Just horrible...

[00:00:00]This is just horrible. Earning season is off to a complete flop with Google trading lower, of course, on higher capex guidance. Who could have guessed?

[00:00:08]And then Tesla's trading lower after Elon basically says that Optimus is the hardest thing that they've ever done.

[00:00:13]Also announcing massive capex. And by the way, who the heck even wants one of these Optimus bots? Am I alone in the feeling that I don't want one in my house? Maybe I'm crazy. Anyways, Micron is up due to these earnings capex numbers, but we need the MAG 7 to move higher if the index pressure is going to be lifted on the cues. So, welcome back to the Trade Brigade midweek show where we'll take a look through all of the data points post earnings and we'll build a logical trade plan. My name is Matt and if you're new here, hit the thumbs up button and subscribe for additional resources. Check out the links listed down below in the description and stay tuned until the end of today's show. I've got two additional trade ideas to share with you that you won't want to miss. With that said, let's jump right into the charts. So, we'll kick things off tonight with a closer look at the SPY daily time scale.

[00:00:53]And the first thing we're trying to figure out here, as always, is what's going on from a trend perspective. I hate to say it, but we're no longer in a daily uptrend building out the right hand side of the consolidation like we were here. You could certainly argue that this is a potential lower high back down inside of range. And this, of course, is an equal low. So, it's not a full-blown downtrend, but what was looking fairly constructive up the right hand side is no longer as good. It's a neutral trend. We do not have a directional bias here. I'm a little bit more neutral from that perspective. What I will say is I'm not overly bearish either. We've not broken down. We've not made substantial new lows underneath the top end of the Korea gap from way back over here. We've been talking about this level for weeks now at 73965 and so far we're still above it. We're also still trading above the daily 20 SMA and the 50 SMA 20 in orange 50 in blue. Again, just some simple reference points. It doesn't mean the market needs to go higher from here, but if it was more bearish, we'd be underneath like what we have in the QQQ, which we'll talk about momentarily. Let's drop it down to the hourly chart because the story of this week is really how the market has opened versus closed. On Monday's session, we try to get some follow-through off of the oversold bounce from Friday and the sellers aggressively step up lower high and range. Incredibly weak close on Monday. So you would think that the sellers then kind of have the edge headed into Tuesday for some form of continuation into the 73965. Instead on the Tuesday session, the strong open is met with buying pressure off of the immediate dip. And then we kind of close strong and that was a big change in character against the backdrop of what we saw just the day prior on Monday and then to open on a gap down on today's Wednesday session against the close at least not outside of range but against the close then rally it back. that was looking fairly compelling midday. You know, by the time the close rolls around, now we're closing weak with this gnarly upper wick on the daily chart. I mean, the candle structure speaks for itself. That's a nasty upper wick there, squatting back down underneath a 2-day range high break. That's not a compelling close for buyers to really be grabbing the market by the horns and saying, "No, no, no. We're breaking out higher. We want more." Uh, the other thing I'll say here on the hourly in terms of structure, if this is overhead supply, this is just a rejection of overhead supply. And that's certainly a reasonable outcome here if we are going to maintain some semblance of a daily lower high set. So what we've been talking about in the group recently is just the market's been stuck between a rock and a hard place. You know, pick your poison. This could be the rock or it could be the hard place. We'll just say rock and hard place down here. If you're in the middle, which kind of is where it looks like we're trading in the after hours session, I don't have much to lean on there. Again, the daily trend is now neutral. We have some failures from both sides. both the buyers here on Monday, but then then sellers here on Tuesday and then again the buyers on today's Wednesday session. We're between a rock and a hard place. I think we learn a little bit more if the market can finally find acceptance over 749s or if the market can finally find acceptance back down underneath 74750s uh 25s, excuse me, and then a break underneath Tuesday's low underneath the 50-day moving average here probably at least gets us to the bottom end of this range down here, the hard place, if you will, if not further into the main line in the sand, which is just at 739.65.

[00:03:53]65. Once again, that this is like one way to look at this. There's another way to look at it, which is, okay, inverted hammer. We wick into the moving averages. You get back here and you're building out hourly higher lows, right?

[00:04:03]Cuz let's not forget trends are fractal.

[00:04:06]If these are hourly higher lows and this is an hourly higher high and we continue to build this out, I I mean, is this a possibility? Sure. There's nothing saying that this can't happen either.

[00:04:14]And I know this is not the analysis that most folks like, and I've been saying this more frequently in the last couple of videos, but when there's no daily directional trend, when I don't have a concrete uh ability to say, okay, there's some edge here. If we can execute based on this location, or against this location, I should say, with the backdrop of this as a trend, uh you know, we just don't have that. We're we're neutral in the middle of the boredom box after failing a breakout and potentially setting a lower high, but we're not downright bearish because we're over the moving average stack of all the things we sort of talked about so far. Let's go back down to the hourly chart. I do want to show you the moving average. Excuse me, not moving average, but the anchored VWAP stack from the intraday. Uh this is the ceasefire over situation from Trump. What was that? 3 weeks ago now. Uh 1 2 3 weeks ago. So we're underneath that anchored view app.

[00:04:59]This was looking constructive because we were holding above it. Now we're getting a bit more consolidation underneath a rally that's rejecting underneath that.

[00:05:05]Uh but we've got this big cluster of anchored view apps beneath us as well.

[00:05:08]So again, does the neutral stance make a little bit more sense here? I I personally think so. One of the things that we've been talking about in the group and you know even on the YouTube live streams and on X and whatnot, less is more for me in this market right now.

[00:05:20]Less is more is the approach I'm taking.

[00:05:22]Some people are nailing the gap down lows, selling and fading the gap up highs and whatnot. You can do your thing, but for me less is more when the market's not trending and we don't have clarity in terms of a daily direction, some kind of edge to execute against levels. It's just not there. So that's my interpretation of the spiders. It's not bad. It's not great post earnings. I mean, we're going to need the MAG7s to move higher if the index is going to move higher. The only thing I'll say about the S&P 500 in particular is that I am quite fond of the XLF chart. If you take a look at this thing, I mean, this is just kind of a nice bull flag up here after earnings, is this ready to break out and keep the rotation going and aka keep the S&P 500 more buoyant than the NASDAQ? It's certainly a possibility.

[00:06:02]The other thing about capex from Google on their earnings announcement, right?

