If you have been MIA for an extended period of time, you may have missed that we do have a discord for better organizational structure of our daily discussions and trade tracking versus the former of filtering through various substack chats as they can become quite convoluted quickly. If you’d like to join, please follow the link posted below. (Note: this is for paying subscribers only, where we chat all day long & even the weekends about current events, positioning, market sentiment, and various other discussions to provide as much value as possible.)

Discord Here

SPX closed Friday at 7,165, a record high. Nasdaq parked at 24,837, also a record. Russell finally showed up at 2,787, and the Dow lagged at 49,231 weighed down by Merck, IBM, and Verizon. VIX bled to 18.71, four-handle compression on the week. Fourth consecutive weekly gain for the S&P, and the tape is squarely in melt-up posture.

On March 31st, we noticed a major shift in the tape of options flow, which ultimately lead us to believe things were changing in a big way, and that we could have major opportunities immediately. This was the turning point & went over looked by many before surging nearly 12% in 3 weeks time.

The driver Friday was Intel. INTC ripped 24% to a record close, the best single day since 1987, on a Q1 print that destroyed estimates ($13.6B revenue, $0.29 non-GAAP EPS vs. $0.01 expected) and a Q2 guide ($13.8B to $14.8B) that came in nearly $1.4B above consensus. Data Center & AI revenue grew 22%, foundry posted 16%, and Lip-Bu Tan said the quiet part loud on the call: the CPU is reinserting itself as the indispensable foundation of the AI era.

On the macro layer: Iran ‘reopened’ (lol) the Strait of Hormuz, peace talks moved to Islamabad with Pakistan mediating, and Trump ‘extended’ the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire by three weeks. Crude is back to $94 and sliding. The fear premium that defined Q1 has fully rotated into AI infra and CPU bid.

The under-the-radar print this week was the DOE issuing its first $1.6B loan to AEP for a five-state grid upgrade, dropped the same week as the Defense Production Act memo on grid infrastructure. That is the project-level catalyst we said to watch for. The framework is operational. This is the trade we want to be early on across multiple legs.

Sentiment & Breadth

NAAIM Exposure Index printed 94.15 for the week ending April 22, jumping from 79.49 the week prior. One of the largest weekly moves of the cycle, pushing active managers into aggressive bullish positioning. Anything above 90 historically flags chase behavior. Not a sell signal on its own, but it tells you who is doing the buying up here: it is professionals who were underexposed and are now playing catchup.

FactSet has 28% of the S&P reported. Q2 to Q4 2026 EPS growth estimates running 20.6%, 22.7%, and 20.4%. Full-year 2026 at 18.6%. Forward P/E at 20.9 (above the 5-year average of 19.9). The earnings tape is doing the heavy lifting. Valuation is full but defensible while EPS keeps printing.

Translation for our positioning: stop adding fresh longs into strength on the names that have already paid, and start letting setups come to you on names that have not. Tighten stops on runners, take size off the closed-out winners, and rotate dry powder into the new themes that are still undervalued by the tape. We do not chase 94 NAAIM readings. We let them mean-revert into us.

April: The Best Month YTD

April is the standout. We caught the CPU renaissance before it was a consensus call. The thesis was simple: the AI buildout was overpriced into GPUs and underpriced into the silicon that runs inference, the orchestration layer, and the agent workloads. INTC and ARM were the two cleanest expressions. The other layer was AI infrastructure pull-through (CRWV, NBIS, DELL), where unusual flow had been screaming for weeks before price followed.

Closed positions for the month, 27 trades, 22 winners, 5 losers, an 81.5% win rate. Multiple INTC 60C 6/18 lots scaled out at 195%, 286%, and 596% as the position ran into earnings. ARM was the bigger fireworks, with 180C 6/18 lots closing at 219%, 434%, and a 903% top tick on the runners. Below is the breakdown:

Five losses, all sized small relative to the winner book. AMD and META were quick cuts taken without ego. NEE was a utility chase on the wrong leg of the curve, lesson booked. TSEM had one win and one loss inside the same name, which is exactly how foundry exposure trades when the Street is split.

VST is the one that deserves a closer look, because it is the difference between an expression failure and a thesis failure. The May 175C got stopped out for -22% on a timing window that closed too tight. That is the trade. The equity position stayed on the book and the underlying thesis stayed alive. We are not relitigating the loss. We are sizing up the thesis. More on that in the next section.

The structural takeaway: high win rate is nice, but the math that wins the year is winners running 200% to 900% while losers cap at 5% to 45%. We do not need to be right more than 60% of the time when the asymmetry is this stark. That ratio is the entire game. Although, we did, and we were right over 80% of the time.

Let’s dive into some new / fresh ideas presenting similar risk reward ratios going forward.

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The dominant headline driver remains the U.S.-Iran conflict, now entering its sixth week. Trump held a press conference this afternoon detailing the rescue of two airmen whose F-15E was shot down over Iran, calling it “one of the largest, most complex, most harrowing combat search and rescue missions ever attempted by the military.” He also reiterated his Tuesday 8 PM deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, warning that “the entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night.” He acknowledged that elevated fuel costs could persist into the summer but drew a hard line: “We’re never going to let them have a nuclear weapon. And if we have to pay a little extra for fuel for a couple of months, we’ll do that.”

A 45-day ceasefire proposal is floating between mediators, and Trump called it “a significant step,” though he has not signed off. Iran rejected any temporary ceasefire, demanding permanent guarantees. Crude oil jumped from $112 to roughly $114 per barrel during the presser alone, and gas prices are sitting near $4/gallon nationally. The CPI print on Friday looms large as the next macro catalyst, along with Fed minutes on Wednesday and PCE data on Thursday. Raymond James noted that strong early-2026 economic momentum and a backwardated oil curve have prevented a sharper selloff, but the Tuesday deadline is the next major test.

Anyhow, let’s dig into the flow.

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The tape walked in hot this morning and the reason was sitting right there in the headline. Iran’s president came out and said what the market wanted to hear: we’re ready to end the war, but want guarantees. That one sentence flipped the switch on risk appetite across the board and the flow sheet confirmed it before the opening bell even rang. But if you’ve been reading this letter, you know one headline doesn’t close a chapter. It opens a negotiation. And negotiations, especially ones involving the Strait of Hormuz, have a way of dragging out longer than the market’s attention span.

Before we dive into the flow, let’s frame what today actually means in the broader context. This is the last trading day of Q1 2026. Everything that happened this quarter, the tariff whipsaws, the AI capex debate, the energy thesis, the VIX staying elevated for weeks on end, all of it culminates in how institutions are positioned heading into the next three months. End-of-quarter flow is always interesting because it captures both the window dressing and the real conviction bets that are being carried forward. Today’s sheet is worth reading closely because it tells you what the smart money believes is coming, not what already happened. Before moving forward, it is important to note that at the time of writing, the JPM Collar has yet to be announced.

If you have been MIA for an extended period of time, you may have missed that we do have a discord for better organizational structure of our daily discussions and trade tracking versus the former of filtering through various substack chats as they can become quite convoluted quickly. If you’d like to join, please follow the link posted below. (Note: this is for paying subscribers only, where we chat all day long & even the weekends about current events, positioning, market sentiment, and various other discussions to provide as much value as possible.)

Discord Here.

March Performance Recap

Now let’s talk about how we actually performed this month, because the scoreboard is the only thing that doesn’t lie.

March was a battlefield. The macro environment was hostile to overnight holds for most of the month. Tariff headlines whipsawed indices on a daily basis. The VIX stayed elevated. Economic data was mixed at best. And yet, looking at the closed positions for March, we came out the other side in strong shape because we adapted. This was not a month for holding through earnings or riding multi-week swings. This was a month for quick, conviction-based entries and disciplined exits, and the results reflect that approach.

The headliner was ARM, and it wasn’t close. We scaled out of the 145 calls across three separate exits at gains of 178%, 311%, and 770%. That last exit was nearly a nine-bagger on the original cost basis. When a position works that well, you don’t need to hit on everything else. NOW 115C returned 196% in a clean trade that caught the software rally before it stalled. LITE 700P delivered 152% on the downside, proving that the put side can be just as profitable when you read the flow correctly. META 540C doubled. RKLB 75C ran 88%. PLTR 145C closed at 86%. UAL 105C gave us 80% on a name that was tricky to time but rewarded patience. VRT, SPY puts, USO, INTC May calls, RGTI puts, MSFT, VELO, and NFLX puts all contributed winning trades to the ledger.

Were there losers? Of course. INTC April 50C gave back 56% and that one stung because the thesis was right but the timing was early. UUUU dropped 50% as the uranium narrative cooled. SEI lost 49%. BE and COIN both closed red. NVDA had two losing entries, one at negative 24% and another at negative 5%, which is a reminder that even the most liquid name in the market can chop you up when volatility compresses at the wrong time. VG technically closed red as well, but that one deserves a footnote. The trade worked exactly as intended. The entry was clean, the flow confirmed the thesis, and the move came. But broader market volatility created noise that led to a mismanaged exit on my end. That’s not a flow miss, that’s a discipline lesson, and those are the ones that stick with you going into the next quarter.

The final count for March: 17 winners, 8 losers.That’s a win rate above 65% in a market that was actively trying to shake out both sides of the tape every single session. The average winner significantly outpaced the average loser, which is what matters more than the win rate itself. When your best trade returns 770% and your worst loss is 56%, the math works in your favor even if you’re wrong more often than you’d like.

