Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:29 Welcome to Market Hours: New Name, Same Crew
01:59 Week 11 in the Range & Faster Boom-Bust Cycles
03:33 GP: Weak Into July OPEX & the Pair Trade Unwinding
08:24 Multi-Year Pivots & Sloppy Selling ($META, $ORCL)
11:02 Nick's $IGV Weekly: Tights & the Awesome Oscillator
18:24 $IBM's 25% Washout & GP's Calls
22:02 $DELL Relative Strength Above 469
27:28 The SPX Range: 7250–7650 & Cookie's Golden Ratio
33:18 QQQs Base Length, 637 & the 7741 Extension
39:02 $HIMS, $TAN & Golden Crosses
42:40 Ben Trades $GOOGL for $AMZN & $MSFT; $ISRG
47:57 Bitcoin, $COIN & $MSTR: Apathy and Liquidity
56:54 Final Words
Market Hours #187 went out live on Tuesday, July 14. It was the first show under the new name, Market Hours, with the same crew of Ben, Nick and GP. Nick said they were in week 11 of the range. GP saw July OPEX arriving on weakness for the first time in a long time and the pair trade starting to come apart, though he still called the price action "pretty garbage." From there they covered IBM's 25% washout, Dell's relative strength, where the SPX range sits, golden crosses in HIMS, TAN and Wayfair, and Bitcoin's long base, before announcing Jeff McDowell as the next day's guest.
Nick's setups, levels and trades
Nick opened with the faster boom-and-bust cycles they'd talked about before. Space was the obvious example: a hot sector goes into a sideways market for weeks or months and the hot names "literally seem to kind of round trip." He said the answer is to keep layering those observations into your trading and stacking good decisions.
He shared his weekly IGV chart, crediting Harrison for the oscillator idea. Price broke into what he thought was the four- or five-year moving average, put in a four-week tight, spiked the low but got the close back up, then failed to hold. On the awesome oscillator, price made a new low but the indicator didn't, and volume wasn't there to push it lower. Price then put in another three-week tight near the 200-week, which was around 84. A bear could read the neutral oscillator as oversold readings fully worked off, with room to roll over. He thought the clues leaned bullish: the floor held, they tried to take it out and price reclaimed a prior breakout level, and an ABCD leg up would point to a measured move back toward the highs. Asked why he switched to bars, he said he uses them only on the weekly chart, as high-low-close, because they make three-week tights and big flat bases stand out and show exactly where the close is. On the daily and monthly he prefers candles.
On the SPX, he and Ben called the range roughly 7250 to 7650. He circled back to Cookie's golden-ratio idea on the QQQs: Cookie's call was wrong on direction and timing but "pretty much spot on" on the inflection points, so the way to use it is to take the idea and make it your own. With short-term bases typically lasting 8–12 weeks, he expected a breakout within a week or two. If it didn't come, he'd lean toward them shaking the tree and cracking it lower before it ripped. On a dip, he'd stack Fibs from the reclaim of the high so he's picking his spots, not just buying because something's on sale.
On Intuitive Surgical, he flagged 360–370, the prior big range highs. Lose that and it's in no man's land inside a roughly 200–350 range. That doesn't mean it has to go to 200, though he'd assume it would in a 2022- or 2008-style correction. "I don't know what's going to happen next, and I'm an optimist." On Bitcoin, using the same oscillator on the daily, he pointed out that price undercut the February 26 capitulation low but the indicator didn't make a new low and volume didn't come in, leaving price in an air pocket between about 65 and 70 (thousand). COIN looked similar, with a cleaner double bottom inside a 140–210 range. You could risk the higher low around 152, or take very small size and risk about 135, then let it reclaim a flattening 50-day. He wouldn't add on strength into 210; above 220–230 it's back in a range up toward about 430. His final word: it's summer, so manage risk, trade smaller and protect your mental capital so you don't chop yourself up and miss the move in either direction.
Ben's setups, levels and trades
Ben opened the new era: "new name, new brand, Market Hours," same guys. He asked Nick about the bars-versus-candles switch. He said he'd fixed his SMA/EMA indicator mix-up and had "another 50-day kiss" the day before, which he called a clearly defined, easy trade that was still green. He also tracked IBM's volume live, at about 47 million shares on the day, and couldn't find anything comparable going back to the '90s.
