Chapters
00:00 Intro
03:30 "I Just Want to Cry": Week 26 of the Range
04:31 Positioning, Derivatives & Mega-Cap Multiples
06:45 Nick: Bear Trap or Bottom Falling Out?
08:51 GP: 14 Hours of Selling & Bear-on-Bear Crime
12:52 Oil, $XOM's Sweet Spot & Put Skew
15:51 How Nick Is Coping: Small Size, QQQs 575–580
19:38 $IWM, Ben's Mag 7 Case & the Flush GP Wanted
23:16 Names Going Green & the $CRM Buyback
25:58 $EOG, Fastly & the $XOM Weekly
28:07 Rotation: $PANW, Crypto & $CRWD
31:52 $SOFI, Volatility & the VIX
33:32 Set Alerts & Walk Away; Why Not Buy the Bottom?
38:46 The Dollar, $CRCL & $FIG
44:04 $YOU, Ben's List, $SNPS & JFrog
50:59 $ONDS, $ASTS vs. $RKLB & $AMD
55:48 Ben's Portfolio & $SHOP
1:02:16 Final Words
Market Hours #169 went out live on Tuesday, March 3, with Ben, Nick and GP. Nick was a little under the weather. GP opened with "I just want to cry." The range was in week 26, and not even a strike in the Middle East could unlock it. GP called the action "bear on bear crime" after 14 straight hours of overnight selling, while Ben made the case that the Mag 7 had already pulled back to a spot that usually catches a bid. They went through oil and Exxon, rotation into software and crypto, Circle after earnings, the ASTS–Rocket Lab lag, the Lisa Su debate on AMD, Ben's rebuilt portfolio and Shopify.
Nick's setups, levels and trades
Nick said the morning's open felt like "what the [expletive]" after Monday's open. Overall he thought things looked pretty good. He'd seen people pointing to a possible head and shoulders on Google's daily, and he figured it would be another bear trap rather than a leg lower. But GP's comparison to the Nasdaq at the end of 2023, when the bottom fell out before it catapulted higher, stuck with him. To cope, he's picked a few spots with relatively small size. Anything he'd bought against Monday's low that wicked through it, he dumped that morning. The longer the range lasts, the more he leans toward a retest of about 575–580 on the QQQs. An undercut and capitulation into 550–560 would be a bummer, probably hitting most trailing stops, but it would set up a lot. At the very least, he'd expected a tradeable bounce back to about 625–630. For most people, he thinks all you can do is be patient, stay small and have your levels to play against.
In the short term, he's into Fastly as a hot momentum name and will lighten up into the next leg higher. Andrew in the chat gave him a shout-out for the EOG call the week before, and he said EOG is still on "a big base." If it breaks out of the range, look out, even if XOM looks ready to pull back. With Ben on the IGV, he put on a Palo Alto trade. On the monthly it's sitting on the four-year moving average with a stretched MACD, so "if it's going to catch a bid, this is where it should catch a bid." Given the action, he said you could set alerts on the indices, say QQQs 630, and ignore the market until one goes off. "It is incredibly boring," but it saves frustration. He noted SPY flirting with rolling back into its prior range around 670–675, and the longer it hangs there, the more likely it rolls over. He'd rather see the short-term moving averages reclaimed and curling so momentum is at your back. He agreed with a chatter that the dollar index looked like it had bottomed.
Nick read Figma as a similar setup to Circle, with a descending channel and a possible push back to the mid-60s on a real breakout, which Ben noted is about 100% from there. He'd posted the Synopsys chart that Ben bought off the week before. Of the two space names, he'd probably prefer ASTS over Rocket Lab. He joked that if he pulled every AMD trade he's ever made, he's probably net negative on it. On Shopify, he likes it here, against 100. It looks like it's putting in a higher low, and above 140 "it really gets cooking."