[00:06:05]If I just go maybe over here and throw on the after hours, you know, you could certainly see we're lower on the capex announcement, but let's just go buzz on over to MU. And MU is like, "Oh, we'll take your money. No problemmo." And we're higher. Again, the problem here is that the MAG7 is just such a heavyweight component of the market. It's going to be very difficult for the S&P 500 to move higher uh without the help of the MAG 7. So yeah, it's good that MU is catching a bid and it's nice that the semiconductor trade maybe continues for a little while longer, but we need the hyperscalers. I mean, these companies are in this order for a reason. It's because this is the weight of their representation in the S&P 500 by market cap, right? So yeah, MU, great. It's it's climbing the ranks here, but Google is certainly still heavier weight than that. Even Tesla is about the same weight as MU these days. So anyway, for what it's worth, that's the S&P analysis as it relates to the price structures.

[00:06:55]Let's quickly take a look at the market internals. If you're not familiar with this dashboard, check out the video tutorial in the top right hand corner.

[00:07:00]What do we see here? Well, again, like neutral. Is this really a day to write home about on today's morning rally? Not really. There's no volume flows there, even at the exchange level. Like the other day, we were getting some questions about, oh, look, you know, it's it's a rally here on extremely light volume. Is that a problem? Not really. Go back and study, you know, the way that some of these rallies start.

[00:07:19]You don't need a ton of volume to get the market lifting higher, right? So the the low volume there doesn't really concern me. But when I see it at the exchange level and we're completely flat on what is attempting to be an upday, that's a little bit problematic. The advanced decline line closes weak. The index score has been weak all day. Look at the cumulative tick down here. That's weak. So I just can't get all jazzed up on the bull side. I want to be a bull. I want to be optimistic about AI and space and you know all this robotic stuff and autonomy. Certainly want to be bullish on the theme and you know how awesome that would be for the future for some things. Again, maybe not an optimist robot in my house, but generally for the future of humanity, sure, that's cool.

[00:07:56]But the chart's just telling me to like chill out here. There's not much to do in the midpoint of this range. So, I might sound like a broken record here, but if it just saves one person from chopping themselves to bits inside of a balance range, then so be it. Here is the How noble of me, right? Uh anyway, here's the market inter uh not internals, but here's the market profile. If you're not familiar with the market profile, check out the video tutorial in the top right-and corner.

[00:08:17]What do we see here? Uh we've got ourselves value trying to progress higher. You can see on today's session, it certainly didn't want to stick towards the highs of today's range. And in the after hours, you know, we made a little 4a lower. We're bouncing a little bit higher. Value's unchanged. It doesn't really look like it wants to accelerate. If I just make a simple line like that, you can clearly see even though price tested above and actually spent quite a bit of time, look how fat the profile is up there. Spent quite a bit of time above the previous day's highs and yet value couldn't migrate higher. I don't want to say it's a red flag that's going to sink the ship and send the market to zero. But it's just another one of these data points that makes me think, okay, pull back on the reinss here. The market doesn't really seem ready to be, you know, breaking out and flying back up to new all-time highs when earnings are kind of a flop to start here. And maybe MU and memory continues to keep things churning sideways. Maybe financials keep the S&P 500 afloat, but the NASDAQ's just not doing it. So, speaking of, let's just jump over here. We talked about this on Sunday for the uh weekend video. This is just in a downtrend, right? As much as it maybe pains us to admit it, but that's a lower low. It doesn't matter how you slice this chart, that is a lower low on the oversold uh gap down from the Friday session of last week.

[00:09:25]We've made made a nice counter trend rebound in here, but in service of what?

[00:09:29]Just a lower high question mark. Are we over the moving average cluster? No.

[00:09:33]We're well below the flattening 50.

[00:09:35]We're below a declining 20 SMA. Is there room to like rally reject that off of a trend line? I'm not a big trend line believer. You guys know this stuff. But like I is this a possibility? Some kind of lower high at the upper bound of the weekly expected move? Sure. Of course it is. The only thing that can kind of save this market walking forward from here is a quick check back into a higher low over uh 700 699 against this gap down low from last Friday. And and then maybe we start to become constructive on this rebound out of the trade and you know we're just building a weekly flag cuz again not to contradict myself in like every single time frame that we talk about but just take a look at the weekly chart. You know, I go out to the weekly and suddenly I think to myself, are we really doing anything wrong? Is is the market really doing something wrong here or is it just digesting the gain after a historic rally? You know, and when I zoom out from this perspective, a weekly chart's not terribly helpful for day trading and and really short-term stuff, but you get the point. I'm like, okay, nothing bad's happening here. It's it's not like this is Armageddon and the, you know, world's ending yet. Uh certainly not for the uh NASDAQ or the S&P. Let's go back over here. And uh when it comes to the trend count, sure, you get that check back to 700. You get a little bit more constructive reclaiming the bottom end of the balance range here at 707s.

[00:10:44]But look at what happened today. Let's just go down to the hourly chart. And you can kind of see the same thing. So not as bad on the Monday gap up that fades just because we never took out this pullback low, the 695. This is a little weaker in the S&P. The gap up again, gap fill reversal on the Tuesday session. Really nice close to then gap down. We came into this morning session thinking, okay, here we go. you know, trapped overhead supply. Everybody's gonna get steamrolled and that's it. You know, you got your lower high. So, I have to say this morning's rally, it was getting me a little bullish. I'm thinking to myself, okay, sellers have this gift gapping down underneath a previous day that rallies, you know, this is going to put everybody off sides from the prior day. To see this rally this morning, and the buyers basically step back up immediately in the cues, it was a pretty compelling look. Midday, I'm thinking to myself, wow, look at that. Sellers can't get traction back underneath 707. And then, how do we close? pretty weak. We squat into the close and you know the close kind of holds the secrets they say and I would somewhat agree that you know stronger buyers would have kept prices elevated.

[00:11:43]You can see in the after hours maybe we're flirting with 707 thanks to MU thanks to some semiconductor pressure in the upward direction. Uh but you know is this is this like everything's firing on all cylinders? Not really. Let's jump into the anchored VWAPs on the intraday.

[00:11:57]You can see a complete difference here on the cues. There's the stack the major stack above. Here is the ceasefires over anchored VWAP. Nice rejections there.

