Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:32 The Quarterly Cookie & Nick's QQQs Undercut-and-Rally
05:46 Why Cookie Asked to Come On: Calendar Flips & a Confusing Market
08:21 They Saw It Coming: October's Peak & Sideways Tech
11:27 The Call: Up Into the Week of March 30
14:04 The QQQs Wedge, 631.30 & the 2024 Yen-Carry Rhyme
15:35 How Cookie Takes Profits at Pivots
22:42 Golden Ratios & Uniform Volatility
24:50 Caveats: 607 & the 20-Week
27:58 Cookie's Rule: A Lower Candle Low Goes to the 9 MA
31:05 QQQs Monthly Channels & Why It's Not a Bubble
38:52 The Correction After: Summer '23, 15–20% & a Round Trip
42:29 Trade Monthly Lows: Micron & QQQs vs. 607
47:18 SOXL's Breakout & the Half-Candle Retrace
53:41 Is Crypto in a Bear Market?
1:01:37 Ethereum's Monthly: 7,500, 4,600 & 21,000
1:08:31 The Ethereum 1-Hour Wedge Breakout Into the Fed
1:14:52 XBI, IWM & a Quick $TSLA Read
1:19:10 Semis vs. Tesla vs. Ethereum; BMNR
1:21:50 Selling Is the Hardest Part; Final Words
Market Hours #164 went out live on Tuesday, January 27, with Ben, Nick and GP and their quarterly guest, Cookie_M, who asked to come on that week. The QQQs had just broken out of the wedge they'd been watching, in week 21 of the range, the day before FOMC. Cookie gave a dated forecast: the market runs "like crazy" until the week of March 30, then a 15–20% round-trip correction, then higher. He also shared his rules for partial profits and candle lows, walked through SOXL, Ethereum, Tesla and BMNR, and told everyone, "You're not bullish enough." Nick, Ben and GP added golden ratios, Bitcoin's low-60,000s risk and a debate over whether crypto is in a bear market.
Cookie's setups, levels and charts
Cookie said he asked to come on because of the QQQs wedge and the calendar flip GP talks about, which comes down to the monthly candle close. The market was confusing: metals were in their biggest run in decades, crypto "really looking like [expletive]," semis doing well and mega-cap tech not. He said they saw this coming three months ago. The QQQs peaked around mid-October, and tech and crypto went sideways together, with AMD consolidating "really nasty" while Google and Microsoft just went sideways. After April's huge run, three months sideways was normal. The wedge has appeared at least four times since the COVID lows, including summer 2023. His call: "the market's going to continue to go up until the week of the 30th of March," and "between now and then, it's going to run like crazy." That would be a short-term, intermediate top, not a 2022-style bear. His estimate is 675 on the QQQs that week, even with "three weeks of [expletive]" along the way. He pointed out that the QQQs stalled at 631.82 against his 631.30 pivot at the top of the wedge, and that the week's low sat on the wedge just as in 2024. The move rhymed with the September 2024 yen-carry pullback, and it broke out "despite all the [expletive] over the weekend," from Greenland to Minnesota to Davos.
His caveats: if price falls below his ellipse, below the 20-week moving average or below 607, the correction he expects in March could come early. He always takes partial profits at weekly and monthly pivots, "like a robot," but only fully exits when the trend actually changes, and he tries to buy back near the bottom of the range. You can trust breakouts, "but you got to trust the backtest, too," because the algos take every excuse for a retest. A breakout that stalls may just have hit the next important level in the hierarchy. His rule to write down: "If price gives a lower candle low, it's likely to go to the 9 MA," on any time frame and any instrument, and the reverse in downtrends. On his QQQs monthly chart, the market wobbles at every intersection of its downtrend channels, which points to a stall around April–May. All the uptrends since 2017 share the same gradient, so he calls "absolute [expletive]" on the idea that the market is in overdrive or a bubble. A bear market "makes no sense at all" unless earnings growth peaks, given that "all we've seen are LLMs," with agents, humanoid robots and embodied AI still to come.
He expects the correction to look like summer 2023, which was worse than April 2025 because it dragged on, but shorter: a 15–20% pullback that round-trips the move, from about 670 on the QQQs back to 620, before launching higher. To cut the noise, he said, focus on monthly charts and buy as long as higher monthly lows hold. Micron went from 220 to 400 with dips from 250 to 190 along the way, but it never lost a monthly low. February's rule for the QQQs was simple: "trade long versus 607." He thinks markets are driven by AI and algos, which makes them "more technical than ever," and joked that his group should check into a monastery to avoid frustration. On SOXL's monthly chart, it has swung up and down since 2019, but it just broke out over its 2021 highs around 51–52. He thinks it can reach the 300 measured move, or blow past it. Its current monthly low is 45, and it retraces about half the prior monthly candle "almost systematically," so there's no FOMO in trimming after a strong month. His Micron limit at 195, half the October candle, filled at the low before the run to 400.
