Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:39 The Pullback: 670, 640 & the 20-Day on the QQQs
05:23 Bitcoin, Zcash & Weakness Into the Golden Cross
08:43 The Dispersion Trade & $ARM's Three-Week Tight
10:20 Oil vs. the Indices: Who's Really Extended?
17:52 FinTwit, P&L Screenshots & Being Right
19:30 Ben's $NOW, $CRWV & $IREN
25:26 GP: $CRWV Into the Golden Cross, $IREN Risk
33:04 13Fs: Hedge Funds Rotating at Hyper Speed
35:45 T1 Energy, SPACs & Direct Listings
42:40 $VRT & Why High-Flyers Get Air Pockets
45:23 $RIVN Below 13 & BYD
49:44 XLE, $XBI & $IBB: Biotech's Weekly Flag
53:54 Space, $SATS & Expansion Candles
57:40 $ALAB & $OSCR's Base
1:01:25 Final Words
Market Hours #176 went out live on Tuesday, May 19, with Ben, Nick and GP, on a down day as the market gave back some of its run. They debated how deep the QQQs pullback could go, then GP challenged anyone who calls the indices extended without saying the same about oil. Ben laid out why he's adding IREN next to CoreWeave, and the crew argued about SPACs, read the latest 13Fs, broke down Rivian below 13 and made the case for biotech, space and Oscar Health.
Nick's setups, levels and trades
Nick said he's watching his individual names more than the QQQs, because if they roll over and trail stops trigger, he gets stopped regardless. All the QQQs' moving averages were trending, price was under the 10-day but above the 20, and it was well extended from the 50 and 200. With his fibs drawn, his worst case where he still stays bullish is above 640, the 0.5 retracement and a retest of the breakout. He didn't lean that way yet. He'd need the 20-day taken out first, which Ben put at 685, about 2% away. On oil, he pushed back on GP. Structurally, crude was already consolidating while extended from its 200-day, whereas the QQQs had just come out of consolidation. The bullish oil case is a macro thesis more than a technical one, and the QQQs were only about 14% above their 200-day, a fraction of crude's extension. He said FinTwit gets to him most with the P&L screenshots and the perpetual need to be right.
He got stopped out of CoreWeave near the open, when the prior day's low didn't hold, but re-entered a starter because he still likes the setup. He was watching a descending channel and would take it at 85–88, around a retest where the channel's top line sat near 85–86. He also liked Ben's IREN right where it was. It sat on the 0.5 retrace and on both the 50- and 200-day, with a volume floor in the mid-40s, so he thought it wasn't a bad spot that day. On the larger time frame, he saw a massive flagpole from about 5 to 70 followed by a descending channel into the 200-day. He called it a good lesson in 200-day behavior: price rarely taps and goes, and it chops around the average. A long-term holder probably got stopped when it lost the 200-day, but the April 13 igniting bar through the 200 and 50 was a sweet re-entry. He noted that whatever he says about IREN on StockTwits, he gets hate from both directions. For active traders, "a ticker is a ticker." What matters is whether a position behaves in a way you can trade, respecting pivots or moving averages, not erratically.
On Vertiv, he's in a runner and has kept peeling out. He admitted he traded it poorly and should have been building into it as much as he sold. To him, the last quality entry was the range-base breakout in the 190s. Entries in the 230–275 range were harder to swing. He said pullbacks like this should be expected in high-flying, high-priced names: when money rotates away, the air gets sucked out, since retail isn't supporting a $325 stock. Vistra was also on his radar. Before the show, he'd noticed the XLE breaking out, XBI and IBB bottoming toward the low end of their ranges, weak mags, strength in semis and crypto still dead money. On the weekly, XBI and IBB sat on the .382 retrace of their big base breakouts and on the 40-week (200-day), and he thought they looked really good. He uses MBG, Dio and others in their circle as his "R&D department," overlaying their biotech due diligence with his technical setups. He also wanted to get a CMT on StockTwits who'd been all over OSCR on the pod. On Oscar at about 24.50, he thought you could enter there and keep buying down to about 22–23, with a stop under 20.
Ben's setups, levels and trades
Ben opened by asking whether this was the pullback they'd been waiting for. He'd said last week the QQQs could come back to about 670, the .382 retrace. They were about 3% off the prior week's highs, so 670 was another 3.5% lower, with the nine-week sitting just below. He'd call that a healthy, meaningful pullback. On oil, he said USO was even more extended than crude futures, roughly 73% from its 200-day against about 45% for crude. But overbought can stay overbought, and it's hard to pick the top tick, so he called it "not if but when."
He used ServiceNow as an example that being bored isn't a reason to exit a trade. Two weeks earlier in New York, he'd felt right on it without getting paid. He kept lowering his cost to about $104, and it was around 102 on the day. "What a difference two weeks makes," he said, and seeing the president buy $1–5 million of his largest position didn't hurt. He hadn't lightened up yet, but expected to within the next 20 points, and said trading around the position has helped. He still loves CoreWeave for the reasons he gave a month and a half earlier, plus Nvidia buying another $1.78 billion of common stock and another fund adding more. He's also adding IREN. He admitted he hasn't traded energy well, but he called Jensen Huang the "greatest allocator of capital in our time," and Jensen kept buying both. A $5.5 trillion company's backing works for him, and his AI-heavy portfolio needs something to power it. His first IREN alert was a touch of the 200-day, then about 42 on an undercut. He sets tranches above and below so he can buy either way. He's a longer-term investor, isn't buying blindly because of Jensen, and likes the flag.
