Taking a Bite out of the Forbidden Apple

Hello Traders,

Ardi here, writing on behalf of Andrew. Today was a slow day to begin with but more opportunities came up as the day went on. Paras and Brian traded the Open and Paras was able to masterfully trade TSLA by solely using the tape. You can watch the recap here. 

Last week, I wrote about how real-time data shows foot traffic is down by almost 30% in retail stores, meaning people are not going shopping nearly as often as they once did. 

At the same time, The Home Depot, Walmart, Target, and other retailers are expected to report this week. I tweeted about how the best bet is to short retailers.

Today, looking at The Home Depot earnings, you would see that was a smart bet. The market continues to be in the tight range and has yet to break above $420 or below $400 for the past month and a half! What is really interesting is the breadth of this move in the S&P 500 (i.e., the leaders).

Apple is now more valuable than ALL the Russell 2000 small-cap companies! That is HARD TO BELIEVE! Nevertheless, this is the reality of the market right now. Apple is also more valuable than all the Canadian stocks trading on the TSX. GO CANADA!

When the market is being so dominated by a handful of names, it truly is a double-edged sword. If Apple and the rest of the big tech companies fall, market could get really ugly. 

The chart below does a great job of showing how the big tech companies have done most of the heavy lifting this year. The white line is the S&P 500 Equal Weighted Index divided by the S&P 500 Index (which is market-cap weighted), and as you can see, most of the returns are coming from the big names such as Microsoft and Apple.

I want to highlight our Live Trading Summit at beautiful WESTIN in New York City! Space is limited, so make sure to sign up here as soon as possible.

And lastly, please join me on Thursday for a free webinar at the MoneyShow. I will be speaking on how to hedge in these times of uncertainty.

To your success,
Ardi

PS: I love to stay connected with everyone on social media and each platform is of course different:

> Follow me on Instagram for the travelling trader lifestyle!
> Connect with me on LinkedIn for professional content.
> Follow me on Twitter for trade recaps and some memes!
> Subscribe to my YouTube channel for hot content from the BBT team.