Ben's setups, levels and trades
Ben said the bearish triangle was holding up "pretty well" in week 26, and the 24,245 level in the Nasdaq was still holding despite repeated tries to break it. The previous week, they'd talked about max pain being up through earnings and then down, and that's what played out: no breakout and no complete dump. After going red to green Monday, he wanted to be more optimistic than pessimistic. He offered to "be the electric blanket to the wet blanket." The Magnificent Seven were about 13% off their high and kissing the 50-week, usually a reliable spot to catch a bid. That's not a U-turn call, just a reason to put money to work in names you like after the market got overstretched coming off last April. On Exxon's weekly, he argued it took three attempts to break out and was now retesting the breakout. "I'm just saying that's a perspective."
On rotation, he's been pounding the table on the IGV for six to eight weeks after its "catastrophic plunge," and it was catching a bid. He'd sold SoFi, and noted Noto was buying after he was cleared to on March 1, with the stock up about 5% on a volatile week. He quoted short-seller from the old Charts for Charity group: volatility usually signals a trend change. He'd like to see CrowdStrike close above 400 on a weekly basis, but thinks it looks good, and he liked Nick's Palo Alto for the undercut and bounce off the 50-week. Clear Secure (YOU) had a base breakout. He wishes he'd had the conviction to hold it in the teens, and he likes its TSA work. His list from the week before still stood. OPTX looks ready for another run once it breaks its IPO or SPAC high. TeraWulf is just ranging. Vistra only has to take out its weekly high to be "game on" with its moving-average convergence. If he had room for another anchor in his long-term portfolio, it would be CrowdStrike.
He pointed out that MongoDB and Sea Limited got crushed but were being bought back up, like ServiceNow had been. He loaded up on Synopsys near the bottom on Friday after Nick's chart, and nearly got a second chance Monday morning. On JFrog, running into its nine daily off base support, he made the case for buying lower when the thesis isn't broken. "If it was a good deal up here in the 50s and 60s, why don't you want it in the 35s or 40s?" That holds as long as you don't need the money for rent, mortgage or food. He has no position in Ondas but said a chatter who wanted a pullback was getting one. He defended "my bae, Lisa Su" against the AMD slander, and said he's held AMD since the 40s.
On Rivian, he has a small position in the Bags Brothers account and probably won't touch it unless it gets back near its trend line. He added a few shares on the early-February drop, trimmed most of them and closed the rest when it broke down. Over the last 10 weeks, he put quite a bit of money into Amazon, Broadcom, ServiceNow, Nvidia and Synopsys, plus a little Coin, AMD and MicroStrategy. He still has Cloudflare and is right about at his goal for rebuilding the portfolio, so the question is what to trim to add more. He'd like cheaper shares of higher-beta names but doesn't think it's time yet. On Shopify, he drew a rectangle buy zone with "pretty good wickage" for support. In his closing words, he said he'd run four 5Ks in the last five days, keeping his New Year's resolution, and his arm feels great. He talked about the burnt-toast theory, that little inconveniences can set you up for something you didn't know about. "Be water... We're not bullish enough." Riley Rose B was set to join the next day's StockTwits Community Rip Live to talk flying cars.
GP's setups, levels and trades
GP said the range is "a testament to the market is run by positioning and derivatives." Everything that should rock the market just pokes lower without breaking, and buyers keep showing up. You can't run small caps while selling mega caps, because mega caps then become value: Nvidia at about 17–18 times earnings, and Microsoft and Meta around 20–22. He thinks they're at the point where supports start to melt. Volume and sellers are building in the lower half of the range, "a lot of trapped dead bodies" that could capitulate or start another leg lower. On the Nasdaq futures, Monday closed just under the year-to-date pivot of 25,025. Then came "14 straight hours of selling," light volume, "straight trickling death all night long," down through the 24,600 pivot with repeated failed reclaims. He called it bear-on-bear crime, not bulls: early bears covering to late bears. Watch for high-volume, wicky green candles on the intraday NQ or ES with no follow-through. That's shorts covering and reshorting. The IGV and most software names were up, and crypto was showing relative strength but was still weak. Netflix and Spotify looked really good but lacked buyers. "What can't break out breaks down."