The Flow / Calls Bought

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Today’s first half session was one of the more active flow days we have seen in recent weeks, and the message underneath the surface was loud. The overwhelming majority of activity clustered into near-term expirations, April 2nd through April 24th, with very few positions reaching out beyond May. That is not a coincidence. When uncertainty is this elevated and headlines can move the tape five percent in either direction overnight, traders compress their exposure into the front of the curve. They are ‘renting positions, not buying homes’. Premium at the front end becomes the vehicle of choice because it gives you leverage on a catalyst without forcing you to hold through weeks of headline risk that could render a longer-dated position worthless before the thesis even has time to play out. The fact that this pattern has persisted for weeks now tells you that whales do not see resolution coming soon. They are playing the range, hedging the tails, and keeping their powder accessible.

If you have been MIA for an extended period of time, you may have missed that we do have a discord for better organizational structure of our daily discussions and trade tracking versus the former of filtering through various substack chats as they can become quite convoluted quickly. If you’d like to join, please follow the link posted below. (Note: this is for paying subscribers only, where we chat all day long & even the weekends about current events, positioning, market sentiment, and various other discussions to provide as much value as possible.)

Discord here.

Here is the full breakdown of today’s first half flow for the subscribers:

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After a few weeks of selling, a market flirting with correction territory across every major index, and a weekend where most of the financial world was bracing for U.S. strikes on Iranian power plants, President Trump posted on Truth Social this morning announcing “very good and productive conversations” with Iran and a five day pause on all military strikes against Iranian energy infrastructure. Dow futures ripped over 1,000 points before the open. The S&P, Nasdaq, and Russell 2000 are all up north of two percent as I write this. Oil collapsed from above $112 on Friday to the low $100s on Brent and sub-$92 on WTI. Gold was getting hammered, down over three percent after its worst week since 1983. Silver was off even more. Commodities have already reversed that move and are now trading in the green. The VIX is pulling back. This could be the start of the ‘relief rally’.

And yet…

Iran’s FARS news agency immediately denied any direct or indirect contact with the Trump administration. That little detail didn’t stop the tape from running, but it matters. Because this is the exact kind of headline driven, whiplash inducing environment we’ve been living in for the last month, and today’s flow confirms that institutional money is treating it that way. Nobody is making clean directional bets right now. They’re hedging, they’re spreading, and they’re playing both sides of the same names. We saw this type of action last year during this same time frame during the tariffs, tacos, and liberation day.

Let me walk through where we stand.

The Indexes

The S&P 500 closed Friday at 6,506 after shedding 1.5% on the day, its lowest close in over four months, sitting below its 200d moving average. Today it’s ripping back above 6,600 & the 200d. The Dow went out at 45,577 on Friday and is up over a thousand points on the session. The Nasdaq closed at 21,647 and is rallying north of 2%. The Russell 2000 officially entered correction territory on Friday, down over 10% from its 52-week high, but is bouncing nearly 2% today with over 1,700 of its components advancing against fewer than 200 declining. These are massive moves in both directions. The 10-year is hovering near 4.37%, pulling back slightly as the immediate stagflation panic fades.

But make no mistake. This is a headline market. One Truth Social post reversed four weeks of selling. The next post could erase it. The underlying picture has not changed. The Strait of Hormuz is still effectively closed. The IEA called this the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. Goldman raised its Brent forecast to $110 for March and April and warned that if Hormuz flows stay at 5% for ten weeks, daily Brent prices could exceed their 2008 record. Iraq declared force majeure on all foreign operated oilfields on Friday. The Fed is still higher for longer.

So what does the flow look like in this environment? Exactly what you’d expect. Messy, two-sided, and loud.

The Flow

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The War & The Strait

The Strait of Hormuz crisis kicked off on February 28 when the U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran, including the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei. By March 2, an IRGC official confirmed the strait was closed, threatening to set ablaze any ship attempting to pass through. We’re now on day 17 of this conflict, and the disruption to global energy flows is unlike anything the modern market has dealt with.

The numbers are staggering. Roughly 27% of the world’s maritime trade in crude oil and petroleum products normally goes through the Strait. Daily transit has collapsed from a historical average of 138 ships per day to no more than five since the war began. The IEA has called it the worst oil disruption in history, estimating the war will cut global supply by about 8 million barrels a day in March. Iran’s IRGC has been defiant, declaring that any vessel linked to the U.S., Israel, or their allies will be considered a legitimate target, and warning the world to expect oil at $200 per barrel.

Saudi Arabia has been diverting oil to its Red Sea port of Yanbu via the East-West pipeline, while the UAE is routing through Fujairah, but combined bypass capacity is only 3.5 to 5.5 million barrels per day versus the 20 million that normally transits the strait. That math doesn’t work no matter how you slice it.

Oil Prices

Crude has been on a rollercoaster. Prices have surged roughly 40% since the war began, with Brent closing above $100 for the first time in four years last week. Brent topped $106 on Sunday before pulling back Monday when the IEA reserve release news hit. WTI settled at $93.50 on Monday after the 32-country IEA coalition agreed to release 400 million barrels from strategic reserves, the largest coordinated release in IEA history. But today (Tuesday), oil advanced again with Brent back above $100 as traders cast doubt on a U.S.-backed plan to escort tankers through the strait.

Here’s the thing. 400 million barrels sounds massive, but at 105 million barrels per day of global consumption, that covers roughly four days. Compared to the 20 million barrels per day that normally flows through Hormuz, it’s about 20 days of typical strait traffic. It’s a Band-Aid. Wood Mackenzie has warned that with 15 million barrels per day of Gulf supply gone, oil would need to hit $150 for demand destruction to rebalance the market. That $200 Iran threat isn’t as unthinkable as it sounds if this drags on.

U.S. gasoline prices are now up nearly 80 cents from a month ago, and diesel has shot up $1.34 to just under $5 a gallon. This hits the consumer directly and immediately.

The Macro Picture

Here’s where the narrative gets tricky. A lot of people are screaming “stagflation” right now, and the headline data supports that framing on the surface. Q4 2025 GDP was revised sharply down to just 0.7% annualized, a massive step down from the previous estimate of 1.4% and the 4.4% pace in Q3. Core PCE inflation rose to 3.1% year-over-year in January, still a full point above the Fed’s target.

But context matters. That GDP print was significantly distorted by a record-breaking 43-day government shutdown that disrupted data collection and economic activity. It does not reflect the actual trajectory of the economy heading into this crisis.

The reality is the economy was re-accelerating before February 28. February CPI came in at 2.4% headline with core at 2.5%, the lowest core reading since March 2021. Consumer sentiment had risen to its highest level in six months. The Dow broke above 50,000 for the first time. Industrial production rose 0.2% in February with manufacturing and mining both contributing. The AI capex cycle was firing on all cylinders. International markets were outperforming the U.S. for the first time in years. Credit spreads were tight. Goldman had full-year GDP growth penciled at 2.8%. The vibe heading into late February was closer to “soft landing achieved, now re-accelerating” than anything resembling stagflation.

The University of Michigan consumer sentiment reading tells the story perfectly. The March headline came in at 55.5, but interviews completed before the Iran strikes showed improvement from February. All of those gains were completely erased in the nine days after the military action began. The economy didn’t break on its own. It got hit.

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What a week. We came in off the Supreme Court tariff ruling, rode a two-day rally into NVIDIA earnings, and watched it all unravel by Friday as hot PPI data and AI skepticism sent mark…

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What a week. I mean that. If you stepped away from the screens for even a few hours this week, you probably came back to a completely different market narrative than the one you left behind. That’s the kind of environment we’ve been living in, and honestly, it’s the kind of environment where flow analysis becomes the most valuable tool in the toolkit. Price action tells you what happened. Flow tells you what people were thinking when it happened, and more importantly, what they’re positioning for next.

We came into this shortened holiday week relatively concerned but as noted in last wek’s letter, rather optimistic after last week’s broad selloff, which saw the S&P post its worst week since November while the Nasdaq notched its fifth consecutive weekly decline. AI disruption fears had been spreading like wildfire across sectors that most people hadn’t even considered vulnerable. Insurance brokers, wealth managers, real estate services, logistics companies. The Magnificent Seven were under siege with Amazon alone shedding over $450 billion in market cap across a historic 9-day losing streak. Defensive sectors were catching all the love. Utilities, materials, and real estate were the only places to hide, while tech, financials, and communication services were getting absolutely hammered. Individual investor bullish sentiment had cratered to 12-week lows, and the fear was palpable.

The question heading into this week was simple: is this a dip worth buying (we thought so), or the start of something uglier?

Four sessions later, I think the answer the market gave us is... both. And the flow proved it in real time. Let me walk you through it.

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The Big Picture

Last week was ugly. The S&P 500 closed Friday at ~6,836 after flirting with its 100-day moving average, a level it hasn’t settled below in nearly a year. The Nasdaq posted back-to-back weekly losses. But here’s what matters: the selling wasn’t about fundamentals. It was about fear.

AI disruption anxiety spread like wildfire last week. What started as a software selloff turned into a full-blown rotation out of anything Wall Street decided could be “disrupted” / trucking stocks (C.H. Robinson and RXO each dropped 20%+), real estate (CBRE -16%), wealth management (Schwab -10%), even media names like Netflix. JPMorgan’s trading desk summed it up perfectly:

“The market is struggling to understand the full scope of what AI can do.”

Meanwhile, underneath the noise, the macro picture actually improved. January CPI came in at +2.4% year-over-year, the lowest since May 2021. Core CPI was in line. Treasury yields dropped across the curve, with the 10-year falling to 4.05%. This should have been bullish. It wasn’t. That disconnect tells you something about the current market psychology: fear is driving the tape, not data.

The Fed rate cut timeline shifted after a strong jobs report / March probability dropped to just 10%, June is now the base case at ~85%. Kevin Warsh, nominated to replace Powell in May, has adopted a more pragmatic tone, suggesting the Fed should “look through” tariff-driven price spikes. That’s a dovish tilt from a known hawk.

