Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:59 Don’t Abandon the Baby on $NVDA
03:29 $NVDA: Ben Buys 172 & the Volume-Profile Gap
06:19 Reclaiming 188–190; $QQQ 720 & the Closed Bond Market
12:22 Sell-Bar Leaders: $META $TEM $AMD $TSLA
15:05 Long $SPACEX; $RKLB vs $ASTS
21:51 $IGV at the 100 Shelf: $PLTR $NOW $MSFT $MDB
25:31 $ORCL Toward 200; $FROG $TTD & Software Laggards
34:57 Ben’s Bitcoin Trade: 73K Stop, 90–100K Target
42:03 $MSTR’s “Micron Moment” & the Dispersion Trade
50:39 $SN Topping vs $NVDA Bottoming: the Pair Trade
56:46 Wrap-Up: Be Active Into Year-End
Nick, Ben and GP were back together for Market Hours #213 after missing last week. They called it a trash-ass market, started with the QQQs, and went straight to Nvidia. The hour bookends on the same visual: an abandoned baby at the bottom in $NVDA, and an abandoned baby at the top in SharkNinja.
Nick's setups, levels and trades
On $NVDA, Nick semi-liked it versus the floor at 170, but the reclaim he wants is 190. That, he said, opens the range from 190 to 230–240, wide enough to carry the stock toward 300 once it breaks out. He pointed to the two gaps overhead as places it can island and stair-step until it gets above 192, and said he'd be content to sit it out until it goes over 190, because it can still fail there. A fail would line up with the QQQs failing around 720 and the 50-day — and even a QQQ double-bottom that rolls over to retest would be enough, in his view, to pressure Nvidia. He'd rather see it get through 185–190 sooner rather than later.
He's still long SpaceX, but it's not one of his main positions, and he didn't like it below 130 — that's back in the lower pocket between about 131 and 105. The easy "cheater" entry was through the November 5th candle high. The next one is reclaiming 150 through the 50-day, with 166–167 and 177–178 as the overhead areas. Ben's target once it clears 150 was a minimum of 180 short-term; Nick agreed it looks good and isn't hanging around in it long term. Rocket Lab, on his daily, had rolled over and needed a push. If you don't want the individual space names, he liked $UFO off the lows — "an easy trade versus 39" — or $ARKX.
On software, $IGV still looked pretty good to him. 99 was the 0.382 from the lows; he loses interest under 95 for any short-term trade. The 0.618 sits at 90, right with the 200-day, so that's the area he'd trade against, risking about 88–90, and he'd be gone under the 0.50. The names that stood out were Palantir and Microsoft, plus ServiceNow and Salesforce, which he said both look fantastic. MongoDB is still one of his favorite setups, sitting in a "monster base."
He likes Bitcoin and said the rest of crypto is sitting at logical retest points, but he does not like the break through 80K and the failure to hold it. That's a breakout failure that could measure into the mid-50s. If it fails here, he thinks the risk/reward is at least definable.
On SharkNinja, he's not being talked out of it, but he said it's getting real close to its near-term measured move of 237–240, and that you should secure some profits if you bought it in the 90s or 100s. Into year-end, his bigger-picture note was that 24/6 and 24/7 markets will take time to work through, and he'd bet they start to incentivize long-term holdings. He also said he's working on two companion shows: Mindset on the Markets on Mondays, and The Last Candle on Fridays, pre-recorded, aimed at weekly charts and longer-term position management. The blog archive he's uploading is meant to be searchable, with chapters, charts and links back to the YouTube timestamps.
Ben's setups, levels and trades
Ben bought some $NVDA on Monday down around 172. On the volume profile there's a huge gap underneath, the stock is sitting right at the edge of that profile, and he understands why someone would be squeamish — but he thinks it ultimately resolves higher. He tied it to last Thursday, when the S&P and the QQQs were also "on the edge" (he cited drops of 7% and 5%) and haven't made another low.
He's long SpaceX from somewhere in the high 120s. Once it gets over the 150 area, he's looking at a minimum of 180 on a shortish-term trade, not something he wants to sit in long term.
