Chapters
00:00 Intro: After Cookie_M's Visit
01:07 Nick: How Cookie_M Reads Charts
03:11 GP: Everyone Knows the TA
06:46 GP: Real Technical Analysis
09:24 Ben: Buying at Your Levels
10:58 GP: Trend Versus Accumulation
12:33 Ben: Trading Versus Investing
13:37 GP: Sideways, Not Down
16:15 GP: The Power of Calendar Flips
18:49 Q1 Stock Picks
19:56 Ben: Freshworks
21:58 Nick: United Rentals
24:34 GP: Advance Auto Parts
29:17 Retail on Fire
30:49 Ben: Hasbro & Retail Homework
33:27 Nick Is in KLA
34:28 GP: Bears Are Going to Bear
37:02 Tesla's 20 Saves
37:32 Cookie_M Picks SOXL
38:32 Ben: AMD Doubling Faster Than Nvidia
41:38 AMD or Intel?
44:49 GP: Candles Without Context
46:21 Ben: Monolithic Power
47:27 GP: Redfin's Accumulation
49:31 Weed, Royal Caribbean & Travel
52:02 Viewer Charts
55:42 Nick: SentinelOne's Power Gap
58:16 Nick: Sell Your Weakest Position
1:01:22 Making Calls in Public
1:04:26 Ben: Take Your 10 to 20%
1:07:00 Picks of Record & Wrap-Up
Market Hours #98 went out live on Monday evening, December 11, with Ben, Nick and GP, a few days after the episode with Cookie_M. The hosts talked about how widely known technical analysis has become, the gap between investing and trading, and how calendar flips change price behavior. Then they made their Q1 picks to run through March 31: Ben Freshworks, Nick United Rentals and GP Advance Auto Parts, with Cookie_M sending in SOXL. They also covered retail, the "Mag Seven" debate, AMD versus Intel, Redfin, SentinelOne and when to cut a losing options trade.
Nick's setups, levels and trades
Nick said he enjoyed Cookie_M's show, though he doesn't chart the same way. "I'm generally looking for like long horizontal channels" and base breaks into range expansion. He wonders whether technical analysis is becoming more or less predictive now that everyone has access to the same books: "the more you zoom out I almost feel like the more reliable these kind of various patterns are," while lower time frames have "a lot more kind of like games being played." "If everybody has read every book... you should expect some games to be played when price comes into the 200 day." He recalled that a failed head and shoulders can be "a more powerful pattern" than a head and shoulders itself. He already owns Path and went back and forth between Path and BlackRock, but chose United Rentals for his Q1 pick because it's already breaking out. "I freaking love the... weekly." It's an ascending triangle with almost a 200-point range, and he has "a measured move on it at basically a 700," about a 39% gain next to Ben's roughly 50%.
He sold out of Broadcom, didn't re-enter and is "kicking myself for that one," and he's in KLA now. SentinelOne's power gap on an EPS move makes the risk-reward "so easy on those types of trades," with a stop under Thursday's low. In a lockout rally, "if you're in something that's not participating like why would you even... why waste your time." With Tesla, for instance, you'll have plenty of time to get long if it breaks the trend line or busts above 250, unless you're in it from much lower.
Ben's setups, levels and trades
Ben said Cookie_M's charts carry a lot of psychology beyond the moving averages, even if his rule is "if it breaks the nine weekly or the nine monthly I don't want any part of it." The bigger challenge is bias: we can avoid ugly trades or stay in them "because of our bias." "Not every trade is an investment and not every investment is a trade." "At my core I'm a long-term investor and I've had to get over a lot of my bias of being a long-term investor to be able to successfully trade." Last year he and GP argued every week, with Ben saying "it's in a downtrend until it's not," and he was lucky to get long many names after Thanksgiving and into February. As last quarter's winner with Tesla, he's swinging Tesla calls now and likes Tesla "shortterm medium term and long term." His Q1 pick is Freshworks, a software name in the IGV similar to Salesforce, which has been on his watchlist "for far too long." "I love the way this is setting up," and he'll be starting a position soon. He thinks it's "a $30 stock by the end of the quarter."
He came across anecdotal retail evidence for a possible short, after his CarMax short, and is doing more homework. He noted Hasbro's layoffs as holiday toy sales slump. Cookie_M's post said AMD would double from here faster than Nvidia did, and Ben agrees. If AMD can establish itself "as being as good as or second best to Nvidia you've got to see a huge move higher." He's sticking with AMD over Intel to double first. Asked about Intel, "I am less bearish than I have been my entire life on Intel," but it's at resistance, and above 45–46 there's probably more upside. Monolithic Power showed up in MarketSmith's top relative-strength semis alongside Nvidia, Broadcom, Rambus and AMD, and AMD, "one of my largest," made him happy today. Having just sold a house, he said "the buyers are still there." He no longer lets losing options go to zero: "I will get out and take my 10 15 20% and walk... away and live to fight another day."
GP's setups, levels and trades
GP said "everyone can learn and know TA right but so do the people you're trading against," so a hold of the 20-day to the penny doesn't mean it will hold. He'd combine TA with fundamentals and options flow, since "it just feels like flow is driving the markets these days." "You can't get a cup and handle after losing 90%," and a head and shoulders in the middle of a downtrend is just part of the downtrend. "There's technical analysis and then there's real technical analysis." Trend-following above the nine is cleaner, but for investors, "if you want to get the lowest prices it's all about where you buy." Waiting for Square to reclaim its weekly nine meant buying about $15 above the low, while he got the 38 he was waiting for. "The trend is not down it's sideways," he said of 2022, when Shopify bottomed at 23 and its retest came at 29.
People overlook "how powerful calendar flips are," monthly, quarterly and yearly. In the QQQs, 2022's behavior stopped around the week of January 1, when they held the 21-week EMA. The October-to-November flip led to a "beastly" six or seven weeks, and the QQQs held the rising nine-month moving average. He passed on Nikola because "they literally are not a company," at under a billion dollars. His Q1 pick is Advance Auto Parts: the quarterly is putting in a doji at a base breakout after falling from 244 to 47 over seven straight red quarters. "If it holds this kind of 47 area... it's going back to 81." He has no position and would like a pullback into 53–55. "I focus a lot on understanding bottoming patterns," and it's above the nine-week moving average, but "it could fail no doubt."
He said bears complained that the "Mag Seven" carried the QQQs, yet when all seven got thrashed on rebalancing, the QQQs still held up. "Bears are going to bear." He thinks Intel has a safety net from government backing and "the amount of accumulation in Intel down here... is just phenomenal." AMD's heavy-volume move off the nine-day ran over the shorts. "If you have that kind of reversal and that kind of volume picking up and it doesn't break the prior day low it's probably a false breakdown." On Redfin, "there's heavy heavy accumulation in this stock," and after a double bottom like Roku and Shopify, "how is this not gonna be insanely higher a year from now outside of a market collapse." Zillow has less accumulation. He doesn't trust weed names' bottoming because of all the volume in heavily shorted names.
The prices of record for the picks are 57.08 for Advance Auto Parts, 505.14 for United Rentals, 20.53 for Freshworks and 26.11 for SOXL.
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