Welcome to the Daily Report, where I review the day’s market moves and their drivers. I share signals for two portfolios, along with many Special Opportunity trades throughout the year.

• Short-Term - 4-to-10-day trades, up 58% in 2025 and up 24.82% in 2026 (vs. 12.4% on SPX as of 8/19/26)

• My retirement accounts - Mean reversion systems averaging 10–20% long term

All setups are backtested, and trades are executed at day’s end or on the open tomorrow. I personally follow these signals—full transparency.

Let’s review what happened today!

New Folks

If you have questions, go here and watch the videos and read the FAQ. And feel free to send me a message - you’ll hear from me soon if you don’t anyway.

New Folks Start Here!

What Drove Today’s Move

Today was an interesting day. Bonds did what bonds normally do - go re-test a key level. We decided to go down there and see if more buyers would defend Scott Bessent’s self declared “too low” level for the Long Bond.

The media took the drop as a reason to consider the intervention a failure. That’s stupid. When you see stocks in the Drudge Report, you should pay attention because the lowest common denominator is on board here and is trying to short bonds.

I’d rather take the other side of that trade. This is looking like a nice buy point on the US Bond market. Sentiment is there, we have a catalyst and a target (Election time) for a rally. Not sure what else you can ask for.

Consumer Discretionary Sector is Feeling Heat

Wal-Mart came out today and said some of the same stuff we’ve been hearing for a while now. Consumers are tapped out, economy sucks and is getting worse. They did get a giant refund from Trump they aren’t going to fully share back with the consumers. I’m not sure how that’s not considered just theft, but it is what it is. Burns my biscuits.

Wal-Mart is now down 23% off the highs and this is about as big a drawdown as you will ever see from Wal-Mart.

It’s happened 9 other times in the last 25 years. That’s it. WMT was higher 6 out of 9 times by 12-13% on average 6 months later and only once suffered a drawdown bigger than 9% from here. That was the Earnings Recession of 2015.

Did I buy some today? You bet I did. This was the last time it was down 23%. Subs, I have another trade for you today too in another stock that is beaten down.

That’s a Freebie today because I think a lot of people are getting whacked right now trading Mo-Mo. It’s not the time to be doing that right now. We will let Subs know when it’s time to hit the gas on that junk again.

It was rough again. They came for the Mid-Caps and Small-Caps (we suspected this was coming).

Banks Dumped

Banks - whacked. We called this - we were looking for weakness in Banks to materialize and a systemic / growth-scare scenario to start to materialize. We have been talking about this for a week or more now because of the Red Dots here.

Bessent has inadvertently given markets good reason to suspect things are bad, bad, bad here and provided the catalyst. We’ll discuss Operation Twist in 2011 in a minute, put a pin in that here.

Let’s Talk Operation TWIST

Operation Twist was done in 2011 by the Fed and Treasury together and its purpose was to reduce long end rates. At that time, it was a big deal. You don’t need to know whole lot of detail about it, but what you do need to know is that what Bessent is doing now is a lot like that. In 2011 it had a very similar effect that we are experiencing now. Global Growth fears ignited (“what does the Fed/Treasury know that we don’t?!”) and the effects were pretty sharp. People freaked out. Bessent has kind of kicked the hornet’s nest here.

• Sharp rotation out of Cyclicals > Into Defensives and Yield-Oriented kind of stuff. Long dated bonds rallied hard.

So, this is something to think about right now. XLU (Utilities), XLP (Consumer Staples) and TLT (Long Dated Bond ETF) could be great options here. Mortgage REITs anyone?! No one talks about them anymore and they pay almost 15% a year!

Industrials will struggle in this kind of environment (and they are dumping today) and so will stocks in general, although the S&P500 is pretty diversified as long as you stick with equal weighted versions like the RSP. Commodities and especially Oil might drop like a rock if demand falls off a cliff and fears of recession start. If the Iran thing finally abates it could be a disaster for Oils. As far as Tech goes, it could frankly still rally if earnings keep delivering - it did in 2011.

This is going to produce rotation again - but different than we’ve seen in some time because fixed income is in play again.

Bitcoin We Bid Thee Farewell

Subs know we have been long the Bitcoins since the Green Dots. We used the IBIT (Bitcoin ETF) and now it’s time to exit - at Red Dots. We pretty much bottom ticked it. Let everyone else chase it. Bitcoin is not going to do well if real risk-off materializes. Return on the trade was about 15% in just about 2 months. Was it annoying waiting for the turn? Yep. Was it worth the annoyance? Yep.

That means over the last 21 trades, 20 were winners in the Special Opportunity Section (which are my Discretionary Trades).

