Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:48 Fake Monday: GP and the VIX-Expiration Cycle
05:01 Mega Caps Must Stop Selling & the IGV's Top Three
07:42 IGV: A Generational Buy? Investment Years & Railroads
13:03 $CRWD's Pivot Candle & $DOCN Outside the IGV
15:42 Nick: 595 Reclaimed, an ABCD to 575 & 540–555
17:50 $MSFT 375–350, $GOOGL 306, $AMZN & $TSLA
21:05 Adding Long-Term? Stops, Rebounds & $RKLB
24:19 What Does "Stop Selling" Look Like?
28:00 Ben the Investor: Base Building & $NOW Tranches
32:47 Range Since the First Rate Cut & GP's $AMD Tranches
36:27 Opportunity Both Ways: $VST & Aerospace and Defense
39:41 Six Months Sideways, $NVDA & Druckenmiller
42:22 Saylor, $MSTR & Bitcoin's 60K Pivot
44:34 13F Season: Bridgewater, Soros' Energy Puts & Burry
52:30 Punishing April's Retail Buyers
54:06 Chaos, the Rubber Band & Ivan Drago
57:12 Bear-on-Bear Crime & the NQ 24,245 Vote
1:03:45 Final Words
Market Hours #167 went out live on Tuesday, February 17, the "fake Monday" after Presidents' Day, with Ben, Nick and GP. GP was "salty" about the NQ sitting right at its December lows. His thesis was that the market has died around VIX expiration every February since 2018, so a bounce into Wednesday's expiration could trap bulls. From there they argued about whether the IGV is a generational buy, what it looks like when the mega caps stop selling, and how an investor and two traders approach the same chop in week 24 of the range. They also covered 13F season, Michael Saylor's debt, Michael Burry's Palantir short and "bear on bear crime."
Nick's setups, levels and trades
Nick said that, pending a strong close, it was a candle you could play against: the QQQs took out the 595 pivot low and reclaimed it. If they faded the close, it sets up an ABCD leg down to about 575, the next floor. Cookie's call stuck in his head. "I like his timing but not so much the price," and he still has 540–555 in the back of his mind as a possibility that would become a capitulatory V. The QQQs broke a rising trend line from July, so he thinks they go after at least 585. On Microsoft, he said it was sitting at the gap fill from last April. A Microsoft bull could start a position there and dollar-cost-average down to about 350, with the 200-week at 375, so 375–350 could act as a range low. Google needs to reclaim 306, the pivot low of its high-volume candle. Amazon needs to reclaim its own pivot low and was getting rejected. If the close faded, he'd throw on an SQQQ position to hedge what he had. Tesla was sitting right on a floor, and losing it puts it back in its prior range.
A bull could read the QQQs as a double bottom, but that doesn't confirm until 617.50 is taken out. They'd been in the 585–635 range since September, about week 24, so it's just ping-pong. "I don't really feel as though I have an edge in the market right now. So, I'm doing very little." He isn't adding long-term positions now but will if the market rolls over another 8–10%. For the mega caps to stop selling, he wants to see them reclaim pivot lows, put in higher lows and get their short-term moving averages to curl. He sees all of them base building: Amazon in a 170–250 range, Tesla 250–450, Nvidia "a base on base" and Microsoft roughly 335–350 to 500–550. Without a definitive uptrend in the indices grinding along the 10- or 20-day, he can't take full position sizes. Right now, you buy the range lows and sell or short the range highs, which recently put in a lower high around 620. He posted the aerospace and defense group in the chat for its relative strength.
On Bitcoin, if you caught the pivot around 60,000–61,000 and didn't sell the bounce, that's a low to play against: raise your stop to breakeven or keep it just under the low. On the monthly, if 55,000–60,000 doesn't hold, he'd expect a lot lower. He could see it chop around in the low-to-mid 60,000s. He likes 13Fs because they add names to his radar, though he trades technically. Gun to his head, he thinks the range resolves lower, but he's leaning toward a repeat of last March and April, which excites him. A heavy move lower would pull the rubber band back and bring in more buyers, because it's hard to keep buying the same range. If Rocket Lab pulls into the 50s, "are you not buying it?" If space and AI names get another 5–10% correction, he'll start trying to pick bottoms. Quoting Ivan Drago: if the range dies, "it dies," and he'll buy more down there.
Ben's setups, levels and trades
Ben agreed with GP that the IGV is a generational buying opportunity, "that doesn't mean the bottom's in." He pushed back on Brian G (Alpha Charts), who argued against buying companies in investment years. When Amazon poured money into AWS, its chart went up and to the right for five years. Tesla's Gigafactory build-out brought nearly five years of chop before 2020 made it the most valuable car company in the world. The railroad builders of the 1800s became some of the richest people in the world. Microsoft and Amazon spending hundreds of billions isn't a reason to sell. A small SaaS company spending $100 million is something to worry about. The big ones are self-funded capex spenders whose free cash flow covers their spending, and Apple has enough cash to fix its AI gap whenever it decides to. As an investor who lets stocks compound, "these are some of the most exciting times," with some of the best prices he's seen in two to four years.
