Chapters
00:00 Intro: Watching Paint Dry
02:04 Nick: Adding to Oscar Health & Waiting
03:35 GP: No Free Money, but Tesla Eyes Highs
04:36 Q3 Picks Check-In & Bitcoin Over 62K
06:10 GP: Quarterly OPEX & Bitcoin at the 200 SMA
07:11 Nick: Bitcoin's $20,000 Range & an Ethereum ETF
08:12 GP: Netflix's Call Selling & the Second Test
11:17 Sour Moods & Range-Bound Portfolios
12:49 Is Tim Apple Cooked?
15:53 GP: Rebalancing, OPEX & Apple's 230 Calls
17:58 IREN, Core Scientific & Energy
20:37 GP: CrowdStrike's 50% Retrace
23:14 GP on Cybersecurity's Low-Volume Melt-Ups
26:24 Nick: Nvidia Above 120?
28:00 GP: Nvidia Needs a Flush
31:39 Ben: Qualcomm, Marvell & the Laggards
33:11 GP: Money Rotating Into Software
35:50 Tesla & Apple Since the April Bottom
38:29 Ben: SentinelOne & Cloudflare
40:34 Amazon, AWS & a Breakup
45:24 Elastic, GE Vernova & Spin-Offs
46:59 Into the Close: SPX 6,000 by Quarter-End?
48:33 IBM & Kyndryl
50:07 GP: GE's 24-Year Downtrend Break
52:15 Ben: Roblox's Range
52:48 Electronic Arts & Waiting
54:24 GP: The Newer IPOs Are Crushing It
58:32 The Next Leaders
59:36 Nick: Toast's Weekly Breakout
Market Hours #126 went out live on Monday, September 23, a little late, with Ben, Nick and GP. The Fed's cut the week before was "the last catalyst," and the market still wasn't going anywhere. GP called it "like watching paint dry" and expects the release to come after the election. The hosts talked about Netflix's endless call selling, Apple's StockTwits "is Tim Apple cooked" moment, CrowdStrike, Nvidia, rotation into software and consumer AI, an Amazon breakup, GE's 24-year trend change, the newer IPOs being accumulated and Nick's Toast setup.
Nick's setups, levels and trades
Nick isn't doing much. He's adding on morning weakness against moving averages, as he did with Oscar Health (OSCR), which sits on a lot of growth traders' focus lists, and "I'm trying not to sell anything." He struggles in markets that "just melt along a moving average" without a definable pivot. Bitcoin is in about a $20,000 range: "if we break 50K I would be pretty confident that dip is going to get bought up," while a break higher could expand. He put a little money into an Ethereum ETF near its low that day. Netflix's weekly is working on a possible three weeks tight. He has Apple and thinks it "looks great" on the weekly. He's ignoring the shakedown retest to about 195–200 and thinks "we're on our way to 300." He owns Core Scientific (CORZ), "the new IPO chart." He also asked why the IBB and XLE can't both rise if everything keeps getting more expensive.
He thinks Nvidia "looks really good" and "so tight right here." He wants it above 120 first, and a break of the trend line from there would imply a bigger breakout. He wondered whether it's time to pick at laggards instead. Amazon "is a beast," and he thinks the FANG names "are all set to go." In a hypothetical breakup, he'd keep the parent company. He first followed GE in its stage-one base around January 2023 and then its 80–95 base, though "I didn't play that well." For Electronic Arts, the beauty of being a pure equity retail trader is that "time is on our side," so he'd set alerts around 150 and 100 and never look at it again. He got out of Samsara (IOT), will be in it again, and put that capital into Palantir and Coupang (CPNG). He owns Toast. The daily could look like a failed breakout, but the bigger move is the weekly break above 25, "a massive igniting bar." He stays in above 24–25, gets nervous below 25 and is out below 24. "I think it's getting ready to go stage two."
