Chapters
00:00 Intro
04:14 QQQs, the SPY Range, IWM & Dow at the 200-Day
08:21 Quarter-End Calendar Flip
09:25 Predatory Tape: $MSFT, $META & the 10-Year
16:14 SPX 7741 and the 10,000 Question
17:49 The 10-Year Breakout & Buying Retests
20:56 $MU Earnings Preview, $SNDK & SK Hynix
28:11 Breadth at Dot-Com Lows?
32:49 Memory Alternatives: $STX, $WDC & $DRAM
36:23 The Wall of Worry & Corporate Profits
40:59 Rotation Trades: $GOOGL, $MSFT & $UBER
47:09 Nick's Line-Chart Experiment
51:21 Less Is More: Stops, Cash & Sitting Out
1:00:31 Closing Thoughts
Market Hours #210 was live on Wednesday, September 30 — quarter-end, with Micron reporting after the close. Ben joined from the East Coast, Nick from Minnesota and GP from a dark "diaper desk" while visiting his niece in San Francisco. The QQQs were printing what would be the fifth-biggest daily candle in their history, yet the tape still felt predatory. Over the hour they covered the S&P stalling at 7741, the 10-year's monthly breakout, the Micron setup and memory alternatives, Ben's wall of worry, and how to keep size down while the market goes nowhere. It was the last show before Stocktoberfest, so there was no show the following week.
Nick's setups, levels and trades
Nick saw positives and negatives. On the plus side, the QQQs were at highs. The SPY was more or less at the low end of its current range, roughly 760 to 775. The IWM and the Dow were the soft spots. The IWM had been on "a slow death spiral" into its 200-day, which he'd count as about the third test of that average since it broke through in June. The Dow had a bit more room to go. You can read it two ways: if the market is teetering, the IWM and Dow dice their 200-days and reset; if not, it's a normal pull-in while the QQQs lead. He reminded people that moving averages are a guide, not hard support or resistance, so expect chop around a long-term average. The last time the IWM tested its 200-day, in March, it chopped there for about a month before it snapped higher. If it lifts from here and you still treat the IWM as a risk-on indicator, the rest of the market could push with it.
Into Micron, his worst case was a gap-and-crap, which he thought would probably make the QQQs fail here. He had MBG's SPY 700 call in the back of his mind. Inside the current QQQ range, a fifth leg would take it back to about 665–685, where it was before the Fed rip, which he'd expected to get tested and didn't. If SanDisk did something like that, he'd expect the QQQs to roll with it. Overall, he still thinks this has more to do with the midterms than anything else and leans toward upside resolution after them, when there's less unknown. A split result with a stalemate in Washington would mean fewer wild policies.
His "bingo" segment was an experiment. John turned him on to MTUM as a line chart, and now he runs his normal daily candle chart next to the same daily as a line chart. The goal is to focus on structure rather than individual candles and to keep his size down. It also connects to a post from Rocco: if price is above the 10-day and you're getting stopped out, you're probably too big or your stop is too tight. His example was Bloom Energy ($BE), which broke out, gave the candle back, broke out again and gave it back again, but more or less rode the 20-day the whole time. He also stressed risk management: decide how much capital you'll put to work in the chop, and know your "uncle" point — the level where you're clearly wrong. If your style and timeframe aren't in alignment with how the market is behaving and you aren't willing to adapt, you need the discipline to sit out. He joked about a viewer who said he'd buy Intel on a gap down to 68.
His closing advice for anyone who wants to trade for a living: drop the trader identity and think like a money manager. Seat time can't be replicated, and people who built their accounts swing trading around a 9-to-5 often implode once they're watching every tick all day. If you're younger and want that seat time, build a job or business around your trading, like PM shift work. He also agreed with GP that the next few years look like a big runway.
Ben's setups, levels and trades
Ben opened with the QQQ daily: if it closed where it was, it would be the fifth-highest candle in the QQQ's history. "That looks like a bullish setup to me." Last week's dailies were "trash" and GP called them predatory, but Ben keeps coming back to the weekly, which he thinks looks pretty damn good, and he refuses to get bent out of shape when there are still opportunities. He pulled up a monthly 10-year chart with a horizontal pivot first touched in September 1993 and last touched in 2007. He asked Nick whether he'd call it a breakout if it weren't the 10-year, then put the S&P since the mid-'90s next to it to show why rate correlations so often make no sense.
On Micron, he expected a stellar report saying the same thing as all quarter: demand so strong they can't keep product on the shelves, with no inventory until past 2027 at the earliest. How the market reads those headlines could make for a volatile after-hours session. The market, he said, is "guilty until proven innocent," so he wasn't buying a bunch of upside Micron calls. Instead he put on a modest SanDisk position ahead of the report, which kept him out of the "juiced calls that everybody else has already bought." His multiple-expansion screener says SanDisk has more meat on the bone than Micron, though he noted it's just an AI tool. On a gap down, he'd buy more SanDisk; the 900 area was where his target had been. He thinks the SMH and IGV look incredible, and that the SMH and SOXX are basically the same chart as SanDisk, with Nvidia similar but at higher levels. He'd wanted SK Hynix at 120 and didn't take the shot at 125, but he thinks it's really the play in memory.
GP asked when a wall of worry becomes too much. Ben, who drew the wall on screen and tweeted it, answered that it stops being a wall of worry when corporate profits stop hitting record highs quarter after quarter. Acceleration is slowing, but companies have never been more profitable for four straight years. Until that changes, he'll keep buying the biggest companies with the best balance sheets when they're mispriced. He recently bought more Amazon even though the chart "looks like crap," because he thinks it'll look cheap in five years, with so much running through AWS. With 24-hour trading, cycles are moving faster. You don't have to be first out the door, he said, you just don't want to be last, and he doesn't see any danger of doom.