[00:12:05]Hardly spent any time above it. And then, you know, down here, this is, believe it or not, as crazy as this is going to sound, this is the April 8th gap up anchored VWAP from over here.

[00:12:15]We've reclaimed it. And that's now the only supporting anchored VWAP underneath us as it relates to, you know, key references after putting in the all-time high. So, I don't know about you, but I just very very tricky market. Uh, to me, this is an opportunity for sellers to really show a lower high underneath overhead supply. And if they can't do it, then we'll take that as a substantial data point. But I don't know that I'm just jazzed up about fullport long. I mean, honestly, I flattened my final swing trade in the swing portfolio today. I'm I'm finally out of PNW on the break of the 20 SMA. I'm out of there.

[00:12:47]And that that was the only long I had left in the swing portfolio. I got nothing left on the swing. So, market feedback has been such that uh it's tough to get traction on new longs. Old longs that have performed well are starting to get tossed out again. Just literally have nothing left. So that's what I'm working with on the cues.

[00:13:04]That's kind of my interpretation of this chart. Again, I think less is more until we have clarity. I don't want to say that the market needs to crash here. Uh dare I even whisper that word, but some I mean the market analog has been the same over the last two years, right? If we just go back out, here's three years.

[00:13:20]But here's your consolidation on the highs. Market really struggles to get higher. There's your tariff wash out.

[00:13:25]Great trading market after that, right?

[00:13:27]Here's our consolidation. Market kind of can't get higher. There's the Iran war escalations. Great rally after that. You know, do do we need to see another little pullback, another little break of the lows, see something that's a bit deeper, test the 200 perhaps, and then rally back higher. Maybe, maybe, maybe we need to wash out all the late longs late to the party, trying to jam it long up here at the highs, thinking high, tight flag, wash them all out, and then come back up. I don't know. Just to reset the positioning. I'm spitballing here as the market's telling me less is more. You know, you start getting a little philosophical. you start getting a little bit esoteric and the next thing you know uh you're I don't know praying to the market gods that the lunar cycle is going to allow you to get long on the fourth uh te to toeekahedradon of the kaleidoscope in the top quadrant.

[00:14:12]I don't even know what I'm saying. You get the point. Let's not overthink this.

[00:14:14]The market's breaking down from a range.

[00:14:16]This is a potential lower high. If we can't reclaim 707, the pressure is on.

[00:14:20]Even if we can reclaim 707, you're in a balance range there. Let's see if we can get some daily high or low action over 700. That's pretty much the summary.

[00:14:28]Let's jump on over to the Q's uh side of the internals and see what we got going on over here.

[00:14:34]Um mild volume outflows on a day that's trying to rally. You could see it in the after hours. Here's, you know, oh, capex means that the semiconductor buildout's going to continue, right? Haven't really reclaimed any key levels. We've been talking about this golden goose spot at roughly 275. So, we'll continue to talk about that tomorrow morning in the pre-market prep. The advanced decline lines weak into the close. The cumulative build is weak. uh you're just not getting a lot of broad-based participation. And again, you're gapping down on Google. You're gapping down on some MAG7s. It's going to be a big headwind to the market overall. Um let's go on over to this NASDAQ market profile, excuse me, and see what we have here. There's value. Here's value.

[00:15:10]Here's value. Uh could it's it's actually down. It's overlapping to down versus the prior day, even though we just kind of had an inside bar. So, not a lot of people willing to commit at higher prices. And um you know, I I don't get me wrong, I I want to, like I said earlier on the S&P, I want to be bullish. I want to think, oh, markets go to the moon and everything's awesome, but price action's telling me to chill out here. Uh and not really do a ton of anything until we have some clarity.

[00:15:36]Let's jump on over this IWM. Let's kind of speed round through this one. Uh very boring chart, which sometimes boring is good, but you've just got one day up, one day down, one day up, one day down inside of a major daily balance range.

[00:15:46]Nothing to do here. If we're in this range, fine. Not helping, not hurting.

[00:15:50]This gets a little bit more dangerous.

[00:15:51]This would be buyers rejoice. Keep it simple. No need to over complicate this Russell. We don't even need the hourly chart. If you wanted to say look below and fail, that is aok. Okay. You're mainly just watching for interactions and information off of 29250s. And then up there at 29950s, aka 300, the nice big psychological number. If you really want to take a look, we could do it.

[00:16:10]We'll jump on into our Russell internals. You can see the volume outflows are not hiding over here. The advanced decline's not hiding over here.

[00:16:17]And even the cumulative build on the rusty rut does close red on today's session. Jumping on over to the market profile section for the rusty. And what do we have? Well, you can see that value is terribly weak on Monday. That's that down day. You can see here's the up day.

[00:16:30]Oh, it's stronger. It's over. It's not even overlapping to up. It's clean.

[00:16:33]Notice how there's room here between the two value areas. Today, it's right back in the downward direction. You're you're doing yourself a disservice if you're overanalyzing using a ton of technical analysis inside of a balance range.

[00:16:43]Paralysis by analysis. It will either break and reclaim the level and we're bullish. It will break and hold underneath and we're bearish and we'll use that as information for the S&P in terms of a headwind or a tailwind. Let's jump on back to the S&P 500 and more importantly, let me actually reset this here. Let's talk about our weekly percent change in terms of sector performance leading the pack. Not a direct sector, but of course DRAM with the bounceback up 6 and a half% roughly followed by semiconductors. It's sort of like the the the reverse pyramid or rather not reverse but rather pyramid.

[00:17:13]memory is a small subset of semiconductors which is a subset of technology right so anyways those are your leading groups uh obviously energy is getting some bids here on the renewed tensions with the Middle East of course utilities leading uh on today's we'll we'll see the structural chart there in just a second you'll see the gap and go but just doesn't it it's such a mixed bag here as the market's just churning at the highs it's not risk off but obviously it's not risk on the market's not flying to new highs here if we look at the bottom end of the barrel software, it's discretionary, it's comms, it's mag 7. You know, once again, you're not going to have that buoyancy and everything's moving up if the index pressure isn't relieved because mag sevens are weak, right? Let's jump on over to the DRAM and just see what's going on here. So, one of the common patterns we've been talking about over on the good old bird app, and I'm sure you've seen it if you follow us, is the oopsy daisies pattern. Oops, sorry, didn't mean to break the neckline. Now, we're back higher. That'd be great. If this can happen, that would be awesome.