Earnings season is 74% complete. 76% of S&P 500 companies have beaten on the bottom line, with blended EPS growth tracking at +13.2% - a fifth straight quarter of double-digit gains. The fundamentals are fine. The question is whether sentiment catches up.

This Week’s Earnings Calendar / The Names That Matter

This is one of the most consequential earnings weeks of the season. Here’s your day-by-day breakdown of the reports that could move markets:

Tuesday

PANW: Cybersecurity bellwether reporting after close. Stock is down 10%+ from 50-day MA. Watch ARR growth, billings guidance, and commentary on the Chronosphere + potential CyberArk acquisition closings. DA Davidson cut PT to $210 but kept Buy. A guidance raise could spark a mean-reversion rally.

CEG: Power generation trade still alive. Nuclear/AI data center narrative is the story here. Watch for updated guidance on power purchase agreements and capacity expansion.

MDT: Healthcare bellwether. Steady but watch for any medical device AI integration commentary.

CDNS: EDA/chip design software. In the AI disruption crosshairs / could bounce or get hit further depending on guidance.

ET: MLP/energy infrastructure play. Dividend and distribution guidance is the focus.

Wednesday

CVNA: THE event of the week. See deep dive below. Binary outcome - short squeeze or breakdown. Options pricing a ~15.5% move. Reporting after close.

BKNG: Travel demand bellwether. After Airbnb's upbeat outlook, expectations are elevated. Watch international booking trends and AI-powered travel tool commentary.

DASH: Delivery/gig economy. After DraftKings' guidance disaster (-17%), the consumer discretionary/platform space is under scrutiny.

EBAY: E-commerce turnaround story. AI-powered listing tools driving engagement.

ADI: Semis. Industrial and automotive end-market demand signals matter here.

OXY: Energy. Watch production guidance and Permian Basin commentary.

Thursday

WMT: Consumer spending bellwether #1. Last quarter was strong (+5.9% YoY revenue, e-commerce +27%). Guidance for FY27 is the focus / any tariff impact commentary will move the tape broadly. This is the single most important macro read of the week.

BABA: China + AI narrative. DeepSeek reverberations continue. Watch cloud revenue growth and AI infrastructure spend.

DE: Agriculture/industrial cycle read. Tariff impact on farming equipment demand.

NEM: Gold miner. Gold at $5,035/oz / watch production costs and reserve updates.

SO: Utility/power. AI data center power demand narrative.

Good bit of Economic Data this week to focus on as well…

Key Points:

The FOMC minutes on Wednesday and PCE data on Friday are the two macro landmines this week. If PCE comes in hot at 3.1%+ on the core, it pushes the June cut narrative into question and could trigger another leg down in growth stocks. If it’s softer, we get relief.

I want to talk about Carvana as the asset has been under heavy selling pressure as of late with a ton of negative press including short reports, and growing narrative of delinquencies etc. so let’s dive in shall we?

The Binary Bet of the Week…

The Setup: CVNA hit an all-time high of $486.89 on January 22. Since then, it’s crashed ~29% to ~$367 after Gotham City Research published a devastating short report alleging $1B+ in overstated earnings through undisclosed related-party transactions with DriveTime/Bridgecrest (both controlled by CEO’s father). Multiple law firms (Block & Leviton, Pomerantz, Bragar Eagel) have opened securities fraud investigations. Insider selling has been massive, the CEO has dumped over $1.4 billion in shares since April 2024.

What the Bulls Need: A clean 10-K filing on time. Beat-and-raise on Q4 numbers (consensus: $1.10 EPS, ~$5.2B revenue). Explicit management commentary addressing the Gotham allegations with data. If all three happen, shorts (11.4% SI) get squeezed and the stock could rip 15-20%+ in a single session.

What the Bears Need: Any delay in the 10-K filing. Auditor (Grant Thornton) issues or qualifications. Weak Q4 numbers or soft guidance. If the 10-K doesn’t file or the auditor flags anything, this stock could revisit sub-$200.

The Flow: Bearish options flow has been building for two weeks. Options are pricing a ~15.5% move. This is a pure event-driven, binary trade. Not for the faint of heart.

Carvana operates in the online used vehicle retail industry, running a vertically integrated e-commerce platform for buying, selling, financing, and delivering used cars across the U.S. In Q3 2025, the company sold a record 155,941 retail units (up 44% YoY) and posted record revenue of $5.65B (up 55% YoY). Yahoo Finance

The company also operates wholesale auction sites through its ADESA acquisition. Primary competitors include KMX (CarMax), LAD (Lithia Motors), AN (AutoNation), CARG (CarGurus), and ACVA (ACV Auctions). Analysts project EPS to climb ~428% YoY to $5.39 in FY2025 and grow another 37% to $7.39 in FY2026. Yahoo Finance

Carvana's competitive moat lies in its technology-driven, asset-light digital platform, proprietary logistics/reconditioning network, and data advantages that traditional dealerships cannot replicate at scale. The company was added to the S&P 500 in December 2025, a massive validation event. What makes CVNA unique is the dramatic turnaround, it rose over 12,000% from 2022 lows near $3.56 to highs of ~$486. However, a short-seller report from Gotham City Research in January 2026 alleging $1B+ in overstated earnings has created significant near-term uncertainty ahead of the February 18 earnings release.

The used auto retail sector has been weak overall, pressured by higher interest rates impacting consumer affordability. However, CVNA has been the worst performer in the group over the last month due to idiosyncratic risk (Gotham report). Over 12 months, CVNA still dramatically outperforms all peers (+93% vs KMX -52%).

Analyst Price Targets for the most part still reside higher, ranging from $460 - $530 with some even calling the sell-off as a buying opportunity (where I sit as well).

TLDR Bull / Bear:

BULL CASE:

• If Q4 earnings beat and 10-K files clean on Feb 18, shorts get squeezed hard (11.4% short interest)

• JPMorgan expects “solid beat and raise” / consensus Q4 EPS of $1.10 (+96% YoY)

• Used car demand tailwind as new car prices stay elevated (~$50K avg)

• S&P 500 inclusion ensures ongoing passive fund demand

• Consensus PT of ~$462-498 implies 25-35% upside from current levels

BEAR CASE:

• If 10-K is delayed or auditor raises concerns, the stock could revisit sub-$200

• Massive insider selling is a red flag that’s hard to ignore

• Gotham City allegations on related-party transactions are serious and not yet fully addressed

• Valuation still rich at ~78x PE despite pullback

• Multiple securities fraud investigations now open

• Operating cash flow declining (slipped to $606M from $858M YoY through Q3)

In summary, this week we have earnings, macro data, and Fed signals all converging. The markets are nervous but not quite broken. With the S&P stuck in a range this week’s data could determine which side breaks first. Our watchlist this week is considerably lengthy between Friday’s piece and today’s piece discussing the upcoming earnings & econ data. While I don’t anticipate trading everything we have discussed, it’s still important to watch them for reactions as a gauge on future bets / money flows from a sector stance.

Thanks for tuning in & supporting the Unusual Flow substack. As always, likes and comments are greatly appreciated as well as shares / restacks. See you guys tomorrow for the flows and I hope you guys enjoyed the long weekend.

Cheers,

Jersace

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If you felt like the market was pulling you in two directions at once, that’s because it literally was. The Dow ripped through 50,000 for the first time ever last Friday. Up 1,207 points in a single session. A 2.5% move on the week fueled by a hard rotation into cyclicals and value. Caterpillar, GE Aerospace, Boeing, the airlines, all caught serious bids. Then this week, that momentum hit a wall. Thursday brought a 669-point reversal in the Dow as AI disruption fears spread beyond software into networking (Cisco down 12% [Thursday] on weak guidance), wealth management, and legal services. This week, the S&P closed at 6,836, down 1.4%. Nasdaq got hit hard as well, losing 1.27%. Dow Jones also negative on the week losing 1.23%.

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- SPY Daily

I see a lot of folks mentioning hedges and flipping short etc. but what remains curious to me is why they would position in such a way today, versus three days ago at range highs? Why short support, range lows, and below the channel? I understand the reasoning of it closing below moving average’s and such but when you frame it the way I have above, it feels more panicky than tactical. I have highlighted the last 3 instances in which we closed/wicked below this channel and in each instance we have snapped back into the range within the following two sessions. While there is no guarantee of the similar reaction, it is likely. Just something to note and always check multiple time frames before making rash decisions. If you check the weekly, we remain above the 20wk which has been acting as our floor lately. Times have been whippy as we will touch into more in depth below.

- QQQ Daily/Weekly

More of the same here yet slightly uglier.

Going to display the weekly for this one as well as you can see that we are still compressed in the middle of this channel although below the weekly averages. Of course we have the longer weekend where being in positions carries more risk especially with ongoing Middle East conflicts - though nothing has materialized the past few instances. Personally still in the camp of “nothing ever happens” & that we ultimately resolve higher once the continued unwind of AI complex fears / capex / collateral collapse settle. I do not have a crystal ball and cannot firmly say with the utmost confidence of when that would happen, although I will remain course and buy dips where I see value.

- IWM Daily

Still the YTD leader and showing similar signs as of late in regards to market chop, but holding up well. Not too much else to comment on here other than the looming rotation back into quality (Mag-7 / undervalued key assets).

- DJI Daily

The story of the week, really the story of 2026 so far, is what traders at Jefferies are calling the “SaaSpocalypse.” Bloomberg reported that Anthropic’s product releases triggered a nearly $1 trillion selloff in enterprise software stocks. The iShares Tech-Software ETF (IGV) is now 30% below its recent high. Officially deep in bear market territory. Atlassian cratered 35% in a single week back in early February. Salesforce is down 40%+ over the past 12 months. Workday, same story. Even Palantir, one of 2025’s biggest winners, has given back 27% year-to-date.

