of emails from people saying, what do I do? Can you help me? How do I make money? All that. And no doubt it's been tough, tough for me too. I'm long in the market. I have retirement accounts. I have bullish trades. I want the market to go up too. So we all have to endure this downtrend, which has been tough. Six months of a downtrend is hard to handle. Financially, emotionally, psychologically wise, it just makes you have less faith in the market. You hear people talk about and including me talk about investing for the long run. But it's hard to see past that in the short run that things are going to get better. And I will tell you things are going to get better. The market always goes up over time. But times like this, we have to endure. This is a pullback. This is a longer pullback than what we've seen over many, many decades. This is just how the market works. But if you have faith in the market, which I personally do, I know I will be rewarded as long as I stay the course. No, it just doesn't mean I'm going to not have losses or not sell out positions depending on the stocks that I choose. But I'm choosing stocks that I know are quality or I think that are quality that will pay off in the long run. Sure, there will be down periods like now and just have to get through it. What I've been doing is nibbling on the way down, bits and pieces, not going full force because I know these stocks will turn around. I don't know where the bottom is. No one knows where the bottom is. The bottom will happen when the bottom happens. No one rings a bell and says, the bottom's here. So either you wait for a turnaround and a lot of times people who wait for the turnaround eventually miss the turnaround because they think, oh, well, I missed a turnaround. Now I'm just going to wait for it to come back down again. And then the market starts going up for good and then people are left in the dust. So that's why I personally nibble on the way down because I don't want to miss an opportunity to buy my favorite stocks cheaper. So this is just part of investing, part of the market and just something we have to endure. Uncomfortable as it is. But anyway, we as smart ops and sells, that's our website, smartopsandsell.com. We basically are more bullish and our focus is on selling put options and put option credit spreads. And in this market environment for the last couple of months we've been a lot lighter on our positions because the market's telling us to stay out of bullish positions. So we've been pretty light so far this year. Yes, we've taken positions and we've taken some losses on positions too. Even though we got into good trades but the market just keeps going down eventually we have to get out. But so that's why we've been a bit lighter because the market's telling us it's not a good place right now for bullish trades. So we're taking it a bit lighter. Anyway, so we're here to do our Saturday synopsis which is what we do almost every Saturday. We look at the charts, try to see what's happening and try to get a gauge on what may be coming forward. Now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start with a I wanna start with more of a clean chart. I wanna remove some of these old lines I have on here. If you've been with us for a while you understand what these lines are and I'll talk about them as well. But for the newcomers out there, what we do is we look at the basically the longer term trajectory of stocks and indexes and because I like to have a longer term approach. So we look at daily chart. So what you're seeing on the screen here is basically a daily bar chart, an open, high, low, closed bar chart, not candlesticks. And I keep it pretty simple. We just follow the price action and the price action is just what direction the market is moving it. If you look at this chart, this is a chart of the SPY, the exchange traded fund for the S&P 500. You can see the price action, price is moving upwards. It's pretty easy to tell. And then basically since January of 2022 market has been going down. Let me move this big line here as well. So what do we do? My charts are pretty simple. I have three moving averages. I have a 20-day, 50-day, 200-day, all simple moving averages. Those are the three lines here that you see. Here's the 200-day. This blue line is the 20-day and this red line is the 50-day moving average. Down here I have the RSI. It's a very popular technical indicator. It's an overbought, oversold indicator. Gives you a clue of whether a stock or index is hitting some overbought or oversold levels. Doesn't mean the turnaround's coming right then and there it's just a more of a warning sign. So I keep my charts pretty simple. And what we do over time is we basically, I like to draw channels. Channels is what tells us as a visual which way the market is heading. As you can see from the COVID low back in March of 2020, here's March 2020, the market, the S&P 500, had basically just been going straight up till we hit this resistance, this wall, around 480, which is 4,800 on the big S&P index, just been going down for the last six months. But we draw these channels and the channel looks like this. You draw, you connect some of the tops of a move and then you connect sort of, the bottoms of the moves as well. And that kind of gives you a visual of which way the market's heading. And until that channel breaks to the other direction, then you can draw yourself another channel. So here we entered a little teeny bear phase and then once again, the market started to go up here. But now we're in this longer channel here since January, you can see the market is going down. Doesn't have to be precise, it's just connect some tops, connect some bottoms. And that gives you an idea of where the market is going. So let me move this. Now