Chapters
00:00 Intro
02:37 Nick's Starters: Garmin, Airbnb & $GH
04:42 Memory's Island, $LITE & a $META Short Setup
07:46 GP: No Edge & a Liquidity Problem
13:30 $MSTR & Bitcoin: Death or Rebirth?
20:47 From Loved to Unloved: Garmin & $DOCU
27:28 Ben: Is the Market Pricing In Confusion?
29:31 MedTech, ARKG, $HIMS & Oscar
34:09 SpaceX's $75B Drain & $TEM
40:49 GP: Protect Mode, SPY Puts & $MSFT's Worst Month
50:43 Nick: QQQs 690 and the 630–640 Spring
54:19 $MU's Big Call Buyer & $HOOD
1:04:29 Indexing vs. the Mags & the New Dow
1:08:11 Final Words
Market Hours #182 went out live on Wednesday, June 24, with Ben, Nick and GP. The SPY was barely red, but most of what people owned was getting hit: Nvidia was back under 200, Microsoft was having its worst month in decades, and Rocket Lab had gone from 151 to 85. GP said he had no edge and was in protect mode. Nick argued there were still tactical trades in both directions, and Ben wondered whether the market was pricing in confusion. In between, they covered Bitcoin's slide, the med-tech rotation, a giant Micron call buyer and the latest Dow shuffle.
Nick's setups, levels and trades
Nick had been moving pieces around and putting on starters. He "got a little lucky" with Affirm, liked Garmin's wide-range bar through the 50-day for a trade back toward the highs, and flagged Airbnb's big IPO base, which kept showing up on his dollar-gainers list. GH looked "too pretty," high and tight. Memory might have started to top if its island held, so he floated an MU or SanDisk short through SNDQ above the prior day's high, risking to about 265 or into the gap. He wasn't calling the ultimate top. He also caught his own recency bias: looking at LITE at $850, he thought it could double, "and what makes me think this thing could double from here? Literally nothing." Amazon ripped off the 200-day, but Nvidia, Tesla and Meta were back on their lows. Short-term, he saw a Meta short with a CD leg toward about 520, after a breakout failure around 640. His advice for chop: reduce size even if you don't widen the stop.
On Bitcoin, he said it was "a gorgeous trend, just trending the wrong damn way." He thinks it's probably headed back toward 30,000. It was back under 65–70, though he expected a bounce in the 40s or near 50. His template was the QQQs in 2022: stair-step down, stop making new lows, go sideways, and build out a big base, possibly breaking out in the second half of 2027. DocuSign was trading inside its May 5 high-volume candle. Stocks rarely tap and go off the 50-day, so when one does, it signals strength. He'd hold rather than add, and at 130 he'd look for an entry or an undercut-and-rally. Reclaiming and holding 154 would be a good look. For active traders, his rule was to keep a focus list of about 25 names with alerts at the prior day's high and low. Don't care about direction, just that there is one.
He said med tech keeps looking better. GH broke out from 98, and a conservative CD leg puts it around 165. ARKG was coming out of a massive stage-one base alongside IBB and XBI breaking to highs, which he compared to XLE taking out its highs. He credited MBG and others on StockTwits for catalyst work on individual drug names. HIMS was riding the 10-day into the 200-day and its November pivot. Reclaiming and holding 32–33 points back to the 50s–60s. Oscar had a Wyckoff spring near 11, and a three-week tight would make it even better. On Tempus, he'd consider a starter if the wide-range bar closed, with a stop under the day's low or 46. The double bottom confirms through 57–58, and he'd size to add at 42–43, though the flat 200-day "can act like a real ankle weight." First Solar had a short-term breakout failure and could revert to the low end of the range, near 100. He sold all of HOOD under the day's low, re-entered against the 10-day, got stopped again and called it.
He pushed back on GP: there's opportunity in both directions. An optimist could see a higher low and a 50-day retest on the QQQs, with room down to about 690. If 690–700 goes, he'd expect a retest of the 630–640 breakout that acts as a spring, not another 2022. "This isn't a market you want to sleep on," and he'd welcome the chance to practice short selling. His final word: protect your mental capital, and if you crushed this last run, protect those gains too.
Ben's setups, levels and trades
Ben said everything that was a darling — crypto, space, the memory trade — was "being taken to the woodshed," and the rotation was from loved to unloved names like Garmin. On Bitcoin, it was revisiting the 59.6 area from a few weeks earlier, when the lows were 59.4 and 59.073 (thousand), and a bull wouldn't want a new low. He floated a theory: the market might be pricing in confusion. Inflation was back up, the new Fed chair had a hawkish history, the Fed had floated a possible hike but offered no forward guidance, oil didn't know which way to go and the dollar was up. "No one knows what the hell is going on."
He pointed to Viking, up 6.5%, as rotation, and said SpaceX had pulled about $75 billion out of the market in its first eight sessions, which was likely part of the drag. He likes Tempus above about 50. On HOOD, the weekly wasn't a pure bearish engulfing candle, and he'd still play it against the new 93–94 pivot. He noted Wendy's was up 29% as a Wall Street Bets play. He doesn't trade for living expenses, so his perspective is different. He also checked that the last time Microsoft had a month like this was December 2000. His final word: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Keep it even-keel.
GP's setups, levels and trades
GP's verdict was "just pick a direction" and "no edge." He was in SPX calls, and when the SPX jumped 10 or 11 points his calls went down. He got stopped out of ARM but held the winner. He described a liquidity problem, with stocks dropping three points on no news. The names that weren't working, like Meta, Microsoft, Tesla and Nvidia, kept not working, and Corning was in a bear market before even reporting. Things had changed since the FOMC. Oil was under 70, yet the market couldn't rally, while it had run to highs with oil over 100. He sold DocuSign shares he'd bought around 160 when they started wicking, getting out at 173–174. He was hoping for a pullback to about 139, the 9- or 20-week.
He said you should be in protect mode. Unless mega caps stop selling, the market can't get free: TAN broke out and died, and Micron has never set the market free on earnings. The SPY gapped up on news, much like the October China deal, and failed the gap right away, which Nick treats as a tell. He listed the damage: Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft and Tesla down about 1–2%, Micron down 3%, ARM down 4.7%, CoreWeave back under 100. "There aren't enough biotechs on the planet to save the SPY if it continues to go down." He held SPY puts, made a Meta short off 545 puts bought for Friday, and noted Tesla broke its monthly low. Microsoft was down about 22% on the month on a $3 trillion company, under its 200-day since last year, and its quarterly looked like 2000. If that repeats, "we're going to be in another 10 years sideways market." He was raising cash and waiting for a trending market.
He did note that someone had bought more than 8,000 Micron 1055 calls at about $53–55 ahead of earnings, roughly a $40 million position, and the stock reacted. When price reacts to flow, he reads that as real buying. IBM was holding its island and showing relative strength, Apple was the usual safety trade, and Google was replacing Verizon in the Dow, which he said is where stocks go to die. He'd watch Verizon now that it's untied from the index and sitting in a 30-year base. Food stocks, Cisco, DRI and Dutch Bros looked good, but "if the market turns down, these rotations aren't going to matter." He passed along a point from Hal on StockNotes: Microsoft was back where it was in 2023, while the QQQs were up almost 100%, so indexing looks better if you're not constantly rotating into the hot names. His final word: "Protect yourself before they wreck you."
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