Atlas Is A Memory Chip: Micron Carries The Market On Its Shoulders

Market Snapshot

Pre-market is a little mixed but generally up small, and the heavy lifting is being done by one stock holding up the whole index. The VIX is fizzing out of the sell-offs quicker than the rallies are suggesting, which tells you where the energy is.

• ES (S&P 500): 7,482.50 / +0.07% / up small, Atlas is doing the work
• YM (Uncle Dow): 52,332 / -0.12% / a touch lower
• NQ (NazQuack): 30,154.75 / +0.20% / Micron-powered
• RTY (Uncle Russell): 3,016.3 / -0.24% / dragging its feet
• GC (Gold): 4,007.0 / -0.23% / a rethink needed, missed the actual move
• CL (Crude): 69.47 / -0.57% / a cat’s whisker from 65
• VIX: 18.01 / -3.28% / excitement fizzing out faster than it arrives
• BTC/USD: 61,668.62 / +1.12% / a bounce, but the bears are stirring

MU, Micron Technology

Looking at the chart, pre-market is popping higher, and not just what so far looks like a 16.57% jump on the back of amazing earnings and guidance. Technically, from a charting setup perspective, this gap higher leapfrogs over two corrective down moves and also leaps above the last swing high. A new all-time high is an added bonus and not essential. That setup will get the day-traders salivating in addition to the earnings traders, and the massive news hype will help too.

In other words, there’s going to be a lot of interest at the opening bell, and perhaps through the day and the next few days. I can take my Premium Popper setups, brush off the “at the open” setups in my systems archive specifically designed for trading gapping stocks, and basically: get me some of that.

Gap leapfrogs two pullbacks and the swing high.

Premium Poppers

The intraday day trades are where the work is being done while the swings sit in their range. Yesterday’s SPX and RUT Poppers fired on the FOMC bonus, full stack on RUT with a Plus +3 grade, and you can see the same pattern in the wider rhythm: poppers popping before mid-morning, then the lunchtime U-turn, then the overnight U-turn back the other way, then the gap at the open.

Today the MU setup gives me a fresh angle on the same idea, the “at the open” gap-stock playbook out of the archive, layered on top of the standard Popper.

The intraday is where the returns are; the swings can wait.

Crude

Crude oil is slippin’ and slidin’ its way to the $65 level and is a cat’s whisker from it. All we need is a classic Wilhelm scream and a spat when we land.

A cat’s whisker from 65, Wilhelm scream on standby.

BTC

The BTC bears are coming out of hibernation, and I’ve popped the daily targets and the shorter-term target on the chart. They are very close to each other, and I’m going to revise my target from $50k to between $45k and $43k. Pop-fucking-Pop.

Bears out of hibernation, target revised to 45-43k.

Expert Insights

Howard Marks, on the discipline of doing nothing well:

“You can’t predict, but you can prepare.”

That’s the whole day in a sentence. I can’t predict whether SPX and RUT pick a direction this week, or whether the Micron gap holds through Friday, or whether crude does its Wilhelm scream on impact at $65. I can prepare for all of them.

The Popper systems are prepared for the intraday rhythm. The “at the open” gap-stock playbook is prepared for setups exactly like MU. The swings are sized so a few more days of nothing costs me nothing.

Preparation is what lets you act on a Micron gap before the day-traders even finish their coffee, and what lets you wait out an index chop without flinching. Trade what you’ve prepared for, not what you’ve predicted.

Fun Fact

Crude is approaching $65, so cue the Wilhelm scream and a “spat when we land”. The Wilhelm itself first screamed in the 1951 Gary Cooper Western Distant Drums, where it dubbed the death of a soldier dragged underwater by an alligator.

The take was simply labelled “Man getting bit by an alligator, and he screams.” It was reused two years later for a Private Wilhelm taking an arrow to the leg in The Charge at Feather River, which is how it got the name, and Star Wars sound designer Ben Burtt later resurrected it as an in-joke when he dropped it into the scene where Luke shoots a Stormtrooper off a ledge in A New Hope.

It’s now appeared in over 400 films since. So when crude finally lands on $65, you have the soundtrack ready.

[Source: Wikipedia, “Wilhelm scream”; National Science and Media Museum]