Friday’s retracement done. Monday’s rally retracement pending. Why I’m sitting tight.
RUT V-entry at the range low. The trade I’d take. The trade I’m waiting on.
BTC’s slow-lazy rising range. Why this looks like the last bear flag.
CL punched the bear trigger. The $25 move below now possible.
Wall Street rebounded Monday on a chip rally led by Friday’s biggest losers. Same names, opposite direction, 48 hours apart, no explanation offered or required.
Brent ripped above $98 then sank to $94 in one session as strikes met fresh ceasefire talk. The barrel priced a war and a truce before lunch.
Bitcoin sits under $65,000, down 12%, with spot ETFs bleeding 13 straight days. Saylor’s Strategy sold coins, and the never-sell thesis became a footnote.
Money fled crypto into AI stocks and IPOs, the exact trade that cratered Friday. CryptoQuant says demand is falling fastest since Terra in 2022.
May CPI lands Wednesday near 4.2%, the 30-year holds above 5%, and Warsh chairs his first FOMC June 16. The calm is rented, and the lease is short.
Friday erased a trillion. The system had me sidelined for May. The wait paid off harder than Wile E Coyote chasing the Road Runner.
Four waits on four charts. Each setup armed. None firing yet.
Opinions are great. We all have one and we’re usually wrong. Rules pay the theta.
The historical post-NFP recovery starts 1-2 days after Wednesday. Until then, dead cat territory.
The economy added 172,000 jobs and markets lost composure. S&P futures fell 2.6%, because good news now means no cuts, and no cuts means no rally.
Semiconductors led the unwind. Marvell down 16.7%, Micron 13.25%, Nvidia 6.2%. The same chips that built the record 7,600 close are now demolishing it.
Bitcoin held near $63,100, green, while blue chips bled. A record 13-day, $4.4 billion ETF exodus rolled on, and Strategy sold coins for the first time since 2022.
Brent topped $96 after Iran fired intercepted missiles at Israel. Markets called it a fragile ceasefire, which is the optimistic phrase for missiles still in the air.
Warsh chairs his first FOMC on June 16, hired to cut and handed a jobs report arguing he should not. Markets price a hold near 65%, and quietly eye hikes.
Today’s the day – will NFP turn the boing boing into zoom zoom or boom boom or even zoom boom. One thing is for certain: the yoyo’ing is making Wall Street bulls and bears dizzy.
NFP at 08:30. Forecasts spread 80,000 to 125,000. The 45,000-job gap is less a forecast than a shrug with a decimal point. ADP printed 122,000 Wednesday. Challenger logged 97,006 layoffs in May, worst since 2020.
The last labour read before Warsh’s first FOMC. The Fed chair who has stated his philosophy is to communicate less greets a market desperate for more.
SPX ranging-rassing-range. Shallow range. Downward range. Possibly Alan Rich’s old topping-pattern napkin sketch. Trade the breakouts.
RUT clean well-defined range. Bear swing held three minutes thirty-four seconds before taking off like a rocket. Rolled at close – back at upper end with bear pulse bars. New trade or in my case roll it. Keep the dream alive.
BTC chugging to the 60k target. Brief uptick attempt then back lower. Bears and institutional dumping keeping the bear train choo-choo’ing along.
CL right on the daily range lows, pausing on the 60min with a lovely range to play. Each-way: bull break back into the daily range up to $115. Bear break with potential to $75.
NFP first – then we see what happens when the dust settles after the opening bell.
The Dow set a record on healthcare and financials whilst the chips that built 2026 stayed home. A rally led by the stocks you hide in is still a tell.
S&P futures slipped above 7,600 into the payrolls print. One number nobody could forecast now decides whether Thursday’s record was earned or merely rented.
Bitcoin fell near $64,000 as ETFs lost $3.4 billion over eleven sessions and Strategy sold coins for the first time since 2022. Never-sell, briefly.
