isn't it obvious by now?

0:00 I mean, is it not obvious by now? A ceasefire and a peace deal conversation could not get the market substantially back above the daily 200 SMA. So it was never really about the war, was it? Just like in 2022 with Russia-Ukraine, it was about the incredibly weak conditions behind the scenes that set the stage and have finally broken down due to the oil shock. And as far as I can tell, the conditions still look weak, although I do have to say I'm pretty impressed with semiconductors as a group today, which we'll get into later on. So welcome back to the Trade Brigade Midweek show, where we'll take a look through all of the data points 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 three 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

0:47 on the SPY Daily timescale. And the first thing we should figure out is what's going on here from a trend perspective. Of course, the trend remains in the downward direction with highs, lower highs, Lower highs, lower highs, lower highs, and really the last three equal highs in here, underneath 662.50, they just strike me as a reasonable spot for the next lower high in the trend count. Recall that from these prior equal lows, 1%, two, and three here. We did set a big time lower low on the Friday session of last week. And the main point of the Saturday weekend watch list video was that the market could rally. It could go counter trend. And really, it would be in service to setting a lower high on the daily timescale. I would say the market's done a pretty darn good job of doing that so far throughout this week's worth of trade. Of course, you can also see that you just mix in a little magic 200 SMA in there. The next thing you know, it's

1:34 very difficult to argue that this is a bullish market environment here. And oh my goodness, the low is officially in. Now, speaking of low, is we do know the concept of a follow-through day, FTD. What we're looking for here primarily is a day that is at least up 1.5% on day four or beyond. So 1.5% day four or beyond from the attempted rally, which technically is this day. Let's label that as number one. This is number two. This is going to be number three. So Wednesday could qualify as day four or beyond. And ideally, volume would increase relative to the previous sessions. So you'll note here, I've got this green line on the screen, and it's kind of tangled with the upper edge of the weekly expected move, but it's 666.50. And that would satisfy the conditions of a plus one and a half percent update from today's close if that were to happen tomorrow on the Wednesday

2:23 session, if I break out the rectangle tool hopefully i can draw this a little bit more cleanly something like this would be a follow-through day now notice that that would take back the daily 200 sma and it would close back above these prior lows from over here if it does happen on an increase in volume I'll respect that as a slightly more bullish data point, but oh my goodness, am I jumping for joy and we're going to the moon and everything's fine and dandy? Absolutely not. It's one data point. You're going to hear a lot about this online. It is possible that that trade sets up, but it is not a base case. It's not the primary outlook that I'm looking for. I would certainly still be respectful of the major weekly lower high that can be set, as we talked about on Saturday, anywhere underneath 675. Remember that to get a weekly lower high firm, low

3:08 or high, you technically need to flip into a daily uptrend. So what might that look like? You could move to here, you could pull back, you could set a daily high or low, you could run into the weekly resistance, and then start to reject for the weekly firm lower high. I forgot to put the H here for lower high, of course. Now, I don't want to overstay my welcome any more than I have to on the bear side. So I'd be pretty cautious of being overly aggressive on this as a firm lower high. I'm just trying to paint the picture that even if we get a follow-through day tomorrow, it's not like we're out of the woods. I don't think that, again, as we'll see through the supporting evidence, the conditions behind the scenes have not improved so much so where I think that this is going to be the primary outcome And the next thing you know, we're knocking on the door at the all-time high. I think there's lower odds of that right now. So what might there be higher odds of, you might ask? Well, it's a

3:56 good question. Any weakness that sustains in here, probably starts to look for bearish outcomes, equal lows at least into Friday's low on a breakdown back underneath 653. That would be moving from a lower high in the daily trend count to an equal low. And ideally, what do we look for after an equal low? Follow through to a new lower low, continuation of the downtrend, and then the cycle repeats. We can then rally for a counter trend, set a daily lower high, and then move back down to the equal low, right? So something that looks like this, very reasonable over the next little bit, if the bears can actually run away with it underneath 653. Let's take a look at the hourly timescale and see what's going on from this perspective. I would just point out that if the market was going to be more bullish, you would think that on the gap up this morning, maybe we squeeze out some of the shorts who started to get involved on Tuesday, right? That Tuesday gap down

4:43 didn't really go anywhere. So you might think to yourself, all right, perfect. On the gap fill reversal or sort of the week close there, maybe some folks head out short, headed into the Wednesday session. The gap up on Wednesday did not yield a short squeeze, right? There was no rally to take out the 200. We just rejected the same equal area in here. So in my view, this isn't really what, you know, bulls would want to see. We're not putting the pressure on shorts. Shorts still seem to be somewhat confident here, holding tight in their positions and possibly looking for what? Well, rather than inverted head and shoulders, how about just a rejection of the 200 SMA again? And now all of a sudden, what does this do? right? Now, this is just a trendline break. You could think of this as a bear flag or a bear pennant on the hourly, and we're targeting the equal low, right? So 653 is the gatekeeper for that trade. Anything that looks like this for bearish consolidation,

5:28 the base case is going to look something along these lines under 653 target 646 as the low from not just Friday's low, but also off to our left from previous areas of support. If we go further than that, we know that we have the 642.50. And then really, I mean, think about the expected move of the week. The market has priced in that going down here would be well within the bounds of, you know, tolerable risk from an options pricing perspective, right? Yeah, sure. Headed into the Monday session with the gap up and the news literally released at 7am. Sure, right? Markets made this big move in the upward direction and suddenly this seems like it's super far away. But the options market technically as of Friday's close was saying, no, no, no, this is well within striking distance. So any rejections away from the 200 that really start to accelerate, you know, don't be surprised if let's just say