On rotation, he's made about 30% on Microsoft in two months and likes the idea of moving into Google, because it looks rough and he thinks it could go up 50% in the time Microsoft goes up 30% — more torque per dollar without changing his risk profile. Google looks to him like a stepped-up version of Uber, with the same swoop down that bulls want to round out. He bought Uber the day before, near 52-week lows; it's a small position, and he knows where he'd cut it. His bet is that Uber won't keep falling in a market that's going up over the next three to six months. He trades structure, not intraday levels, which is why the predatory dailies don't bother him much.
Ben said he's famous for staying almost fully invested and typically holds no more than about 10% cash. He has pulled money out before, most recently ahead of the tariff tantrum, but nothing on his horizon makes his "spidey senses tingle" enough to raise cash to the 30–40% levels he's gone to in the past. He closed with a dad joke: his portfolio is diversified, so "my losses have plenty of company."
GP's setups, levels and trades
GP called the quarter-end a monthly and quarterly calendar flip, and said calendar flips are personality flips. Futures have rolled to the December contracts, a different trader with a different landscape. The market looks like it's going to rip, he said, yet every day it gets "stuffed in the face." Microsoft has spent nine or ten weeks setting up to break out and keeps fumbling instead. Meta keeps rejecting 744, five or six points from all-time highs, despite all the news, including the Muse launch and the Enterprise rollout. In the back of his mind he's thinking of Lam Research in 2022. The 10-year is now higher than it was in 2022–23 when inflation was running at 8–9%, even as PCE shows inflation coming down. He doesn't think the market crashes, but he likened the flows to "a drunk teen" with a trillion dollars of liquidity — Tesla sold right into the 50-day, MicroStrategy filling a gap and popping the next day — and said it feels like trading against himself from 18 years ago.
On the S&P, it has spent six or seven weeks consolidating at 7741, the 161.8% extension from the COVID lows that they marked three years ago. With breadth this bad, he sees two options: breadth deteriorates along with the leaders and it rejects badly, or breadth improves and the market escalates toward 10,000 by the end of the year. If it breaks out of 7741 meaningfully — "not for three minutes while they sell us into oblivion" — the next stop is 10,400 on the S&P, and it won't be a slow grind. On the 10-year's breakout, he said he never buys the first breakout because breakouts come back and retest. He also thinks higher rates are needed if the economy is going to run hot, and doesn't like that the market reads higher rates as a reason to sell.
On Goldman's stat that S&P breadth is as bad as it was at the dot-com lows, he said breadth is arbitrary: it can stay neutral while they crush the leaders holding the market up. During the summer selloff the RSP was going nuts, the Dow and IWM led, and now they've pulled in while the SPY came up to meet them. Nothing he sees suggests the market is heading lower, and he leans higher. The leaders look ready: Microsoft, Meta, Google (a great reaction that day), Apple and Dell. ServiceNow looks good, SpaceX looks good, and crypto looks good despite six or seven straight days of selling. Even the rocket names keep finding buyers in their volume-profile zone.
For Micron, he'd rather play SK Hynix, an IPO-base breakout. Those tend to ultimately fail, but they can go nuts first, as SpaceX did going from 150 to the 200s. If you want memory without the crowd, he'd look at Seagate and Western Digital. If you want options exposure that isn't overpriced, he'd look at DRAM, the 2x fund, which he said holds about 45% Micron. His expectation for Micron: earnings will be great after 87% margins last quarter, but the stock may just oscillate, crush the options and figure it out the next day. If margins drop, it could get hit hard, since Apple has been fighting them on pricing. He noted Apple raised iPhone 17 prices by $100 to cover its costs. On Microsoft, he said it got to 519 that day and looked like a rounding top that could break back below 514. He admitted he doesn't have a read on when this market breaks out. The last time he felt that way was late July, and then it turned out someone (Leopold) was getting blown out.
He said everyone is doing the 30%-and-swap rotation, which is why the market goes nowhere — "the Ackman playbook" — and he wants the market to stop pair trading. Microsoft can't go when Meta goes, and Uber and Tesla, once a pair trade, are now both getting sold. On Uber, he said "40s is coming" and that it could become a buy the way Microsoft was at 350, putting the odds at about 60/40 that it goes lower first. He called himself and Nick short- and long-term market timers, with Ben more of a long-term one, and agreed with Ben's thesis to buy assets, as long as they're the right ones.
On stops, he warned that "it's only a 20-day retest" can be as much of a rationalization as July's "RSP is fine." He got stopped out of DoorDash ($DASH) and it reclaimed the next day; he still loves the chart and will get back in. He waits for his entries, risks about 1–1.5% per equity trade, and looks for 20–30% upside. Going sideways destroys options on both sides, puts included. His illustration of why less is more: trade a $10,000 account down to $2,000 in the chop and it might get back to $10,000 or $20,000 when the trend comes, but the original $10,000 could have become $100,000 if you'd waited. After six months sideways, the acceleration will be big whichever way it breaks. Overall he thinks the markets look great, though there could be one final flush, maybe as the new quarter starts.
His closing message: power is returning to the people. You have every tool to succeed and you're not limited by a coder anymore, so use the next couple of years to build real momentum behind your own brand, even if it means burning the candle at both ends for a while. He also plugged Stocktoberfest, where he'll be speaking on a panel.
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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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