Chapters
00:00 Intro: Holiday Shopping & Back After a Missed Week
01:36 Nick: Hoping for Chop, Then a Rip Into Year-End
04:12 Nick: Quantum Names & Bitcoin's Chop at 100K
06:15 GP: Bitcoin's Rising Tide, 120K Then 203K
08:20 GP: Rotation Into Small Caps Into OPEX
09:53 GP: Tesla's Earnings Rerating & His Nvidia Short
12:29 Will Money Rotate Back to the Megas in January?
14:35 Ben: Still Selling, This Feels Like Late 2021
17:13 GP: This Isn't 2021 & You've Got to Be Long
22:54 Ben: Way Euphoric? Fear & Greed & Faster Cycles
24:56 AMD, Down for the Year
25:58 GP: Where He'd Cover Nvidia
29:32 Ben: IWM Batman Ears & a Small-Cap Op-Ed
30:35 GP: IWM's Volume Bar & a Three-and-a-Half-Week Tight
32:06 Nick: The VIX & Being Comfortably Long
33:42 Nick: Off Margin Into Year-End
34:45 Nick: Palantir, Toast & Runners
36:51 GP: KRE, Financials & Late-Cycle Signs
40:03 GP: Wayfair's Monthly Accumulation
43:08 GP: Coinbase, Enphase & Disney's 10-Year Base
45:15 GP: Dave
46:49 Ben: Roblox at 47.20
47:49 EA & Take-Two
49:23 Oil Drillers & OXY
52:29 Square Over 100
53:01 Cybersecurity: Zscaler & SentinelOne
54:32 CBOE, ICE & Long-Term Money
58:08 Carvana & CarMax
Market Hours #135 went out live on Tuesday, December 10, the day before CPI, with Ben, Nick and GP, back after missing a week. The QQQs and SPY were slightly red, the quantum names were ripping, and Bitcoin was chopping around 100,000. Nick wants some sideways chop and then a rip into year-end, followed by a Q1 correction that sets up bases. GP made the long case: rotation into small caps, Bitcoin's rising tide toward 120,000 and then 203,000, Tesla's earnings rerating, and a late cycle that "we're not there yet" on. Ben is still selling because the euphoria feels like late 2021. They also covered GP's Nvidia short, IWM, staying off margin, financials, Wayfair, Disney, Dave, Roblox, oil drillers, cybersecurity and Carvana. Fear & Greed read neutral.
Nick's setups, levels and trades
Nick came into the week hoping for a red Monday and "one more week of just sideways chop," and he still thinks "we're gonna rip into the end of the year." His dream scenario is six to eight weeks of correction or sideways action from January through March, so stage-two names can set up flags, wedges and bases for a strong Q2 and Q3. Right now it looks like backfilling, not a rug pull. "For the active trader, I think the market's been phenomenal," with the quantum names like RGTI, up about 50% that day, "on a tear." He thought Bitcoin would rip through 100,000 to 110,000. Since the break above 100,000 looked like a breakout failure, he expects the recent base low to get undercut into the 50-day and then "rip higher." He thinks a monster altcoin run is coming, since many alts are pulling into the 20-day and 50-day and retesting base breakouts, but he'll change his tune if those breakouts fail.
On the VIX, he thinks a Santa Claus rally into year-end would bring a capitulation low around 11–12 or below, with many names sold into the rally. He agrees with GP that you have to be long, but "comfortably long": down to runner size in favorite positions, names without cushion cut, and "if you're on margin you should be definitely selling down into the end of the year." Things can drop 10% in a day in low-liquidity year-end markets. He wants to add to Palantir on a pullback "and we just haven't gotten it," and the same goes for Toast. He's down to runner size in big winners like GEV, VST and VRT with costs too good to mess with. He got into most of the quantum names as a momentum trade but thinks they'll "pop and fizzle out." He owns EA and Roblox.