Economists pinned May jobs anywhere from 80,000 to 125,000, unemployment near 4.3%. A 45,000 spread is not a forecast, it is a group shrug with footnotes.
The print lands at 8:30, the last labour read before Warsh’s first FOMC this month. A Fed promising to say less greets a market desperate for more.
Day 2 of show me the bear. Pre-market shows the moves already pushing below prior day’s low, and not just by a tick or two. Is the Almanac stat going to come to fruition this week? NFP on the horizon could be the catalyst that sets the tone for the month.
SPX TnT swing: bull momentum finally exhausted. %R extreme flipped from bullish to bearish. MACD-v showing increased bear momentum. Big question – 1-2 bear days then bulls wrestle back, or the real reversal? Bear break down and swing finally on.
RUT back below the range lows. Already bearish, holding the swing – as long as we stay here today the first swing win of the month is logged. Can also reload the swing.
BTC – woot woot – on a tear into the target zone given the big 60k round number. Bounce on profit-taking expected before anything else. Still have a really big target down at 50k from the Elliott Wave count made on Monday’s calls.
Oil pulled back to 95. The party invite I was waiting for.
Broadcom beat and fell 13%. CrowdStrike beat and fell 10%. The two reports summoned to confirm the AI rally turned up and resigned.
Strategy sold thirty-two Bitcoin. The never-sell firm sold. Analysts explained.
Overall – I may just get my neutral-to-bearish week still. Well done, stats.
Wall Street ignored a war for a fortnight, then noticed it in an afternoon. The Dow shed 620 points as the peace it kept pricing stubbornly refused to exist.
Broadcom beat and fell 13%. CrowdStrike beat and fell 10%. The two earnings hired to confirm the AI rally turned up and resigned on the spot.
The SPX read: oil reclaimed $97, yields climbed, and two weeks of optimism unwound before lunch. Friday’s payrolls inherit a tape that has stopped pretending.
Bitcoin hit $65,710, half its October high, while the never-sell firm sold. Analysts insisted it was planned, which is precisely what one says after selling.
May payrolls land Friday, the last number before Warsh’s first meeting. The tape priced calm for a fortnight and now owes the arithmetic, with late fees.
The moves to new all-time highs are continuing but the momentum – in the form of the range of movement – is getting smaller. Conviction is getting weaker.
Aside from the Stock Trader’s Almanac, the move higher may well be happening as opposed to the resting week history suggests. We’re only on hump day so it still can stall in line with historical stats.
The main stock indexes continue to befuddle and stupify. One for the potter heads.
SPX: rising channel changing its angle of dangle. Stick with waiting for a breakout.
RUT: breakout turned out to be a false break. Holding the swing until Thursday before deciding. Range-high break = bull move. Range-low break = big picture range reversal on the daily.
BTC has fell out the apple tree missing all the branches on the way down. Looking for more shorts around 70k. Target 60k. Potential 50k. Alt-season die-hards will try the recovery story.
Oil pushing back into the prior range. Pullback to 95 would be a nice party invite.
Gold is middling and not interesting just yet.
GEX has huge bullish exposure but bear GEX sneaking in overnight – super tiny. Watching whether that increases or disappears.
Futures slipped before the open. S&P E-minis off 0.26%, Nasdaq off 0.54%, as oil and yields rose. Two days of records met their first real test.
Chips carried Tuesday. Marvell jumped a third on a Huang compliment and HPE 19% on a raise. Alphabet fell 4% on an 80 billion dollar sale plan.
Bitcoin slid under 67,000 and Ethereum under 2,000. Spot Bitcoin ETFs shed 483.8 million Monday after May’s record 2.3 billion in outflows.
Strategy sold Bitcoin for the first time since 2022. Just 32 coins from a 843,706-coin stack to fund a dividend, yet the never-sell narrative did not survive it.
Trump criticised Warsh two weeks before the new chair’s first meeting. Markets now price a 61% chance the Fed funds rate ends 2026 higher, not lower.