One stock's options are the priciest they've been all year, and still too cheap
This is the morning issue of Wednesday, September 23, 2026, and it covers the most overbought and oversold names, the names with the best record for the days ahead, the earnings watchlist and the options radar.
Overbought / oversold, 22 September 2026
Real estate is still the worst-looking sector on the board, better than ten points behind the S&P over the last three months, which is why the same REITs keep turning up on this side of the card. FRT is the one I'd pull out of the group: O and ADC are both net-lease, essentially the same rate trade wearing two tickers, while FRT collects rent from shopping centers and needed the smallest five-day slide of the three to reach the bottom of its own year. Nothing dramatic happened to it. It just kept sliding.
Most overbought
| Ticker | Level | RSI Percentile | Close | Last 5 Days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CHT | Extreme overbought | 100th | $46.11 | +1.6% |
| META | Extreme overbought | 99th | $736.59 | +9.9% |
| NICE | Extreme overbought | 99th | $118.29 | +13.8% |
Most oversold
| Ticker | Level | RSI Percentile | Close | Last 5 Days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ADC | Extreme oversold | 0th | $67.32 | -3.9% |
| O | Extreme oversold | 0th | $56.53 | -3.7% |
| FRT | Extreme oversold | 0th | $110.46 | -3.0% |
What's happened after this before
| Ticker | Next 3 Days | Next 7 Days | Next 30 Days | Prior Times |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| O | 56% · +0.5% | 58% · +0.7% | 64% · +2.2% | 472 |
| It did tend to bounce — higher 59% of the time on average across the three windows | ||||
| FRT | 55% · +0.2% | 60% · +0.5% | 63% · +1.9% | 449 |
| It did tend to bounce — higher 59% of the time on average across the three windows | ||||
| ADC | 57% · +0.4% | 57% · +0.5% | 58% · +1.5% | 459 |
| It did tend to bounce — higher 58% of the time on average across the three windows | ||||
| META | 52% · +0.5% | 51% · +0.6% | 66% · +3.3% | 228 |
| It kept going — higher 56% of the time, so "overbought" has not meant due to fall for this name | ||||
| CHT | 47% · -0.0% | 54% · +0.2% | 64% · +1.0% | 428 |
| It kept going — higher 55% of the time, so "overbought" has not meant due to fall for this name | ||||
| NICE | 48% · -0.1% | 48% · -0.1% | 51% · -0.2% | 483 |
| A coin flip — this level has told you nothing about this name | ||||
Each cell: how often the stock was higher, and its average move, every prior time it hit this level. Under the hood the windows are 3, 5 and 20 trading sessions. The line under each name is what that record says.
Worth sitting with: META, CHT are on this list for being at an extreme, and their own history says the extreme has not been the thing to trade against.
The Levels Map gives you the whole board: every name at an extreme, with where it stalls.
Best of the day: Sep 23
The average on TAL is the number to ignore: 2024 alone put up better than +38% in this one week and it is carrying that mean almost by itself, so the median underneath it is what a normal year in this window actually looked like. The column I keep rereading is the worst one, because for a Chinese tutoring stock the ugliest version of this week cost single digits.
TAL has the strongest typical showing over the next 5 trading sessions from Sep 23 in our universe since 2011: up 12 of 15 years (80%), with a median move of +2.21% (average +5.36%). Best year +38.5% (2024); worst -8.1% (2011).
The Seasonal Watchlist
The names that have owned Sep 24 – Sep 30, year after year:
| Ticker | Hit rate | Median | Sample |
|---|---|---|---|
| TAL | 80% | +2.21% | 15 yrs |
| RNR | 77% | +1.30% | 26 yrs |
The Seasonal Board ranks every qualifying name for the month, each with its own window.
Earnings watchlist, 23 September 2026
Before anyone gets excited about a beat this week, look at what beats have historically been worth here: COST has beaten in more than half of its quarters and the median payoff is a tenth of a percent, and PAYX has drifted red on good news. The one report that genuinely decides a day is KMX next Tuesday, where the miss column is far uglier than the beat column is pretty.
The biggest names reporting in the next 7 days — and what each has typically done on report day:
| Ticker | Reports | When | Market cap |
|---|---|---|---|
| COST | Thu Sep 24 | after close | $426B |
| Median swing ±1.4% over 95 reports; typically +0.1% on a beat, -1.3% on a miss | |||
| CTAS | Wed Sep 23 | before open | $79.8B |
| Median swing ±2.9% over 107 reports; typically +1.2% on a beat, -2.0% on a miss | |||
| PAYX | Wed Sep 23 | before open | $43.4B |
| Median swing ±2.7% over 107 reports; typically -0.3% on a beat, -4.2% on a miss | |||
| CCL | Tue Sep 29 | before open | $38.5B |
| Median swing ±4.0% over 107 reports; typically +0.2% on a beat, +0.1% on a miss | |||
| DRI | Thu Sep 24 | before open | $25.6B |
| Median swing ±3.2% over 107 reports; typically +1.3% on a beat, -3.8% on a miss | |||
| GIS | Wed Sep 23 | before open | $21.0B |
| Median swing ±1.9% over 107 reports; typically +0.7% on a beat, -3.3% on a miss | |||
| SNX | Thu Sep 24 | before open | $20.7B |
| Median swing ±5.8% over 91 reports; typically +1.2% on a beat, -5.5% on a miss | |||
| JEF | Mon Sep 28 | after close | $11.2B |
| Median swing ±2.0% over 100 reports; typically -0.3% on a beat, +0.1% on a miss | |||
| KMX | Tue Sep 29 | before open | $8.3B |
| Median swing ±6.3% over 107 reports; typically +2.8% on a beat, -7.1% on a miss | |||
| AIR | Tue Sep 29 | after close | $5.8B |
| Median swing ±5.1% over 107 reports; typically +2.0% on a beat, -1.5% on a miss | |||
Options radar: SHOP
I came into SHOP looking for a premium-selling setup and found the opposite. The options are the priciest they have been all year and the stock has still been moving more than they are charging for, which the last week explains: it broke down through $130 on the 17th, then straight back up through $140 on Monday.
SHOP options are the day's outlier: pricing at the 100th percentile of their own last 38 sessions (ATM implied vol 52%, which is 0.91× what the stock has actually been moving). Rich options on one name are sellers' territory, if the story fits.
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