In crypto, the 50-month moving average around 60,000 is where Bitcoin typically goes in bear markets. But the 2022 drop came during a bear market in everything, so if stocks don't enter one, Bitcoin probably doesn't either, and January didn't make a new monthly low. He doesn't see much utility in Bitcoin and looks at Ethereum, the rail for tokenization, through the ETH/BTC chart. On Ethereum's monthly, which he labeled with Ben's name, the sideways action since the 2021 high near 4,800 is its bear market and an accumulation period, each one longer than the last. His forecast: 3,000 to 7,500, rejection back to 4,600 in Q2 as crypto's version of the round trip, then 21,000 by mid-2027. On the one-hour chart, a falling wedge from January 7 broke out as the call began, with support at 3,050, the February pivot. He laid out a 1x/2x fractal and wanted 3,120 next and 3,300 by the weekly close, which he took to mean a positive Fed reaction. A drop back below 2,900 would signal a failed breakout. His base case: February and March strong, April through June weak, then "we ride off into the sunset" in the second half.
He said XBI was consolidating around 130 and needs to take it out, the same crossroads as the QQQs' 630 area. IWM's monthly took a lower low to the nine, held it and kept going. Tesla on the four-hour was repeating last August's "bunny hops," up for a few days and down for a few, driven by options flow. He wants it to hold 430 and get back above the four-hour 200 MA at 434, with earnings and FOMC ahead. Between Tesla, semis and Ethereum, he'd buy semis: 30% on SOXL is far easier than 30% on Tesla, which "will drag you around the houses." "It's not about how much money you make, but it's how easy it is to make it." His last chart was BMNR, a "dog of a stock" that he thinks will "go ape" if his Ethereum idea plays out. It's at the end of a cycle that began in July 2025, the same length as the 2024 cycle, with the top of the channel near 100 from 28. Cautious buyers can wait for a move over the 50-day, while "brave" ones hold it against 26–28. He's holding the 2x BMNU, and he's good at exits. "2026 is the year we have better exits." His closing words: "You can't call yourself a trader if you don't sell."
Nick's setups, levels and trades
Nick was in week 21 of the QQQs range. Past about week 12, he decided it needed more time, because the first expectation in a sideways market is an 8–12-week consolidation. The QQQs went from a head and shoulders to an inverse head and shoulders to an ascending triangle, Mark Minervini's volatility contraction pattern. It looked "so pretty, maybe even too pretty," and sure enough it took out the pivot low and immediately reclaimed it. That undercut-and-rally has been this market's signature, like Google's selloff bar last spring. Meta and Microsoft bottoming and Amazon taking off were "lighting a fire" under the QQQs, though volume was light, which he expected in a range. He explained golden ratios as measuring a stock's typical leg. If Google tends to run about 35 points before ranging, and you're 20 points into a run, you have 10–15 points left before taking money off the table. Cookie called that "uniform volatility."
He suggested that slow corrections, like 2022's or the 2018–19 chop, tend to correct through time and find support in shallower areas. Violent follow-through points to deeper support. He shared that a trader on StockTwits years ago, Trader Fox, trailed every position with a six-week low on the weekly, close to Cookie's monthly-low rule. On Bitcoin, he thinks it's getting ready to touch the low 60,000s, where a long-term trend line and the four-year moving average sit. It had already lost the 12- and 18-month moving averages. In ranges, he thinks price makes about five touches, the fifth being the spike low before it catapults one way. That fifth touch might come only around 74,000–75,000, but he thinks it heads lower. Bitcoin going mainstream without going anywhere suggests to him "they need to accumulate even more," and they won't do that on the way up.
Ben's setups, levels and trades
Ben gave Nick props for calling the QQQs move, and his take on the confusing market was simple. He's invested in and traded semiconductors as long as anyone's known him, "and as long as semis tend to lead tech, I don't think things are broken." On crypto, he admitted he's "loaded to the tits," so a drop to the low 60,000s isn't his base case. His reasoning: if technology moves the way Cookie described, there's no way it's a risk-off environment that should hold crypto down, and "if anything, they should be exploding exponentially higher." He watches Bitcoin dominance and the ETH/BTC chart, and he's a believer in the tokenization of finance. He sold some Tesla because "I couldn't wait for 500," and asked Cookie whether he'd rather buy Tesla, semis or Ethereum. He called himself "a Cookie disciple" and said a quarterly hour with him is "fresh electrolytes in my veins." "Selling is the hardest part... it's easy to buy things when you've got cash," but capturing profit or limiting a loss "is everything."
GP's setups, levels and trades
GP had flagged the calendar flip a month earlier. His crypto theory: the first leader out of the 2022 bear market was Bitcoin, then the QQQs, and now small caps are joining. While crypto goes sideways, he thinks the next leg higher is crypto, "because it leads, it doesn't follow." He called it a downtrend, not a bear market, "apathetic," consolidating after three years of crushing everyone to the upside. He pressed Cookie on how he trades a forecasted top, whether he trims or shorts. He also pushed back that "you can't trust the breakouts if they're not working." On his view of the tape, it's annoying but "really technical": horizontal pivots, "the backtest of the backtest of the backtest," holding to the penny before it finally goes. He noted that Micron, about 4% of SOXL, will keep growing as a share at the pace it's moving.
Subscribe for the weekly live show at YouTube.com/@MarketHoursPod.
This is not financial advice. Market Hours is for education and entertainment only. Always do your own research.
Follow Market Hours: YouTube @MarketHoursPod · X @markethourspod · TikTok @markethourspod · StockTwits @markethourspod