[00:18:08]You know, does this give us some opportunity to get long in here? uh treating this as a higher low maybe chart still is is pretty wide and loose the you know again how do you how do you get involved in this unless you're buying o you know overnight or I mean if you bought the oversold gap down on Friday from last week that's really the only tactic I could see here to get involved and keep a piece that's it uh but this really tough you didn't open in range you just gapped up and then you know you gap back down we're going to be gapping up just very very tough chart to get involved in obviously ly you want to play your individual components anyways, but the main idea here is good above 57, bad below 55. How about that? We'll keep it simple on the DRAM. Let's jump on over to this SMH. This is really where the oopsy daisies pattern uh originated from. There's your Manray. Oop, there's the break of the neckline. Oops. And we're back higher, right? So, I actually like what we're seeing here. The open equals low uh candle that we got today.

[00:19:02]Very impressive. And obviously, we're going to be slightly higher with the capex announcements from Google. Uh, if we could just get a little bit of a rally into the declining moving averages, pull back, show me a red bar that proves this is supportive down here. I mean, I drew a hammer. It doesn't have to be a hammer. It could be a dogee. It could be a bar that just is a small greenbodied bar with an upper wick or whatever. Doesn't matter. Show me that we do have support here for a higher low over 568s and that this was not the higher low. So, basically asking the market for a little bit more structure, right? If we can get that, then maybe we trade the oops pattern. Uh the alternative is that it just gaps up over the moving averages because oh my goodness, Google capex. We're here and then the higher lows over the moving average set. That's an alternative, right? And there's your inverted head and shoulders and boom, we're just back off to the races. I don't think that's how it's going to play out, but I've been wrong before and I'll probably be wrong again. Anyways, moving forward to XLE. This is right at a perfect spot to reject. I would start thinking about some pullbacks too far too fast energy.

[00:20:00]Uh the only thing that makes this tough is obviously crude oil being so sensitive to your headlines right now.

[00:20:05]So it's not a trade I want to get involved in. Yeah, it's a nice uptrend happening through here. It's it's you know one of the only things that's actually moving in a linear fashion, but is this a sector I really want to get involved in? No. Let's go to the XLK.

[00:20:17]And by the way, we have wor next uh next Wednesday. So we'll see if inflationary pressures there from XLE matter at all.

[00:20:22]Here's the XLK. I think that this is very similar. It's a rinse and repeat analysis of the Q's. basically uh show me something that breaks trend here. You know, this is just a declining channel.

[00:20:33]Hard hard to really get all bulled up, but I'm also not a mega bear uh in here based on again the capex DRAM rally, semiconductor rally, and then MAG 7 lag.

[00:20:42]So, tough. Uh here's XLU. There's the gap and go I was mentioning earlier strong. We don't want that leading the market to new all-time highs. It's not hasn't broken out of range yet. Not much to read into there. XLB, nothing to talk about on this one. Let's go to the IGV.

[00:20:56]This is important. need to see support here basically immediately tomorrow morning off of 8810. I'm not sure if it's going to happen or not. Uh Service Now is trying to save the day. Um however, as of right now, you know, your Palanteer chart really broke today. Even Service Now intraday got absolutely hammered. Um now it be there we go. It's just getting wrecked underneath that low. That was a brutal day there. It is opening higher. At least it's trading high around 100 bucks right now. So we'll see if we can gap green over red and rally it back up to the range high.

[00:21:26]Service Now got hit. PLTR got hit today.

[00:21:28]Um, from what looked like a decent setup, mind you, this was this was looking fairly constructive. Okay, look at the inside bar over its high. I was ready to get long Palunteer if we broke 135 today. I mean, forget about that, right? This is a complete kill candle there in terms of that setup. Going over to a CRWD crowd strike, right? Closed below the 20 SMA. Going over to a PANW.

[00:21:50]Check this thing out. Closed right at the 20 SMA. Maybe it makes me look like an idiot tomorrow. That's certainly a possibility, but uh I just had to get out of the way, right? Especially being long from down here at 266. I'll take my money and run. Uh what else do we have from PNW? We go Forinet, right? And you could start to see that the group doesn't look all that stellar. This is breaking down. Go look at an octa. I thought this was maybe a little bit more of a signal as well. Breaking the 20 there, making an equal low. If this gaps down, forget about it. Uh then we can go FFIV for F5. This one looks even worse, right? No good over here. So, just kind of buzzing through some of those softwares. Let's go to Oracle. One of the poster childs. Uh just when you think you're getting a multi-day bounce uh out of Oracle just smacked in the face with the inverted hammer closing back down inside the previous day's range. It's slightly higher in the after hours, but am I jumping for joy to buy a chart that looks like this? I mean, you got to be out of your mind, right? Sure, oversold bounce. Maybe you get a couple days in here, but are you going to find a new leader out of Oracle buying it down here at 120? I don't think so. Um so, I'm all set with that software for now. CRM, another one. Uh, I would stay far away from this thing. An absolute train wreck. I would stay away from wday, right? This thing an absolute train wreck. Failing big time on today's session, monday.com. I'm just, you know, listing all the You guys know the software names. These are garbage. I wouldn't I've been saying this for a while. There's good software, which was cyber security, and there's bad software, which is almost everything else. Palanteer's towing the line. Let's continue forward. Let me stop bashing those software bros and uh continue forward here. XLY looks like it's ready for a break. Uh with Tesla gapping down on earnings, wouldn't be shocked to see this opening at support, if not slightly below support. Does it reclaim and set the higher low for a rally? Or do we just get weak and start to crack? If we do, your S&P is not moving higher or it's going to struggle to move higher.

[00:23:35]Communications really breaking down in a big way today. Meta not able to pick up the slack and Google obviously not going to help tomorrow either. Again, you buzz through the 11 sectors, you're like, "Wow, look at this memory stuff. It looks all great. Semiconductors cool."

[00:23:47]And then everything else is like, man, this is not really it's not doing what it needs to do. Here's the mag seven, right? There's some opportunity for this to offer a higher low. Maybe it sort of uh interfaces with the 20, catches a higher low, and starts to close this gap above. There's some ability for this to do that. Uh not my favorite. Ideally, this tightness near the 50 would have stayed tight, and then we have some sort of resolution to it. We build out some sideways here and then go with the gap down.

