Chapters
00:00 Intro & Technical Difficulties
01:12 NQ 25,700 & Floors Breaking in Momo Names
04:30 Tesla's Gap Fill & a No-Bid Market
06:10 Small Caps, Options-Driven Moves & Election Jitters
08:17 Crypto in the Bunker
11:26 Nick: Bitcoin's Trend Line & Ethereum Back in the Range
14:15 Ben: The Halving & a Change of Character
18:33 GP: What's Green, Bonds & Hims
22:21 Bonds: Risk-On or Safety?
25:04 Apple & Tesla: The Last to Participate
27:47 Who's Up: Financials, Costco & Quality Names
29:22 Election Day & a Divided Country
34:35 Ben: We're Where We Were Last Friday
36:10 GP: It's Not Just Shitcos
41:03 Wayfair's Character Change
44:22 Nick: Expensive Stays Expensive & $ANET
47:40 First Solar, Zscaler & the Case for a Pullback
51:55 GP: 5% Losses, 20% Wins & Raising Cash
55:42 TLT & the Breakaway Gap
58:22 $MDB & Trail-Stopping Tesla
1:03:05 Wrap-Up
Market Hours #152 went out live on Tuesday, November 4, election day, with Ben, Nick and GP. The crew was trying a new streaming setup, and gremlins knocked Ben off several times, at one point leaving Nick logged in as Ben ("We'll do better next time"). It was a rough tape: floors breaking in momentum names, crypto "in the bunker," Tesla filling its gap on no volume and small caps rejected again. GP called it election jitters until there's confirmation, though he stressed "it's not just shitcos" getting hit. Ben pointed out the market was just back where it was a week earlier. They covered Wayfair's character change, Nick's Arista starter, GP's 5%-loss/20%-gain math, TLT, MongoDB and how to trail-stop Tesla.
Nick's setups, levels and trades
Nick noticed a lot of floors breaking in the momentum names. He gave it until Thanksgiving, since "shitco fall" was in season. The Mag 7 and quality names still look great. Richtech Robotics lost its floor around 4.75. When floors drop into an air pocket between moving averages, it's hard to lean either way, because price could find support almost anywhere. He isn't bearish, but crypto concerns him. Bitcoin is his favorite, trading in a channel with a trend line from the 2020 lows. It's back inside its prior range, and a retest of 70,000–76,000, the low end of that range and the 2020 trend line, wouldn't surprise him. Ethereum built a base-on-base look and reverted into the prior range, with room to about 1,500, and it had just taken out its 200-day. "It's just an asset. People overthink it."
He thinks the momentum season ran hot and needs time to digest. The IGV and many names in it look fine, so it's a timing and rotation question. Expensive stays expensive, and that's his focus: Tesla, Google, Apple and Nvidia are the ones he owns and his favorites. He doesn't think the run in alt energy is finished, and he's still "wildly bullish on drones," though they aren't acting well. He leans toward this being backfilling before the market melts higher, not a correction. He started a small position in Arista Networks (ANET) the day before. It makes the switches data centers need, with earnings that night, so he went small, wanting to get longer eventually. He remembered choosing Cloudflare over Arista back in 2020.
He said the melt-up trend from the tariff lows rewarded buying quality bases and sitting tight. "Less is more." Backfilling with no clearly defined pivot is very hard to trade, with price spiking the 10-, 20- or 50-day only to reclaim it, "a recipe for getting chopped and throwing away quality positions." TLT looks good to him for a swing right at its converging moving averages. On MongoDB, he liked it better through 340. The back test of the 10-day wouldn't be a bad add, and he'd set alerts at 369 and on a reclaim of 355–360, though "it's not the prettiest." When he doesn't know what to do, he tries to do nothing and let trail stops talk. Hardcore trend traders trail Tesla on candle lows. On a weekly three-bar low after a new high near 470, the stop is still around 340. He described a StockTwits trader, Trader Fox, who uses a 2x weekly ATR initial stop and trails a six-bar low after new highs, "an uber long-term trend trader."