Hope Trader on StockTwits had asked for software, so Ben pulled up $IGV and put it in the same "anxious" spot as Nvidia: you're a buyer at the 100 level on the volume shelf, but you could still pull in another 10 points. He walked Zscaler (about 123% in seven months) and ServiceNow (about 90% over the same stretch), and said selling conviction names is the hard part. On ServiceNow he had two sell areas on the way up, then bought some more back at 120, which he said was a little early. Software as a whole still looks pretty good to him, but it's on a ledge — slip much more and you're falling down.
The trade he spent the most time on was Bitcoin. He put on a "pretty big" long last night and called it an easy if-this-then-that. He'd retweeted a chart for the show teaser whose structure reminded that poster of March 2023; Ben's own case is a tighter cycle, with a painful path that runs toward 100K, comes back down, retests and goes again. He bought last night, is risking down toward 65K if the trade isn't working, and said a stop under the weekly low around 73K is mandatory. If it works, he likes Bitcoin up to 100K, or 90-ish K, relatively soon. Like Nvidia, it's sitting at the edge of the volume profile. He later added that this is a retest of the rising nine-month moving average "to the literal penny," and that he's betting it holds: if it loses the weekly low it's probably going lower; if it holds, probably higher, without a lot of percentage risk.
He also said he was fortunate to put on SMH calls last Thursday, and that SOXL had looked early and then printed a big candle.
GP's setups, levels and trades
GP opened with the question: if you wouldn't abandon your baby, why would you abandon the baby on Nvidia? On the weekly he called it a full flush, a washout, an abandoned baby — the kind of setup, he said, that in 2022 looked like it was breaking down and then began one of Nvidia's biggest runs. He cited $680 billion in revenue next year, and later that Nvidia is on pace to make $280 billion more next year than this year, more than the other 493 companies in the S&P.
"Shooters can be wrong, but shooters shoot." If it breaks the lows around 164, he said there's nothing holding it there on the volume profile, so you have to be wary if you're just going to sit and hold — there might still be downside. But this is the fourth time in Trump's presidency, by his count, that they've gotten to the right edge of that profile. The March 30th test was followed by about a 20% move in a month in the index, and he sees a similar position after the election-day capitulation. Once Nvidia gets back over 188 — a reclaim he wants on volume, most likely a gap-and-go — "it's game on." Timeframe doesn't matter to him; earnings are coming and it can faff around, but it will eventually reclaim. Today was the first day of follow-through, and the bond market was closed, so he flagged the chance this is a one-day wonder before the downside resumes tomorrow. The setups he usually likes — two-day patterns, two hammer candles, a few days under the coil of the 50-day or 200-day — have been extended in 2026, which is why he's "not as married to the timeline." His standing advice: add volume profile to your charts. Amazon, Meta and Microsoft still can't take out all-time highs, so this can stay a chop range. The faster the reclaim, the stronger it is; if it instead chops and bear-flags, a break could be "pretty waterfallish." He also said Jensen is most likely not going anywhere, but that his judgment and investments had put the AI conversation in question.
Coming out of last week's flush, the tell for GP is the names that immediately take out the sell bar. The four that stood out Friday into Monday: Meta, Tempus AI (already through last week's high), AMD (took out Friday's sell bar on Monday and has been leading all week), and Tesla, which was one of the first to take out Thursday's sell bar even as it "gets beaten down consistently." SanDisk and Micron are playing catch-up. His point on the dispersion trade: people have been moving out of Nvidia and into the other chip names all year.
He's long SpaceX for a trade after buying last week and thinks it "looks like it explodes higher." Elon, he said, is "the king of compute out on the West Coast." The June market top, in his telling, started in $IGV after Blue Origin blew up and Rocket Lab and ASTS dropped 25–30% in a day; he moved both to an avoid list, and now Rocket Lab has ripped off the lows in four days on "fantastic" earnings. That's his liquidity-hole point: fundamentals don't matter until the selling is done. Between the two, he'd play Rocket Lab over ASTS. He had ASTS revenue at $45 million this quarter versus $47 million expected (up from $17 million around May–June), or roughly $80–90 million a year against a value well over $15 billion — "nearly a 100x" — so ASTS stays off his longer-term list until revenue grows more meaningfully. Rocket Lab, he said, is doing over a billion dollars a year with a 73% growth rate, and was only around a $34 billion market cap before earnings.