what you see here, this is another pattern. There's lots of patterns that stocks and indexes make that some, most of the time are reliable that can tell you which way a market will move next. What you see here is this, what's called a flag pattern. You have the flagpole and then the pennant. Now typically the pennant will form when the stock moves in tighter and tighter ranges to storing up all this energy to explode in one direction or another outside of the triangle. See if they're gonna go up or down. Typically I talked about this the last few weeks when the market is going up and forms the flag it will continue on in that same direction. In this case, the market just got dropped. We had inflation numbers, the US Federal Reserve started raising interest rates. So the market just took a dive. In this case, the pennant moved down. It's not an exact science. It's not always 100% guaranteed but in this case the market moved down. Anyway, so what we do is we try to find higher probability trades. We follow the market action and we go along with that action until something pushes it in another direction. So where we stand now is here, the S&P 500. We look at the SPY. The market's just been going down since January and until that really turns around we're playing it light in our newsletters and for those of you that are unfamiliar with our newsletters, bring up our website here real quick. We're big proponents of put option selling. If you don't know what put selling is, go to our website, click on the heading here, put selling basics. This is our free guide that I wrote about what put selling is all about. Put option selling. Put your name and email address in here. We will send you a free copy. You'll get an email. In that email will be a link to download the e-book. All right? So that's what we do and if you wanna look more around our website under our services tab, here's our two newsletters and we have our coaching sessions, our one-on-one coaching sessions. If you wanna learn more about how to trade options, option strategies, get a leg up, learn what you can do in certain situations. We're here to help you in that regard. All right? So that's our website there. So going back to the chart, the S&P 500 is in a downtrend. Now last Saturday when I was making the video, last Friday, which was this bar right here, this long bar right here was good. You know, we had some momentum. Friday really brought us back up from the brink. Here was the recent low down here and then that past week, Friday ended on a really good note. And I said last Saturday that we'll probably see a little bit of momentum carrying over from Friday into this past Monday and that we should probably see a little push higher. But I did say in the video was that we had the downsloping 20-day moving average lurking right above it that could potentially act as resistance and knock it back down. And as you can see, that's exactly what happened. So here was Friday last week, this long bar right here, and then Monday and Tuesday. So just this past Tuesday, it connected with the 20-day downsloping moving average and it hit the resistance, the wall, and it just knocked it back down. So Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, we were down here. So we did have resistance at the downsloping 20-day moving average and basically it wiped out, this move down here the last couple of days, wiped out last Friday's big up move. We totally reversed it and came back down. And this is what's been happening. Any kind of rallies that we've been seeing in the market has been met with more selling. It's giving people the opportunity to either sell out of positions that they've been holding or positions that they just got in and they need to get out. So as you can see, here's, let me scale down a little bit, right? Here is beginning of January. So we get a rally sold, right? We get the sell off, then the rally, then the sell off, then the rally, then the sell off. We had this nice rally here. I think a lot of people got caught on this one thinking that the selling was over and then we just hit this nasty, nasty move right here. This is a good solid two months of just pure downtrend. Had the rally and then the sell off again and the rally and the sell off again. So for now, most rallies are being met with selling. The rallies just aren't sticking. When will they eventually stick? Nobody knows when that happens but we still have these headwinds of the war in Ukraine with Russia. We have inflation. We know the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates. COVID's still out there. Supply chain issues are still out there. Travel's really bad. So we have all these negative headlines that are still swirling out there that's leaving everybody in a bad mood and it's just affecting the market. And people are selling everything. Good stocks, bad stocks, everything's going down. There's a handful of companies, a handful of sectors that are doing okay but for the most part majority of stocks are going down and it's hard. But if you have a long-term view and you know companies are producing products that people are buying and they're having profits quarter after quarter, eventually the stock price is gonna have to go back up again. So you have to think that the selling is creating value cheaper prices that are eventually gonna be bought back up. But until that happens right now we have to be wary that all rallies are gonna be sold off until they're not. So we just have to be patient, wait it out and that's just how it is. There's no other way around it. You can't just magically will the market back up. Say the market has to go back up now. There's a collective process of millions and millions and millions of people playing and the collective idea of which way the market