Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:09 Nick's Spring Under 585 & the Inverse Pyramid
03:50 GP: Mega Caps Stop Selling
08:03 A Eulogy for the 200-SMA Rejection Crowd
11:50 Ben: Fear, Iran & Positioning Before It Resolves
13:30 Oil Can't Break 2022 & GP's Oil Short
16:09 60% Deployed, Rotation & $COIN's Setup
19:23 $TSLA: The 347 Retest & Tranches
23:33 Ben's Price-Prediction Models
27:23 QQQs Line in the Sand & SPX Fib Targets
30:34 Software: Three-Gap Exhaustion, $ORCL & $DOCN
33:54 $IGV Calls, $MSFT's Channel & the 447 Gap
37:35 AI, Regulation & the Human Layer
40:48 $FSLY, $CRWV & Selling Into 100
45:16 $SYM, $MRNA & Novo Nordisk
51:52 $Q, $TWLO, $IDCC, $LSCC & Space
59:21 Final Words
Market Hours #173 went out live on Tuesday, April 14, with Ben, Nick and GP. Nick was just back from the desert, and the market had ripped while he was gone. The QQQs had reclaimed their 50- and 200-day after breaking the floor under 585, and the crew called it the spring Nick had mapped out. GP gave a eulogy for everyone who expected the 200-day to reject price, Ben argued for positioning before the war headlines resolve, and they went through oil, Tesla's base retest, three-gap exhaustion in software, Microsoft's channel, CoreWeave, Symbotic, Moderna and a stack of chat names.
Nick's setups, levels and trades
Nick said that once the floor gave out under 585 on the QQQs, the move acted as a Wyckoff spring, and it played out that way. It was almost the opposite of last year's tantrum, when the breakdown after months of sideways action felt like relief. Many traders he talks with on StockTwits eyed 550–560 as an exhaustion point, at least for a bounce. Now price had reclaimed the 200-day, the 50-day, the short-term averages and the 50% of the leg from high to low, all pointing to a spring. When the floor broke, the 50% retrace from the double-top highs to the pivot low lined up with the 200-day. They'd talked about a gap through that area being "game on" for a rip back to the highs, and that's what happened. Ben credited him with the inverse pyramid he'd drawn back in January, which played out close to the mark. Nick said it's more art than science, so use it in alignment with your core strategy to stack the odds. He's thinking about fewer trades and more time on the trail over the next six months.
Flipping the fibs on the QQQs, he wants 595–600 to hold. His line in the sand is about 590: take that out and it's probably heading back to the low end of the range, with the 200 and 250 converging around 595. He thought it was worth lightening up or at least not adding, since the McClellan was pushing toward 202. On Tesla, he asked how a long-term believer without a position should approach it, and said he likes the weekly. You can be patient for a lower cost basis or pick entries until it takes out 500, "then it's off to the races." On Microsoft, he saw a symmetrical descending channel and a big pocket of air between the 50 and 200, so it could snap back toward 450. Breaking out of the channel puts it above about 420, and the gap could act as a magnet to 480. "You got a 100-point trade pretty much just laid up right here."
He was stopped out of the last of his Fastly on Friday after a solid trade. A strong rip into the close could give a candle to trade against. Otherwise, 20 is his line in the sand, the .618 of the base break, with a pocket of space from 20 down to about 13. The 200-day rising past the old stage-one base highs was a good sign, but he'd wait for a pivot or pattern. On Q, the DuPont spin-off, he likes both Q and DD. The entry is a takeout of the 141 high. You could have traded against the gapper candle near 127 or the February 26 selloff candle's low around 117–118. If you're not in, set alerts at 120 and 140 and ignore it until then. Symbotic's weekly looked good to him, wedging into the rising 30- and 40-week and sitting on the prior range highs near 50, but he didn't feel the need to own it. His last word: put some dry powder to work, "I'm ready to ride."