For 2026 in this portfolio, I’ve taken 36 trades there and 34 were winners, which is insane. I had no idea how it would turn out when I started to do it.

All in real-time, Daily in these Notes - I’ve got the receipts, no deletes, no funny business. I give the entry, the exit and the dates and I even do the trade structure for Options if I recommend them for a trade (which is not super common, but it can happen). 🤯

I have done well this year, and I think probably writing this thing makes me more accountable and focused. And frankly in the Chat we have some great traders and we bounce ideas off one another. Today’s Special Opportunity Trade comes from that kind of banter.

I’m slowly closing trades, as you can see over the last few days / week, and naturally I can tell what’s left in the portfolio is getting a little more defensive in nature for whatever reason, though there are some stocks that are high Beta setting up now.

For Subs

We are going to cover the setup here zoomed out for the various major asset classes. I think you’ll like it. And don’t forget we have more trades! We do our best work when things get like this.

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New Folks. If you have questions, go here and watch the videos and read the FAQ. And feel free to send me a message - you’ll hear from me soon if you don’t anyway.

New Folks Start Here!

Today’s Setup

We are gapping down and most of the action took place once the US session opened for early trading around 7 AM EST. So, US traders are a little spooked.

The catalyst was WMT earnings and they were good earnings, but folks are interested in what they think about the future and what’s to come.

And what they said was not pretty. They guided their Q3 under estimates and their same store sales metrics were the worst in 6 years. That’s not good. The consumer is not well. None of that is surprising, the Iran War is sapping poor (and now middle to upper middle class) folks.

is down a whopping 7% (which is ALOT for that stock). It’s probably a buying opportunity. WMT has gapped down now the last 3 earnings announcements. Oof!

The Options Flow Oscillator shows a lot of hedging before the print, so that usually cushions it from further damage. We’ll see how it turns out - WMT is normally 50/50 after a big gap down on earnings a month later. There isn’t much edge in trying to buy an earnings dip on it.

We continue to see mounting evidence that the Economy is tipping over. The Economic Surprise Index, which counts how well the economic data is doing relative to expectations is just in free fall the last few weeks. Something has shifted, that’s for sure. It’s bad and getting worse for the consumer.

For Subs

We are going to outline support and Resistance, and I go over my Day Trading Bar Score that will tell us if it’s a good day to be Day Trading or not.

Read more

Welcome to the Daily Report, where I review the day’s market moves and their drivers. I share signals for two portfolios, along with many Special Opportunity trades throughout the year.

• Short-Term - 4-to-10-day trades, up 58% in 2025 and up 24.82% in 2026 (vs. 12.4% on SPX as of 8/19/26)

• My retirement accounts - Mean reversion systems averaging 10–20% long term

All setups are backtested, and trades are executed at day’s end or on the open tomorrow. I personally follow these signals—full transparency.

Let’s review what happened today!

New Folks

If you have questions, go here and watch the videos and read the FAQ. And feel free to send me a message - you’ll hear from me soon if you don’t anyway.

New Folks Start Here!

What Drove Today’s Move

Today it was all about Scott Bessent and a big jawbone in the fixed income space. The Treasury has done a big about-face in the guidance of what kind of debt they will issue - it wasn’t a small difference either, it was a big change. We covered the crescendo in last night’s note that seemed like a turn was near and we got it. The question is whether or not they’ll actually do any of this or not because the last few months has been a lot of missed guidance from these folks.

The new policy will take place from basically now > November 4th. Why November 4th? Because it’s the day after elections. Can’t make that stuff up. But it’s a full court press, as usual ahead of elections. The odds actually improved today that Republicans would keep the Senate (by a little bit). Bonds rose 1.6% on the news - it took a little while, but the Buy Setup (Green Hump, middle clip) worked again. We have some longs finally working that we put on down there. Isn’t it funny how the setups always happen and THEN we get the News?

For the last couple months, the Treasury (and the Fed now over the last month or more) has been ignoring Bond markets and doing basically whatever they want, more or less saying they know better than markets. Markets have been demanding some level of basic fiscal responsibility - which has not been happening to say the least.

To say Warsh and Bessent have had a bad read on the market is an understatement. Bonds have been down about 7% since just the 4th of July - that is extremely poor performance for a fixed income asset like a Long Bond. Bessent finally caught up and scored a point towards restoring some credibility at the Treasury - at least in Bond-Land.

But it came at the expense of one thing. The Currency (and the AI Trade, which I’m not sure they expected). We were down almost 1% today, which means that move in the IWM that was up about 0.5% was really actually a net loss after factoring in the Currency move. That move up of about 1.6% on Bonds was really not that impressive either when you consider the move in the US Dollar.

