Chapters
00:00 Intro
03:42 SPX Tags 7741 (161.8% from the COVID Lows)
07:16 Has Memory Topped? $MU, $SNDK & Optics
15:29 Q2 Rotation: "Memory Is an Employee"
19:37 $NVDA Circular Financing & Jensen
24:18 Reaccumulation and the 2020 vs. 2022 Analogs
28:26 What If SPX Fails 7741?
30:59 Silver: Breakout-Retest Setup
36:13 SPX 10,368: The 261.8% Extension
39:46 2021 Highs: $TSLA, $MSFT, $NFLX & $META's Gap
43:21 Chat Tickers, Larry Fink & AI Narratives
48:59 AI: Power Back to the People
1:00:49 Nick's Long-Term Pick: $EEM
1:02:26 Wrap-Up
Market Hours #200 went out live on Tuesday, August 11, with Nick, Ben and GP — though storms knocked Ben's power and internet in and out, so it turned into mostly a Nick-and-GP hour. The starting point was GP's long-standing SPX target of 7741, the 161.8% extension from the COVID lows, which had finally been hit. From there it was memory versus mega caps, Nvidia's "circular financing," silver's breakout-retest, the next SPX extension at 10,368, and a long conversation about what AI means beyond the next six months.
Nick's setups, levels and trades
Nick took GP's 7741 point as a reason to expect a pause: when a target or measured move completes, he said, you should anticipate some kind of pause, and even going sideways is a change in character. If the SPX or the QQQs fail here, he doesn't think they just test the low end of the range — he thinks they undercut it and come back toward the 200-day, with the QQQs or the Nasdaq possibly putting in a double bottom or undercutting before ripping out. The more optimistic read: the SPY has already broken out, so it could simply pull back and retest the breakout while the QQQs flag. He's still in the bullish camp and sees the QQQs and SPY as backfilling after a run; the trend hasn't changed on any timeframe above the daily.
On memory and optics, he agreed with GP on SanDisk and Micron. With COHR reporting the next day, his thinking was that optics could pull in and put in a higher low or a double bottom while the memory trade undercuts, or at least retests, the 200-day. SanDisk and Micron are trapped in the pocket between the 50-day and the 200-day, and it "really wouldn't look that bad" for them to drop the floor and chop out the other leg.
On the mega caps, he said the post-earnings action was pretty much exactly what he wanted to see: the Mag names are the true market leaders moving the QQQs, and watching them get smacked and bought back up within three days couldn't have played out much prettier. Microsoft, Google and Amazon all look phenomenal to him, and Meta was set up great on the day. His guess at the narrative as they break out: big-cap tech as "too big to fail."
On the long-term SPX picture, he's in alignment with GP that a push into 10,368 would have him shifting gears, more or less regardless of timing. Drawing out the move-higher, move-sideways legs going back a century (the golden-ratio work Cookie has talked about on the show), he leans closer to 15,000 as where the SPX tops before a sideways consolidation — but said he'll take it a week at a time.
He also shared a StockTwits flashback: reconnecting with Brian Steeler Trader from the old Young Guns Trading crew, and watching the silver bulls of that era get decimated in the decline before silver went sideways for the rest of the decade.
His closing idea was for long-term portfolios: if you already hold VOO, VOOG or the QQQs, he thinks $EEM would be a fantastic addition. His reasoning is that emerging markets start from a base level when it comes to new infrastructure, so they have the quickest route forward — and the monthly chart, like the big multi-decade bases they've discussed in silver and gold, looks amazing to him.
Ben's setups, levels and trades
Ben was in and out all hour. Storms were rolling through and his connection kept freezing, so he passed on sharing his screen and let Nick "keep driving this bus." He did jump in on the Nvidia $500 billion "circular financing" story from the chat, pointing out that Nvidia isn't doing it alone — it's working with several investment firms — and that whatever you call it, "at the same time, that's good business." His connection dropped before he could finish, and he didn't make it back before the end of the show.