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The fear is straightforward. If an AI agent can do the work of 10 humans, why would a company pay for 10 software seats? The per-seat SaaS model that minted millionaires for two decades is getting repriced in real time.

But here’s where it gets interesting for us.

The market is painting with a broad brush right now. Selling everything that touches software, buying anything that touches AI infrastructure. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF is up 10% year-to-date while the software ETF is down 18%. That divergence is the widest it’s been in years, and divergences like this don’t last forever. Some of these software names are getting unfairly lumped in with commodity SaaS that honestly deserves to get disrupted. The companies actually building the orchestration layer for AI agents, the platforms that make agentic AI work in production with real governance and security, those are getting thrown out with the bathwater. And that’s where the opportunity is.

On the macro side, the delayed January jobs report finally dropped Wednesday showing 130K jobs added, well above the 53K consensus. Unemployment ticked down to 4.3% from 4.4%. Consumer sentiment ticked up. CPI dropped this morning at 2.4% year over year, coming in below the 2.5% consensus. Good news on the surface, but core CPI still ticked up to 0.3% month over month so it’s not all clear skies. The Fed is still on hold and markets are pricing roughly a coin-flip on a June cut. The government shutdown that ended February 3rd delayed a lot of this economic data so we’re just now getting caught up on the full picture.

The rotation is real though. Value and cyclicals are leading. Small caps (Russell 2000 up 7% YTD) are outperforming large-cap tech for the first time in a while. The Dow hitting 50K while the Nasdaq struggles tells you exactly where institutional money is flowing.

So how do we play this?

The SaaSpocalypse isn’t the end of software. It’s the market sorting winners from losers in real time. And when the market sorts this aggressively, it creates dislocations. Dislocations are where alpha lives.

That’s exactly what this week’s deep dive is about. The same AI agent technology that’s destroying commodity SaaS stocks is creating an entirely new investable theme. One that spans agentic orchestration platforms, humanoid robotics, edge AI components, and the infrastructure that powers all of it. The companies building the tools that make AI agents actually work in the real world, not just demo well on X, those are setting up to be the next cycle’s biggest winners.

We’re breaking down the full AI Agents & Robotics theme. The layers of the stack, the key players, the timelines, and a tiered watchlist from high-conviction infrastructure plays down to speculative robotics bets. This is the kind of theme that starts with institutional flow, builds into retail narrative, and eventually becomes consensus. We want to be positioned before that happens.

Let’s get into it.

The Big Picture

If 2025 was the year AI proved it could think, 2026 is the year AI starts doing. The narrative is shifting hard from model capabilities to agentic execution, autonomous systems that can plan, act, and complete multi-step workflows with minimal human oversight. Simultaneously, humanoid robotics is crossing the chasm from science-fair demos to factory-floor deployments. These two themes are converging into what could be the defining investment cycle of the next decade.

This is not theoretical anymore. Goldman Sachs expects hyperscalers to pour over $500 billion in capex this year. KPMG found that 67% of business leaders say they will maintain AI spending even in a recession. And at CES 2026, Boston Dynamics put its Atlas robot to work sorting car parts in a Hyundai factory, not doing backflips for cameras. The money is real, the deployments are starting, and the investable surface area is expanding fast.

Part 1: The Agentic AI Revolution

What Changed

The shift from chatbots and copilots to autonomous agents represents a fundamental change in how enterprises consume AI. Instead of answering questions, AI agents are now executing tasks: processing invoices, resolving IT tickets, orchestrating supply chains, and managing complex workflows across departments. Gartner predicts 40% of enterprise applications will integrate task-specific AI agents by 2026, up from less than 5% in 2025.

The agentic AI market is projected to expand from roughly $7.3 billion in 2025 to $88 billion by 2032, a 42.8% CAGR. But the more telling stat comes from Bessemer Venture Partners: the real competitive advantage in 2026 will not be in building the best model, but in data governance, agent orchestration, and observability platforms, the middleware that makes agents work reliably in production.

Why It Matters for Markets

Wall Street is repricing the entire software stack. Again, the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF is down 19% year-to-date while the VanEck Semiconductor ETF is up 12%. The fear is that frontier AI models can now replicate what traditional SaaS companies charge subscription fees for. But this creates a massive dislocation, and dislocations create opportunities.

The companies that survive and thrive are those embedding AI agents into mission-critical workflows where switching costs are high and governance matters. The companies getting killed are commodity SaaS plays with thin moats. This is a stock-picker’s market, not a rising-tide market.

The Investable Layers

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Busy day on the flow desk with some real conviction trades showing up. Let’s break it down.

The Headline Stuff

The monster of the day was that AMZN sweep. Over 10,600 contracts on the 250 calls dated all the way out to August, filled at $10.76. That’s north of $11M parked into a single name with a six-month runway. That’s not a hedge, that’s a thesis. When you see that kind of size on a mega cap reaching out that far, someone has serious conviction AMZN hasn’t topped out.

On the other side, IWM saw nearly 19,000 puts bought at the 254 strike for March. This is worth paying attention to because small caps have been on a tear. The Russell 2000 is up over 8% on the year, hitting all-time highs, while the S&P is only up about 2%. Someone is saying this small cap run is overextended and hedging accordingly. Pair that with the ARKK 70 puts (10,850 contracts) and you’re getting a pretty clear read: protection is being bought against the more speculative end of the market heading into March. The flow is there.

INTC continues to show up. Over 15,600 calls on the 55 strike out to April. That name just keeps attracting interest, and if you’ve been following us, you know how we feel about that one already.

ORCL was active with 13,000+ contracts on the 170 calls expiring this week. ORCL ripped nearly 10% yesterday on a sell-side upgrade and the broader software bounce, so this is someone chasing that momentum with a short-dated, aggressive bet.

Now the PLTR puts caught my eye. 3,500 contracts on the 130 strike expiring 2/27. PLTR just crushed Q4 earnings last week, beat top and bottom line, guided FY26 revenue to $7.19B (61% growth, absolutely lapped consensus), and Alex Karp called it the best results in tech in the last decade. Stock popped hard on the print. But it’s still down about 20% on the year, and someone is positioning for a post-earnings fade or hedging a long. That’s a name to watch closely over the next couple weeks as the dust settles.

For the puts sold column, which is where a lot of the smart money likes to hide: RIG had over 20,000 puts sold at the 5 strike out to May. That’s someone saying “I will happily own this at $5 or collect premium trying.” UBER saw nearly 15,000 puts sold at 65, and SCHW had over 10,000 puts sold at the 90 strike. That cluster of institutional put selling tells you where the floor bids are.

Broader context matters here too. Dow just crossed 50,000 for the first time last week. Retail sales came in flat today, missing expectations, which pushed bonds higher and is now getting the market to price in the possibility of a third Fed cut this year. Jobs data hits Wednesday (delayed from the funding lapse), CPI tomorrow as well. It's a loaded week, and the flow is reflecting that.

What the flow is really telling us, how we’re positioned, and what we’re watching next... as well as a deep dive on one of our newest equity positions.

🔒 The full breakdown, including the highlighted names, and the setups we’re tracking into this week’s data, is for paid subscribers only.

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If you’ve been sitting on the fence, today’s a good day to hop off it.

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You got the full week ahead last night. Today’s about what actually happened and where the money went. Just a quick read and recap of what I am seeing in regards to the flow pull from todays session.

The Tape

Strong reversal day. Opened red, closed green across the board.

S&P 500: 6,979.41 (+0.58%) Dow: 49,420.53 (+1.08%) Nasdaq: 25,744.51 (+0.75%) Russell 2000: +1.01% (small cap rotation continues, for now) VIX: 16.43 (-5.79%)

The metals liquidation from Friday appears to be exhausting itself. Risk-on sentiment returned. Dollar held gains (DXY 97.65, +0.53%).

Disney beat this morning. $1.63 EPS vs $1.57 expected, $26B revenue. Experiences crossed $10B for the first time. Stock still sold off 6%.

Oracle popped on plans to raise $50B for cloud infrastructure. Nvidia fell 2% after WSJ reported the OpenAI investment has stalled.

Palantir reports tonight. AMD tomorrow.

The Flow

Let me walk you through what stood out to me, & what we’re currently positioned in below. As always, yellow indicates that the trade interests me personally, purple indicates earnings, orange is a repeat hit.

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Hope you all had a solid weekend, because last week was a ride and this week isn’t going to slow down. Let’s dive in.

LAST WEEK IN REVIEW

January closed out on a positive note overall, but Friday reminded us that things can get ugly fast. For the month:

• S&P 500 finished around 6,939, up 1.4% for January

• Dow closed near 48,892, up 1.7% for the month

• Nasdaq ended at 25,552, gaining about 1.27% for January

• Russell 2000 was the quiet winner, jumping over 5% on the month as small caps caught a bid

But let’s be clear, Friday was brutal. The S&P dropped 0.43%, Dow fell 0.36%, and the Nasdaq got hit for nearly 1%. Tech led the selling, and risk assets across the board got whacked. VIX crept back up near 17.5.

Sector rotation was the story of January, and it wasn’t subtle.

Energy absolutely dominated, up over 13% for the period. Materials followed at nearly 11%. Industrials, Consumer Staples, and Comm Services all posted solid gains in the 6% range. Meanwhile, the laggards tell you everything about the rotation: Info Tech down 0.36%, Healthcare down 0.75%, and Financials bringing up the rear at negative 2.33%.

This is a clear “risk-on but not in mega cap tech” setup. Money rotated hard into cyclicals and commodity-sensitive names while the Mag 7 trade took a breather. Healthcare got wrecked by that Medicare Advantage news, and Financials never recovered from the early-month weakness.