6:15 the headlines get worse. I would say right now Now we're moving in the correct direction on the MFC EU scale, right? You guys who've been to the morning show know what I'm talking about. Maximum fear, complacency, and euphoria. The headlines have certainly shifted in this direction. We'll see. I don't think the market's really buying it all that much, right? Obviously, you can't really talk about peace negotiations and having a deal put in place when you're literally about to have boots on the ground in the next couple of days. So the market doesn't really seem to be buying it. If the market did believe in the peace deal and, you know, brokering that was going to be quote unquote easy, then I would think you would squeeze harder on today's session, right? Something that looks like this and okay, I'll All of a sudden, now we're talking about upside, right? It's just not what we're getting. We're still getting this rejection underneath the daily 200 SMA. So let price really drive what your decision-making process

7:00 looks like here. Don't let the headlines do it too, too much. Just let price light the way. And right now, the continued and sustained rejection underneath the 200 to me is another indication that, hey, I'm thinking we're more so not done here. We need to continue down to the equal low, if not follow through, and do something that looks like this. If we move for upside, as I've made mention already, if we get the follow through day, I'll start to change my tone a little bit. It's one data point. I'll just be less bearish, but I'll still probably remain bearish on a potential rejection at the 20 SMA. And as we'll see, once again, the supporting evidence is not overwhelmingly flipping in the upward direction. Before we get on over to market internals, I do wanna take a look at the intraday anchored view app stack. This is of course telling us that once again, all it's gonna take is consolidation down here. You lose the anchored view app from the Friday session of last

7:46 week, sub 653. You're probably just targeting that equal low. If we were to reclaim, sorry for the funky zoom there, keyboard shortcut on thinkorswim, zoom back in like this, there we go. If we were to reclaim this area and start to tag the follow through day threshold, once again, 660, 650, If we get there, then fine. We've actually reclaimed a pretty substantial anchored view app from one of the first major gap downs that was Thursday of now two weeks ago, right? So I would really say on your over-unders, quite simply put, 660, 250, and then down here at 653. Let's quickly hit it with a Fibonacci just to see if there's any confluence. I actually haven't looked at this from the last leg on the hourly. Perfect 61.8 rejections here. That makes sense, keeping the bears in control. Ideally, underneath the 653, you'd just naturally be underneath the 38.2 fib which is of course also bearish. If we come in

8:33 from the low of the move up to the top of the move this week, notice also that your breakdown in here would be putting prices back underneath the 61.8, offering higher odds of a 100% retracement. So just as it relates to where the market's actually spending more time, I would say that we're still in bearish territory as it relates to location. Let's take a look over at the market internals. If you're not familiar with the internals, check out the video tutorial in the top right-hand corner on how to set this all up and what it ultimately means. As you can see here, I got to give a little bit of credit as the market has stayed somewhat sideways over the last three days after the big gap up Monday morning. Volume flows were technically up and that's just majorly, not majorly, but the... The major reason, let me slow down here for a second. The major reason is because the gap up was so substantially above the Friday close, right? Remember, this measures from prior

9:19 days close. Did the market actually go anywhere meaningfully on Monday? Not really. We went sideways. We did not even take out the news euphoric high there. So that's, again, another sign in and of itself. If the market was truly a believer that a peace deal or something to dramatically reduce the time frame of this conflict in the Middle East was actually in play, you'd probably be above the Monday pre-market high. Obviously, the market's not even close to that as of right now. We're actually closer to the midpoint of the range that was traveled there. And if I just do something like that, so the market's like halfway to belief, if you will. All right. So volume inflows, but we didn't really go anywhere on Monday. Flattish on the Tuesday session. I'll give a little bit of credit today as the market grinds sideways. Technically we did have some volume inflows. If we look at the AD line really weak on the Tuesday session as we opened lower, but nice recovery. So again, I got to

10:08 give a little bit of credit here. I can't be overly pessimistic. I still think location is generally bearish for the market, but at the exchange level, it's a little bit more of a mixed bag. Take a look at the index score as well. It's not like it was dominated by the sellers. It also wasn't dominated by the buyers. I would concede that point also. Look at the sort of cumulative build on the tick. Once again, more so flat than anything else. You didn't really ramp here into the close. Remember that substantial reads are 5,000, could be bullish or bearish. Friday just sticks out like a sore thumb. Does it not? Although we've consolidated sideways here, so far based on everything I can see, paired with location, It's not like these internals, the last three trading days, are enough to really change the tide out there in the market. That, I would say, is the bottom line of the internals dashboard here. Let's jump on over to market profile. Where's value developing? Once again, here's your

10:53 crazy overnight move. It's really not overnight. It's pre-market on Monday. Where did value develop relative to that move? I mean, it's certainly lower in that Monday session. If you look at Tuesday, it's lower. If you look at today's session, it is lower in the individual profile. It's more so overlapping and sideways than it is developing in the upward direction. And by the way, if you're not familiar with market profile, it's just a way to look at different price data, volume data. Check out the video tutorial in the top right hand corner if you'd like to learn more. Generally, what would I watch for going forward? What we have seen, I do have to give once again a little bit of credit where credit is due. The J period single prints from Friday are acting supportive as of Tuesday's low. So once again, credit where credit is due. If we had a weaker market, these sellers really should have just blown right through that and tried to find more price acceptance inside of the lower 50%.

11:38 We call this d2 distribution number two on that friday session underneath j periods low it just simply didn't really shape up it doesn't do anything to negate the fact that these are still beautiful lower highs up here on the higher time frame we're just talking about the confidence of the sellers you technically could have slightly more confident sellers here if momentum was really going to start running hard on the downside. Let's go back on over to the platform. Let's take a look over at our good friend, the nasty NASDAQ and see what's going on with the cues here. Daily chart to start every single time it rhymes. Here we go. Bottom end of the balance range. Has it been recovered into today's session? Survey obviously says no. You're still looking at a lower high underneath that. You're looking at lower high acceptance underneath the daily 200 SMA. We have plotted out the follow through day satisfied level, a one and