[00:24:14]might give me a little bit of a second thought if we rally and reject the 50 now. Are we just building a little head and shoulders here? It's a possibility.

[00:24:21]You can kind of hear the hesitation, the neutrality in my voice. I don't want to be overly bearish. I don't want to be overly bullish. I'm kind of straight down the middle as of right now. Uh, which, you know, that's that's maybe not the answer most people want to hear, but it's the reality of the market we're in right now. XLV just when you think it's looking good and hey check back for a higher low over the 20 you kind of get this gap up that fails the gap down here making it tough you know what are we going to do are we going to go buy Eli Lily I don't want to in this chop I tried it back over here uh I don't know if I'm going to try it in this range we're going to go out and buy Johnson and Johnson may you know is this a little double bottom reclaim the 20 trade idea that I sort of stumbled upon for today's episode but there's J&J uh you go look at him Mr. K Merrick Health, you know, no thanks. Uh you go look at a UNH, maybe a bullish three bar play to get back to the earnings high, you know, it's like what are we doing buying this XLV in here? If it's not HIMS uh with a high ATR, right, which by the way looks terrible. Uh if it's not MRNA, which I thought had a decent opportunity to resolve this tightness here. It never did. So that was kind of a red flag.

[00:25:31]Maybe this retest of the breakout point in the 50 SMA is it. Maybe we get something there tomorrow on Madna. Uh you we go over to XBI for example. Is this going to start to shape up and are we finally going to get a higher low here? There's probably another opportunity breaking out of this base uh on XBI's into the future. This this would be the place to monitor in the healthcare side. It's going over to industrials weekly brigade bolt. Higher low potentially happening here. This is 8% still of the S&P 500. So it's important that this resolves higher and stays over the 50. We'll see. We'll see what that Caterpillar that Cummins wants to do. XLP is telling us a boatload of nothing in the middle of the range. So, we'll pass on that. Real estate's really lightweight sector and technically I'm really impressed with the way this has held up in the face of extremely not extremely high rates, but rates that are higher than what we've been used to recently. You know, color me impressed on real estate. The wealth effect uh is holding up. And I just got my tax bill in the mail uh for some property taxes.

[00:26:24]And they're not shy about jacking those higher. So, you know, the real estate people are hanging in there even with higher taxes, higher rates, and the whole nine yards. What else is going on here? XLF. Whoops. What's going on with financials? We talked about it earlier.

[00:26:36]I like the flag. I like, you know, your Goldman Sachs, your JP Morgan, the big banks here. Uh, obviously JPM is in our core list, but there it is. Looking pretty good. Here's your Goldman Sachs looking pretty good. Breaking a multi-day high here. Here's your Bank of America looking pretty good at the highs. Wells Fargo was a lagard. Still is a lagard. Not near the highs as was City Bank. back over here. Looking pretty rough after earnings. So, I would stick with the winners, aka Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan. How's Morgan Stanley look? Speaking of the devil there. Uh, not too bad, but not as good as the others. Maybe it's the same thing as that Goldman getting ready for a multi-day high break. So, stick with the big banks there. Let's uh jump on into our ratio grid and see what's going on from this perspective.

[00:27:16]Uh, we want the Yeah, this is the right ratio set. Not doing anything wrong. Not doing anything right. This is picking up some of the slack. This is still a problem. This is still a problem. Will these things resolve tomorrow? This and this. No, of course not. Tesla gapped down. Sayanara, XLY, Google gap down.

[00:27:33]Nice knowing you, XLC. The broad market's going to remain buoyant because of the semiconductor stuff. Well, guess what? You know, this of course this is going to move lower, right? XLV, it's not screaming risk off, but it isn't an uptrend there. This is a bit more neutral. This is a bit more neutral.

[00:27:47]Let's jump on into some other supporting evidence here. Risk on off uh AB sets.

[00:27:51]Not doing anything wrong. Not doing anything right. not doing wrong anything right. You get my point. Pretty much straight down the middle. Let's jump into this uh B set. What do we have here? Uh gold ratio pulling in a little bit. Not the end of the world. This has been screaming higher. TLT ratio looks fine. Bonds getting sort of slaughtered here as rates move higher, but yet markets are still up. Uh usually you just want to see, you know, when when we're talking flight to safety, it's bonds go down, but they go down less than the S&P 500, right? And that's what causes your ratio to move that way in terms of risk off. That's not really what we're seeing there. Bonds are just down and the markets are holding up. Uh rates are up and markets are also up.

[00:28:27]Kind of a head scratcher, right? Your copper futures still continue to look good over here. That's fine for the data center theme. Let's jump on into the dollar and rate. Speaking of, this looks like a bull flag breakout in the making.

[00:28:36]This looks like a breakout in the making out of an inverted head and shoulders.

[00:28:40]Higher rates, higher dollar. What does that do for risk appetite? It should technically dampen it. We haven't seen that yet, but somebody's lying, you know. And as as I sit here and talk about how neutral I am maybe on the QQQ and the S&P 500, then I see something that looks like this, I'm like, okay, I I I I think I think I don't know, but I think um the liar is probably the equity market, right? Being masked by some of the strength in the heavyweight stuff, but aside from that, right, starting to see some cracks in those uh MAG7s, at least to the start of earnings. Let's jump on into the inverted ZT. This would tell us that the market's thinking higher for longer. Higher for longer out of the Fed. So, let's just double check.

[00:29:18]Let's confirm it. H. What do you know?

[00:29:20]Yes, the Fed is higher for longer here.

[00:29:22]Right? Instead of getting some cuts into the back half of 27, we are just higher straight through. Now, again, my take is that I don't think that a higher Fed here is magically going to solve the issue with the energy shock. I think Kevin Worsh knows this. I don't necessarily, you know, rate hikes here don't impact the straight of Hermuz. I also think if we want to put on our tin foil hats for just a little bit headed into the midterm elections. I mean, Trump, Trump is uh he's a market guy, right? He talks about the stock market all the time. Besson literally ran hedge funds, right? These guys are market guys. Trump's a real estate guy. He likes debt, right? He knows how rates work. He knows if he wants the market higher, all he has to do is ease up the pressure on the straight of Hermuz and the next thing you know, rates come down, risk assets rise, and the market's up. Again, tinfoil hatish, maybe. Do I really think that the Fed's going to go out there and rip rates higher because of what's happening with crude? Probably not. I think that you have an administration that maybe walks back some of the tone u ahead of elections or, you know, whatever. Put on your tinfoil hat, speculate all you want. I think you get some walk back there. They know the mechanic that allows rates to come down, markets to lift. It's very obvious. So, it's been obvious, right?

