Chapters
00:00 Intro
04:13 QQQs Back at May Levels
09:25 Apathy, OPEX & the Earnings Calendar
11:26 Jensen & Circular Financing
13:30 Gap-and-Fade Days; $META Clears the 200-Day
15:33 Crypto: Zcash Leads, Bitcoin's Range
24:12 Volatility Compression & Options Flow
27:23 Sizing a Sideways Market; $ORCL Into Earnings
31:30 Less Is More: Gold, $META & Moving Averages
35:36 What They're Trading: $NVDA, $AMD & SPY Levels
42:25 Midterm Seasonality, the 10-Year & CPI
50:44 $IBM, $SOFI & the Index-Removal Trade
55:21 Nick's Book, Gold Miners & Ben's $SNPS Exit
1:00:00 Closing Thoughts
Nick, Ben and GP were back together for Market Hours #205 on Wednesday, September 9, after more than a month off. Not much had changed: the QQQs were sitting two points below where they closed on May 14, and the market had been trapped inside the August 4 bar for 26 days. The theme of the hour was how to survive a sideways, "trash-ass market" — less is more, smaller size, wider stops — with stops along the way at Jensen and circular financing, crypto's volatility compression, Oracle into earnings, and the index-removal trade.
Nick's setups, levels and trades
Nick said plenty of people on StockTwits and X were calling for a retest of the July low or an October rug. He doesn't pay much attention to their reasons, and in his style he'd simply get trail-stopped out if it happens. With the midterms coming, he saw the real low-risk entry as the capitulation out of the Leopold liquidation, when the QQQs pushed back into the range; if you pressed anything after that, you probably ruined your cost basis and chopped yourself out. The only real moves lately, in his view, were the memory names popping out of a tight area and the SMH, which double-bottomed off the lows and is starting to put in a right shoulder. On the ES, the fifth touch inside a descending channel looked like it would break out but failed, and now it's retesting the 50-day.
On crypto, he thought Bitcoin is just digesting its rip from about 65K to the 75–80K area, with a three-week-tight on the weekly that's holding the top 20% or so of the move. It broke out of a wide, long descending channel. He'd wondered about a shake-out toward 69–71K first, but said it may just hold tight, and he'd thought some of the run was front-running Clarity Act news. A lot of alts — XRP for example — are breaking out of clean, symmetrical descending wedges on the weekly and going sideways. For the shorter-term move, he's focused on five: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash, Hype, and maybe XRP.
His sizing take is probably not the popular one. In a market like this he zooms out to the weekly and sizes risk off it — smaller positions with wider stops, often set using 2x the weekly ATR — because tightening your stop in a volatile market just gets you stopped out immediately. As long as your directional bias comes from the top down and matches the trend, that should keep you mostly on the long side. His read: day traders are doing well and zoomed-out traders are doing reasonably well, but short- to intermediate-term traders are struggling, because it's hard to size up while the indices are in a range.
On what's working for him, he's been on the photonics and memory trades (Micron and SanDisk) and had better luck with GLW than the others. LRCX looks better to him than KLAC, and AMD looks like it's taking the lead: it built a rounded top, then a symmetrical descending wedge right under the 50-day, broke out, and basically hit its measured move that day. He doesn't mind churning a bit while he works into positions, likes his cost in a lot of names on small size, and doesn't plan to let anything go from green to red; he thinks the real resolution comes after the midterms.
Part of him wants to take the contrarian view that the market actually looks pretty good. The QQQs broke out of one descending wedge, went sideways into another, and more or less failed at its trend line, but a few days sideways wouldn't look bad. On the SPY, it's still holding the 0.382 off the July low with the 50-day catching up; he put the 0.5 at 750 and the 0.618 at 748, and under 750 he'd shift gears toward needing a full reset and another flush. He credited John with getting him focused on the SMH, which he thinks looks like an inverse head and shoulders, and said the market tends to behave better when the SMH leads.
His current book: BE, Microsoft, SK Hynix, GLW, a small position in Nebius, Meta, SanDisk, SMTC and Dell. His eyes are mostly on Oracle and its weekly setup; he doesn't care what the report says, he just wants a positive reaction and a gap. He still thinks the photonics trade is there. On DOCN, the big level is 130, the reclaim of the high-volume candle low; it has failed there several times but only pulled back to around 100 as the 200-day caught up. He's also in AGI, and noted the miners John posted — FNV and NEM look nearly identical on the weekly, sitting in three-week-tights. On FNV, he put the base at about a 75-point range, which would measure to roughly 350 on a breakout. RGLD was on his list as well.
He closed with a note about staying kind online: when he feels attacked on StockTwits he's trying to resist biting back and is doing a lot more blocking and muting instead.
Ben's setups, levels and trades
Ben's message was to be nimble. With volatility compression across the board, the move will break one way or the other; you can be patient, but you also have to know when to cut. On Meta, he said it could hop the downtrend line that's been in place since last August, but he probably wouldn't be in full size. On Oracle going into the next day's earnings, he removed all his leverage, kept his long shares, and was happy to "take my 20% and just ride off and sit it out."