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Indices

- SPY Daily

Touched 7,000 briefly on Tuesday, which was a new intraday high, before pulling back. The index is sitting right above the 10/20d MA after Friday's action. Breadth has since faded from the January highs when many names were above their 50-day.

- QQQ Daily

Tech weakness dragged it down, especially on Friday. The Nasdaq underperformed all week as rate sensitivity weighed on growth names. Earlier in the week it appeared as though money had been rotating back into tech, yet we are left wondering if that was a head fake after the first half of earnings came around.

- DJI Daily

Held up relatively better thanks to some of the value and industrial names. Caterpillar gained over 3% on earnings. Verizon ripped 12% on guidance. But Visa and American Express weighed on the index.

- IWM Daily

Small caps had been quietly outperforming all month. The 5%+ January gain was notable, though Friday gave some of that back. Still worth watching if the ‘rotation’ trade continues.

Here's something worth keeping in mind. The Dow just posted its 9th consecutive positive month. That's rare.

Going back to 1927, there have only been 12 instances of this happening. The forward returns are overwhelmingly positive. Average 1-month gain of 4.57%, 3-month gain of 8.50%, and 12-month gain of 27.54%. Over 91% of the time, the market was higher one month later.

Now, past performance isn’t a guarantee, and we’re dealing with a different macro backdrop than most of these historical periods. But the takeaway is clear, momentum tends to beget momentum. Extended winning streaks historically don’t just suddenly reverse. Something has to break the trend, and right now, the data isn’t showing that.

Positioning Data: Where the Smart Money is Leaning

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Before we dive in, I have to take a moment.

Last week, Unusual Flows officially hit bestseller status. That doesn’t happen without you. Every share, every referral, every conversation you’ve had telling a friend or colleague about what we’re building here. This community has grown into something real, and I don’t take that lightly.

We’re just getting started. More tools, more data, more alpha coming your way. Thank you for believing in what we’re doing.

Now let’s get to work.

The Tape

What a session. Let’s take a peak at the charts first.

- SPY Daily

- QQQ Daily

- IWM Daily

- DXY Weekly

Price says calm. Rotation says chaos.

S&P 500 pushed to fresh all time highs, settling at 6,978.59, up 0.41%. We’re 22 points from the psychological 7,000 level. Nasdaq finished at 25,939.75, up 0.88%, as mega cap tech continued positioning into this week’s reports. Microsoft gained 2.19%, Apple added 1.12%.

But if you’re only watching the indices, you’re missing the real story.

The Dow got absolutely torched. Down 0.83% to 49,003.41, dragged into the red by a healthcare sector that can only be described as a bloodbath.

$80 billion in market cap evaporated from managed care in a single session.

UnitedHealth cratered 19.61% to $282.70 after dropping 2026 guidance and confirming what everyone feared: the first annual revenue decline in three decades. They’re calling it “right sizing across the enterprise.” The market called it something else.

But UNH wasn’t alone. CMS dropped a bomb, proposing a 0.09% increase to Medicare Advantage payments for 2027. Wall Street was expecting 4 to 6%. Dr. Oz and the Trump administration clearly have different plans for managed care.

Humana fell 21.13% to $207.93. CVS shed 14.15% to $72. Elevance dropped 10.2% to $338.51. That’s not a selloff. That’s a policy induced reset.

On the other side of the tape, CoreWeave ripped 10.73% to $108.86 after Nvidia announced a fresh $2 billion investment to build out five gigawatts of AI data center capacity by 2030. Jensen went on camera to reaffirm the partnership. The flow reflected the enthusiasm.

Silver saw one of the wildest sessions in recent memory. SLV closed at $101.59, up 3.3% after experiencing massive intraday volatility. Over 100 million shares traded on the session. First time an ETF other than SPY has topped that list since we started tracking in 2012. Wild.

VIX at 16.32. Remarkable complacency given the headline risk this week.

The Headlines

CMS Medicare Advantage Bomb

This is the story. CMS proposed 0.09% payment increases for 2027 when the Street expected 4 to 6%. That delta is enormous for companies where margins are already thin. UNH, HUM, CVS, ELV all got taken to the woodshed. The April final notice will be the next catalyst. Either they soften the blow or managed care has a serious problem.

Nvidia Doubles Down on CoreWeave

$2 billion fresh investment. Five gigawatts of AI data center capacity by 2030. Jensen Huang went on camera personally. When Nvidia writes checks like this, pay attention. CRWV ripped 10%+ and the flow was aggressive all session.

Fed Wednesday

FOMC decision at 2pm ET. No change expected. Powell presser at 2:30. Given the ongoing political drama, the tone will matter more than the decision itself.

Earnings Avalanche

Wednesday after close: Microsoft, Meta, Tesla. Thursday after close: Apple. This is the week that determines whether mega cap tech leads or lags in Q1.

In case you missed it, we recently opened up a discord server for the paid subscribers to make it easily accessible to find any missed information, trade ideas, charts, and filter through discussions with ease given their advanced search feature vs the classic “ctrl + F” function on substack chat. While this is reserved for paid only members, I realize discord is not for everyone, and I will continue to post trades on substack as we always have. This is just an added feature for those who enjoy it.

We are also still working on developing a new website client for your use that will be granted upon a new tiered subscription in the future once finalized. I have dropped a few teasers here and there within chats. Features include:

• Historical options database

• Portfolio / basket tracking

• Market AI Chatbot

• Market News updated throughout the day & filtered ticker search

• Stock allocation & performance tracking

Among many other features to come.

What’s Buzzing

CoreWeave (CRWV)

The AI infrastructure name of the moment. Nvidia’s $2 billion investment validates the thesis. $56 billion backlog is real. Debt load is real too. But in this tape, growth gets funded. Stock closed at $108.86, up 10.73% on massive volume. The flow was relentless all day.

Managed Care Wreckage

UNH down 20%, HUM down 21%, CVS down 14% in a single session. This is what policy risk looks like. The question now is whether April’s final CMS notice softens the blow or confirms the damage. Some contrarian flow showed up in HUM calls late in the session. Someone’s betting on a bounce.

Silver (SLV)

Most traded security of the day. Over 100 million shares. Massive intraday swings. Safe haven flows, inflation hedging, short squeezes, take your pick. The metals trade is alive and well.

Options Flow Breakdown

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Happy Monday. Markets are closed for MLK Day, so we get a quick breather before jumping back into what’s shaping up to be a pivotal week. Let’s break it all down.

The S&P 500 closed Friday at 6,940 - essentially flat on the day but down slightly for the week. The Dow settled at 49,359 and Nasdaq at 23,515. But here’s the thing: if you’re only watching the big indices, you’re missing the real story.

The Great Rotation Is Here (well, it’s been occurring)

The Russell 2000 is absolutely ripping. We’re talking +8% YTD while the S&P sits at just +1.5%. Small caps have now outperformed the S&P 500 for 11 consecutive sessions - the longest streak since 2008. This isn’t noise. This is the rotation we’ve been waiting for.

Why? A few things converging:

• The valuation gap between small and large caps hit a 25-year extreme at year-end

• Russell 2000 trades at ~18x P/E vs. S&P at ~26x

• Lower rates are finally flowing through to small-cap balance sheets

• GDP is running hot, Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow pegs Q4 at 5.3%

If you’ve been sitting in mega-cap tech waiting for breadth to improve - congratulations, it’s happening.

Current Levels

Index Close (Jan 16) YTD: S&P 500 6,940 +1.5% Nasdaq 23,515 +2.0% Dow 49,359 +1.2% Russell 2000 2,678 +8.0% VIX 19.23

Gold: $4,600+ (record high)
Silver: $90+ (record high, +26% YTD)
10Y Treasury: 4.20% (breaking out of multi-month base)

- SPY Weekly

- QQQ Weekly

- IWM Weekly

- DJI Weekly

Overall, things are pretty constructive in the grand scheme of things with a longer time frame horizon outlook. While we do sit at/near overbought levels, the channel remains pretty mid-line controlled if you will. When looking at futures at the time of writing, we are still trading above the 10wk SMA on Spooz yet people are running around like chickens with their heads cut off on X. We’ve seen this exact song and dance before just under a year ago. The famously coined TACO trade is back? Per chance, per maybe. Certainly will see a good bit of blood in the week ahead especially with the higher beta names & growth stories likely taking a big hit. This provides necessary downside to consolidation & entry for traders who were ‘locked out’ of the trade.

The Headlines

Powell vs. DOJ

Fed Chair Jerome Powell dropped a bombshell last Sunday: the DOJ served the Fed with grand jury subpoenas threatening criminal indictment over his testimony about the Fed’s building renovation project.

Trump denied involvement but continues hammering Powell on rates, posting “Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell should cut interest rates, MEANINGFULLY!!!”

The market implication? JPMorgan now expects the Fed to hold rates steady all of 2026. That’s a big shift from the 1-2 cuts everyone was pricing in. Fed independence concerns are real, and the bond market is paying attention.

Personally still believe we remain on track for 1-2 cuts this year.

Credit Card Cap Drama

Trump floated a 10% cap on credit card interest rates for one year. Bank stocks got hammered - Citi down 7% for the week, Bank of America off 6%, Wells Fargo down 7%. Even JPMorgan sold off despite beating on earnings. Goldman Sachs remained resilient in the grand scheme of things and continues to surge at highs.

Geopolitics Getting Spicy

Iran, Greenland, Venezuela - choose your fighter (lol). Trump announced tariffs on any country doing business with Iran, “effective immediately.” The Greenland situation is escalating. Meanwhile, safe haven flows are going straight into gold and silver.

