Chapters
00:00 Intro (Ben Out)
01:24 QQQs: Head and Shoulders or Inverse? SPY's Tight Weeks
03:30 The 25,700 China Gap, Metals & Copper
06:13 2026: Bullish, Neutral & the Calendar Flip
10:33 Rocket Lab & a $1.5 Trillion SpaceX IPO
14:16 Meta's IPO Base & When Bull Markets Really Start
19:14 $XOM, Silver's 47-Year Base & Gold
21:52 Crypto: Apathy & Six Tight Weeks
26:42 Options Traders Obliterated & $TSLA's Gap and Crap
31:39 Quiet FinTwit, K-Shaped Markets & 24/7 Trading
36:32 Where Strength Shows Up in 2026
40:17 Stage-One Bases Need Execution: $RIVN, $PLTR & $NVDA
45:30 Wayfair, Carvana & Buying Cars Online
49:14 GP's $COIN LEAPS & $HOOD
54:38 $SNOW's Retest
57:51 $HIMS & $BABA
1:01:12 Real-World Stocks: $XOM, $RIO & XLE
1:05:06 Buffett's Occidental, Catch-Up Trades & GE
1:07:08 Year-End IPO Pops: $MDLN
Market Hours #159 went out live on Tuesday, December 23, the holiday week, with Nick and GP. Ben was out, so Nick steered the ship ("so many buttons") and said Ben would be back for the next day's StockTwits pod. The QQQs were in week 15 of the chop range, with a head and shoulders and an inverse head and shoulders both building. GP called the 25,700 China-gap level on NQ resistance-turned-retest and said metals led 2025, with copper next. They covered when bull markets really start, Tesla's "gap and crap," the 24/7 trading fear, why stage-one bases need execution, GP's Coinbase LEAPS, and real-world stocks like Exxon and Rio Tinto.
Nick's setups, levels and trades
Nick zoomed in on the QQQs daily, where a head and shoulders and an inverse head and shoulders were both building. A breakout from the inverse version takes price toward about 680. On the weekly, it was week 15 of a violent chop range, and a breakout into year-end could "start off 2026 with a bang." The QQQs didn't quite go three-weeks tight, but SPY put in a fourth tight week. He bought TQQQ and SOXL that day, thinking the Mag 7 names were starting to perk up. As a technical trader, he's bullish but won't call the year until price tells him, either by trail stops forcing him out or by getting chopped up. He usually expects January volatility from repositioning, but the momentum high-flyers "have been obliterated so bad" that they feel like they're bottoming. A breakout could bring another speculative wave.
On crypto, he said it "doesn't look good at all to me. But it doesn't look bad," because it's still inside a channel. From an active standpoint, Bitcoin is below the 200-, 150- and 50-day. Like GP's gold rule, he'd set alerts at 100,000, or at 95,000 off the 10-week, and ignore it until then. Six tight weekly closes keep him from calling it a bear flag. "I'd rather be moving my money into spaceships." He noticed FinTwit has gone quiet, with people doing either one-to-three-day trades or longer position trades and little in between. He thinks a K-shaped economy shows up in the market too, and that a 24/7 market would make the middle even harder. The idea of news gapping futures overnight while he's full port "scares me."
For 2026, he likes aerial and space running hot into the SpaceX IPO, plus drugs. With rates down, he thinks the IWM could head toward 300 and set up another speculative momentum run. His focus list runs from drones to rockets: Archer, Joby, Intuitive Machines and robotics like Serve Robotics (SERV). For the hosts' 2026 pick, Rivian was easy because it's already essentially stage two. He leans toward Moderna because drugs keep ripping, but it hasn't broken out yet and he risks getting trapped in a stage-one base. He said that's the appeal of O'Neil-style growth investing: it's techno-fundamental, and both price and execution have to be there.
On GP's Coinbase trade, he'd watch the trend line. Under 150 he isn't interested, but an undercut and reclaim of 150 would be an easy entry with an alert. On Snowflake, he liked GP's setup: price broke out of the high-volume candle range, failed twice, and came back to test the low end of that candle and gap, in line with the 200-day. Ideally it curls under the 50-day, tests the gap high and builds an island. He asked GP about Hims, which tried to spike its lows and rallied, as a possible higher low. He doesn't understand why XLE and the drug names can't both run. XLE has "held this tight up here," and he keeps thinking of GP's gold comment. On Buffett's Occidental, a catch-up trade could be played against the 0.618 if it retests the lows, but he'd rather not.