Ben's setups, levels and trades
Ben fought the new tech all show. He'd marked Bitcoin's halvings on his chart, and about six weeks earlier he'd said something wasn't right. After past halvings, Bitcoin took off within weeks, but this time it made a new high and didn't do anything like before. "When you see a change of character... you've got to pay attention." He pushed back on the gloom: "My point is we are exactly where we were one Friday ago." The stair-step structure he posted before their talk with Cookie hasn't even come in to test the breakout retest, "and we're acting like it's civil war and the world is on fire." Meta was down about 17% since earnings and about 21% from the top. Only a confirmed break below 670 on SPY would have him expecting further declines. He's fully long and "taking a haircut just like everybody."
He likes Wayfair holding the 102–103 area and still sees it as a buy all the way down to 85–86 at the top of the base. He liked how Broadcom looked that morning before it gave it up. He said grinding higher isn't sexy. In a trend like this, "your cash was trash," so a selloff tempts you to dump stocks, but "get long quality stocks. They're going to bounce back. Don't throw them away." There are always reasons to sell, and "how you're feeling is definitely not on the list" of the right ones. He also remembered telling the crew at their last dinner in Coronado that the next drop would likely be "fast and scary."
GP's setups, levels and trades
GP said as long as 25,700 holds on the NQ, it'll be okay, but there's been inherent weakness for weeks. Tesla took heavy volume to reach about 474 and then filled the gap overnight on almost none, "one foot out the door, no bid." On futures, once 26,200 broke, it was "nonstop selling." The NQ had an island gap formation, with the 25,X00 area retested overnight. His bigger concern was small caps rejecting their four-year level over a possibly delayed December cut, which "doesn't track." He thinks moves feel options-driven, with derivatives turning from a hedging market into "a driving market." Election-day jitters around the New York City race could unwind afterward. Crypto, meanwhile, "is now sitting in the bunker strapped in a bulletproof vest," and treasury companies keep buying while it can't find a floor. He wants a real index pullback for the liquidity to go higher: "If we get that, we get power."
He noted what was green: Apple, Hims after earnings ("a crappy green" for an earnings stock), First Solar, TLT and all the bonds, investment-grade bonds, the dollar, the VIX, natural gas and the XLV. "I like Meta," after a lot of puts were sold. Bonds rising while stocks fell was one day of the character shift he's watching to see whether bonds become a safety trade again. Apple and Tesla were the last two to die in 2022–23 and are the last to take out all-time highs. Apple broke out then became a "struggle bus," and Tesla still can't. Financials (Citi, JPMorgan, Wells, Goldman and Morgan Stanley) were the only thing keeping the RTY from "the gigantic monster poo." He argued it's not just the speculative names: Meta was down about 30%, and Lulu, Nike, Netflix and Spotify have been disasters, so portfolios are down 5% while the index is down 1%. AMD could fill its gap at 180 after earnings that night. He still called it election jitters until confirmation.
Wayfair is his "number one non-shitco." It's a character change: it broke out of a three-year base on earnings, and it held while everything fell, down about 1% while Tesla, Palantir and Nvidia dropped 3–7%. A back test of the base would be a buying opportunity, though he'd prefer a clean break toward 170 and then a retest of the 130s. Zscaler and CrowdStrike look great, and First Solar was holding up strong. He trades long-term positions plus swing shots for 20–30%. If you alternate 5% losses with 20% wins, a 50% win rate on 20 trades turns $100,000 into about $307,000 in a year. Coinbase would be his 5% stop if it didn't recover by the close. He stopped out of his last 20% of Rocket Lab the week before, bought at 25–26 and sold at 62. He sold KRE the day before because he has small-cap exposure through the IWM and RTY futures, and he might get long Cisco, though it's only about 15% from its all-time high. He bought TLT calls as a possible safety trade. He thinks the QQQs will fill the second of two breakaway gaps but not the first, like May 12–13, and then "it's off to the races again."
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