Macro Setup

The macro picture is honestly pretty constructive despite all the noise:

The Good:

• GDP running hot

• Initial jobless claims came in at 198k, second lowest in two years

• Consumer spending holding steady

• Taiwan Semi’s guidance was strong (more on this below)

• Earnings season starting solid (Goldman/Morgan Stanley crushed it)

The Concerns:

• Fed independence under direct attack

• Valuations stretched (CAPE ratio at 40, only hit this during dot-com bubble)

  

• Inflation could re-accelerate if rates stay higher for longer

• Geopolitical uncertainty at multi-year highs

This Week’s Earnings

Earnings season heats up. Here’s what matters:

Tuesday (Jan 20)

• Netflix (NFLX): All eyes here. The WBD acquisition bid is the wildcard. Stock down -6% YTD after four straight monthly losses. Look for subscriber numbers and any updates on that $83B deal.

• 3M, US Bancorp, United Airlines, D.R. Horton, Interactive Brokers

Wednesday (Jan 21)

• Johnson & Johnson (JNJ): Watch immunology segment and any talc litigation updates

• Kinder Morgan, Halliburton (watch this one), Charles Schwab, Truist

Thursday (Jan 22)

• Intel (INTC): The turnaround story of 2026. Stock is up 129% over the past year and 30%+ just this month. Panther Lake (18A process) now in high-volume production. This is the key AI infrastructure name everyone’s been sleeping on. We classified this name as a Trump Trade back in late ‘24 and we see it coming to full fruition now.

• GE Aerospace (GE): Should be a blowout given the plane backlog

• Procter & Gamble (PG), Freeport-McMoRan (FCX), Capital One, Intuitive Surgical

  • FCX is going to be interesting given the recent run-up from mid December & the widely discussed “Copper Supercycle” from our year-ahead.

Friday (Jan 23)

• SLB (Schlumberger)

Also: Fed meeting is Jan 27-28, expect no change, but the Powell situation will dominate the presser.

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What’s Buzzing

Intel (INTC)

I can’t emphasize this enough. The stock ripped 30% in the first two weeks of January alone. Taiwan Semi’s strong capex guidance ($52-56B for 2026) validates the AI infrastructure buildout. Intel is sold out on server CPUs and reportedly considering 10-15% price hikes. Jefferies has a $45 target (current levels). Earnings Thursday after close.

Gold Miners

Newmont (NEM) hitting all-time highs. Gold at $4,670+, silver above $90. If you believe the Fed independence narrative plays out, precious metals have room to run. Target prices of $5,000 gold / $100 silver are being thrown around by serious analysts.

Small Caps / IWM

The breakout is legit. MarketBeat has targets of 3,250-3,650 on the Russell. That’s 20-35% upside from here. Focus on quality. Industrials, financials, domestic cyclicals benefiting from “America First” policies.

Under the Radar

Freeport-McMoRan (FCX)

Copper and gold exposure. Stock up 40% since the start of December. Metals are on fire. Earnings Thursday before market open.

Dave & Buster’s (PLAY)

Just got upgraded to Buy with a $30 target (55% upside). First positive same-store sales in 13 quarters could be coming. Worth watching.

Dollar Tree (DLTR)

Up 96% in the past year. Evercore just added a tactical outperform rating with $165 target (+17%). Multi-price point strategy is working.

Defense names

Budget increases being proposed. Lockheed (LMT) near all-time highs. Smaller contractors like Kratos Defense (KTOS) benefiting from “America First” industrial policy.

Netflix (NFLX)

Earnings Tuesday, but the Warner Bros acquisition drama overshadows everything. “The earnings will be overshadowed,” as one analyst put it. Options pricing in an 8%+ move. Netflix has now recorded SEVEN straight weeks of downside. Not a huge proponent of ‘knife-catching’ but this one is hard to ignore given the sheer dominance & upside potential here.

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Options Flow Breakdown

Let’s take a look at Friday’s flow grab for the time being while we discuss the current market as many of these highlighted trades will open in the red.

I’ve highlighted only a few trades that really piqued my interest on Friday as we weren’t entirely focused on adding new positions during the session. However, Tuesday should provide us some intriguing opportunities depending on a potential continued unwind vs an intraday reversal.

A standout theme with flow as of late, and one in which we did relatively good with, has been homebuilders. We first positioned into Lennar back in December after their earnings report with the assumption there would be a news trade here with parabolic upside. We were nuts on. Absolutely crushed the thesis as it came to fruition the exact week of expiration for our contracts. Although, there is so much more behind this trade & feels like a potential year-long theme.

Ideas from Friday:

• RKT 25C / 35C 13,670x total size across both strikes for 01/23 & 06/18

  • Weekly idea a bit aggressive but will monitor the chain action upon open to see if they are taking the loss or adding at a lower cost for the aforementioned reversal possibility.

• LEN 117C 2,100x 01/23

  • Again, another weekly to watch for with earnings on Tuesday.

• DHI 180C 1,000x 02/20

  • Earnings also Tuesday. Bit more time behind the idea.

• BLDR 160C 5,800x 03/20

  • Supplier play on housing, more under the radar.

Given futures downside over the weekend, the idea is that these contracts are going to open in the red, some even deep in the red. Money had obviously been flowing into these names especially RKT with some serious size / conviction. Few direct earnings bets including LEN weeklies and DHI quarterlies. Assuming that the whales remain in the trades come Tuesday close, the opportunity for discounted flow trades are present into the report.

• COHR 240C 1,000x 13.64 avg

  • This is the AI optical networking play. Premium paid is substantial (~$1.36M notional). Someone's betting on continued data center buildout. With TSM's strong capex guidance last week, this makes sense thematically. Chart looks great as well, see below.

• CIFR 10,960 contracts at 35C for June

  • Bitcoin miner. Highlighted for a reason. That's a BIG bet. If BTC holds and miners catch a bid, this has room. Not to mention the surplus of news headlines that consistently surround these names / sector boosting them higher. Incredibly volatile name and this will certainly provide discounted entry.

• CRWV 14,010 contracts at 125C for FebruaryLargest single position (OI wise) in the flow. Worth digging into what’s driving this.

• DKNG 11,070 contracts at 37.5C for Feb

  • NFL playoffs in full swing. Sports betting volumes are elevated. Solid seasonal catalyst. This is a bet we notice yearly. Typically has worked although the growing presence of Kalshi, Polymarket, and other prediction markets presents new competition & uncertainty.

Obviously some of those bearish ideas will pay nicely given the weekend we’ve seen. ORCL weeklies are interesting given the cloud competition heating up + Gemini deals going to Google. Reddit weeklies as well coming in at the 20D from below & resistance level of 237 and change. MU had a bit of a split, with puts bought & puts sold. Clearly the puts sold is a bullish position with the whale willing to be assigned shares at $350. The memory trade is far from over IMO, but intermediate weakness on a name that has gone relatively parabolic is always necessary.

Actionable Setups for a Down Open

If futures stay red, here’s how I’d play it:

1. RKT on the dip. The call flow is too big to ignore. Near-term catalyst could be rate expectations or housing data. Watch for support levels to hold. Would lean towards the June chain vs the weeklies for obvious reasons given the short week and Geopolitical uncertainty.

2. LEN / DHI into earnings Tuesday. Both have call flow. The LEN 117C expiring Friday is a lotto but the flow is there. I expect more homebuilder flow in the coming days with more time behind them.

3. COHR for AI infrastructure. If it pulls back with broader tech weakness, the 240C March calls suggest someone sees a move. This is a beneficiary of the same theme driving TSM.

4. Fade ORCL. 10k+ puts expiring this week. If/when it gaps down, could have momentum. Watch 180 as the level to hold as it has previously (bullish gap back from June ‘25).

5. BLDR as a builder play (neat). Less volatile than the homebuilders themselves, benefits from the same tailwind. March expiration gives time.

Bottom line: The homebuilder/housing theme is screaming from this flow. RKT, LEN, DHI, BLDR all have significant call buying. With rates potentially staying higher for longer (per the Powell/Fed situation), this might be a “bad news is priced in” bet.

If we get a gap down Tuesday, those are the names I’d be stalking for entries. The COHR and CIFR calls are more thematic AI/crypto bets with longer timeframes.

The Playbook

Look, the market wants to go higher. We just capped off three consecutive years of double-digit gains. GDP is strong, earnings are coming in solid, and now we’re getting the breadth expansion everyone’s been waiting for.

But there are real risks here. The CAPE ratio at 40 is screaming caution. The Fed situation is unprecedented. Geopolitics are a wildcard. Overbought territory + Greed.

My take for the week:

• Let earnings dictate the action, especially Netflix Tuesday and Intel Thursday

• Small caps remain the play if you believe in the rotation

  • Individual names amid broader market chop

• Precious metals as a hedge against the chaos

• Stay nimble, we have Fed next week and PCE data Thursday

The best opportunities often come when things feel uncomfortable. Right now, it’s uncomfortable, and that’s when you stay sharp.

See you tomorrow & cheers,

Jersace

Unusual Flow is for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. Always do your own research.

Key Dates This Week

Date Event Mon 1/19 Markets Closed (MLK Day) Tue 1/20 Netflix earnings (AMC) Wed 1/21 J&J, Schwab, Halliburton earnings Thu 1/22 Intel, P&G, GE Aerospace, FCX earnings / PCE Data Fri 1/23 Michigan Sentiment (final), S&P Global PMI Jan 27-28 FOMC Meeting

Sources:
CNBC, Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, MarketBeat, Seeking Alpha, FRED (St. Louis Fed), Reuters, Wall Street Journal

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Hello,

What a year it has been.

Welcome back to the Juice List! To those who have followed me for quite some time or chat with me regularly, you know this list has become something of a tradition. Vol. 1 helped set the stage back in January 2024, and Vol. 2 published at the tail end of 2024 absolutely delivered. Now, as we close out another incredible year, it’s time for Vol. 3.

