Chapters
00:00 Intro: Meet Zah
02:42 Zah's Thesis: Breadth Over Mega Cap & Re-Industrialization
05:22 GP: 2007, Regional Banks & Tech as a Piggy Bank
08:02 Nvidia Suppliers: $AMKR, $FLEX & $KEYS
11:09 The Stock Picker's Market; GP Out, Ben In
14:18 "Mega Cap's Dead, Long Live Mega Cap"
17:29 A Sub-10% Year? IWM, Uranium & $BWXT
19:35 F-35 Parts: $HWM, $ATI, $CRS, $HXL & Embraer
22:53 Construction Bases: $TPC, $GVA & $WWD
24:28 Let Names Prove Themselves vs. Knowing What You Own
30:58 Capitulation in $META and $MSFT? $SYM vs. $MSFT
36:32 $NVDA's Range & Investing Outside the US
40:25 Rheinmetall, KWEB & Holding the Day's Low
42:32 The Dollar, the Taco & SPY 745
46:16 QQQs: 585–600, the Nov. 20 Candle & 580
49:04 Tariff Timing & No Man's Land
53:19 Drones, $ASTS, $JOBY & $ACHR
56:59 The Fed, the IPO Wave & Crypto
1:01:39 Final Words
Market Hours #163 went out live on Tuesday, January 20, the day after the MLK holiday, with Nick, Ben and GP and a first-time guest, Zah, a longtime listener and chat regular. GP had to drop off about 10 minutes in for an emergency, just as Ben arrived, "one in, one out." Futures had cascaded since Sunday night on tariff headlines, and the QQQs were back in the range in week 20, but the conversation was about where the strength is. Zah made the case for breadth over mega cap and a "re-industrialization" trade, from Nvidia's suppliers to F-35 parts, construction bases and Embraer. Ben pushed back with "long live mega cap." They also covered capitulation in Meta and Microsoft, the tariff timeline, drones and the coming IPO wave.
Zah's setups, levels and trades
Zah said he's been in markets close to 10 years. He started out messing around, moved into options and found consistency trading breakouts, which "in this market has been here and there," unless you're in metals. He got into USAR (rare earths) on Friday. His thesis for the year: weakness in a lot of mega-cap tech while IWM, RSP and QQQE outperform, with boring, forgotten companies bubbling up so the breadth of the market carries the weight. He pointed to the re-industrialization of the US, with "left for dead" companies shaking off the cobwebs: Intel, Coherent, Corning and SanDisk, plus railroads like Norfolk Southern and Wabtec. In software, he expects select names to bounce on earnings. In tech, he's watching Nvidia's suppliers, Amkor (AMKR), Flex (FLEX) and Keysight (KEYS), all coming out of bases from 2022. "Nvidia... they don't build everything themselves." He thinks the QQQs and SPY may have a sub-10% year, still up, but a slower churn and a wider-breadth market, with IWM outperforming. "Big tech is going to be paying the bills this year."
He's in BWX Technologies (BWXT), nuclear submarine tech, which was having a rough day but looks great overall. He's also seeing a lot of "war stuff": alloy, titanium and carbon-fiber makers like Howmet (HWM), ATI, Carpenter (CRS) and Hexcel (HXL), all components for F-35 jets, setting up from 2020–21 bases. He also likes Boeing. He's held Embraer (EMBJ) since last April, "just a stairstepper," and it broke out the week before. Coherent does optical cables, lasers and battery cells, "a powerhouse," and Corning "is gorgeous." He showed construction names out of huge bases, like Tutor Perini (TPC), which had done nothing for about 12 years, and Granite Construction (GVA), along with Woodward (WWD). He called Woodward and Coherent "a Stanley Druckenmiller special," since Druckenmiller is always years ahead of the curve. A chart tells him a lot in a minute, and he cares what a company does "only a certain amount."
He's mostly in short-term swings of up to about six months, with some longer holds like EMBJ. He's also investing outside the US, mostly Brazil: Nu Holdings and Embraer, previously StoneCo, plus a Baba play. He thinks the mega caps "are just taking a little nap." Last year's three-month stretch when everything went up is over, and smaller rotations of speculative names will move the market instead. He bought a lot on Friday, sees this pullback as "almost like a gift of another entry," and doesn't understand people who want a crash. Zoomed out, he thinks the indexes look like 2020's choppy road map, up and to the right, with a next measured move around 745 on SPY. Normally a weak dollar lifts US equities, and that wasn't happening, which he read alongside Canada's deal on Chinese EVs as a breaking point in global trade. He hadn't added that day and thinks "the taco is very likely." He floated "shitco season 2" in speculative growth, explaining that it's much easier for a Joby or Ampex in a new industry to grow fast than for Microsoft to keep growing 10%. His last word: keep your eyes open to an evolving market, "strength begets strength," and look for big bases in legacy companies and new emerging tech with a good trend.