He traded out of his Google and added more Amazon and Microsoft. Microsoft "of course is a dog," but he likes it down there, and he likes Amazon more, calling it a make-or-break moment with a setup to go higher faster than Google. He greatly reduced Intuitive Surgical after its breakout attempt fell back. He took off his taxable positions and kept only a small Roth position ahead of Thursday's earnings, and said he'd probably just cut his $400 shares rather than hold them. He's always looking for a new dumpster to dive into and flagged Photronics.
On liquidity, he said it isn't just SpaceX and the IPOs. SK Hynix coming online also pulled money out of DRAM and semis, and every new offering needs money rotated out of something else. He thanked everyone for watching the first episode of Market Hours, with audio streams and more assets coming. His final word, from a TikTok he'd posted: "Nobody's coming to save you." The boats are burned, so get out and get yours.
GP's setups, levels and trades
GP said July OPEX usually brings strength into it and chop afterward, but this year it was weakness into OPEX, which could mean chop into earnings and the opposite after. He was finally seeing what he wanted: a move away from the pair trade of long Micron, Dell and SanDisk against short mega caps. IBM's news, he said, showed it selling software to buy infrastructure. Gap-downs in software were now getting bought, including ServiceNow, Microsoft and Palantir. He tied the dispersion trade to thin summer liquidity and the IPO supply Ben talks about. He found it absurd that the U.S. market had been trading tick-for-tick with the Korean index, which is 60% Samsung and SK Hynix, after months of trading against every uptick in oil. It was nice, he said, to see Nvidia finally leading.
Microsoft, Netflix, Bitcoin, IGV and Oracle were all sitting at multi-year pivots, and he said the selling underneath had gotten "sloppy." When sellers stop worrying about any bull case, that's when short squeezes and big moves happen. His example was Meta selling off 30 points the previous Thursday on a $1.4 trillion lawsuit, about the size of its whole market cap. On IBM, he played options his usual buy-and-roll way, buying around $1.40 and selling at 14–15, so only the small rolled portion was hurt. He called the 25% drop a washout and added 250 calls expiring that week because he expected a hard bounce. He'd also bought Enphase the day before.
His focus was Dell. SanDisk went from 2,400 to 1,500, Micron from 1,300 to the 800s, and Western Digital and ARM were smoked, while Dell "just doesn't care." That, he said, is the definition of relative strength. He compared it to Nvidia consolidating after its May 2023 earnings and to Micron's path before its run from about 340 to 1,200–1,300. He holds it as straight equity, no options. A double top could just mean a range, but "above 469, that baby's gone" (the all-time high was 469.47). HPE, Cisco and Akamai were also setting up above their dot-com highs. He couldn't find a leveraged short ETF on Dell to hedge, only the long DLLL.
On the indexes, he said the SPX had been about 70 points from its all-time high for weeks, with a gap-down Monday and a dump on Turnaround Tuesday. If you broke out of a stage-one base, he said, dips in stage two should be bought. But after 8–10 weeks of consolidation, a retest of 637–640 on the QQQs would be a bad sign and he'd lighten up, especially with the SPX nearing his 7741 extension from 2023. He thinks big funds now reposition every quarter or two, which explains the three- to six-month consolidations.
He was never out of HIMS. With a cost basis under 20, he used the dip to 15–16 to add. "Founder-led, not expensive" are two of his pearls, and both lead to volatility. Another host who is also long wants it to reclaim 40–41 to get back into a 40–70 range, and a chart on screen showed a possible dip toward 31 and a weekly close needed above the 50-week near 34.30. TAN had the same weakness into a weekly golden cross, and Wayfair had tagged the 200-week, bounced and tagged the 50-week. He also pointed to Dave. On crypto, he said MicroStrategy has had the most buying volume since the February flush, and Bitcoin "is doing everything you expect it to do except go higher." He sees crypto as apathy, starved of liquidity by AI and IPOs. If Microsoft slowed its capex, the market might get hit but crypto would behave better. His final word: July brings birthdays and some tragedies in his family, so keep balance, don't let the trash make you feel worthless, and if you're unhappy with something, do something about it.
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This is not financial advice. Market Hours is for education and entertainment only. Always do your own research.
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