Ben's setups, levels and trades
Ben said he'd probably shown the most patience of the three, and that GP was "spitting straight from my playbook": these are the best, most capitalized companies in the world, and betting on them going to zero is usually wrong. He'd been ribbing Nasty Nate, not to pick on him, but as an example of the "everything is the worst it's ever been" crowd of the last five weeks. Boots on the ground in Iran and World War III fears spook markets. Oil is still an issue, with 20% of the world's supply not coming through the Strait of Hormuz, but the companies are still set up for success. He's treated every drag down as a buying opportunity because the war won't be prolonged. "Are you positioned for it when it resolves, or are you waiting for it after it resolves?" Wait, and you're late. On the S&P, he flagged 6954 as a level that could cause trouble by creating what bears would call a right shoulder. He noted the ceasefire coming due the next week as a possible catalyst either way, and that OPEX was that week.
On Tesla, he would have started buying at 350, with a tranche set around 320–310 and another above 385. He talked about the price-prediction models he started building one sleepless Wednesday night with Gemini and Claude, without writing the code himself. There's a core model based on price and a "Bags AI" model with his own inputs, which is more short-term. They overlay what price projected in the past to try to predict the future. His read was an upward bias for the next week or two with some chop, because the market was overextended. He uses them to identify trend, not as law, and is curious how they perform in a trending market compared with the past six months of no direction. He sold his CoreWeave trading position on Friday into the 100 level for about 31% in a couple of weeks, expecting chop after it broke its downtrend line and hit a horizontal pivot. The next two days proved him wrong, but that's what a trading position is for. "There is no shortage of setups."
Lex Trading Kevin told him about $20 million in out-of-the-money December IGV calls, a bullish bet for someone in software, especially ServiceNow. The IGV's top holdings are Palantir, Microsoft, Oracle and likely CrowdStrike, and he asked whether those leaders won't figure it out. He'd posted a Microsoft chart and thinks it gets into the 400 range, but wouldn't be surprised to see it base for a while, which is what bulls should want. On AI, his ServiceNow thesis is that there has to be a governance layer, and AI won't replace people one for one until it can filter discrepancies the way a human can. Building his models showed him the human aspect is the secret sauce: someone has to mind the shop and decide what's signal before anything goes live. On Symbotic, a name from Zah that ran from the 20s to about 87–88 last year, he loved the confluence of moving averages on the daily and weekly and said it's "game on" above about 57–58. He pulled up Novo Nordisk's little island at the bottom after two years of destruction. On Rocket Lab, he said 70 is the easy level: above it, it's holding the pivot, and below it, wait for it to set back up. His closing word: "the market giveth and the market taketh away." When your P&L is struggling but you're in the right things, don't panic, and at all-time highs don't think you're a genius. Have patience, believe in your setups and "buy the points on your charts." He also reminded everyone about the Cashtags awards at the NYSE on May 4.
GP's setups, levels and trades
GP opened with the Knicks heading to the playoffs against the Hawks, then got to markets. For six months, the first step was for the mega caps to stop selling, and now they were pushing higher. "If the mega caps stop selling and the best you could do is a 10% correction, you are in major trouble," and the last 10 days showed bears how much. Microsoft was still almost 80 points below its daily 200 SMA. Some of the most stable companies with huge cash flow were 30% under their 200-days, with Meta, Microsoft and Tesla all under and Amazon only just back over, while the S&P sat a stone's throw from all-time highs. Mega-cap earnings started the next week, and Netflix, which "has been showing you market direction since it was born," was doing well. He gave a eulogy for everyone who guaranteed a 200 SMA rejection like 2025 and the next ABC leg lower: "Pay attention to price action." He could still sell Microsoft bought at 367–380 at 390, and Meta 100 points higher, low volume or not.
He said six months of sideways action is rare, and a real breakdown from it should accelerate hard. Every attempt lower showed clues of covering. Everyone who sold for six months got caught offside, and their shorting is what drives the market higher. He suggested taking some chips off the table, but not many. His base case is mean reversion for the mega caps to their declining 200 SMAs, which means Microsoft still has about 20% to go. "So far, the price action is telling you you should be long and you should be looking for pullbacks." Gold, silver and the other parabolic names that busted were now basing and moving out of their bases: "You don't have a 47-year base in silver break out for a month and then die." The clues were there. Oil rose 13% in a single day while the market bullish-engulfed. With the Strait shut, oil still couldn't take out its 2022 Russia-Ukraine highs. He shorted oil at 103 the day before.