On oil, Exxon didn't care when oil was falling, but above about 70–72 crude becomes a hindrance to its profitability. Its sweet spot is 60–70, so an escalating conflict and rising oil aren't good for XOM. It "just behaved like a meme stock," and four or five days of breakout attempts kept getting sold, "not a bullish sign." He thinks it gathers strength if it comes back to the 120s. Ben quoted him from before the show: "buy puts on things that are red, buy puts on things that are green, just buy puts." GP pointed out that flow had been heavily skewed to puts for seven or eight trading days in negative gamma, with open interest in the 675 SPY dailies "well into the 100,000 range." IWM "looks like turds" to him, and he still thinks it heads to its 200-day around 245. Why buy the names in IWM over Nvidia at 17 times earnings or Microsoft at 20? He bought Circle at 62 before earnings and still likes Microsoft and software. He thinks Microsoft, the leader in the IGV, was unfairly punished, and if it pulls out, the IGV goes higher.
What he'd wanted Monday was a gap down and a flush, and he thinks some of that flush was happening. So he leans to the upside, given which names were leading. ASTS was "going nuts," Rocket Lab was catching a bid, and Microsoft, Oracle, Circle, BMNR and ServiceNow were going green. Salesforce authorized a buyback of about a third of its market cap, roughly $50 billion, and raised its dividend. When Ben said going from a penny to two pennies is meaningless, GP explained that many funds only invest in dividend payers, so even a token dividend opens up a new group of buyers. That's why Nvidia, Google and Meta pay one. "When you don't have enough growth buyers, you got to start looking for value buyers." He asked whether March 3 could be last year's April 7. Crypto showed strength about a week before the market bottomed then, and it was showing strength again. Coin was up from a 139 low to about 180. He's sticking with his theme that the defensives, cyclicals and metals everyone ran to too late have played out, and that rotation goes back into the QQQs, mega caps and software. He's a long-term crypto bull but warned it's speculative.
Asked why not just buy the bottom of the range, he said people are conditioned to expect a flush there, then buy in the middle or top and get smacked back down. "This is creating a destruction of your mental capital." If the volume building down there breaks lower, Nasdaq futures could go back to about 21,000, another 3,000–3,500 points, a retest of last year's breakout. Stops get run because the action is "predatory": gold was trickled lower all day, bounced to stop people out and then crushed overnight. Circle crushed earnings, undercut its IPO low and reversed. A couple of weeks earlier, it was the only crypto name that reversed on volume heavier than the prior day's selling, while MicroStrategy and Coin didn't. He wouldn't chase it, and anyone who does should use a trailing stop. If you held through earnings, you needed a smaller position and a wider stop. Rocket Lab's earnings were good but sold, while ASTS's were great and bought. Rocket Lab tends to follow ASTS a few days later, so it wouldn't surprise him to see a Rocket Lab day Friday or Monday.
He's mostly out of AMD: one account is at zero and the other is about a 25% position. He thinks a lot of the chip names that popped on OpenAI are in distribution, and AMD going back to 120 "really" wouldn't surprise him. "It's always good to sell AMD... you'll be able to buy it lower." On Shopify, if the market rolls, you'll probably get it near the 80s. He doesn't like failed breakouts, which are essentially double tops, and this one went from 180 to 118 with no quick bounce. Drawn-out pullbacks stack up resistance: the trend line, a falling 10 around 135, a rolling 20 and the 30 about to cross, on the weeklies. He'd rather look at Rocket Lab and ASTS, where technicals are in your favor even if the market isn't. His last word: he was taking his dad to his first Knicks game at MSG in matching hoodies. "Celebrate the good times and the bad times and the experiences that come along."
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