Ben's setups, levels and trades
Ben was waiting for Bitcoin to get over 62,000. It hasn't broken through, but the chart looks different than last week, "so as long as we're holding that I think we still have time to go above that into the 70s." He told the hosts their sour moods usually mean "we're at the end of the hard work," right before the market rips. He was annoyed at StockTwits for pinning an "Is Tim Apple cooked" post at Friday's close. There's no reason to act like Apple has to be thrown out of the market. He doesn't own Apple. He thinks Core Scientific looks much better than IREN, but "I'm snake bit on energy." He says he hates it because "I have had piss poor luck trading energy," not for technical reasons.
On laggards, he has liked Qualcomm and hated Intel for a while. If the rumored Qualcomm–Intel deal happened, it "would make Qualcomm a very formidable force" against the AMDs of the world. Marvell has been "so tight" for many weeks, Broadcom "looks pretty good," and Lam "might be a little hot up here." He's long SentinelOne and Cloudflare. SentinelOne is "born of AI," and Cloudflare should benefit from AI unlocking "so much more potential and profit." He also thinks AWS could be "a pent up beast inside" Amazon. Roblox has tried "one, two, three, four, five, six times" to break its range, "but I'm convinced that it's going to go one day." He said "waiting and selling are the hardest two things to do." He also teased a coming Quarterly Cookie Call, though Cookie has left StockTwits.
GP's setups, levels and trades
GP said the charts "are all so pretty and so ready to go," but day in and day out they bang up and down. He's hoping for an earlier release, but "once election uncertainty passes this roars out." It's not 2020–2021, because "it's not free money" when people get 4.5–5% risk-free. Still, "Tesla looks like it's about to take out all-time highs in my opinion in the next couple of months." He expected no breakout into the heavy quarterly OPEX and a move the week after, starting with Bitcoin, which instead went flat at the 200 SMA. Netflix took three years to get back to all-time highs and is retesting them, yet institutions sell the 710, 715 and 720 calls every day. "The second test is the most powerful test." For options traders, though, "this is nonsense," since even second-test buyers from mid-August have seen their premiums destroyed. On Apple, Friday was a record quarterly rebalance on OPEX with a big 230 call level, so "they're going to do everything in their power to make sure it doesn't close above 230."
The XLE's monthly MACD crossed down and its retest was rejected. "XLE looks like a short, yet it refuses to die." CrowdStrike can't get past its 50% retracement even with a Goldman upgrade, and its monthly MACD is about to break down: "I think this is the calm before the storm." Palo Alto and CrowdStrike look like "really low volume melt ups" to him, a technical issue rather than a sector issue. Nvidia "has a much larger floor" than SMCI, and "you buy Nvidia 100 all day," but it needs to flush the cocky buyers from August 2–5. He's done looking at it as a trade. He thinks money is going into software and the consumer side of AI (IGV), with puts sold in MongoDB, Adobe and Salesforce, and that over three to six months software outperforms chips, which can "just be a grind." Since the April 19 bottom, Tesla is up about 78% from 138 to 250 and Apple about 37.7%, against about 16.5% for the QQQs.
On a breakup, he'd stick with the parent company and put some allocation into the spin-offs. GE is up nearly 300% from the bottoms, against about 66% for GE HealthCare, and GE Vernova is up about 120%. GE "finally broke a 24-year downtrend" with a higher high, "one of the biggest trend shifts on the planet," and "unless it fails that higher high again it is an opportunity to buy almost every day." He thinks the quarter-end week could be strong, with a high-side SPX target of 6,000 into quarter-end. He calls EA "dead money." He was wrong about IPOs: those from 2019–2021 mostly haven't done well, but "the ones that have come out in the last two or three years are doing pretty damn well." AppLovin, Duolingo, Samsara, Palantir and Coupang show monthly accumulation, Monday.com is close, and Coinbase fits too even though "it's not behaving well." There's "no accumulation in Square" even after it got destroyed.
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