Nick's setups, levels and trades
Before the show, Nick said he'd been doing "a lot of quick hit options trades" while accumulating shares in a couple of names "while we're waiting to leave the station," and he expects this year to be tricky. He said Zah's list fits GP's "real world economy" stocks. Looking at Woodward, he said the beauty is that you don't have to buy wildly beaten-down names at a crazy discount, as much of FinTwit wants to. Let a name prove itself in a trend, then find cheater entries to stack and layer a position with the wind at your back. GP calls stage-one bases a waste of time unless you have massive conviction or size. "Okay, so you weren't involved at 30, but it still set itself up again at like 140," which caught a 100% move from 100. He agreed with Ben that most people are passive, and that trading isn't an obsession for most of them.
He asked whether the day could mark a capitulatory low in Meta and Microsoft. Microsoft had been bleeding from 550 and Meta was about 200 points off its high near 800. Nvidia and Tesla might see more weakness, but he thinks Meta, Microsoft and Amazon put in a low that day. He wanted to see strength into the close, not a close below the morning low or 610 on the QQQs. Mid-lunch, he'd buy intraday pullbacks as long as the day's low held. A retest of 585–600 on the QQQs wouldn't surprise him, in week 20 of a range. He's watching the high-volume candles from October 10 and November 20, and price was back inside the body of the November 20 candle, which he thinks "everybody should be paying attention to." Pivot lows from January 2 and December 17 should bring bounces. His view won't change until the lows near 580 are taken out. A break there puts the QQQs back in the prior range, and his trail stops would take him close to cash, with the 200-day at 566.
On drones and aerial names, he said that two consecutive tight weekly closes make him expect a push for a three-weeks-tight. So Joby and Archer were "no-brainers off the open" for the week, likely to push back to last week's close and toward the top of their ranges, with Archer back to about 11.50 and putting in higher lows. "While we may not get follow-through on indexes, we are getting on some individual names, and maybe it's drone time." His last word: "Price is truth. So respect price, manage your risk."
Ben's setups, levels and trades
Ben arrived just as GP left, with "Mega cap's dead. Long live mega cap." He agreed that some underloved names will outgain Apple and Microsoft, but argued mega cap isn't dead. On a 24-hour chart, the QQQs had already been bought up 1% off the bottom, which he called strength, even with Broadcom down 4% and AMD up almost 2%. "It's not a throw the baby out with the bathwater situation." All he'd seen was panic over being back in the range they'd defined, while Nick's yellow trend line was still holding at the edge of the range box. He gave GP credit for the point that the market "can't follow through." He pointed out that most average market participants buy what they know, like Apple or Tesla, over an unfamiliar name like Woodward, and if you don't know what you own, you may sell it too early. "Know what you own."
He didn't call the day capitulation. The futures cascade ran Sunday night and Monday while the market was closed, and after 36 hours people got their wits about them, so buyers stepped in. People are tired of names not doing what's expected and are rotating into what's working. Since November 1, Microsoft was down 8% while ASTS was up 62%. His doctor, a casual investor, bought Symbotic in the 20s and rode it toward 90, "warm and fuzzy feelings" you don't get from Microsoft right now. Nvidia had led the charge but sat in a 175–190 range. He brought up Rheinmetall, the German defense maker, which had an 18% week three weeks earlier, and noted KWEB was rounding. He thinks individual names are the way to go over a broad basket. On tariffs, with the February 1 deadline 11 days out, "we're in no man's land," with time to negotiate, backtrack or escalate, and the Supreme Court has no timetable on its tariff ruling. He expected volatility. "It's gamesmanship with a lot of people's lives and finances."
He didn't expect the Fed to do anything on January 28, and joked about having warned Nick about the Powell indictment headlines weeks earlier. With so much macro uncertainty, money moves away from risk-on, and crypto is becoming less of a risk-on, risk-off indicator but isn't there yet. He thinks the 2026 IPO market will do more damage to people's favorite mega caps than anything else, because buyers need a source of funds. He listed nearly a dozen candidates, with SpaceX at the top, which is good for ASTS and Rocket Lab, and Discord among them. Invested money tends to stay invested, so it has to come from somewhere. His last word, filling in for GP: surround yourself with a community that can test and support you, value guests' different perspectives, curate your feeds, "click the bio," and "if it's somebody who's been bearish since 2024, then consider your source."
GP's setups, levels and trades
GP was on only for the opening minutes before an emergency pulled him away. He said Zah was "pretty much spot on." The last divergence this meaningful, with tech underperforming the real-world economy, was 2007, when financials, regionals and homebuilders went nuts right before the crash, which is why some people see this as the endgame. But financials are usually the last sector to join a bull market, and they're just starting. KRE is only consolidating above its GFC high after 17 years, and compared with the bases in XLF, silver, gold and copper, "there's room here." He still stands by "without tech we can't go higher," but tech just needs to stop breaking down. If all those companies break down at once, it's hard for the other 493 stocks to outperform consistently. He disagreed that nothing is working: "I think they're just using tech as piggy banks," with tech's weakness mostly money rotating into these other names.
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