12:24 a half percent update from today's close would bring you to about $596.65 in the QQQ. If you were to hit that and still reject, I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm still thinking about overhead supply weighing on price in the downward direction. Will you have to find a bottom eventually at some point? Sure. Could a follow-through day start to indicate that? Yes. Does it really change my tone to full-blown bullish, oh my God, all-time highs? Here we come. Not really, as we've already sort of outlined. So for now, this looks like lackluster price action to me. This is sort of like maybe day one, day two, day three, maybe tomorrow becomes a day four. As long as this low from Friday remains intact, then we'll still keep an open mind to this stuff. For now, I would generally take more of a slightly more bearish approach, overhead supply, lower high, under the 200. Didn't even test the 200

13:11 on today's session with the pre-market sort of rally there, if you will, or I guess it was last night right after the close when the announcement was made. So all these headlines right at the perfect timing, of course, right? 7 a.m., 4.15, right as the market cash is closed, right? So anyway. the consolidation, the location of price action is bearish in my view. If we were to start taking out these lows in here, we know that we do have downside references under 580.75 Friday's low into 574.25. And then this gap level down below is my next area of interest. 566.85 to 565.90 is the major spot. And once again, think about your expected move for the week. Options market certainly pricing in that you could get there no problem. And it wouldn't really bat an eye at being over its skis in terms of volatility or risk that it's assigned as of Friday's close So with that, let's take a

13:57 look at the, I mean, let's just acknowledge the bull side reversal case, right? If there was going to be a screaming up day, like something that looked like this, really, really up there, and then we pulled back on Friday and we really were holding in firmly over the prior range here, could we start to think of this as lows, lower lows, higher lows for inverted head and shoulders? It's possible. You know, I would keep an open mind to it, but I would really want to see more of the supporting evidence start shifting, which as I know I've pointed to the sectors, this is just a part of it. But as we've made note, supporting evidence is really not aligned with an overly bullish or risk on environment here. That's the daily. Let's drop it on down to the hourly. You could see, again, if you had stronger sellers in here, you'd think left, head, right. In here, wouldn't you put the pressure on and try to get at least back up to the neckline over that into the 20? Didn't really happen today. I will give the buyers some credit

14:46 in the sense that, yeah, gap fill reversal did keep prices over the Tuesday high, and the after hours were slightly lower here by about a dollar. So where does that put us? Just roughly... 86.79s, right around in here towards the lows of today's session. So, you know, you could still argue for inverted head and shoulders like this. Now your neckline's a little bit more of a quasi, you know, trendline, if you will, even if that breaks, right? Once again, am I sitting here calling for a massive reversal? This is the start of it all. It could be the start of it all in hindsight, but for now, the base case for me is any rallies into this area. I'm looking more so for rejections underneath 5.95 and then continuation back down into the equal lows there at 5.80.75, continuation beyond that for the lower low and continuation of the trend as we've described on the S&P, right? Once you set a lower high, you're really looking for the equal low and then at the

15:33 equal low, looking for the lower low to continue the trend. Once again, if there's going to be this, I'll change my tone as evidence starts to turn with it. But for now, I would think lower odds, not really the base case. If I have to eat my words, then so be it. Like I don't wanna fight against an uptrending market any more than I have to be. You guys know where the permable of YouTube's over here. So, you know, sure, flip us back into an uptrend. I've got no problem with that. But from my viewpoint here, the supporting evidence has not turned. Let's jump into the intraday anchored view apps. You can see we're right at the cusp of losing the Friday anchored view app via the overnight pressure to the downside. So any open underneath 586.75, I mean, I don't want to say kiss it goodbye as in like it's the end of the world, but you just don't have any support from your anchored view apps here. If you do start to recover over 595, once again, that is a clearance of this. Thursday gap down anchored view

16:20 apps will give a little bit of credit on that one. Once again, keep it simple. This is the major zone. If you're here, great. Maybe Maybe we change our tone a little bit. I'd be more open-minded to look above and fail something doing this, low or high. right? If we do something that looks like this, awesome, equal lows, follow through to the downside. Let's see if we can continue the trend, making a new lower low. Let's break out the Fibonacci's one time on the NASDAQ side from here to here. You could see we've got our 61.8 spot on at 595, perfect confluence with the daily 200 SMA as well. That's the green moving average for anybody who has not picked up on that yet. And then from here to here, low up to this most recent high, not really getting great confluence out of the 38.2 or the 61.8. Of course, the more time we spend in the midpoint there, no man's land as we call it. It's the less confidence we are or less confident we are in the market. And I would say that really over the last

17:07 two trading sessions, very, very low confidence tape, right? The market just went absolutely nowhere. No firm buyers to step up, no firm sellers to step up. Same thing there on the Tuesday session, right? Each session has gone gap fill reversal, gap fill reversal and stayed elevated. So I think the market's kind of in a limbo mode, waiting for the next thing to happen. And ultimately, you know, as we're waiting and going sideways, we're not waiting in bullish territory. We're waiting in bearish territory sort of seemingly waiting for the next shoe to drop on the bear side. There's only so many ways to say the same thing, right? So there it is. That's your downside on the NASDAQ. Let's go on over to the NASDAQ internals and see what we've got here. Once again, Monday is all about the disjoint from Friday's close. The disjoint is what makes this seem so severe. I don't think we did anything so impressive on

17:52 Monday where I'd say, oh my God, it's like through the roof. No, I'd give more credit to today's session making a move here on the AD line up in trend higher zone. Give a little bit of credit to the buyers on that. Overall, though, you could see here out of the cumulative build on the tick, really not doing anything substantial as it relates to intraday pressure. This is much more indecisive action. And once again, location, generally speaking, is slightly more bearish. Let's take a look at the NASDAQ side of the market profile and see what we can glean from this. The profile. Any shift in value? I would say the same thing as the ES. Value on Friday. Here's Monday. You would think, like, if this thing was over the moon, you should have clean value, like big separation to the upside. I mean, like maybe a small amount of separation there. How many points is to be accurate, right? Let's just call that 350 up to about 375, a 25 point move in the