is going and for now that's down. And until enough people are satisfied that we've reached value levels then the market will go back up. So for us in our newsletter, we're light. Our newsletters I should say we're lighter. We're only taking positions on just extremely high probability, lots of cushion for us to weather even more down selling in the market. Now when you sell put options what you're doing is basically you're obligating yourself to potentially buy a stock a lot cheaper than where it's currently trading. So when we put ourselves out there to potentially buy a stock we're going to make sure it's a quality stock and we possibly get it at really good cheap prices. And by that I mean 10s of percent below where it's currently trading. So if you don't know what put selling is all about go to our website and download our e-book. All right so let's take a look at some stocks here. So we see the SPY it's in a downtrend rallies are getting sold. So for now that's what's happening. Friday and Thursday kind of had the same day range right here. These last two bars was Thursday and Friday this week. Similar range. If anything, if the market pops back up again you still have all the moving averages are now down sloping. So that means the market is currently in a downtrend we all know that. So any rallies at this point are going to be sold and until the market could get enough strength to push through these downtrending moving averages and have the moving averages eventually start to curl and turn upwards then that's when we can say an up move is starting more in earnest. But for now they're all sloping downwards rallies are going to be sold. How much further they're going to be sold down don't know. But if you're playing for the long run which I am little bits and pieces on the way down and just go from there. And if you don't want to do that then you sit it out and wait till the market shows you that it's starting to go up. All right so that's the SPY. Let's look at the NASDAQ. We use the triple Qs same thing. I have all the downtrending channels drawn in here. All the other thing I wanted to show you was we talked about this, the gaps, right? We have these, we talk about gaps. We have a gap here, a gap here and the markets like to fill gaps in the future. By that I mean if there's a gap here and a gap here the subsequent movement will close that gap. So this gap right here was eventually closed last week because we had last Friday's bar filled in the gap meaning this move covered the gap. So we have this other big gap lurking up here which we would like to see get closed. That'll take a little bit more work. We also had a gap down here which now closed the market gap from here up to here and then it all reversed and so now this gap was closed. So the next site would be to fill this gap up here but that's gonna be hard because that means the market needs to go up pretty strongly but maybe it can happen. All right, get back to the queues. Same thing, market's going down. We have this other gap, it filled this gap, had this gap here, almost did it. Got about halfway through the gap but then it got knocked back down, found the resistance at the 20 day moving average as well. So same thing, we got the NASDAQ, the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones, we'll look at the Dow using the DIA, the diamonds, that's the ETF for the Dow Jones, here's just so you can see DIA up here. All right, same thing, market coming down, found resistance at the 20 day moving average, one gap here, another gap up here. So the market has its work cut out for itself but for now the market's in a downtrend. Okay, so it's been hard. Let's look at individual stocks. We tend to look at the same stocks every week because these are the biggies and the most popular ones, Apple has this $140 level right here. This blue line that I've drawn for a long time ago seems to be the magnet. It goes down, pops above it, goes down through it, pops above it, goes down. So it's been circling this 140 level which is the support going back to last year, a whole year, this 140 level has been sort of the magnet and support. Apple's still in this kind of downtrend as well just like all stocks. It has closed, you can see the gap here and a gap here but those gaps have been closed so that's good. But Apple, still in the downtrend, flirting with the 140 level. If it continues down next week then that's gonna be the 140 level will be now act as resistance. Next level of support, you gotta go back and look in time. Next level support's probably right around here where this little area was, you can draw a little line here. So this is the next area of support for Apple and that's right around the 122, 123 level. If Apple starts to come back down it'll probably stop or slow down right around the low 120s. Really don't want it to go down that far. I'm long Apple too, but we'll see. So Apple's flirting with 140, need to get back up here, need to get through these moving averages. We need people to start buying. Tesla, we've looked at as well. Still flirting with that 700 level just like Apple, down, up, down, up. So right here, this 700 level and I do this line, I guess I do this line last week. You got potential double bottom here. Bottom one, bottom two called a double bottom has support. So this is around $625 right here. Also, which coincides with the support back here last summer. So you need to look in the past to see where other support and resistance areas were. So for now, Tesla's still kind of flirting with the $700 level. If it comes off again, it'll be in the low 600s here right around 620. So keep an eye on that level. Let's look at Microsoft. These big tech stocks, these are the stocks that people are interested in. This is Microsoft, let me make