[00:30:32]Anyways, just pointing it out now that this market seems to be pricing in higher for longer here. Why why if shelter inflation is moving in the correct direction, right? Why why would we do that? Why would we sacrifice a decently healthy labor market right now?

[00:30:44]Right? So, anyway, there's my tinfoil hat experiment for today's session. Uh I didn't even listen to whatever this was at 3 p.m. We just listened to earnings calls and uh went from there. Jobless claims tomorrow morning. We'll watch that. PMIs on Friday. Pay attention.

[00:30:57]Here's your earnings calendar. GE Vernova lower, Tesla lower, Alphabet lower. Uh tomorrow, not morning, but rather tomorrow after the close, my eyes are all on Intel. Intel's trading higher on the capex announcement from Google.

[00:31:10]Uh probably a little bit of Tesla as well there. IBM lower even after pre-announcing their dog water earnings there. And then Service Now is the only one that's slightly higher. I did not look at TXN. Uh however, we could just go do that now. That way I don't speak sideways out of the corner of my mouth.

[00:31:25]TXN is uh where's my white crayon? There it is. Trading lower. Beautiful. Great.

[00:31:30]So, three for four lower and the one that is up is now, which in my opinion is not a chart that I would touch with a 50 put pole. Um going back on over to earnings. What I thought was pretty compelling. So, here's your Google capex, right? Just insane tripledigit capex still. Uh but if we scroll up, I think the only slide you needed to even look at was this one right here. 82% cloud growth. Are you kidding me? Uh, insane numbers out of Google Cloud here.

[00:31:58]Strong numbers really across the board.

[00:32:00]So, killer numbers, but the capex is what's killing it. The thing that's going to be so interesting, and this is what Amazon did. Remember, Amazon made all these investments. They're investing back into the company. Capex was high.

[00:32:11]They shut the faucet off. And then what happened? The stock ripped, right? As soon as their free cash flow came back to life. It's I'm assuming, and maybe I'm you know what assuming does. It's going to make a you know what out of me and you.

[00:32:24]Maybe when the capex slows down, yeah, your semis get hit. But are companies like Google going to absolutely explode because of these numbers here? Again, maybe I'm a little bit tinfoilty, but 82% cloud growth are like name another company doing that. Uh let's going over these Tesla uh slides. And I I just thought this was interesting. Huge capex going to continue. Then if we scroll up to the numbers, uh this was actually pointed out on X. So this is I do not claim this to be my own observation, but look at these two numbers here. Your capex at uh 57 let's just call what is that 57 billion. What is what are these numbers in in millions? Yeah. So no sorry 5.7 billion, right? Against the backdrop of net cash provided by operating 4.6 billion. Not bad, right? the the the basic observation here is is that Tesla can kind of support some of their capex with the cash flow from the business, right? So, yes, they're technically underwater with free cash flow, but all they have to do is dial back some of it and next thing you know, they're still uh producing positive cash flow there.

[00:33:28]Anyways, don't want to get too fundamental. Never go full macro, never go full fundamental. It's not worth it.

[00:33:34]So, those are some observations about the earnings reports. Big cap uh expenditures here on Tesla. huge cloud growth on Google. Do the faucets turn off? Do these companies rip? Maybe at some point down the line, but we're just we're not there yet, right? They're still talking about 2027 building out more capex being supply constrained.

[00:33:54]Google talked about in their earnings conference, hey, we're actually going to use third parties, right? Because we actually can't build enough fast enough to serve our customers needs. So, who gets a bid? your Nbbyes of the world, your riots of the world, your marathon digital holdings of the world, your Irene of the world. Although I think Irene's are short, and that's actually one of the trade ideas, so spoiler alert. Anyways, let's go back on over to the platform. Let's finish up the supporting evidence here. Let's get this thing moving forward. It's almost 9:00.

[00:34:19]I want to go to bed. I don't know about you. Uh let's go on over to these bond markets. What do we see over here? Still worried a little bit about inflation, but this Let's pay attention to this labor report number. Uh it's the jobless claims. It's not really the full labor report, but let's pay attention to that on the Thursday morning session. This would tend to indicate, hey, you know, watch out. Uh let's jump into credit spreads.

[00:34:39]Still staying stable down here. Not quite picking up uh the divergence between the two. So, I'll remain optimistic for now. Junk bonds and isolation still telling us that we are, you know, sort of on par. Seeing lower and then lower over here. Let's jump on into our breath and let's just go full full pain one by one. Uh not bad. Not making substantial new lows towards the 50% mark here. This is just kind of telling us to be neutral as well. That's new highs versus lows on the NY exchange. So we haven't made, you know, a negative impression here, but we're not really making progress up and out.

[00:35:14]So that's that. RSP pretty rough day failing the break of the hammer high. Is it the end of the world? No. You're still stacking your daily higher lows.

[00:35:21]That's fine. And then last but not least, QQQE. Nice rejection underneath the overhead supply. Another reason to potentially be a little bit more cautious here in the near term. And let's go on over to the VIX and VIX. VIX getting crushed ahead of earnings, which is just I don't know, kind of kind of comical. The market's very complacent here. It seems it would seem to me that downside protection is cheap. Again, I'm not calling to be an overly bearish participant right now, but insurance is cheap. Look at the VIX. Look at the VIX coming down as the market's getting literally volatile and can't figure out up versus down. Uh I wouldn't be surprised to see a volatility expansion here shortly. Uh this is we are in a VIX for what it's worth. If I just go over here for all of our volatility nerds like myself. I am one of you. Uh we have an expiration. So the end contract goes out. We're going to be using Q against the scroll down. There we go. Q against you is the next look, right? And you could see here 1840 against 1955. You could even go here product depth and you could see the futures curve this way. So ignore well actually don't ignore it's pretty steep. There is your August September. Oh there it is. It just fixed itself. There it was. I was going to say that that kind of reminds me of this being wrong. Anyway, we're in contango.