18:40 upward direction of value, a shift. It's not really that bullish. If we had 125 points, then maybe, but for now, really lackluster build as it relates to volume and value. You could see here and here, mostly sideways more so than anything. It's not really convicted in the upward direction. Sure, you've got a little bit of this action happening here. Wasn't quite a clean J period single print on the Friday session for the NQ. Nonetheless, still respecting structure there off of that mechanical set and L and M periods as the low of Tuesday's session. So we'll give it a little bit of credit on that. But for now, base case stands as is. Let's jump back on over here to the platform, take a look at the small caps and see what we got going on from this perspective. Give a little reset. There we go. So on smalls, I got to be a little bit more open-minded. And I think

19:26 on small caps, right, the logic behind this is You never took out the 200 SMA, right? Small caps actually perfectly bounced off the 200. They were in a slightly stronger trend behind it anyways. This, I would argue, is certainly neutral since the start of the year. But this was much stronger than what we had seen over in the S&P 500. So you're coming with a firmer footing on the higher timeframes. Nonetheless, 200 SMA is held. You're over this neckline. Technically speaking, if you want to, like, get crazy here, I mean, the NASDAQ has already found... Sorry, not the NASDAQ. The small caps, the Russell 2000, has already found a slightly higher high. I mean, that's pretty compelling. What do we know about small caps as well? They're more so a gauge of breadth, you could say. I mean, it's 2,000 stocks, small caps, of course, but it's 2,000 versus the S&P 500, the NASDAQ 100. So breadth might be subtly improving here. I've got evidence that says on the contrary, but nonetheless, for small caps,

20:15 not really the worst look in the world. If you wanted to start considering this, a quasi-inverted head and shoulders, you're over the neckline. You broke above, you stayed above, you're rejecting the 20 still, so we've got to be a little bit more... open-minded to a look above and fail in my view. If you get back into this range, that'd be kind of nasty down into the right shoulder again. But for now, at face value, lower WIC gap fill reversal over the Tuesday high, stronger day on Tuesday than the broad market S&P NASDAQ. Once again, a little bit of credit deserved here on small caps trying to stay over 251. So in the effort of trying to keep it simple, 251 is a major arbiter of price, as is this level here, the right shoulder at 245.50. If we could stay above 251, great, maybe there's some follow through here into the follow through day satisfied count, which is at 255 60 on the top side. And if we do go look above and fail, which

21:01 I'm got to be honest, I'm a little bit more partial to that. I would be thinking about the right shoulder coming into view as a target, 245.50, as we've said, you know, a few times now so far. Let's go on down to the hourly chart. You could see how the market struggled up against the 20. We did set sort of an intraday lower high as well as an intraday higher low. So you're in range compression in the very short term. If we do add, or if we did have, excuse me, I should say, if we did have stronger sellers, I would tend to think that the second hourly bar of the day would find acceptance underneath 251. You rally into the, not 200, but the 20. You reject and you're here, you're under 251. If you're a stronger seller, this is the outcome that you wanna see, not a close back above that level. So once again, have to give a little bit of credit over here in the small caps. I truly

21:46 hope by evidence of this analysis here, We just take the chart at face value. I don't want to have to be any more bearish than I have to be in the S&P, the NASDAQ, or the small caps. And as you can see here, this just isn't as bad as the other charts. Objectively, it's not, right? Are we out of the woods? No, I don't think so. But, you know, it's certainly a step in the right direction, right? What I would love to see if you're trying to be constructive on smalls, probably want to see a rally here, very reasonable spot for a pullback to develop again. Then if you could set a daily higher low here, over the neckline more meaningfully, yeah, that starts a change in trend absolutely holding over the daily 200 SMA. So that's really the next watch if you're a bull here on smalls. Let's go down to the hourly chart again and hit it with the intraday anchored view apps just to be congruent in the entirety of the analysis. Notice how we're over the entire stack. Very, very different look than what we just

22:32 had in the NASDAQ and the S&P 500. So the longer we could stay above, better outcomes that are, are the better outcomes there are for movement in the upward direction to sustain. If we come in here with the same Fibonaccis, remember, we pulled from this prior high, last week's high, to the low of the move, we're, I mean, you can see it for yourself, we're over the 100% retracement. There's not much Fibonacci analysis to actually do as it relates to that move. If we come from Friday's low up to today's high, notice that we're still over the 6%, not the 68.1, but rather than 38.2, any consolidation, if we do just grind around in here, it might not be the end of the world, right? I would prefer, of course, that we stay over 251 flat, but Fibonacci analysis sort of says, no, you could kind of hold the stack of the anchored view apps in here and still be all right for an hourly higher low, lows, higher lows, and higher lows. So that's that on small caps. Let's jump on into the Russell side of the market internals,

23:20 see what we got going on from this perspective. Much weaker volume inflows today. It's kind of ironic considering that the chart looks stronger. AD line, not as strong. cumulative builds, definitely a little bit better in terms of their solidity, solidity, validity in the upward direction there towards 1000 substantial here on Russell is going to be a 2000 print. We haven't really seen that in some time, but also on the downdraft to give credit where credit is due. I mean, that was only negative 1k, right? It's not like you went out to a negative 2k on that Friday session from last week. So small caps kind of liking what they're seeing here as of right now, hoping that the MF EU scale continues to move in the right direction for interest rates, right? Really, what oil has done is put a shock to interest rates and put a pressure on the Fed that boxes them in, right? The dual mandate is really at odds with allowing them to do anything. They can't cut because they'll spur

24:07 inflation. They can't hike because they'll kill growth and the labor market is just getting pummeled, right? So Small caps are starting to say, okay, maybe the oil shock can start to calm down a little bit and then rates will ease and the Fed will continue on their trajectory to ease rates. That's basically what small caps are starting to price in as of right now. And once again, I'm kind of at odds with that thesis. I don't think it's, how should I say it? I'm not overly convinced that that's the outcome. If it is, then fantastic. We won't fight it. But for now, let's just stay objective with the charts. You can clearly see value is where. elevated on today's session. One of these things is not like the other and the market profile certainly supports that for the Russell. Let's get back on over to the platform here and let's finish up the look through our sectors or let's start