sure. Yep, Microsoft, okay. In this big, big channel, this, it seems to go back and forth from the channels. You have the moving averages right here in the middle of the channel, finding resistance. Here's the 20 day, the blue line, and here's the 50 day. So it comes up on resistance and then it gets knocked back down. Will Microsoft's next move be back to the bottom of the channel? If the rest of the market goes down, Microsoft will come down as well. If the market gets a little strength, Microsoft could probably push up towards the top edge of this downtrending channel near $280 a share. So follow the price action. Let's look at Amazon. I drew the support line just above $100 a share. They had their 20 for one split a couple of weeks ago. So you can see this is probably about $102 maybe. One, two, three, you know, four, five. A lot of support seems to be building here, right above $100 a share. So keep an eye on Amazon. You know, the market can't seem to push it below this 100 level. If the market gets strong, it's gonna go and it's gonna move above the 20 day, move above this 50 day, push up towards $120 a share if it could get some strength. So for now it's just kind of hovering around this support just above 100. So keep an eye on Amazon. AMD we look at because we're long AMD. Two stocks right now, AMD and Nvidia in the chip sector space, they're really getting hit pretty hard. We have some puts that we sold on AMD. We still have decent cushion below. We're trying to get for really good cheap prices if we have to buy AMD. But these chip stocks, which is surprising, really in this downtrend. Here's this, I must have drawn this line long ago. Low 70s is the last line of support here going back a decent amount of time. If AMD falls below much lower than this where it is now, it's got some more room to fall. I mean, we have to go back. Let me look at the weekly chart here and see where the next C can see this right here. Going back to the summer of 2020, two years ago, that's where all the support is. We're right on that support right now. The next line of support is the 200 day moving average. This is the 200 month, I should, 200 week moving average. This is the weekly chart. So 200 week moving average is right here around $67. That would be the next level of support around $67 from where AMD closed $73 or so. If we look at the monthly, let's go back a little further. Still on the monthly, you can see that support. We're right on that line of support. And on the monthly $65 is the next area support. So somewhere between $65 and $70 seems to be the next area of support potentially for AMD. It's in a strong down move here. Let's look at NVIDIA because it's the same. And we have positions on both of these. I like the chip sector. Computers are here to stay. You gotta make chips for computers. NVIDIA and AMD are biggies in that sector. But same thing, NVIDIA is going down. Has had a new low the last time it was at this level was last May, May of 2021, right? You take here and you scroll back in time and it takes you to last May. So we're coming on support too, right around $140 level, just under 140. This is where the last time it caught support and started its move up. So high 130s, right around 140 is the next line in the sand. So let's draw a line. So when we look at this chart next time, this is where the support level should be. Draw a line here. Try to make it flat as possible, okay? So it's just manual labor. Drawing your lines, support and resistance. This is the line in the sand because it lines up with the last low here, last May. So this is NVIDIA. What stocks are going up? Well, we know the energy stocks have been going up because oil prices have been going up. So this is ExxonMobil. It's been having a nice run up. It's been in a downtrend the last few weeks itself but overall it's been going up. Chevron, this is Chevron, same thing. Been going up, but at the last two weeks or so has gotten hit decent as well. Some utility stocks, I talk about ConEdison. This is Consolidated Edison. This is the largest utility provider in the New York area on the northeast of the United States. Been going up to, had a pullback right here, almost tagged the 200 day moving average and had this nice bounce, okay? Another company I've been watching is Southern Company, SO. Here's the symbol SO, Southern Company. It's just like, has the same chart pattern as ConEdison been going up, had a big move down, had the, has the V-shaped rally. Look at this on the RSI, has the V-shaped bounce. So some stocks are going up, most stocks are going down. It's been hard. It's definitely been hard. Coca-Cola, one of my all-time favorites is still doing well. Came down to the 200 day moving average here. Missed the opportunity. I was looking for some puts to sell. Missed the opportunity and it bounced. Closed on the high yesterday Friday, right here. So it's up above $64 again. Like that for Coke. McDonald's, we're gonna look at McDonald's and Pepsi as well. McDonald's closed nicely as well. Up $6 yesterday, Friday. So McDonald's is still kind of flirting around, hanging in there. McDonald's, you know, everyone knows McDonald's. Pepsi, doing okay as well. Not as strong as Coca-Cola, but still doing pretty well. We like, what are the other stocks that I'm looking at? Let me go to the list here. We'll look at the healthcare stocks as well. Disney and Nike. We talk about these each week as well. You know, the biggest name brands on the planet. Disney and Nike. Disney still, still going down. Has been falling through all these areas of support. I'm long Disney. I've been buying Disney. The last time I bought some Disney was in here and I'm just now holding. I mean, I guess I could nibble on some more. I know eventually Disney's gonna go back up and I say