On SPACs, he argued you can't paint everything with a broad brush: SoFi looked great until recently and was a SPAC, and Spotify was a direct listing that lagged for years before working. He said AMD traded terribly too, but that didn't stop him from going "full tilt" in the 40s and 50s. A chart's behavior and the thesis aren't the same thing. A viewer, Gotham Shah, nominated VRT as the best SPAC. On Rivian, he'd warned people for months, and it was below 13 after hitting the low 12s he called that weekend. He thinks the product and the stock have completely diverged, and he's glad he's out, though he may trade it again. He doesn't like the long wicks, and the red volume bars outnumber and outsize the green, so he doesn't see accumulation. The bigger issue to him is BYD. It can't sell in the U.S., but cars can come in from Mexico and soon Canada, and he thinks it will "eat all car manufacturers in the United States' lunch." He still thinks Tesla gets picked up by SpaceX eventually.
On space, the more ASTS holds between 74 and 84, the more he likes it. Rocket Lab was pulling back but still the clear leader, and a viewer, John, also liked Planet Labs. He credited GP with calling the big SATS move. On Oscar, a huge base, he'd posted it on Twitter at about 20 a couple of weeks earlier. He noted that AMD went from 163 to 220 nearly overnight while bears kept fighting the tape. To close, he reminded viewers to vote if their primary was that day, as his was, and to get an annual checkup. He'd just had his and everything was great. "Buy them tight and sell them loose."
GP's setups, levels and trades
GP said the Bitcoin chart he posted was about footprints. Institutional names often get nasty, unexpected weakness right before a golden cross, and Bitcoin had sold the Clarity Act rumor and then the news, five straight red days from the 200 SMA back into the 50. It could undercut, but that low-volume pullback into a golden cross is the setup you want. Zcash was the example: he started buying in the 490–510 range, and it led right out of the gate after weakness into its daily golden cross. Thanks went to John Morgan for flagging it. The bigger the pullback on the weekly, the better the setup, and buying against the 50 means minimal risk for maximum reward. The same setup was forming in Microsoft and Meta, whose weakness kept bothering him. Since the March 30 bottom, the dispersion trade (buy what's going nuts, short what's under the 200 SMA) had worked like clockwork. ARM was the textbook CAN SLIM setup: a two-year base, a big breakout, then three weeks tight as institutions accumulated. The line in the sand was around 206–207 by his read, or 204–205 by the others'. He noted the Dow still hadn't hit an all-time high in three to four months.
His main question for technical traders was why they call the QQQs and SPY extended but not oil. Crude was up over 100% year to date, its monthly RSI was in the low 80s, and with the 200 SMA at about 71, it was 50-something percent above it. Yet it kept making lower highs, and December and January futures traded at about a 20% discount. He called it recency bias: people who expected markets to crash in January now want oil to break out and stocks to fall. "If you're going to be true to the conversation, be true on both sides." Last Tuesday's warning shot had held so far, he said, and the market had been weak since. He said he wants to lead people to where the alpha is and see everyone do better.
On CoreWeave, he pointed to the 50 and 200 heading into a golden cross, his favorite setup. He'd flagged 97 as his point. He was already in from Ben's call at 78, so he wasn't adding. On IREN, he was done: it went from 57–58 the week before to about 47, a 25% drop in three days, and he can't manage risk on that. He didn't know the business well enough to hold it long term. Unlike AMD, where the business is obvious, IREN had done an offering he believed was about a third of its market cap, so he couldn't judge support. Jensen was in CoreWeave too, and it still fell to the 60s. On the 13Fs, his takeaway was that funds moving billions now rotate in and out by the quarter: one fund swapping Google for Microsoft, and Druckenmiller out of Google and into Nvidia. They used to build positions over two quarters of sideways chop before a name took off. Now "they're chasing hot money just like we are. They just have a lot more of it," which means more volatility. T1 Energy looked like a SPAC to him, and "that's a SPAC. I'm out." He said SPAC financials never passed the IPO roadshow, and finding a diamond in that bundle is harder than finding one among regular stocks. Still, Rocket Lab is a SPAC and he's in it. He pointed out that Tesla never holds SMAs cleanly, and that AMD gave back 70 points with the market only off about 2% while Nvidia couldn't get out of its own way.
On Rivian, he said the low-volume selling wasn't distribution or accumulation. The chart is in balance, a stage-one base, and "management needs to get its act together." A base only means support and resistance, not that a stock is ready to go. He disagreed with Ben on BYD, doubting it could keep its pricing in the States. On XBI, he'd posted the weekly flag and wanted this week's backtest to turn into a green candle and rip to the highs, since biotech trades at one to two times book and isn't priced for growth. He admitted he hesitated to chase SATS, which ran about 108% in a week. When a long base finally expands on heavy volume, he said, the first thought shouldn't be how to short it but where to buy: "if this market in 2026 hasn't taught you that buying higher goes higher," nothing will. AMD took out 267 and ran to 460 without a flinch while shorts got obliterated. On Oscar, he called it the Rivian chart compressed: every trip to the top of the range brought a 50–60% drawdown and a flush from 24 to 10, the reaccumulation spring setup. "This is why I love charts," he said, because they reflect greed and fear. His final word: appreciate what you have, and use these conversations to build a foundation, four years into doing the show.
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