On software, he wanted Oracle in the conversation. It's having a big day, "very similar to CoreWeave": people bought, it still came down, and a 20% drawdown is just what the volatility looks like. His first buy in Oracle was at 117 a couple of months ago; it undercut that level and he hated it, but buyers stepped back in at the same spot, which he reads as confirming the bottom. If Oracle gets going, it can be the main driver of $IGV even with a smaller weight, and "could easily go back to 200 by December" — a 60–70% move he actually thinks can go farther than that, "an easy double." Microsoft, in his view, still needs a catalyst: if the bid rotates (he mentioned Anthropic and OpenAI going public), the bids come back into Microsoft and Oracle. $IGV itself looks pretty good — it reclaimed the three-year volume profile today after hanging a couple of days underneath, so the group can go higher. The question is which names participate. He hopes it's ServiceNow, but the reaction to otherwise-fine earnings was "terrible," with no buyers 50–60% lower. Palantir also got crushed. What stuck out to him instead: $FROG, which couldn't break out, then broke out on earnings, and $TTD, which he said should be on your radar after good earnings and a deep washout. Duolingo is holding up. MongoDB is "okay," but he'd rather buy it when it actually breaks out than "cry in the corner every other week." Salesforce-type pullbacks, after this long a cycle — April, then June, then another — are too deep for him and are a real concern.
He called this a volume-profile market, not a contrarian one: it goes to the top of the range and rejects, and people who short the top have been getting rewarded. A month ago he thought Meta was playing coy at 796 and would break out to all-time highs; it wasn't strong enough, and it went lower.
On the quarterly, he compared MicroStrategy to "your Micron moment" — the old run from 90 to about 160, the pullback to 64, then the next leg higher — and said $MSTR is stair-stepping, fumbling under a retest of the "dot highs," at the edge of its volume profile, with selling "nowhere close" to the accumulation. Cisco, Intel and AMAT, in his view, are in the same camp. If this works, he also wants $MSTR, BMR, SBET and Circle on the radar. The broader dispersion point: while the S&P was going down, $RSP was mooning. $IGV can keep working, he said, without it having to be CrowdStrike or Palo Alto right now, as the software names that haven't gotten the love catch up.
The behavior he does not like is the repeated cycle since the start of the Trump presidency — the third or fourth monstrous drubbing, then nothing goes anywhere, and everyone gets very bearish. If this is the final one, he worries it sets up a blow-off as people who cut 30–50% try to FOMO back in, then a rug pull. "These kind of breadcrumbs… are not leaving me feeling very long-term optimistic."
That led to the pair trade he's been talking about since earlier this year: SharkNinja topping and "Jensen bottoming." He said he'd been looking at SharkNinja puts for next week or December. The stock has still gone higher, but he sees momentum slowing, distribution on multiple levels, and each push coming on less volume. There's a little gap he'll play — above it bullish, below it bearish — but the message is to sell into strength so you don't round-trip it back to the top of the volume profile at 130. A big wick, in his words, is a volatility candle and a warning shot. Then he put $SN and $NVDA side by side on the weeklies: SharkNinja is an abandoned baby at the top, Nvidia is an abandoned baby at the bottom. If you'd bought both the first week of 2024, he said you'd have 350% in SharkNinja and 259% in Nvidia.
His close: going into the end of the year in a bull year typically brings bull action, and with this much underperformance you could see outperformance into year-end, so don't get too bearish. Flows tend to stay bullish in bullish years. In the later stages of a bull market, he said, you have to be more active — "passive doesn't work here." Be aware of what you own. Most people, in his view, have already round-tripped Nvidia because they were investing in it, not trading it.
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