GP's setups, levels and trades
GP's case on 7741: if you set a target in March 2023 and it hits in August 2026 and then fumbles around there, "maybe you should pay attention to it." He had the crowd pull up the SPX 5-minute chart over five days to show price tagging 7741 that morning, trying to bounce, breaking, and the level it had gapped over the week before. In his view a lot of charts look great — Microsoft included — but all of them look awful if this level doesn't hold. His own plan for the week was a possible inside week that retraces about 61% of last week while everyone calls for a bear, then "rip their faces off," with PPI, CPI and Jackson Hole on deck. He thinks this setup is very similar to what silver did before it went nuts and expects an expansive move out of it.
On memory, his stance hasn't changed since the end of Q2: "when June ended, so did that trade." Intel, Dell and, increasingly, AMD stand out of that crew, but with SanDisk and Micron he asked how you don't tag the 200-day — "there's a flush coming." His argument: the momentum traders who took Micron up are gone after that massive weekly earnings candle, and what's left is fundamental money that waits for value and doesn't chase. "If there is no demand, your supply does not matter." He pointed to Tesla going from 414 to 100 while EPS was still growing, because markets price about 18–24 months ahead. He doesn't think memory is done; he called it a reaccumulation cycle while the mega caps are pushed up, likely through the end of August, maybe September, before "everyone wakes up together" and the year finishes strong.
The rotation, as he described it, was memory pumped all the way through quarter one while the mega caps — Oracle, Microsoft and the rest — went straight down in quarter two. Then the calendar flipped and Microsoft had its biggest move off earnings ever. "Memory is not the boss. Memory is an employee. They get paid when Microsoft gets paid." If your thesis is short Microsoft to buy Micron, he warned, it eventually blows up. And for anyone calling him a permabull: it's a bull market, so bull charts get posted — look at Home Depot (in his screener last week), SharkNinja or Cheesecake Factory if you don't like AI.
On Nvidia's circular financing, he said doubting Jensen keeps getting people burned. Jensen has been at the forefront of every major expansion cycle for 35 years, is investing in thousands of companies and self-funding the build, and has not wavered. Microsoft and Amazon then confirmed on earnings that the CapEx is actually growing their earnings. Amazon, after six years of going nowhere, had "the move of a lifetime," and Microsoft had its biggest post-earnings move ever.
He rejected the dot-com analogs: the market isn't euphoric, things aren't trading at 100 times earnings, and calling Michael Burry "the Leopold" of this stretch, he said Burry's going to get his face ripped off. Tesla's run from 25 split-adjusted to 414 was an expansion cycle, and it never came back to 25.
On silver he called it "freaking gorgeous" — an Adam and Eve setup, or in layman's terms the breakout-retest. Things that break out of 15-, 20-, 30-year bases rarely make their last move on the first move out. Micron was his example: it broke past its dot-com highs well before its expansion, came all the way back to the 60s on a retest that undercut "by a mile," then went nuts once it reclaimed. If silver's retest holds, he said it can be an insane move higher. If it fails, you reassess.
Then the next target: 10,368.44, the 261.8% extension from the COVID lows. If the indices get there any time in the next six months, he'll be "shortening up," trimming a lot and buying protection. He doesn't see 261.8 as a point of despair but as a point of concern, and noted bull markets that go parabolic can overshoot. He reminded the chat that Tesla's real all-time high was 294–295 after S&P inclusion; 414 was the trap. Tesla, Microsoft and Netflix all just tagged their 2021 highs after five or six years sideways — "there might be a theme setting up here." On Meta, it was back in its earnings gap the same day it gapped down and filled it within three days, which he called as strong an indicator as you need from any stock.
The back half turned into a bigger-picture talk. GP said he doesn't watch financial TV because it brings on guests who support its narratives (the last host he rated was Mark Haines). In his view there are no losers in the AI race, and one of the most powerful results of the technology is returning power to people to control their own futures — building an app or an agentic trading model without raising $40 million. He argued the number of people getting rich has expanded every cycle, from the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts on, and that the squeezed middle class now has tools to take some control back.
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