GP's setups, levels and trades
GP said the QQQs gap from the US-China trade deal has been resistance for months, at the 25,700 level on futures. It formed an island bottom, got destroyed, got back, gave a 50% retrace that held, and was pushing up again, "technically a bullish view." Metals were the best-performing asset class of 2025: gold, silver and palladium. Copper hasn't broken out "but that's next" (FCX, CPER, HG futures), and if "Dr. Copper" leads, 2026 is a real-world year. The mag names "are cash cows" and look better overall. He's not in the "2026 will be terrible" camp until price says so: "If you thought the markets looked terrible in 2022, you are getting slammed in 2023... curb-stomped in 2025." Still, PayPal, Block (XYZ) and Paycom look terrible, so it's a stock picker's market. Calendar flips are powerful, usually in the first or second week of January. The Santa rally is leftover institutional flow. If the first week reverses lower, as it did on January 4, 2022, watch out. He thinks there are echoes of 2021 in this year's high-flyers.
Rocket Lab crushed its all-time high and then gapped lower, "not a great sign," though the SpaceX IPO could keep it running. He has no interest in SpaceX at a $1.5 trillion valuation: it would need to reach $15 trillion for a 10x, while Nvidia, the biggest cash generator on earth, is "struggling with five trillion." He compared it to Facebook's 2012 IPO, which got destroyed by 50-something percent after the initial pump, and that's when he'd look to get long. Buying Meta on the retest of its IPO highs still made you 15–20x. He argued 2009 wasn't the start of a bull market. It started in 2013, when SPY reclaimed its 2000 and 2008 double top (his pinned post): "Until everyone that's been underwater for a decade gets made whole, you are not in a bull market." Exxon Mobil has consolidated three years at its 2008 highs, a "steady Eddie" 50–80% over a year or two with a dividend. Silver broke out of a 47-year base with RSI at 80–85 on every time frame and kept going, and for gold it was "once 2,100 clears, just sit back and relax."
Crypto "just seems apathetic." The 10/10 candle wiped out the people who make the market. Traders have been obliterated for six months because options were a nightmare unless you caught a quick move. His AMD calls on the OpenAI news were monstrous, but since then "this market is a two pump chump," going back to the May 12 breakaway gap. Tesla went from 214 to 488 in two months in 2024. Since then, it's been gap and crap on the CEO's billion-dollar buy, the Delaware ruling and driverless robotaxis, and call sellers win. People calling a move to 505 or 515 "are just playing ATR." He expects January delivery numbers to be the real catalyst that breaks Tesla out. The 24/7 market worries him too: one player with enough money could push Google from 313 to 296 overnight, and "let margin calls be your alarm clock." He said stage-one bases "without management execution" are fluff. Unity is out of its stage-one base. Palantir broke out because Karp executed quarter after quarter, and if Rivian pushes its launch to 2027, "it goes right back into the range." Nvidia's big breakout came when it guided from $6 billion to $11 billion and then posted $13 billion. Wayfair is breaking out as its numbers improve, and Carvana was rewarded for getting profitable when monetary policy shifted in 2022.
GP said Coinbase looks like it did in the 50s, when Ben took shares and GP took a LEAP. On the monthly and quarterly, it's a cup and handle from the IPO highs or a big inverse head and shoulders, with lots of accumulation. The catalyst is that "they are no longer just crypto, they are equity." He considered a pair trade, short Hood and long Coin, but didn't want to be cute. He bought January 2027 300 calls, about $42 ($4,200 a contract): half the day before and another half that day. He expects a possible backfill to the 207 S&P gap and a measured move near 800, and he'd happily add cheaper. Hood's comps concern him, though Hood and Coin may simply take share from Schwab, Interactive Brokers and Fidelity. He went long Snowflake from 221 last week against 217–218, as a trade on a chart he never likes. It got to 219, so he's risking about $5, roughly 2%, for a move back toward 280.
On Hims, there's apathy, but he's watching 35.03, last year's high. It's still consolidating in the upper wick of last year's candle, and a yearly close above it sets up 2026. He sold Baba in October and rebought last week with January and March calls, calling it the stage-two breakout. He wants June–September calls once it confirms. He compared it to Celsius and ARKK, whose top holdings are Tesla and Coinbase. He's in Exxon Mobil and Rio Tinto, which spent 17 years inside its 2008 candle and just put in a bullish engulfing year on volume, with a 5% dividend at his buy, "a multi-year story." XLE's top holdings are Exxon and Chevron, at about 40–50%, "so if these break out, XLE is going with it." Buffett's Occidental has made lower highs since 2011. Catch-up trades like JD fail because "things are weak because they're weak," on multi-year time frames. GE broke a 24-year downtrend after selling everything off and executing, and it has doubled since. His closing tip: in the last two weeks of the year, performance chasers pump new IPOs for one-day 30–50% pops, as with Twitter years ago. He's in MDLN, with a break of 43.90 as the trigger and out under 40, about 5% risk. "Don't overstay your welcome."
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