24:53 the look through our sectors. Really, we've got who's leading, who's losing and where's the weight energy leads the pack, of course, with what's going on with crude up 4.63% on the week. Then we have materials, lightest weight sector. There is semiconductors, as mentioned in the intro, really impressed with some of the action in the semiconductor components. We'll get into that. That's going to be really almost all of the trade ideas are related in away to semiconductors, electronics, equipment there for data center, right? XLY also not having a terrible week there, up 0.87%, not over the 1% threshold, but not bad. Bottom of the barrel is software just getting absolutely wrecked on that Monday, Tuesday session, Tuesday. Monday actually had a nice breakout, especially Palantir. Anyways, moving along, real estate towards the bottom end of the barrel, as well as communications and financials, still a thorn inside of the market. Financials look really, really ugly. Let's jump into

25:40 the structural chart. So overall, what does risk posture stay Not really a risk on market, right? It's kind of split, if you will. There's a split with semiconductors looking good, tech and financials not really looking so great. Let's jump on in here. Energy. I think the chart speaks for itself. Crude obviously speaks for itself. And as long as we remain elevated here, you know, it's going to be an inflationary pressure for the market. While we're on it, let's just look at crude now. Let's not belabor the point. Let's bring this down to the hourly chart. This, of course, is the Monday morning announcement, right? And generally why there's a Fibonacci on here, if the market's a believer that there are going to be negotiations and conversations about things getting better, you want to see prices remain almost down towards the extreme price of that announcement, right? What would be the The worst thing for crude in terms of a

26:26 positive development here as it relates to the MFEU scale would be a move all the way back up here to 98.75. If price and crude comes back above that level, then the market's completely discounting everything that was said on Monday morning. No deal. We're not interested in that. The war rages on and this thing gets dragged out and oil prices remain structurally higher for a longer period of time, obviously as a major impact to inflation. So 98.75, that is the number to beat. As long as we're below that, The market believes to some degree that a deal could shape up. The best place for crude to be would be down here. Now, where is it currently in the after hours? Kind of right in the middle, right? 50% retracement here. The market's still sort of teeter-tottering, just like we talked about the fib on the market internals when I was talking about the ES, right? Right in the middle. The

27:12 market's like, man, maybe there's something to it. Maybe there's not. Maybe it's not as good as we think. It's not as durable. It's not going to be as long lasting. That's kind of what the market's suggesting as of right now as it relates to crude. You go over here to BZ, which of course is the Brent, and you You can see the same exact thing where we're closer to about, I'd say in the lower third still, but if we just break out the fib from the top down to the bottom, right there at the lower third, right? Ideally, this would continue to be here and take out 98.35. That would be a big step in the right direction to reduce the pressure on global oil prices, right? So that is what we've got there. Let's continue along into XLB for materials. It's one of the lightest weight sectors in the market. It is the lightest weight sector, actually. So the fact that this is rallying in here, you might be like, oh yeah, look at that. That's awesome. Yeah. it pulls no weight for the S&P 500. So yeah, I

27:58 mean, it's technically reclaiming this level. In a picture-perfect world, sellers would have just stepped up for a lower high there, but there's still room for a lower high. They're not daily 20. You could just have look above and fail there, and it's the lightest weight sector. So it's not really doing anything to make me overly enthusiastic about longs. If we look at SMH, this is where I've got to give some credit, right? You know, everybody's looking at this through the lens of head and shoulders, and honestly, rightfully so. It's definitely there. There's absolutely a lower high. The moving averages are pinching and starting to reorient in a more bearish direction, I would just remind us of this situation. We've been talking about this in the group for a while, right? This head and shoulders is a prime example of when everybody can see how obvious the setup is, maybe it doesn't actually play out, right? Now, I think that the conditions of the market here were dramatically different, obviously, than what we're dealing with over

28:44 here. Notice that that entire formation, the 20 and the 50, didn't even come close to crossing, never mind even sloping in the downward direction. So, you know, let's not compare apples to oranges. I think this is totally a different situation, but... You know, what is, what would be the classic quote unquote pain trade here for semiconductors? Everybody thinks it's lower. And then it does this into the high. Everybody gets re-jazzed up about the long side. This turns into a weekly double top. And now you test this after you sucked everybody right back in one more time. Right. You know, it doesn't have to happen that way. I hate to sort of be like a conspiracy theorist and the market's out to get you. Oh my God, it's the boogeyman. It's not what I'm trying to get at, but semiconductor components, as we'll see there, the three trade ideas, all semiconductors, right? Those charts look pretty decent for upside, mainly in manufacturing equipment. So that's semis. Let's go on over to XLY. And if you don't

29:32 lose semis, if let's just go back, if SMH does not take this neckline at some point and do this, then you might not actually have the massive, you know, 15% correction, or I think it was 12% correction we were talking about into about 615 SPI that gives you the monthly higher low thesis. You need to lose semiconductors if this is going to continue to be painful in the market. Let's jump on over to the XLY. and see what's going on here. It looks bearish. This just looks like a lower high to me underneath prior lows. projecting for a lower high, easily could continue in the downward direction underneath today's low tomorrow. Plenty of room to still sustain a lower high, even if it tags with 20. Let's jump on over to XLU. As a defensive sector, you'd be like, okay, this is maybe going to hover out near these highs. Obviously it hasn't. That was Friday's bar. We talked about that on Saturday. Plenty of room for a lower high sub 46. No change here.