Ben's setups, levels and trades
Ben said, "I'm still selling stock, I'm still selling positions," which he started in mid-November as risk management, because the signs are flashing that "we're getting too hot." The Hawk Tuah meme coin, social screenshots of portfolio gains and more "TikTok furus in the last 72 hours" than in all of 2024 make it feel "really late 2021" to him. "I don't foresee us making it through January higher than we are at the end of December." The 2s and 10s were trading at the same level. Altcoins ran big and pulled back big. "I hope I'm wrong," and he'd love to put half the cash he's raising into new investments, "but I'm not going to let these gains evaporate." He thinks cycles are getting shorter and faster. AMD is "sucking so bad" that he can hardly get value out of covered calls, so it's "find a penny, pick it up" with a name that's red for the year. He drew Batman ears on the IWM and said it's possible it fails. He's still holding his TNA re-entry, up about 15%.
He had an order at 47.20 to add to his Roblox position, but the low was about 47.95–48.10. Roblox "has finally broken the range," and it's where he wants to put sideline cash to work. EA has a nice tight weekly flag. On the oil drillers, TDW went from 111 to 47 in six months, and "look at all those red bars in a row," so he isn't interested yet. In cybersecurity, he's in SentinelOne and may add after its usual post-earnings puke. CBOE looks a little toppy, and he prefers ICE. CarMax is "my favorite short," at the top of its range again, and he joked about selling them his car twice off the short.
GP's setups, levels and trades
GP said Bitcoin's market cap is nearly $2 trillion and "rising tides raise everything," so alts move with it for now. Bitcoin's "first stop is 120 and then you're going to get to 203 and then it's going to top out," and once it tops, the altcoins really push. They're in stage-one accumulation now, shaking people out. Bitcoin was testing its 20-day for the first time in two months, and "the first test of the 20-day in a rising uptrend is usually viable." He likes MicroStrategy, Coinbase and miners here. In stocks, he expects megacap weakness into next week's OPEX, if not year-end, and rotation into small caps after their three-week tight. Small caps were the only index green that day. "Rotation is the lifeblood of bull markets." Every megacap but Tesla has hit all-time highs, and he thinks Tesla's run "is probably going to dwarf any other projections." It's an earnings rerating, with gross margins back up, not an election story. He's short Nvidia and added more shorts that day. He took and cut Microsoft calls for a small loss. Megacaps are a source of funds, so expect underperformance, not a big drop. A 2022-style reversal in the first week of January could hand leadership back to the megas.
He said this isn't 2021–22, when everything got destroyed while megacaps held up. This time base breakouts are starting in names like Square and PayPal, and Disney has gone 10 years doing nothing. "You got to be long this market," just not necessarily megacaps. Nvidia has the same "it's still cheap" talk Tesla had in 2021–22. It has tried about 10 times to take out the June high and gotten distributed each time, though not on heavy volume. He'd like to cover under the August lows but thinks 115–120 most likely holds. Lam, AMD, ARM, Dell and Oracle are in distribution. The IWM's big volume bar to all-time highs, followed by a three-and-a-half-week tight, looks like institutions accumulating, not a double top. KRE and the financials look amazing, and as the last sector in secular bulls they'll benefit from deregulation before "they... make everyone poor." It's late cycle with 0DTE, SPACs, altcoins and Saylor's talk, which he called "the quintessential conversation of this is not going to work for long," but "not until you see weakness in the banks... I just don't think we're there yet." The top lines up with his SPY 771 call, and that's when he'll talk about going to cash.
Wayfair, his stock pick, is back to breakeven and "looks phenomenal." It's broken the downtrend line from the 2020 breakaway gap with heavy monthly accumulation, and "I think it's ready now" for a big 12 months. "All I see is people buying the stock." Coinbase "looks phenomenal" even though it acts badly "97 out of 100 trading days." Enphase has more beta than FSLR, and a reclaim of the weekly 9 is all the trend change he needs. That was the start for Tesla in April and Nvidia in September 2022. Disney, ignoring the COVID spike, has based about 10 years since its streaming push. Streaming is turning profitable, it has pricing power, and it double-bottomed this year from 80 to 120 and back to about 87–90. Dave is a clean small-cap fintech, and his brother works there, so he can only buy in open windows. Square gets a momentum shift over 100, its 2018 high. He said CrowdStrike "makes no sense" technically, likes Zscaler, and thinks Carvana is topping after its run from $8.
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