He admitted he had felt like he was failing himself technically during the nonstop selling that never broke down. Back in February he said he'd go to all cash with no edge, and now he was about 60% deployed after 10 straight up days. Rather than adding, he's rotating. AMD and Dell were rock stars while everything got slapped, Circle before that, CoreWeave now, and crypto is the one area with potential that hasn't delivered. Bitcoin had been rejected at 76,000 again, a level that's been a horizontal annoyance since February 3. The crypto names lead the coins, so if COIN, MicroStrategy and BMNR push, Bitcoin should clear it. He got stopped out of COIN and then went long again at 166, where it tagged and held the earnings high, which he called great risk-reward. Tesla has the usual setup: beaten down 30–40% from December through March, then a 20–25% April recovery and a base. "It does 40 to 60% retraces every single year. You're not a genius." It retested its 347 breakout and held. If you're trying to get long at 498, "you're doing it wrong." The 338 gap from last August was filled and wicked three days in a row, which offered good risk-reward. Tesla moves 3–5% a day, so you need a wider stop. The gap at 238 is the only one he sees still unfilled.
Using fibs from the COVID bottom, the S&P extension is 7121. He thought people would want to short around 7,000 and that price could push up there, maybe gap in and sell off. The 6738 extension they discussed last July marked the top before months of sideways action and the 10/10 candle. On software, he'd identified this setup before, including at the June 2022 bottom. The IGV had three exhaustion gaps, the same rule that marks tops in names like HOOD and Palantir. At that point there's no one left to sell, and it had rallied about 10% since. He'd prefer a base but will take a V. Not every software name will recover, and some really will be hurt by AI. The standouts last Friday were Oracle, first to go green and up 20% in two days, and Unity. DigitalOcean's offering at 77 was oversubscribed 6x, and it was well below that. He'd be a buyer at 58–60, and mid-50s would be "phenomenal." The December IGV calls Ben mentioned were the 90 strike, about 30,000 contracts at $5. On Microsoft, he expects the declining 200 SMA to meet price near the 447 gap into earnings about 15 days out, giving at least a 45-point move before it gets hairy. If there's any hint that capex comes down sharply in 2027, "you're going to see rocket ships." He argued AI is moving faster than the internet build, but regulation in banking, healthcare and law means companies won't drop ServiceNow because of Claude.
On CoreWeave, his first batch was around 70 near their 85 discussion, and he added at 72–73 after the three miserable days that undercut and reclaimed that level. He's riding it the way he rode Circle, whose 100% move he didn't sell, because "my process is following the levels, not emotions." A 50% retrace after a 100% move is healthy, and he expects CoreWeave to go a bit higher and then retest about 61. The shallower the retest, the stronger the second leg. On Symbotic, the two-candle volatility pattern on huge volume after a 7–8x move concerned him. It looks like a base retest that breaks out again, but keep tight risk against 54. If 54 breaks, that candle starts distribution, and the whole thing is "null and void below 48.50." If 54 holds, it's most likely going to take out all-time highs. On Moderna, he said it was working, though he doesn't play drugs or commodities, and that healthcare is still asymmetric, cheap and the place "where money will flow forever." On Novo Nordisk, names that fully retrace the COVID move tend to base for years, like XYZ, PayPal, Roku, Wayfair and UNH, so it's not his focus as a trend trader. He'd wanted blowoff volume on Twilio's big volatility candle, his top pick for the year, and said there are better software names, like ServiceNow, CrowdStrike or Oracle. He bought Palantir on a base retest just before Trump tweeted about it. Rocket Lab still looks like distribution to him, and if SpaceX delays its IPO, he thinks the space names get smoked. His final word: AI will disrupt a lot of industries, but not on the timeline you think, so look for where it makes people's lives better.
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