Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:49 Knicks, Spurs & a Sports Detour
02:53 The Pullback: Inside Bars & the 10-Day
06:00 GP's Warning Shot & Missing Rotation
12:24 699.50, Island Reversals & No Hedges Yet
13:30 Worst Case: 635, the 0.38 & Pearl-Clutching
17:43 Last Week's Low, Crypto Weakness & $TSLA
25:37 Velocity Down: $AKAM's Destruction Candle
31:28 GP's Oil Short & the Downtrend Debate
34:52 XLE, $XOM, $FSLR & $NXT
38:31 Failed First Breakouts: $MU, $TSLA & Oil
41:50 $DDOG: Momo or FOMO? Plus $NET
44:27 China Names, $CRWD & Edge or Ledge with $RBRK
51:56 $HIMS After Earnings
54:37 $ASTS vs. $AVAV & $RKLB, $14.7M in Sales
1:00:05 $IREN, Jensen & Final Words
Market Hours #175 went out live on Tuesday, May 12, with Ben, Nick and GP, during OPEX week. The QQQs were down about 2% after a near-vertical run, and the question was whether this was the start of the pullback Ben had been expecting. GP called it a warning shot, the crew mapped levels from the 10-day down to 635, and GP explained why he was short oil while Nick stayed long-term bullish. From there they went through Datadog and NET, edge-or-ledge on CrowdStrike and Rubrik, Hims after earnings, and a hard look at ASTS's revenue next to Rocket Lab.
Nick's setups, levels and trades
Nick said the QQQs were getting extended off the 10-day, so some backfilling is normal. Some names were getting hit hard, but much of what he watched was still putting in inside bars. If the pullback stays contained, he expected a low somewhere near the 687 gap, in line with the 10-day. If not, maybe a consolidation, and last week's weekly bar was the range he'd want it to hold and flag within. One day doesn't make a trend, but you have to respect price. He cut CoreWeave when it took out the low of the prior two sessions. ASTS, which he wasn't in, was holding around the 200-day. Some space names were showing breakout failures, while the ones still putting in inside bars likely had higher relative strength. His worst case was 635, both the 50% from the latest pivot low to the high and a backtest of the QQQs breakout, just under 10% lower. He'd find that healthy and normal, though uncomfortable. If the correction plays out through time instead of price, he expected it to hold about 650–655, the 0.38, maybe chopping through summer before resolving toward fall. Ideally price holds the 0.38 at about 654 and then spikes into the 630s near the end as a spring. Momo and breakout traders need price to cool so the 10 and 20 can catch up and form the next pivot. He said you didn't want a green Monday after last week's big bar. You wanted a gap down and a weak Tuesday morning that gets bought.
On oil, he still thinks the USO goes higher, possibly toward 200 before it runs into trouble. Change in alternative energy only comes with pain, so he sees higher prices as the pain trade and expects "higher for longer," not a return to $70 soon. The XLE looked great on the weekly, just consolidating a breakout from a three-to-four-year base. XOM had a potential double bottom that confirms through 155, and he'd go after XOM or OXY if he got back into energy. He was bummed NXT didn't hold its breakout and took it off completely, but First Solar and NXT were holding where they needed to: FSLR with an inside candle on the 200-day and last Thursday's pivot, NXT wicking off the 20-day. If Ben's 219 weekly close failed on FSLR, he'd be out too, or at 214–215 if you're being lenient. "Pay attention to where the RS is."
On Datadog, which ran from about 143 before earnings to 195, he said buying there would be FOMO, not momo. The momo trade plays the May 7 pivot high and low, with an entry on a close above 199. If it falls back into that candle's range, he'd play it against 180 or a reclaim of 180. The post-earnings drift is the playbook, and it's hard to play because you're waiting for the 10 and 20 to catch up. He'd rather look at Datadog than NET, which got smoked and looked set to follow through lower. On NET's weekly Batman-ears, Microsoft-looking chart, maybe you get another shot near 170, while 164, roughly the 50% from the stage-one breakout, is the line in the sand. He likes CrowdStrike: after the 2024 outage shakedown got bought up so fast, he figured "expensive stays expensive." It's hard to size, but he's done well trading it small. On Hims, if you're in love with it, about 23.70–23.75 is what you want to hold and a spot to leg in, near the low of the high-volume April 16 candle. He said Rocket Lab's relative strength was his takeaway from ASTS's disappointment, and he wouldn't be surprised to see it double from here. On IREN, he'd throw on a starter against the 20-day with a line in the sand at 48. The channel breakout was 51.50, with a pivot around 47. His final word: do very little today, see whether the market closes heavy or lifts, "either way, it's a bull market."
Ben's setups, levels and trades
Ben said the pullback he'd been talking about might be happening. The market had come a long way fast, and OPEX week always brings games, so some consolidation has to happen somewhere. The hard part for bears is knowing where to strike: they need follow-through below the day's low, not a tag of 700 that bulls buy back up. He asked whether the QQQs could pull back to about 690 or the 9- and 10-day. He also floated the nine-week, about 6.3% lower, as pearl-clutching territory after months of the indexes going nowhere. He's not bearish, just expecting some mean reversion, and he hadn't bought anything in about four weeks. "There has to be balance in the force." It's tough to be short a market that went nearly vertical for four or five weeks, because as a short "you're just out there drawing with sticks until you go broke," which is why he rarely shorts. He also suggested following last week's low for the next several weeks, not just this one. He noted it was "Taco Tuesday," and after-hours proclamations cut both ways.