30:19 It does not look bullish to me. If you look at industrials, another one that just doesn't really look bullish to me. This is more like a topping formation, head and shoulders, still respecting the neckline there, 20 pinching through the 50. It's not really a great look look, you technically have an overshoot here to a lower low. There's plenty of room for a lower high. I'm not convinced that you have a turnaround story here. If you look at IGV, I've got to say I'm a little impressed with the selling action on IGV. This was a really nice taper in volume as we were getting this potentially as a flag over this key inflection point alongside a 20 SMA cradle, completely thrown out the window on the Tuesday session. So sellers, I got to hand it to you. I'm pretty impressed with the breakdown here in IGV. Certainly some headlines on Tuesday morning that related to Apollo being only willing to pay out 45% of their private credit loan or, you know, depositors could only sort of

31:07 take back 45% of their loan, if you will, or investment, however you want to phrase it. That possibly put the pressure on IGV, right? Now, you know, pair it with what happened in Palantir Circle, of course, got absolutely wrecked by the Clarity Act. So like all these things really point to a deteriorating chart on IGV from what was looking kind of constructive here over the 20 to very quickly unwinding, a little less interested in IGV now. And this technically does just look like a weekly lower high. Let's go on over to real estate. interest rates putting the pressure on over here. It's a lightweight sector, but do you think of it from a wealth effect perspective? If people start believing that their homes are going to start being worthless, right? You know, not literally worthless, but the value of their home is going to be, you know, dialed back a little bit, even though, you know, literally not everybody's out there getting a HELOC to go, you know, fund their next purchase or whatever. It's

31:54 just going to, they pull back on the wallet a little bit, right? That's the nature of the wealth effect. Oh my God, the house isn't worth what we thought it was. Let's like save a little bit more money, right? That's the situation that we're dealing with as an if real estate prices start to come in more aggressively. Let's go on. And so what does that mean? Less spending, less earnings, right? For companies. There you go. Um, Let's go on over to communications. Looks weak. I mean, there's nothing to really say about this other than a break of the 200, continuing to accept underneath. You were hanging on for dear life into the Monday session, but just completely falling apart on the Tuesday and then on today's Wednesday session, confirming that via the lower high in the upper wick. Let's jump on over to the XLF, also looking horrible, rejecting the daily 20 SMA. Nothing really constructive to say about this in a downtrend, sustaining the downtrend, still rejecting this. Even if you popped 20, look above and fail, I think could easily produce just a lower high underneath these prior

32:42 equal low from over here. No change to this. Maybe earnings season is the next big catalyst, which is going to start mid-April for the big banks. Maybe that's enough to pull it out, but just right now, really, really tough look. XLK, another tough look here, rejecting the 200. Remember that as of late last week, really Thursday, we were closing back above, just finally breaking below on Friday. We didn't really make big new lower lows, but what we do start to see here is just the sustained lower high pressure. So anybody who's long from this congestion is starting to think, ooh, Not working, not working, getting a little bit more red. Like where do those people throw in the towel? I mean, I would have to imagine there's a stop run underneath this 134.30s, which just continues to put the pressure on. I will say a little bit resilient here considering what happened in Microsoft today, but nonetheless, XLK trying to

33:27 hang in there, primarily being impacted by NVIDIA. Let's jump on over to the MAG7 ETF. This just looks horrible, right? Still rejecting underneath the overhead supply here. Tough to get jazzed up on this one until we start to take this out and set higher lows above 60.10 So not really bearish, sorry, absolutely bearish, not really bullish at all. Look at the 2200 cross. You're about to get, you know, the also famous or infamous, I should say death cross as they call it with the 50 down through the 200. We'll see XLP, nothing really to write home about on this chart. Even if you bounce from here, lower highs abound. Even if you bounce from here, lower highs abound. Let's jump on over to healthcare. Healthcare, one of the defensive sectors, no hiding over here in this. It's not like we're getting a rotation. We talked quite a bit about this on the Saturday update video. You're not seeing a sector rotation You're not seeing the defensives get a bid. Yeah, you're up for

34:16 a couple of days, but it's not like this is an in and up trend. There we go. This was where your rotation was taking place from October to maybe in here, January-ish, if you will. This is the rotation that kept the S&P 500 going sideways. Now there's no hiding, right? That is the bottom line as it relates to sectors. Let's jump on into the ratio charts and see what we got going on from this perspective. If you're not familiar with ratios, check out the video tutorial in the top right-hand corner. It's pretty cool stuff. XLK. little bit like neutral there still. I've continued to give that one some credit on the ratio chart. This still looks horrible. This is deteriorating. This doesn't look good. This says defensive. This says defensive. So there's zero risk appetite here as it relates to the actual sector posture. If we jump into the A set, what do we have? One, two, neutral, three, four,

35:05 Five out of six bearish, maybe a neutral here, noting that ever so slightly making a slightly higher high at semiconductors versus healthcare. And with anything that just reinforces once again, if we end up coming out of this, semiconductors may once again be the leading group. It might not be NVIDIA. It might not be, well, AMD actually looks really good right now up at the top end testing its earnings gap, but it might not be, geez, might not be NVIDIA. It might not be, God, why... It's right here on Broadcom. My goodness. Might not be a Broadcom. You know, Supermicro, just forget about that with the big gap down. It might not be an A-Lab. It might not be a CRDO. But it could start to be some of the newer players in the space, ones that are just announcing big things like ARM, for example. And we've got some others. ARM is not included in the three ideas. Anyways. reinforcing

35:54 data point for semiconductors. Let's jump on over into the B set. You can see that the gold ratio has made some stable improvement here. But once again, we know that's because of interest rates and how crude is impacting that. It's not technically a more risk on signal to see SPY outperforming gold here. It's more of the inverse where interest rates are, you know, you need to know the context behind why this is actually moving in the upward direction, right? It's not just face value there. Bitcoin's still acting well with potential higher lows here. Got to give that some credit as being a risk on sign. I don't think we're out of the woods, but some credit. And you can see here on the TLT, still making lower high ratios there. This is not good for risk appetite. As it relates to credit spreads, jumping on over, let's go dollar and interest rates first. Sorry, we'll go here and then we'll bump over. dollar staying elevated rates starting to come down a little bit. You know,

