Hey, Ross here:
For all the noise surrounding this market lately…
The S&P 500 itself has been almost freakishly quiet.
And there’s an old trading saying that comes to mind when I see a market acting like this.
I’ll explain in a second.
First, take a look:
Chart of the Day
The S&P 500 has now gone 39 straight trading days without falling 1% in a single session.
Not once in September.
And zoom out a little further…
And prior to this week, we had also gone four straight weeks without the index gaining or losing even 1% for the entire week.
That’s the longest such stretch in roughly seven months.
Think about everything stocks have had thrown at them during that time.
The Fed. Treasury yields. Inflation. Iran. Trade tensions.
Not to mention weakening breadth underneath the indexes.
Yet the S&P keeps absorbing it all without producing a serious down day.
You could look at that and say the market has gone nowhere.
I look at it a little differently.
Especially when you put this next chart beside it:
Forward earnings estimates just hit record highs across the S&P 500, S&P 400 and S&P 600.
So this isn’t simply a mega-cap earnings story.
Analysts are marking expected profits higher across large caps, mid caps and small caps.
Meanwhile, price has spent weeks doing very little.
That combination is important.
Because while the index has been moving sideways…
The earnings underneath it have kept climbing.
And that brings me back to an old line traders have used for decades.
Insight of the Day
Never short a dull market.
Now, don’t take that literally.
There are plenty of dull markets that eventually break lower.
But the idea behind the saying holds.
If sellers keep showing up…
Bad headlines keep hitting…
And the market still refuses to crack…
You should pay attention.
Sometimes what looks like “nothing happening” is actually the market digesting a previous move.
Sellers take profits.
Nervous investors get shaken out.
Earnings have time to catch up.
And instead of collapsing, price just sits there and absorbs it.
That can be a much healthier setup than a market that goes vertical every week.
Of course, the S&P sitting quietly doesn’t mean every stock underneath it is asleep.
In fact, it can be just the opposite…
A quiet index – but explosive moves in individual stocks.
Because individual companies are always moving due to independent catalysts – things that have nothing to do with the broader market.
So the question then becomes…
How do we target the stocks with these kinds of catalysts?
Well, one of my favorite ways is to look at the people who know those companies better than almost anyone else:
The insiders running those businesses.
When a CEO starts putting serious personal money into their own stock while everyone else is distracted by the latest macro headline…
I want to know about it…
Because it usually signals they’re seeing an opportunity the rest of the market is missing.
And later today at 3 p.m. Eastern…
I’m going LIVE to show you how I track those legal insider purchases…
The warning signs that tell me which insider buys to ignore…
And the signals I use to isolate the purchases with the strongest conviction behind them.
It’s the same approach that has helped point us toward opportunities like Crown Castle before an 851% move… Extra Space Storage before 1,204%… and Viking Therapeutics before 1,829%.
I’ll also show you several little-known stocks these investors are buying right now.
Click here to secure your free seat for today’s LIVE training…
And I’ll see you at 3 p.m. ET.
Don’t be late.
P.S. If you’re planning to attend on a mobile device, make sure you download the presentation app now so you don’t miss anything when it starts. See you there.
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/goto/id1465614785
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Customer Story of the Day
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Ross Givens
Editor, Stock Surge Daily