He'd flagged a weekly close below 219 as bad for FSLR. On Datadog, he pointed out the jump from about 143 to 195 on earnings. He was the Hims hater of the three and had told Joey Rockets to stay away the day before. On Hims's down day after a guidance raise, he said he draws channels as timing channels too, and the intersection of the pivot and the channel lands around July. If it's not above that or heading there by then, "bad bad no good." He'd been watching ASTS since they were in New York the week before but waited for earnings, and the reaction was poor. He'd want it to hold about 67–68, but said there's very little comparison with Rocket Lab and its igniting bar. If you bought ASTS in the single digits, congratulations, but starting a position there is hard to justify.
On IREN, he noted it's a Jensen buy. Jensen was in CoreWeave from the 80s, and Ben recalled GP calling the 66–67 area. His theme since Oktoberfest has been that Jensen "is buying the living hell out of this market." He called him the greatest allocator of capital in the last 35 years, better than Bezos. That's not a reason to buy everything he buys, but you can't ignore it. He closed by telling GP to stop with the 1999 comparisons. There are similarities, but today's leaders are cash-rich and not as expensive as in 1999, and rotations and cycles move faster now. Go Spurs go.
GP's setups, levels and trades
GP called the day a warning shot. Warning shots usually bring a trend-down day, then bulls try to push back toward the highs and get rejected again. In OPEX week, a pullback was always likely. What worried him was missing rotation. In a healthy bull, the laggards find relative strength. Instead, crypto got one good day and went right back to the bunker. Bitcoin wasn't bad, but COIN was down about 5.5%, Circle 5% and MicroStrategy 7%. He expected AMD, Intel and chips to come in after a generational run, but only Meta really showed rotation, since Apple is always green on big red days. If the market stays hot, about 2% is usually all you get before another leg, so this could be a one-day wonder. He had no hedges on yet. He trimmed and took a lot of profits the day before, "obviously not enough." If the Clarity Act doesn't pass that week, he said, the crypto names get slaughtered. The heavy weights, like Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Nvidia (a laggard among chips), would need to find footing for the market to keep pushing.
The QQQs were testing Friday's breakout, with a low of 699.50, so a potential island reversal was in play. A close under it might get him to add hedges at the end of the day, but he wasn't convinced yet. The selling was straight down with no bull-bear battle, which oddly gave him hope it was options positioning. He didn't want to see 637 again, the prior all-time high they'd double-topped from. A close below last week's low of 668.90 would be a bearish engulfer and set up much lower. Your caution flag should have gone up on Friday and Monday. The crypto weakness surprised him most, because charts like SUI, Solana and ICP looked fantastic. MicroStrategy usually leads Bitcoin at three to three and a half times the move, and Bitcoin was right at its 200-day. Tesla's early weakness surprised him too, though it sat where Elon bought in September 2025. Unity had been green and Netflix was up almost 4%, while Palantir, Oracle and HOOD were down. On velocity, he said a 637 test by Friday would be more bullish than one two weeks later. You want sharp drops after sharp rallies, not a slow grind of profit-taking. Akamai showed it: a destruction candle shook everyone out, then reversed. Dell and ARM were coming in hard, ARM about 20%. Until 12:29, it was a downtrending day where every line he'd drawn got hit and reversed lower, so "if you're fighting to buy calls here, you're on the wrong side for the day."
He's long metals and short oil. Oil "refuses to break," so he's scalping 50 cents to $1.50 at a time, shorting the ranges and covering at the bottom, hoping to be short when it finally breaks down. Oil has made lower highs since the war started, and to him lower highs is a downtrend even without new lows. Almost every long-term consolidation breakout fails the first time. Micron took out its dot-com highs near 150, dropped to 67 and is now above 700. Tesla did the same in 2018–19, and Akamai was doing it now, so the XLE could too. With about 20% of global capacity shut, oil still can't push to the 2022 Ukraine highs, so he sees a multi-year downtrend until that high breaks, plus a daily downtrend. USO had been stronger than light sweet crude.
He has zero desire to play China names: "Without my edge, I'm farting in the wind." CrowdStrike gives him no technical edge, since big-volume shakedowns that should go lower keep going higher, so it's been on his no-trade list for years. He fights Tesla every day and doesn't need more battles. On Rubrik, he passed. The weekly has no ignition accumulation bar, and it could bounce to about 90 to form a right shoulder and then die. He called it process versus results: buyers stepped in with volume, but price kept falling. PayPal, XYZ, Teladoc and Zoom are examples of where significant buyers haven't stepped in, and Zoom had already failed at the top of its base. He wasn't a buyer at 93 or of much else beyond quick trades until he gets more data. Crypto kept getting murdered as they talked: COIN was back to 200 and MicroStrategy down 8%. "Get your guard up."
Hims is in "a perpetual penalty box." It was holding its 2021 highs pivot, but earnings-day volume was lighter than the day before. He expected disappointed buyers to flush quickly, and he warned it could go back to 13. On ASTS, he said the earnings were trashy and he thinks it's going lower, much like AVAV, which bounced at the 200-day and then got smoked. He was in ASTS when it reclaimed the 50-week and 200 at 67 the prior week and got out when it failed the daily 200 that day. His "WTF moment": a $27–28 billion market cap on $14.7 million in quarterly sales. Rocket Lab is the leader, barely down that day, and the play all three agreed on. He also wants no part of zero-revenue names like OKLO. On IREN, he pointed to the February weekly candle, the biggest sell candle, which opened at 52.35 with a high of 55.72. If it stays in that range, it goes higher, and below it, lower, so above 50 is probably the right place to be. Jensen being in CoreWeave didn't stop a 40% haircut, so "doesn't mean Jensen is right short term." If the market really is 1999, he added, the QQQs go to nearly 1,200 by the end of August, and no one is ready for that.
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