[00:36:32]That's the bottom line. We're having fun looking at different line charts. But the bottom line is that we're still in contango. Uh which is bullish. Contango here. This fine compressed near the lows. Nothing to write home about on volatility, but that's oftentimes right when it gets you. Let's jump on into our core list of companies. Let's buzz through and get the job done here. Not nothing out of the ordinary, right? You get a big capex number from Google. Who gets the money? You transfer it from the bank account. Sundar says, "Hey, Jensen, I got a present for you." And the money goes straight over to Nvidia. Is anybody shocked about this holding up in the after hours? Probably not. If this can go sideways and brigade bolt for a day two continuation over the major daily inverted head and shoulders. Count me in, coach. I want a little piece of that action. Can we get a follow-through move here on Nvidia? Let's make sure we have Arvall tomorrow. It started to pick up today. Look at this. 101% of 20-day average RV relative volume. Right. If we can get an uptick in Arvall here as we start to go up and out, that's a trade I want to participate in. So, there you go. Nvidia, one of the better watches.

[00:37:31]Apple. If the market gets a little bit defensive tomorrow, if Nvidia says, "Ah, I'm gonna pop and fade back below the level, I want to be looking at Apple longs over this inside day high at 329."

[00:37:40]If Apple says, "Hey, I'm safe, right? I I don't have capex out the wazoo. You know, I'm not getting paid from Google, but I'm also well, they're paying Google, right? Gemini model and the iPhone." Anyway, we don't have capex problems. Maybe we're here over 329 brigade bolt. Is this some sort of a, you know, hourly double bottom?

[00:38:00]Maybe uh but this is only if the market starts to rotate into that defensive posture for tech. Let's jump on over to Microsoft. You know how we doing here?

[00:38:08]89's in the after hours almost unchanged. Look at the daily bar.

[00:38:11]Horrible, right? Just when you think, okay, tight day underneath the 50, break the two-day highs and you're higher. No thanks. Back inside the balance range.

[00:38:17]I'll pass. Let's jump forward into Amazon. Just when you think you have a tight hammer, reclaim the hammer high.

[00:38:23]Maybe we're doing this. I'll pass being in the midpoint of this range. Uh let's go on over to Google reported earnings, right? And by the way, if anyone wants the earnings slides, so to speak, or the earnings uh I don't know what you want to call this, a visual. Let's just do this real quick. Um you could take a screenshot of it. I don't know if this is going to That's fine. Um the idea here was that I thought it was interesting. Nvidia rallied when Google said that they're not using TPUs uh as infrastructure for other customers. They're using TPUs to serve their own AI, right? which me which kind of gave Nvidia boost. That was the last comment in here. Uh the other thing was as soon as they started talking about their forward guidance and the capex that's when the stock fell off of a cliff. Um we are coming back up into what I would consider a little bit more of an equilibrium here. Lower bound of the market maker expected move was 33304. Uh we obviously massively overshot that on the commentary and now we're back inside of that range. So market makers being a little bit more so delta neutral here headed into tomorrow.

[00:39:24]Maybe we just kind of digest the gap down and figure out, you know, how much punishment we want to give Google for capex, right? And how much we're going to look through it for the potential 80% cloud growth. Be my guest. Pick your choice. Pick your poison. So, gap rules will be in play for Google tomorrow.

[00:39:38]We're gapping down to this equal low.

[00:39:39]Look below and fail of the overnight low. Maybe this gets a little bit of a bid higher to trade back into uh the gap close. Does this turn into a little bit of double bottoming action? I mean, my goodness. Let's got not get ahead of ourselves. Pattern traders rejoice when and if we crack the neckline. a lot of work on this chart. If we can't 200 SMA is where I would expect we have a date.

[00:39:57]Let's move forward to Broadcom. Uh Broadcom a little higher in the after hours about six bucks here towards 400.

[00:40:03]Not a huge gap up, but it is opening towards the top end of this range. Give me single stock futures on Broadcom and we'll trade it. Other than that, not yet. And by the way, single stock futures hopefully coming to a town near you soon. Meta look below and fail here maybe. Uh, another one that's just kind of getting not pummeled, but just questionable uh, you know, against the backdrop with the capex stuff. So, look below and fail is the only thing I can really see off the top end of the range.

[00:40:28]I am not going to get short in the whole meta here into this low. So, this is really the only trade I'm looking for uh, tomorrow if it's going to even set up. It's going over to MU. Catching some bids here in the after hours. We got 986 by 987. We're pretty much pressed uh, straight into the highs in here, which is great. Um, I think that for MU, we have the potential of inverted head and shoulders. This naturally acts as your higher low. This is a two-day balance.

[00:40:52]Are we able to brigade bolt out of that and really reclaim? Everybody's watching it. It's the grandma number, right?

[00:40:58]A,000 bucks flat. If we can get over a,000 bucks, brigade bolt out of this.

[00:41:01]Do we have something to do? Maybe. I'm paying attention to that. Into the into the tomorrow's session. Into tomorrow's session. Here it is on the hourly. We don't need this little bubble, whatever that was from. Let's turn off these extended hours session. And let's turn this thing into an hourly chart. What's the game plan over here? MU, you dog.

[00:41:19]Getting some boost from the capex. Yeah, I think it's just you're here and you're here. That's a possibility. MU, this is another one that's been fairly difficult to trade recently. The option spreads get a little wide. And you know, MU has split. So, I do like MU. Uh, recently the idea has been looking for shorts.

[00:41:37]Actually, MU fades back down here under 900. There's MUD. MUD is very tough to trade just like DAMD. Very tough. Those those price points are just not good.

[00:41:46]Anyways, let's move forward. We know the idea is a reclaim of the 20 and higher on MU. Show me the inverted head and shoulders. Show me the brigade bolt here of the neckline and let's see if we can go higher. Some people might want the gap close and then you're longing this off of 900. That's possible, but if you're there, you're underneath some moving averages. You know, your classic momentum traders, they don't want to be involved in this under a 50 SMA. Uh let's go on over to this Tesla chart.

[00:42:09]Tesla earnings. Another one gapping down. You can see us here at F 359, excuse me. So 359 is within the bound of the lower bound of the expected move.

[00:42:17]And this gap down unfortunately does quite a bit of damage here for Tesla.