On Nvidia, he pointed out that two weeks earlier Jensen said they couldn't book all the orders they have, so he expected Oracle to say what the other hyperscalers have said — that they're increasing spend. If they don't, he thinks everyone has to take a pause. He bought Nvidia when it lost all of its moving averages because everybody hated it, then it moved after earnings; he called the last month two of the better weeks of his trading career, and said it's hard to paint this market with a broad brush. Like Nick, he's running several smaller positions so he has skin in the game while he figures out which to ratchet up.
He raised a chat topic from Z — the "buy the close, sell the open" stat on Micron versus buying the open and selling the close — and said he finds those comparisons interesting. Late in the show, answering Arun on Synopsys ($SNPS), he said he'd been trying to accumulate lower, got tired of the behavior, and sold once it lost its pop and his alert around 448 broke. He still likes the company long term but called it dead money for now: "If you're not buying, you're selling."
GP's setups, levels and trades
GP's view was that nothing is broken about the market: it's had two 10%-plus corrections, rolling corrections throughout, and either four months of massive distribution or just a trash-ass market — and he leaned to the latter. Apathetic markets rarely produce a big payday to the downside, he said, and this is the perfect setup for apathy: deep into earnings season, OPEX next week, Oracle and Adobe reporting the next day, Micron on September 30, then the banks in the second week of October. That could drag the range out another six weeks or so, though he said Oracle could set the tech trade on fire.
On Jensen, he said the people fading him keep getting burned, and Jensen told you on the last call that this isn't circular financing. His analogy: giving your kid $20 to open a lemonade stand that makes $200 and pays back your $20. Jensen also can't do it all himself, so spreading the investment out lowers the risk to Nvidia. He described the past four months as clockwork — gap up, short it three minutes into the open, nothing from 11 AM until the 3:45 covering. Still, he sees repair on bigger timeframes: Meta popped that day because it finally cleared the 200-day SMA, Tesla absorbed the post-robotaxi selling well, Oracle found a bottom, and Microsoft is consolidating its big earnings gain.
The disappointment for him has been crypto equities: the coins are fine, but MicroStrategy, Coinbase and the like aren't moving the way they used to on Bitcoin rallies. He's in the camp that crypto goes nuts from here. Zcash is the leader — encrypted Bitcoin — and he recalled its crash from 540 to 240 in two hours, saying you need to come after the leader for a space to bottom. Leaders lead and others follow. He added that Coinbase doesn't need the Clarity Act to go up, though Circle is tied to it more than any other stock. Solana looks great to him.
His bigger point was volatility compression — "as John would love to call it" — along with the RSP. The longer it stays compressed, the larger the move, and it doesn't have to break up, though it typically does. His advice: keep your mental and physical capital free and clear for when it moves. Options flow is driving things right now because there are no real catalysts; you could have seen Meta's pop coming from the call flow. He bought Meta 650 June calls for $1.75 in late August and sold them that day at $17 — "doing less with more." Most day traders are getting smoked, he said, pointing to gold's 100-point drop on the 5-minute chart after Bessent's announcement (about $10,000 per contract) and Meta going from up 40 points to red three minutes into the open two weeks earlier. "Less is more" — wait for your pitch.
On moving averages, for the first time in a long while both the 200-day and the 50-day are rising, which gives the market more wind at its back. When the 200-day flattens, he said, that's when volatility compression resolves one way or the other. After four months sideways, he called the 9-, 20- and 50-day "absolutely useless" on the daily; pay attention to anything beyond the 100-day.
He put the current pullback at about 8.1–8.2%, versus almost 11.5% from the all-time high to the July low. Midterm seasonality usually brings 15–20% corrections, and with two rolling 10%-plus corrections he thinks that's mostly priced in, though a dip after earnings into the election is possible. None of the seasonalities have worked this year anyway. On rates, he said the market has doubled while the 10-year has been over 5% since 2022; what spooks markets is trajectory, not an arbitrary level. A 25-basis-point hike in September wouldn't freak markets out, and cool PPI and CPI would send the rate-hike bets back to zero; hot numbers could accelerate the downside.
On the buy-the-close stat, he called it what a lot of bored people make when they're not making money in a trash-ass market. His trades: he likes IBM, which has spent weeks above the gap down it took on what he called a small revenue hit. He got long SoFi and already regrets it, but he loves the base, thinks it goes "absolutely bonkers," and would be excited by any chance to get it in the 15 range again. On index removals, he thinks Nike is probably a great buy soon, because removal takes pressure off: Verizon was removed from the Dow on June 29, had one more day lower and never again, and is up about 20% while paying a 7% dividend. Inclusion tends to do the opposite, as he showed with SMCI and with Tesla since its 2021 S&P inclusion. He also likes QCOM and SK Hynix, which just took out all-time highs, and said IPOs that do that tend to go bonkers.
His close: pay attention to price and to what's in your control, keep your mind and heart open, and "if this market is destroying your soul, take some time to heal it."
Subscribe for the weekly live show at YouTube.com/@MarketHoursPod.
This is not financial advice. Market Hours is for education and entertainment only. Always do your own research.
Follow Market Hours: YouTube @MarketHoursPod · X @markethourspod · TikTok @markethourspod · StockTwits @markethourspod