The 2025 Juice List wasn’t just about picking stocks that would go up. It was about identifying a structural shift so profound that it would revalue entire sectors. 2025 was a phenomenal year for markets.

The big themes of 2025 were clear: AI infrastructure remained king, nuclear energy emerged as a legitimate growth story, memory and storage stocks exploded, and the “picks and shovels” trade expanded beyond semiconductors into power generation and grid infrastructure. Gold hit all-time highs above $4,500, silver broke $70, and commodities broadly rallied as inflation concerns persisted into the first half before easing.

The remarkable thing isn’t that these stocks from Vol. 2 went up as much as they did. The remarkable thing is how few people understood why they went up. Most investors saw “AI stocks” and chased semiconductor names. The real trade was understanding that silicon without electricity is worthless, and that we’d created an energy constraint that would take a decade to solve.

As we position for 2026, I want to be crystal clear about what we’re doing and why. This isn’t a momentum portfolio. This isn’t a collection of “AI plays” because AI is trendy. This is a calculated bet on the largest coordinated infrastructure build-out since the interstate highway system of the 1950s (in other words, the best thing since sliced bread), and we’re positioning ourselves in front of every bottleneck, every capacity constraint, and every material shortage that build-out will create.

Now let's see how the Vol. 2 basket performed and get into what I'm watching for 2026.

Vol. 2 Performance Recap

The Vol. 2 list published in late December 2024 absolutely crushed it. Let me break down how each name performed throughout 2025:

The Big Winners

GOOGL (+66% YTD): The undisputed champion of the basket. The Willow quantum chip announcement we highlighted delivered, Google Cloud continued to dominate, and Waymo expanded its robotaxi footprint. Alphabet emerged as one of the Magnificent Seven’s top performers alongside NVIDIA.

JOBY (+75% YTD): The eVTOL thesis played out beautifully. Joby entered TIA testing (the final stage of FAA certification), acquired Blade’s passenger business, and secured major international deals in Dubai and Saudi Arabia. The company is positioned to potentially launch commercial operations in 2026.

UBER (+51% YTD): Our risk/reward play from Vol. 2 nailed it. Goldman Sachs’s $97 target was hit and exceeded as UBER reached all-time highs above $100 in September 2025. The autonomous vehicle concerns we noted ultimately didn’t derail the stock - Uber partnered with multiple robotaxi companies instead of being disrupted by them.

GEV/VST/CEG (Energy Trifecta): These names crushed it. GEV nearly tripled since its April 2024 IPO. CEG gained roughly 45-60% as Meta, Amazon, and Google signed massive nuclear power deals. The AI power demand thesis we outlined became THE story of 2025.

TLN (Talen Energy): Another nuclear winner. The Amazon partnership we highlighted expanded to 1,920 megawatts through 2042. Earnings projections soared, with 2026 EPS expected to jump over 300%.

HIMS (+36% YTD, hit $73 ATH): The GLP-1 weight loss play delivered early in the year, with shares surging to all-time highs near $73 in February before pulling back. Volatile but profitable for those who caught the move.

TSLA (+18% YTD): Solid gains, though not the explosive move some hoped for. The robotaxi narrative continued building, and the Musk-Trump relationship remained a tailwind.

IONQ: Hit all-time highs above $84 in October 2025 during the quantum computing frenzy, though it’s pulled back since. Those who caught the momentum play banked serious gains.

The Misses

LCID (-65% YTD): The speculative turnaround play didn’t work out. Production scalability issues persisted, and the EV market remained brutally competitive. Risk/reward cuts both ways.

GTLB (-15% YTD): Underperformed despite the DevOps theme. Microsoft’s GitHub integration and broader software compression hurt.

ACHR: More volatile than JOBY, with execution concerns emerging late in the year. Still up significantly from 2023 lows but lagging its peer.

AUR (-38% YTD): This one was interesting because while it didn’t perform well throughout the year, we actually booked a gain on this for over 70% within the first two months of the year.

Each of these names had their moment of green and if executed the trade perfectly, you wouldn’t own any of these at the moment unless you’re still interested in the previous thesis at a lower entry.

The Verdict

Overall, the Vol. 2 basket significantly outperformed the S&P 500’s ~17% return. The energy and autonomous mobility themes we identified were spot-on. Even accounting for the LCID and GTLB misses, a diversified allocation across these names would have generated strong alpha. The juice was absolutely worth the squeeze.

The Broader Market

The S&P 500 returned approximately 17-19%, marking its third consecutive year of double-digit gains. The Nasdaq Composite climbed over 21%, and the Dow added around 14%. We came within striking distance of the historic 7,000 milestone on the S&P 500, hitting an all-time intraday high of 6,945 during the Christmas rally. The market proved resilient, muscling past the April tariff chaos, rate cut speculation, and concerns about an AI bubble bursting.

The Copper Supercycle

I want to spend time on copper because I believe this is the single most underappreciated macro trade for the next three to five years.

Copper demand from AI data centers alone will grow 6x by 2050 according to BHP’s research division, from around half a million tonnes annually today to approximately three million tonnes by mid-century. But here’s the key insight: that growth won’t be linear. It will be front-loaded into the next five years as the massive data center construction boom happens now, not in 2045.

Here’s what makes copper different from other commodities. When you’re building a data center, copper represents less than half of 1% of total project costs. Developers are completely price insensitive. If copper goes from $4 to $6 per pound, it doesn’t change anyone’s decision to build. This inelastic demand in a supply-constrained market is the recipe for explosive price appreciation.

On the supply side, the picture is bleak. The US averages 29 years to permit and build a copper mine. Chile’s state miner Codelco faces stagnation. First Quantum’s Cobre Panama mine closure removed substantial supply. BHP and Freeport-McMoRan both face rising capital requirements for new production. The industry has been underinvesting for fifteen years, and you can’t fix a decade of underinvestment overnight.

The investment playbook here is straightforward. We want to own copper producers with low all-in sustaining costs, mines in politically stable jurisdictions, and near-term production growth. We want to avoid development-stage stories with 5+ year timelines because we’re trying to capture the 2026-2028 price spike, not the 2030s. And we want to complement direct mining exposure with copper-intensive infrastructure plays like utilities and cable manufacturers that will benefit from higher throughput volumes even if margins compress slightly. Moving on…

The 2026 Juice List

Before we dive into the list, I’d like to point out that in the past two weeks, I have nearly re-done the entire letter. A few ideas you will find missing as I have already mentioned them in chat and others on hold for the time being with the intention of writing them up in another letter in its entirety focusing on the memory/data storage angle paired with batteries. I was taking the angle of a full blown weighted portfolio structured letter here, however switched gears back into flat-out idea generation built for investing & trading alike.

Now let’s dive into what I’m watching for 2026. The themes have evolved - AI infrastructure is entering its “maturity phase,” healthcare is setting up for a rebound, and the power generation trade has legs left to run. Here are my picks across various sectors and themes:

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On the news front, two key points to anchor: First, the ongoing U.S. government shutdown continues to eat into the normal flow of economic data, delaying major prints and forcing traders to rely more heavily on corporate earnings and Fed chatter. Second, big tech and data-center names remain in focus, from AI infrastructure deals to holiday consumer sentiment at lows / these are the “live wires” behind where capital could flow next.

Trump has been very active today on Truth social highlighted by announcing a $2,000 Tariff Dividend - oh?

The real kicker is when the government shutdown will end. It feels as though the street, among many others, are growing increasingly impatient with the shutdown causing a bit of unrest / uncertainty in the broader market. What this means for the week ahead?

• Data headlines will be thinner, so flow, volume, and conviction…

• Earnings news (especially in tech/AI relative) will create the real breaks or fails.

  

• Indices are caught in a bit of a holding pattern — waiting for clarity. This is a week to pick your lanes carefully, not throw everything at the board.

• Keep an eye on Fed speakers, small business data (NFIB), and the leadership names around AI or spending that could pivot the market.

The indices are still just below all-time highs ~2.79% (SPY) with the Fear and Greed Index still in extreme fear territory. Which brings me to my next point - sidelined money. Hypothetically, if we were to reclaim key / pivotal prices in the broader market & many leaders, how much money flows would we see come back into play to drive this market even higher into EOY? Conversely, we could reject the aforementioned pivots / levels confirming the resistance and continuing to break the uptrend as we correct into Q1. Personally I’m in the camp of higher for longer once we get clarity from the gov’t shutdown ending, whenever that may be - this week please and thank you.

Looking at the indices, the risk seems pretty clear at the moment shown below.

SPY

So we’ve got a clear undercut & reversal (UnR) of the 50D SMA and putting in a hammer candle right into previous high / gap support. Opening futures action and into Monday’s session will be interesting to see how we act around this zone. Upside is intact, but conviction is weak. Without a decent volume burst or a headline trigger, this index could stall or reverse. Support remains around the prior breakout levels. For this week, watch for a clean test of resistance or a sharp undercut of support for directional clues. Also worth pointing out that we have broken / closed below the bottom deviation channel for the first time in a month (Oct. 10). A intermediate snap back move into the channel as we began to see Friday afternoon feels more than likely / appropriate.

When looking at the weekly and just simply ‘zooming out’, everything is fine yet fear is still ticking lower… 10wk SMA UnR, correction to median channel, and upward sloping moving average’s paint a much more calming picture in the grand scheme of things.

QQQ

Similar look / commentary as I had on SPY here with tech having been the leader for much of the most recent run. This remains the most interesting animal. QQQ is showing more strength, likely because growth/AI stories still get the spend. The bear case however, if tech stumbles - watch the pull-under scenarios fast.

IWM

IWM is out of favor relative to the other two. More volatile, more sentiment-sensitive. With thin data this week, the risk is that small caps diminish without leadership. But if a surprise flows in (policy shift, spending bill, stimulus chatter) - IWM could catch up quickly. For now, treat it as the “risk-trigger index” - good for breakout plays, bad for fade plays.