[00:42:21]Overhead supply. How you doing? Um, as much as everybody wants to be bullish on robots and autonomy and, you know, FSD and whatnot. They're just not getting the job done. The market's not responding that way. So I think gap fill reversal is the idea. Yeah, I don't want to be short in the hole, but if this rallies and rejects previous day low, if this rally rejects 368, we have a short up against that level perhaps. Let's move forward to JPM. Nice little push up and out here. We've talked about financials looking good already. This is like it already went. It made the move.

[00:42:50]You have your two-day string here and here. I would expect some digestion and consolidation. I would probably look to that Morgan Stanley if you want to look for an extension move. You have a little balance here. If you're hellbent on trading financials, that's your move.

[00:43:03]this uh 21960 220 spot on MS. That's where you're looking for a move back into these highs closer to the hourly level of roughly about 230. Let's just clean this up for round numbers sake.

[00:43:13]You guys know the deal up here in the office. Rule number two, uh is of course, you know, round numbers only. Uh everybody knows rule number one and uh we're going to abide by those rules.

[00:43:23]There we go. Perfect. From Morgan Stanley, we got there from JP Morgan. We go to AMD. One of the names that I think is going to be a leader uh through this market cycle. a little tough with the earnings coming up. And this honestly reminds me a bit of just how annoying this was here. Obviously, the base was way longer through this stretch, but uh AMD coming into a basing impact. Uh this is really nice. The reclaim of the 50 was pretty instantaneous. Strong day today, strong in the after hours with our semiconductor group. So, do we have something to do on AMD breaking from this balance range tomorrow on elevated capex numbers? It's possible. Are we a bit extended here on a gap up? Does that make that even more extended? The best outcome would be a pullback to set a higher low and a lower wick. We're buying that gap fill reversal intraday to stage longs as a break from this balance range. Just buying the gap and go a little hairy. It's not impossible, but we'll see. We'll see. The reason I say it's a little hairy is just because the market's not firing on all cylinders. If this was April 10th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 20th, whatever, May, sure. Yeah. buying gap and goes, yeah, it works. Uh, but when the cues look like this, buying a gap and go, I don't know. You're putting yourself between a rock and a hard place. Let's keep moving here. Intel is the final one on the chopping block. Tough to say anything constructive about this with earnings tomorrow after the close. Probably won't stream their earnings, but uh for now, inverted head and shoulders, rough close today. Look at the after hours 105. So, you are pushing back into the highs. Is this some sort of like postmarket higher low that's going to continue building out the inverted head and shoulders?

[00:44:57]Maybe. I'm just not willing to have too much of an opinion on it ahead of earnings. They'll change it on a dime. I hope it's higher. I'd love to continue to trade Intel. The options market really firmed up on it as it was making these moves back over here. Really nice options market through there. Uh please stay in play. Be a nice name on the core list. Anyways, that is the core list which means we are into the trade ideas.

[00:45:18]MSTR. Can you believe it? MSTR.

[00:45:22]There we go. MSTR is the idea that was not Irene for a short. And uh this is a potential long. The reason I like this is because Bitcoin's offering some relative strength through this entire downdraft in the NASDAQ. And if we could just check this back as a higher low in Brigade Bolt here. I mean, this is your lever on Bitcoin basically. If you want to just go trade spot Bitcoin, that's fine. There's I got nothing wrong with that. But MSTR is a levered bet on that.

[00:45:44]And you know, you could go MSTU if you really want to get crazy and use leverage on your uh on your monster MSTR.

[00:45:52]Then there you have it. I mean, this thing's ATR is 20%. I mean, you get hurt with that pretty quickly. So, just be careful if you're going to trade MSTU.

[00:46:00]But MSTR here on a break up through these highs after a slight daily higher low, lows, higher lows, higher lows, break through the equal highs. Do we just have an ascending triangle breakout ahead of earnings? Maybe. Bitcoin's been offering some relative strength. I don't think I commented on it directly, but if I do just bring back up the risk onoff bet set, you can see over here on the Bitcoin chart, we do have a bullish sailor shift ratio paired with MSTR looking like that potentially. So that's interesting. I think it looks better than Coinbase. Coinbase kind of flop today back down underneath this 171. We also had Robin Hood, speaking of brokerage accounts, not look too great, giving a round trip down into these lows. And I think in the after hours, h it was gapping down slightly prior. If I do this, maybe we have little trail of that. Yeah, there's your push to the downside through earnings. Uh, not Robin Hood earnings, but the earnings announcements from Tesla and so forth.

[00:46:50]So, we'll see where that goes. Uh, what did I want to do? I wanted to full screen our daily charts. Anyways, we got there from coin after strategy. Finally, Irene is the short setup. Uh, honestly kicking myself a bit for not just ponying up and shorting the shares today. Uh, yeah, I mean, this was this was the short watch headed into today.

[00:47:09]Irene off the 20s SMA rally rejection still in play underneath these two equal lows. I think you could still get this thing short down towards these lows.

[00:47:16]Please just be careful of Iran gapping up on the heels of Google's announcement that they are using third parties to serve some of their data center needs, infrastructure needs as uh they continue to build out via their expanded capex.

[00:47:29]The other one in the neighborhood of looking similar is this Wolf, right?

[00:47:33]WLF, not OFF. Uh basically the same setup. This would be fine to even get stretched into the 20 SMA and then you're shorting it here up towards this location at like 22 bucks. So 20 SMA and 22 bucks round number some kind of rally rejection into that looks like a decent short overhead supply. We're definitely backside below the 50 below the 20. Uh just be careful getting short in the hole. If this thing breaks and you're like, "Oh, it's down. You know, it's underneath the two-day lows." This is what Matt was talking about. I'm talking about getting short here with tight risk, some intraday level that you're defined against targeting the 200, right? Right. The riskreward I would want on something like this is like that. Uh even better would be, you know, you're shorting against the 20 SMA, maybe your entry tack that gets you an entry here, then you're targeting the 200 SMA as well. That would be even better on something like a Wolf. All right, so that's what I've got for you in today's episode and installation of the midweek market update. If you enjoyed the video or learned anything new, let me know down below in the comments section or by giving the video a very simple thumbs up. As always, we'll be live back up here in the office 8 a.m. Eastern time tomorrow to get the job done for some Thursday Thunder. Mr. G, I'll be looking out for your message.

[00:48:36]Hope to see you there 8:00 back here on the channel. Pre-market prep, building a game plan for the session ahead. With that being said, have yourself a green rest of the trading week. And as always, I'll see you in the next one.