I often talk about looking for signals and listening to what the market is telling you. before acting. Particularly around trade entry and exit, and trend changes- rather than blindly jumping in or out of a trade.
Sometimes it can be difficult to separate the signal from the noise, and even if you can you still need to interpret the signal correctly.
However, on other occasions, the story just writes itself. You don't have to think too hard about what the market is saying because it's right there in front of you.
Arming Yourself
Take the conversation that I had on Tuesday ( 20-01-2026) with a member of the Idea Factory, who trades an opening range breakout strategy, via options.
I highlighted Ulta Beauty ULTA US as a potential candidate for the strategy.
He responded that options prices in $600 stocks are such that it's “super hard “ to trade them.
Taking that on board, I cast my net a bit wider, looking for something with a lower price and momentum
ARM Holdings ADR, ARM U,S jumped right off the page at me.
The chart below shows a long-standing downtrend in the stock price, and a recent move above that downtrend line. The stock was up +4.0% in the pre-market and testing towards horizontal resistance.
Source:Barchart.com
What’s more, ARM had dramatically underperformed its peers.
For example, in the chart below, we see ARM in black, vs SOXX, the iShares Semiconductor ETF, in blue.
ARM is down -31.0% while SOXX was up +40.0% over the preceding 6-months.
Source:Barchart.com
It's a similar story when you compare ARM with another well-known “agency” stock in the semiconductor space. Taiwan Semi TSM US had outperformed ARM by +66.0% in the period under observation.
Source:Barchart.com
It was abundantly clear to me that ARM was likely to play catch-up, and as we can see below, that process has started.
ARM closed up by +6.30% on Tuesday and was up by a further +6.61% in the pre-market on Wednesday.
Source:Barchart.com
More obvious than not
In fact, recently there have been plenty of examples of the market intimating what’s coming next.
A case in point is Lithium refiner Albemarle ALB US.
The clue about Albemarle was written in letters that were 2 meters high- so it was hard to miss.
Though I am sure that plenty of people managed to do so.
You can see that clue in the table below, highlighted in the red box.
Which captures the monthly, year-to-date, year-over-year percentage change in Lithium prices.
Source: Trading Economics
I am sure you recognise a breakout when you see one
Source:Trading Economics
Source:Barchart.com
Albemarle's new price highs
Source:Barchart.com
Copper plated
We can see a similar story in Freeport Mcmoran FCX US, one of the world's biggest copper miner,s which has rallied by 45.0% since I highlighted the stock back on December 1st
Source:Barchart.com
However, the story had been in play since September, as the LinkedIn post below shows.
Source: Darren Sinden / LinkedIn
We can see one of the major drivers for the re-rating of FCX US below. And that is the rally in copper since early August 2025.
Source:Trading Economics
Market Intelligence
Coming back to semiconductors, how about this opportunity at Intel INTC US.
Source: Darren Sinden / LinkedIn
In fact, Intel has been knocking it out of the park this week, but that is part of a longer-term bull trend as well.
Source:Barchart.com
That trend is highlighted in the table below.
Source:Barchart.com
Make your life easier
The purpose of this article isn’t for me to show off about how well I have done with my idea generation.
Although clearly I have had a good run.
Instead, these examples are meant to show other traders, like yourself, how you can unearth high probability trades, just by listening to the markets and being open to what they are telling you.
Of course, you still need to join the dots and manage your trade. If you open one.
But by slanting the odds of success in your favour - by going with, and not opposing the market, and the flow of information coming from it, you can make your life a whole lot easier.
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