36:41 the running joke is just that whenever rates start to reach about four and a half percent on the 10 year, somebody in the administration says something and tries to put the pressure on in the downward direction. So, you know, you can believe that or not, but look at what happened all through the tariff debacle, four and a half percent. It seemed like every time we inched over four and a half percent, some announcement, some deal was being made, some this, some that, uh, you know, rates came down a little bit. Oh, put the pressure on. Oh, come down. Right. So we'll see. We didn't quite make it to 4.5, but you get the idea. Uh, the administration, the headlines are everywhere that the debt burden has been the highest that it's been in all year, right? So people are paying attention to rates. Scott Besson didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday as literally a head fund manager. The guy knows kind of the inner workings of how the bond market works. So we'll let that be. Let's continue along. and see what else is going on here with the

37:28 inverted ZT, which is the Fed watch, basically telling us that don't expect any rate cuts anytime soon. And if you've been tuning into the pre-market preps, or even if you just watched on Saturday, there's been no change, you know, pause, pause, pause, pause, pause, all the way out to the end of 2027. That's right, you heard me, 2027, not 2026. No cuts for you, market. You're seeing 70.6% odds of a pause. Now, do we really believe these odds are gonna be cemented here forever, for all of eternity, and this is what it's gonna be? you know, developments will change these odds dramatically as bond markets reprice things. But for now, the idea is the market's pretty timid about the future prospect of rate cuts, right? So you could play contrarian here, actually. And if you've made it to this point in the video, you know, please, you know, take this to heart. The market has priced

38:13 in kind of what I've suggested so far, which is that things don't look great. The conditions under the hood are not awesome. Inflation is sort of uncertain at this point. The labor market's in a tough spot. What the market's not pricing in is that things do get better, they get better much more rapidly, this curve starts to look something like this, right? And that of course would be upward pressure in the market. So like, don't get me twisted. I know exactly, you know, I know that the contrarian play here would be the unpriced situation and the market would respond in kind in the upward direction. If we see that starting to take shape, then we should quickly get in line and not hold on to our current bias of being overly bearish, right? So for what that's worth, there's an acknowledgement. Let's jump on into the economic calendar here. PMIs actually came in pretty good, over 50. That's expansionary there.

38:59 So growth, not terrible as an outlook there. We'll see what happens with jobless claims. It looks like President Trump is scheduled to speak in about 20 minutes. So I wrap this up so we could go, you know, watch at the edge of our chair and watch the ES futures tick minute by minute, as every word is said. Anyways, jobless claims tomorrow morning. That's the big tell as it relates to the labor market. A lot of FOMC speakers here into the after hours on Thursday, and then revisions to consumer sentiment. Not really concerned about that on Friday. Just keep in mind that next week should be the full Monty labor report, right? There you go. There's your jolts. There's your ADP non-farm. And then on Friday is the full labor report. All right. So that is next week. That's coming down the pipeline. And this stuff will be a big deal considering the Fed is caught between a rock and a hard place. As we look at the earnings calendar on this before the open today,

39:45 the chart really didn't do anything all that compelling. Pony AI I have not looked at yet. And rightfully so, because that's Thursday before the open tomorrow. Karaman after hours, I also haven't looked at, but that is an interesting one that we should go look at right about now because nothing else really grabs my attention on the earnings calendar, maybe Carnival and maybe the metals company. This is rare earths. And this of course is super sensitive to oil prices right now with of course, just their operations let's go back and over here let's quickly take a look we'll divert to krmn uh krmn here right this was wednesday after hours yeah wednesday after the close what are we doing on earnings we're unchanged maybe slightly higher so not quite a good enough move to break up and through this today we'll see if it can hold on to the moving averages cradle and make an attempt, you know, quasi

40:32 cup with handle here. It's more like on a higher timeframe, you know, is this just a weekly higher low? And can we continue here without too much pressure for a lower high? I think it's still in the right space. We'll see where we go from there. Anyways, that's KRMN. Let's keep going through the supporting evidence. Let's finish this thing up on a strong note. Let's jump on into our credit spreads and bonds. Here we go. Bonds are saying, eh, maybe inflation kind of cools a little bit. I shouldn't say cools even, but the trajectory has slowed down, if you will. This is a rapid ascent here. Remember, that's a very rapid move for this particular ratio. It's sort of slowing down where it needs to slow down to keep a lid on inflation expectations. We'll see what happens on Friday with the revisions for from consumer sentiment and inflation expectations, University of Michigan. And then this appears just telling us that the labor market, right, has problems. We know that. That's nothing special there. Let's

41:20 jump into credit spreads. Continue to widen on the bottom side here, or at least trend in the upward direction. This is bad for forward returns. In the S&P 500, this is a risk off sign, basically. Let's say off because O could also be on. Risk off. I'll give a little bit of credit to this one, but the short end, S-H-Y-H-Y-G, is more of the one that you need to pay attention to. Let's jump from here over into our junk bonds in isolation. Are they showing us any sort of a divergence? Survey says not really. Maybe a subtle divergence. higher high. Like if you do that, it's pretty obvious lower high in the SPX. If you do this, it's kind of an equal-ish high. Maybe nothing to really write home about, in my opinion, on the HYG as it relates to divergence. Let's jump on into the total breadth. This is what I was saying earlier with the small caps, not really, you know, small caps look fine, but for overall breadth, you're still

42:09 under the 50% mark here, certainly under the 50% mark here, and you did not get into oversold territory at 10% on the 50 SMA components. If I just drag this down without breaking think or swim, let's see if it'll cooperate It did. Would you look at that? But will we have to auto zoom that? We will. There we are. New highs versus lows is still negative. That's not really what you want to see. If this is truly going to be a breath return and oh my God, everything's great. You want to see a breath thrust, right? And you're going to start hearing people talk about the ZBT. Slow down. The Zieg. breath thrust, right? So we'll see if those criteria are met eventually, but for now, this is still bearish. As we jump this up here to the RSP, let's just go full screen and we'll cycle through the rest. RSP, you know, you still have this similar look, but not much different from that of the weighted, still a lower