He thinks they stair-step out of this and build a base, not V out. He likes today's prices against where he sees them in 5, 10 and 15 years, and the game is to buy the cheapest shares and sell when they're most valuable. Every morning he wakes up thinking about what he might take a taste of that week, "like the hors d'oeuvres going around the party." He's being selective, with about 10–15% cash left from sales over the last 10 weeks, and another leg down would probably get him fully invested. His ServiceNow position, only about seven weeks old, was down about 18%. He bought more than he should have in the 140s and 150s and is correcting that in tranches near 100. He doesn't think AI displaces it more than it helps it, and his thesis is intact. VPA in the chat put it as switching from investor glasses to trader glasses, and Ben said there are still trades out there, like Vistra breaking out of a downtrend on a huge bar.
On 13F season, he noted that Bridgewater was a net buyer of the S&P 500 and bought Salesforce in its last filing. Soros was buying puts on energy names like XOP and Exxon, and doubled down on them, while net long a lot of tech. Ben was buying in December himself, and he wanted to see whether the big tech investors were too: Tiger Global and Brad Gerstner's Altimeter among them. He looks at 13Fs thematically, whether funds are long the market or going hard into one theme, more than at any single stock. He asked how Michael Saylor must be feeling about refinancing MicroStrategy's debt, "some pearl clutching time." To close, he put a line on the NQ at 24,245 and asked whether it would be above or below it the next Tuesday. He called it "the beatings continue until the morale improves episode."
GP's setups, levels and trades
GP said that since Volmageddon in 2018, the market has consistently died the day VIX expires. So the bounce, with everyone getting bullish into Wednesday's expiration, could end with a gap down that traps people for a week or a few. It should all be right by March or April OPEX. Last year, the acceleration started on the Wednesday of February OPEX and ran to the end of March before a massive reversal by April. "If you are an options player... this is not the time to be putting money to work" unless you're strategic. Even in years up 25–30%, he said, Februaries have been nasty, from quick 4–5% dips to 20–25% corrections. The NQ was sitting at its December lows, and every push above got "slapped in the face." Small caps and the Dow, which hit 50,000, looked good, but the mega caps won't stop selling, and they're too heavily weighted for the market to go higher. Microsoft, about 80–90 points below its 200 SMA, is the IGV's top holding, followed by Oracle and Salesforce, and you won't get the IGV higher without them.
He told Brian G that if you're not watching the IGV at its 50-month SMA and 200-week with capitulatory volume, "what are you doing?" In strong sectors and names, the 200-week or 50-month has usually been a generational buy. CrowdStrike stood out, one of the few software names holding the April 9, 2025 candle, which he calls "a monstrous pivot candle." DigitalOcean isn't in the IGV, so there's no index selling, and it has outperformed the IGV on every level. Anyone adding longs should use stops and keep risk to 1–3%, and he's doing nothing major without tight stops until Wednesday passes. After this window passes, "it is belt to ass": the bottoms in April and 2020 rebounded 40%-plus. Rocket Lab and DigitalOcean showed relative strength, but Apple's bounce and the Amazon buying after nine straight down days and 18% were a fake-out. Microsoft is too far below its 200 SMA to V. Meta's only buyers came off earnings, and the NQ had failed at 24,800 with 400 points down in four bars.
He noted that the QQQs had been at this level since September 17, the first rate cut of 2025. He sees distribution in the bottom half of the range, not the top, which leans bullish, but all that selling still couldn't break it. It looks like October 2022: a break would accelerate quickly, which makes a V more likely. He described buying AMD last year in three planned tranches, at 128, 98 and 78, which worked out, though watching the market more closely would have kept him from buying the first near 121. ServiceNow hit a pivot and "didn't even bother to fake a bounce." If the QQQs go six months sideways, he gets "pretty freaking bearish," because "what can't gap and go gaps and craps." He doesn't see Nvidia as the market's savior, and he pointed to Druckenmiller moving in and out of it. Crypto names were showing relative strength even though crypto wasn't, and he noted MicroStrategy was down 72% from its July high: "who is going to refinance this for you?"
On Michael Burry's Palantir short, he said "a monkey could have seen" not to be long after a 40x move in about two years. It was the same with HOOD, with capitulatory breakout volume to the upside and impossible year-over-year comps. "Four words: do not be long." To him, 13Fs are lagging. The fund that bought $2.5 billion of Amazon by the end of Q4 isn't flipping it in a quarter, and only Druckenmiller trades his book like a nimble swing trader. His contrarian read is that this is punishment for last April, when only retail was buying. Five and a half months later, most IGV names bought then were underwater, with Microsoft about $3 above its April level. Like GME and AMC, retail wins for a while until Wall Street shows "who's your daddy," so "this is not a time to be a hero." Every bull attempt had failed: three tries at 25,360 two Fridays earlier and again at the December lows, each followed by a 100-point red bar. To him, it's shorts covering and reshorting, "bear on bear crime," with no edge for a bull. Earnings used to be a bullish time, but buying the dip and selling the Netflix rip hasn't worked in a long time. His last word: a bet on his Knicks to win the championship and Coin at 500 by the summer.
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