Let’s jump into our current positions & setups to watch for in the week ahead.

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The headlines are still essentially he said she said at this rate in regards to Trump / Xi - while we are being told that the conversations are going well and that a meeting between the two will be held in the coming weeks. Looking at the overall market, things still look decent. Plenty of names needed to be corrected / come back to reality / reset for further upside. The lucrative gap & go theme on many of these shitco’s / higher beta names was of course not only not sustainable but a bit over done in many regards. Now looking at these charts, again, I see them setting up for more opportunity going forward (this is healthy).

Everybody wants a pullback, until they get one…

Over the past two weeks, the broader market saw just over a -3% decline into the 50D SMA / 10wk SMA and net equity positioning has already returned to neutral with the fear & greed index in the mid 20’s.

Since that test of the 50D, we’ve already had a ~1.7% move back towards highs on spooz. While it has been ugly / choppy, many names under the hood are looking to go again as I mentioned before.

Bank of America had this to say “Tech Stocks just saw a weekly inflow of more than $10 Billion, the largest in history”…

Some headlines from Friday:

*TRUMP, ASKED IF HIGH CHINA TARIFFS WILL STAND: NO

*TRUMP: I THINK WE’LL BE FINE WITH CHINA

*U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed Friday he will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in two weeks.

This brings me to my next point, being China assets. As I had teed this up earlier, this is an eerily similar playbook to what we saw back in April. The post Liberation Day rally has provided not only investors, but traders alike, a tremendous gain on the year and given folks plenty to be happy with while easing into year end in anticipation of a bigger correction / bubble burst as many are calling for.

As shown above - China has essentially benefit from this entire mess with exports steadily increasing to this point rather than declining. We also have to remember the man in the office is quite vocal about his reputation and has upcoming midterms. It would shock me if this was not resolved before then to help boast his approval ratings and ultimately assist him / republicans in the upcoming midterms. Something’s got a to give as is per usual in all negotiations in business and it will most likely be worth the concession to maintain a healthy relationship with a major trade partner going forward.

Not too concerned with the credit / banking fears personally…

We had XLF retest previous ATH’s and hold following the credit / banking snafu we saw earlier in the previous week while also testing the bottom of the weekly standard deviation chain. In April, as shown above, we saw this band break undercutting the 50wk before snapping back and continuing with our regularly scheduled programming to where we are now. Not to beat a dead horse here, but the theme is very similar while shaping up to hold up better than the former reaction.

Things under the hood look GOOD - not great, but GOOD. Moving on…

The indices, again, have a similar look to April, shown below.

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SPY

Pulled this comparison from a colleague of mine, Bracco. Bracco has a keen eye when it comes to setups and market conditions alike. I am going to go ahead and get ahead of the “but you said” crowd in regards to what happens next in the chart on the left back in April as I’d like to note that while this is the same playbook, conditions and sentiment is entirely different in Liberation pt. 2. This comparison was also made on the 16th of October, and we saw those previously mentioned headlines a day later boosting sentiment / easing greater fears into the weekend.

While rejecting the daily 10 / 20D SMA’s, we also remained to bid off the 10wk / bottom STD channel (daily). Nothing is for certain, but things are looking up and I imagine it will remain as such. Higher.

Responsibly - additional cash on hand, smaller sized positions, and cushion is the way forward until things become more clear / less murky. Worth pointing out that we also have CPI this upcoming Friday.

QQQ

Similar story here as Spooz in regards to current standing here on the Q’s yet they closed above the 10/20D SMA’s.

Now this, this is worth recognizing. Money is still flowing into the market evidently and it seems as many investors are not flinching.

IWM

Feels like the entire world is waiting for this breakout. Pretty nasty weekly close below the mark and we’ve got another two weeks before the end of October. A monthly close above 250 would likely solidify this breakout. Plenty of fun to be had in small caps if this decides to go.

BTC

All in all pretty constructive move on Bitcoin with a daily candle triggering upside pivot. A move towards upper teens will present us with a great deal of sellers once again, yet a hot market this week paired with any positive resolve with China & this see’s new highs, quickly.

Not going to do any flow today as I’m sure there will be a lot to unpack during tomorrows session, but let’s take a look at some setups I’m eyeing for this week and into year end.

TSLA

Nice consolidation here allowing the asset to cool off after the relatively recent explosive breakout from 360 with the moving averages catching up. Been a bit choppy alongside the rest of the market and we’ve got earnings this week. Could be some fireworks.

PLTR

Nice high and tight weekly flag on PLTR here just grinding higher.

CLS

Nice flat top daily breakout on this name - can play this either way as a trading vehicle for quick gains long / short targeting 300 long side and retest ~260 downside depending on the broader market strength.

XOM

Energy demand ramping again / name has been sideways all year long / next leg up feels imminent here.

ISRG

Love this chart for good value / defined risk / tight leash. Pretty clear we’ve got support just below us ~435.50 heading into earnings which could boost this back into the recent balance of $500/share. Will be looking for flow on this one certainly.

Buying names of support has been working considerably better than buying breakouts the last couple weeks so here’s another for you to keep an eye on.

BE

Another fun trading vehicle for short term scalps / day trades dependent on broader market strength is BE. This name moves a ton and catch some pretty sick moves on weekly contracts for some quick hits. Any meaningful dip on this should probably be bid until the theme breaks.

SMH

Semi’s should be a top watch going forward given this flat top base here ready to go for a blue skies breakout. Paired with this, ARM has been a great swing providing quick profits in overnight sessions and even some nice moves during regular hours.

ARM closed just above the breakout level giving it yet another backtest on this race to 200.

That’s all for today, just wanted to put something out to get the bells and whistles moving around before we jump back into things later tonight with futures / market open tomorrow morning. Feel free to jump in the chat and discuss other ideas / any of these presented today with questions, thoughts, concerns.

If you enjoyed the article, likes and comments are greatly appreciated. Feel free to share the publication with anyone you may think would be interested in us.

Cheers,

Jersace.

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Today, tech is trying to hold the line. Nvidia and AI-adjacent names are still propping sentiment, though volatility and rotation are never far behind. Stocks that are over-baked will need discipline, names that are tired or broken need to prove they can hold. The intermediate backdrop feels ‘noodly’ not a crash, not a mega breakout… just accumulation, tests, and traps.

Trade war playbook from Q1 seems to be reoccurring here in Q3 so it’s best to be vigilant and selective as I previously mentioned. Getting chopped up in longer dated swings is never fun but there are plenty of opportunities for quick news hits, or hedges across the board in these sessions. Any headline or positive notion of resolve between Trump and Xi would absolutely trigger this market to surge back to highs. A general market correction was indeed needed to fix some of these charts however, amid this process, some have become ‘broken’ and / or unattractive. On the flip side, this is typically where the bigger gains are made when you bid troughs and bottoms on unattractive names with certain looming upside on the heels of positive resolve.

Let’s talk about where SPY / QQQ / IWM sit in this mess:

SPY Weekly

Yes we are below the 10 / 20D SMA’s… However, SPY’s dancing in that resistance band just above its recent highs. The strength is there when buyers show up, but the follow-through’s been weak. It’s stuck in a range until volume backs a clean breakout. If price can reclaim and hold above that resistance zone with conviction, we may see a leg higher - but if not, this could rollover. It’s a classic “watch the edges” game right now. While we are below the easy momentum average’s of 10/20D, we’ve maintained the 10wk to this point and are already reaching extreme fear territory on the fear/greed index ticking to 20.

QQQ Weekly

QQQ’s been doing the heavy lifting. Tech and AI still driving it, and relative strength is giving it more say in where the broader market goes. When QQQ leads, setups in semis, AI plays, and high-growth rerating names become more valid. But risk is that QQQ overextends and the rest of the market can’t keep up. If it pulls back, tech will need support (flow / institutional bids) to re-anchor. Also holding the 10wk here but simultaneously below 10/20D as mentioned on SPY.

IWM Weekly

Small caps continue to lag the party. IWM’s showing more volatility - it will move quick when liquidity or macro relief hits, but until then it’s getting clipped on weakness more often. The chart is weaker, participation is sparser, and without a catalyst, IWM will be reactive, not leading. If macro or policy surprises line up, though, it could be a sharp catch-up… which is what many have practically begged for now for the last four years. As it stands now is actually pretty important in regards to the weekly candle close. We’ve only closed above this 244.59 level shown once in the past four years (two weeks ago) before ultimately failing the breakout. IWM actually still holds the 20D SMA still but in a way a moot point given the lack of returns here.

From here, the trick is being nimble: flow, volume, and confirmation > ideology. I’m watching for high-conviction setups, clean breakouts, and names that refuse to roll. The broader indices are your map - but today, it’s about picking direction off internals, not macro hope.

Amid the chop and whippy action of the intraday sessions, I’ve provided consistent value for subscribers in the daily chat with live trading / alerts to help outperform consistently whether that be quick scalps, news trades, or quick hit swing trades to capitalize on the volatility while we let longer term trades do their work on their own time. I’ve started tracking trades placed in the subscriber chat the past few weeks and I’ll let the numbers speak for themselves.

The main reason for this is not to gloat, but rather display that trades we take are not solely mentioned in the letters posted & that they are being called out actively in our chat as many have been quite time sensitive and headline driven the previous couple weeks. I apologize if you suffer from OCD / ADHD or whatever alphabet diagnosis that makes you cringe at the unorganized structure of expiration sorting displayed above .. LOL.

Not a big flow grab today as I mentioned in the intro that it’s been pretty mixed as of late. Nonetheless, some interesting ideas I have that I’d like to share with you all today below for our subs.

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