42:56 high there. And then if you look at the QQQE, you see the same thing, still just stacking lower highs as we move in the downward direction. And most notably, this did go out to a more substantial lower low. So breath, not really a believer, even with what the RTY and the Russell is telling us. Let's jump from there over to our volatility complex. You can see the VIX remains elevated even with the peace talks and the negotiation tactics and this and that. VIX went right to 2050 and then bounced right off of it and remains elevated. I don't know about you, but that's a pretty low confidence move as it relates to being a believer in the future here of the 2020. of the negotiations. If you look at the VIX, still near the 120 handle. That's not really a great look. And we did ultimately correct our vol futures curve here, still in a decent backwardation of about 60 cents, which is enough to keep money managers on the sidelines, not allocating new capital

43:44 yet. Take a look at the nine versus the 30, starting to poke back up into a contango, but nothing that I would be overly confident in. This is the holy grail up top. This is a secondary. If you look at the one day VIX, still elevated here over 1275, just telling us that the conditions overall have not materially improved. right if they were then you'd see this back above zero as we just talked about in vix literally itself you would see this back underneath 2050 right you're just not getting any of those ingredients to really suggest that we have a full-blown risk on environment let's jump on into the core list of companies let's get the job done we'll send you on your way with three trade ideas we'll also look at some leaders in between the trade ideas and the core list all right so we'll talk leaders in just a second uh lower high high excuse me, happening here on NVIDIA. Great rejection of the 20 SMA. Nice little gap fill reversal off

44:30 of that level. There's a very tiny little gap in there around 180.30. It's a little too early to that trade today, but nonetheless, nice inverted hammer, daily lower high. Underneath its low, I would expect continued breakdown towards this area here. It might even be best to see this open like this and then get that on Friday underneath the two equal lows, 174.25. If I just drop down here, you could see once again in the after hours, kind of just right in here basically. This would not be the idea I want. I would want this, And then this is the idea short right here as we're taking out the two day low through the thin structure into the 171. That would be Nvidia. If it is going to be strong, I would kind of let it be in here. I think there are far superior long setups in the semiconductors, which we'll get into. If we look at Apple, another rejection off of the tired old neckline from the inverted head and shoulders. So you're still

45:15 in right shoulder territory. I'd still keep an open mind to this. One thing that is going to start changing is that the 20 SMA is barreling down on price. So instead of having a larger range to trade for, it's just going to get smaller as we go day by day. The next thing that would be ideal is that the 20 just continues to go like this and like this, then the next thing you know, this entire Brigade Bolt is reclaiming the 20. So 254.65 is still the number to beat on Apple. As long as you're over the 200, wouldn't be overly bearish. This one here has really failed the follow through underneath that low. Let's jump on into Microsoft. This one has not hesitated at all to follow through underneath the lows. As you can see here, continuing to slide underneath this area, no longer really offering even the potential for a double bottom, really weak stuff out of Microsoft. Possible contagion with the open AI situation. Is that maybe it? I think so. Something's

46:02 got to be going on here in Microsoft behind the scenes. I would not be surprised if we start seeing some headlines about things going awry, maybe some large shareholders, employees of the company selling shares in a big way. I mean, this is just not after the earnings gap down, if everything was going to be fine in software, IGV, why is Microsoft leading it to a new low? So there's something wrong going on here in my belief. It's just not following along with any of the other components of the market. It's been one of the heaviest stocks out there. So just possibly looking for some follow through. Any lower highs on countertrend rallies off of 382.25 really fit the bill. And I would look for shorts up against that area on countertrend strength. Wait for it to come into that level. Reject equal low target, right? The time where I would change my tone is if it reclaims

46:49 that area here and then starts to retake the daily 20. You had this nice curling action there, maybe going for inverted head and shoulders, completely fell apart with lower high underneath the overhead supply. So hard to be really convicted or convinced, you could use the other word, on Microsoft here. Let's go on over to Amazon. Amazon, if this would zoom. There we go. Amazon, I really don't like this chart, if I'm being honest. Let's fold up that volume a little bit. You've got this. trend line in here, maybe that breaks and there's a long setup into the 50. That's a possibility. It had some strength today, you know, semi gap close, holding above, not in love with it. I would watch 212.50. If we can step above that for Brigade Bolt here, again, I think you're just targeting these highs, these highs in

47:35 the 50 will be kind of in there to meet you towards the end of the week, right? Could you say inverted head and shoulders? Sure. But you could also at the same time, just keep stepping down your lower highs. And if you're here, I'm just not interested. So 212.50 is the number to beat. Let's jump on over to the Googler. Big break. Let's go to the daily chart. Big old break of the daily neckline from the head and shoulders, left head, right shoulder. This is one of the only MAG7 names that has not had a substantial fall from grace. Let's see if that does that into the end of the week. Under 296, the door is open into 276.25 from this range back over here on a failure below 290.25. That's mostly today's low. If we zoom into today's low, look at this as just a bear flag consolidation. And then the gatekeepers open it up under 290.25, as we've mentioned. So pretty straightforward setup. I believe this is a decent short, it looks like

48:22 in my view, with tons of overhead supply in the beginning stages of a breakdown. You've already got the moving averages oriented properly here. Now it's just a matter of do we get the range rotation? And ultimately, does the 200 start to play catch-up support when and if we get there? So those are the next steps there. Would I change my mind over 296? I'd be back to neutral, but I don't think I'd be, you know, just jumping for joy on the long side. Let's go on over to Broadcom. Broadcom just, you know, really ugly here inside this balance range. So I'm not really convinced of anything in this range. This is like noise to me. I would start looking for clarity here over 3, uh, 3650, or I would start looking for clarity here underneath 309 because semiconductors seem to be an okay sector right now. You know, it's hard to want to get overly bearish if the entire group is acting well. Uh, but the chart just doesn't look good, right? You've got highs,

49:10 equal highs, lower highs in here. You're underneath the moving average cradle, so pressuring prices lower. You can look for the 309. I wouldn't fight that, but I'd want to see definitely some SMH weakness if that's the case. Let's jump on over to the metaverse. This still just looks like a bear flag down here. Honestly, I would have liked to see a stronger countertrend out of this to close the gap above. 614.50,

…