this each week. So Disney may be finding some support here right above $90 on the longer term chart. We'll go back to the weekly Disney. The COVID low was just under $80 a share. Will we find it again? You can see the stair stepping down. You know, this is the next line in the sand. Just under 80 bucks. Will it get there? It's possible. Everything keeps going down. Nike. We had a position in Nike. Glad we got out because it's now making new lows. But Nike for the long run. How can you go wrong with Nike? This is just such an incredible company. But where is the support now? We have to go back to the weekly to see where the next support was. Next support was right where it blasted out of this congestion pattern in the summer of 2020. Congesting and then just powered higher. So right around, I'd say the mid-90s. It's probably the next line in the sand for Nike. We can go here. Here's that congestion pattern right here. So this is right around probably $96, $97. And that's where we're probably gonna see the next area of support to hold it, at least temporarily. We'll see what happens from there. The healthcare stocks. We love healthcare. Everyone's gonna need healthcare. We look at Eli Lilly's doing okay. Bristol Myers, all these are kinda hanging around their highs, Merck. So healthcare doing okay. Here's the XLV, which is the exchange traded fund for all those healthcare farmer stocks. We had a position, we got stopped out, which I'm really angry about, because it just turned around and went higher right after we got out. That just burned me. But sometimes, you know what happens? You can't win all the time. You gotta follow your rules and follow your game plan. Warren Buffett. You know, even Warren Buffett's fund, Berkshire Hathaway fund, has gotten hit as well. So no one's immune. But if you love Warren Buffett, and you know he's been an incredible success story since the 1960s or even earlier, you can follow along. You can buy his Berkshire Hathaway class B shares under $300 a share or also on our website. Let's go back to our website. There's a report that I wrote on how to piggyback Warren Buffett with an options trading strategy different than what we do. So if you go to the More tab here, you click on Shop and it'll bring you to, if it goes through, the secret to buying Warren Buffett for pennies on the dollar. That's a report that I wrote that if you're interested, take a look at that on our website. So that's Berkshire Hathaway. Anything else? Any other stocks that are worth looking at? Twitter, same thing, really hasn't been going anywhere. Still in limbo with Elon Musk buying it out. Facebook or now Metta at the lows. Lows it hasn't seen since, let's go back to the weekly for Facebook. Lows it hasn't seen since right around COVID, COVID lows in March, 2020, making the round trip turn all the way back to the COVID lows. You know, I'm not a huge fan, never been a huge fan of that company. What else we have? Big blue IBM hanging in there, looking pretty good IBM. So some stocks are doing good. Google kind of hanging near the lows. What else do we want? Yeah, that's about it. Clorox, so we've got the, you know, the name brand companies Clorox. You know, these companies make products that we buy all the time in the stores, but you can see in the long run the trajectory is downwards. Colgate, look at this volatility on Colgate. Whoever thought Colgate would be that volatile. Procter and Gamble. These are the companies, these are the household companies, create products we need. We buy these all the time. You go to the store, Target, Walmart, you're buying stuff that Procter and Gamble and Clorox and Colgate make. But even these companies, good dividend payers too, they're getting hit. So nothing's immune, nothing has really been immune. But you know, eventually, all these stocks are gonna be great buys. You just have to, you know, have faith in the market and have the long-term horizon. If you're a short-term trader, you know, I really can't help you because we're not short-term traders, we're not day traders, we're not swing traders. We're a couple months at best in our trades. So if you're a short-term trader, it's really hard to play these intraday moves. But if you have a system and it works, great, more power to you. All right, I think that's about it. There's really not much else to say here. The market, it's been tough. Costco is kinda hanging around. Minnesota mining 3M down at the lows. You know, 3M's a great company too. But just going down, down, down. All right. So bottom line, there's probably more selling ahead. All rallies have been getting sold. This is the S&P again one more time. Until the market turns around in earnest, then, you know, we will know when that happens. The market turns around, starts blowing through, moving averages, moving averages start to curl and turn upwards, then we can have some faith that, okay, things have started to turn around. But until then, you have to be on the defensive. Keep it light if you wanna buy bullish positions. Nib a little bit here and there, but don't go all in. The market's telling you to stay out for now. All right, that's it for me today. Showing you our website. Give me a thumbs up this YouTube video. Don't forget to subscribe. I hope this is good information for everyone. Leave me a comment, send me an email. I'm here to help you, here to answer your questions. If you're ready to get into the options game, consider maybe our coaching sessions. We'll get you to that next level. All right, that's all for me today. Hope everyone has a great long weekend, July 4th weekend here. Holiday in the United States markets, US markets are closed on Monday. So I will hopefully be back here next Saturday. Wishing everyone a good weekend. This is Lee Lowell signing off.