But let’s talk about a move that WAS impressive. This little jawbone did ignite the “Debasement” Trade like we haven’t seen in months. Gold and Silver Miners just went bonkers. Gold Miners were up almost 9% as gold was up almost 4%.

And the INFL (Inflation ETF) went bonkers today. It’s setting up for a sell here. If you will notice the US Dollar is setting up with a Green Dot (Buy Setup) too. So, our real question here is whether or not this is sustainable (no is my initial thought). Markets were thinking this was coming for a week or two at least now. I’m sure Retail Folks are piling into these stocks right now though after watching CNBC though.

Why Did Momentum Get Blasted, Why Chips Down?

I got a bunch of questions about this today. I will review the chart that I posted not long ago in the Weekly Report - if you recall a few days ago, I reviewed what happens when inflation stocks go up. Tech stocks do poorly. I’ll now review that model again and show you the last couple times when the Inflation ETF went bonkers. That was right before the QQQ fell off a cliff going into April. The QQQs need to be outperforming INFL to really gain ground and they are simply not doing that now. Pick your reason why if that suites you, but it doesn’t matter why. They ain’t getting it done and haven’t been for months now. Subs get access to this model - once it pings a long, I’ll let people know.

Today, we just saw the cost of imported chips go up a lot because the US Dollar is being de-based (or at least that’s what the market is saying). That is going to make the bottom line of AI companies suffer - especially now that costs are being scrutinized a lot.

There Are Chip Stocks Worth Trading

I will go over two of them tonight for Subs.

Healthcare (Get Out)

We went crazy in Healthcare and Biotechs today because MRNA was up almost 200% (eye watering!) on great news they basically are using MRNA tech to develop Cancer vaccines and it’s actually working. That’s awesome for humanity - really cool stuff. We covered it in the morning and remember we called out the insider purchases WAY back in March of 2025 when they hit the wire. I can imagine Stephan Bancel (CEO) has made an insane return once again trading that stock.

Now the bad news. Healthcare is now overvalued - prices are in the Blue Bands. It’s time to get out. No one wanted it at the Red Bands with Green Dots (except the CEOs and insiders and us of course). Remember the US Government was basically in DOGE mode and Medicare reimbursement rates were getting cut, etc. That one guy even whacked one of the higher ups at UNH. Talk about bad sentiment. Now - everyone wants in because AI is going to make drug development super charged and Hospitals will use it to become more profitable. My, how far things have come!

For Subs

I got a lot of nice comments from last night’s deep dive on Oil, you asked about Nat Gas and I’ll cover that soon (probably tomorrow or the next day if I can get the charts all setup). Look for that!

We are going to exit NFLX LEAPS up about 30% from the entry at the end of June. Pretty good trade. We have more trades tonight on these Semis.

And I’ll cover another Bond Model that is pinging tonight. It’s a good one and right on time. I will also cover the US Dollar and another setup there too. All useful stuff for what to expect next!

Read more

New Folks. If you have questions, go here and watch the videos and read the FAQ. And feel free to send me a message - you’ll hear from me soon if you don’t anyway.

New Folks Start Here!

Today’s Setup

The indexes were registering a tepid bounce until a few minutes ago when the headline hit. Now we are rising and bonds are up 1.3+%.

I said it yesterday, it felt like it had reached fever pitch on the Bonds. We have Google Searches going bonkers for stupid stuff like this.

And this.

So, naturally Scott “The Trader” Bessent had to shake the cages and run the shorts out of the market for a while longer. US Treasuries are starting to form that familiar look of the Japanese Yen, where feckless Central Bankers try to scare traders out of short term-positions, only to draw more (stronger hands) back into the fold with shortable, sharp Bear Market Rallies. Markets are forcing fiscal discipline on Japan and the US.

Keep in mind, just last week we got the Treasury Statement and it spooked the markets. I didn’t cover it last week because I normally don’t worry about it, but now that I look at the chart, it was bad. Really bad.

Look at the Chart. That’s the lowest number in a long time. It means they are spending way, way more than they are taking in due to obviously - the War in Iran (and probably refunding Tariffs too). That’s 10% growth in the deficit in a YEAR. Just a YEAR. So - yeah, it’s bad.

So now it gets interesting. We are now seeing the Government respond to markets here again, only this time it’s not a Trump TACO - it’s a US Treasury TACO.

Just two weeks ago, Bessent released the Treasury Refunding Statement and none of this non-sense this morning was in it. I covered it at the time and noted that Treasury has been saying they are going to do one thing and then doing another, which is pissing off markets.

Treasury is saying they’ll sell X amount of short-dated debt, then selling WAY more than X and commenting that there is no guarantee they won’t increase offerings in the future.

Markets finally twisted the arm of Bessent and he relented. Good job markets! Hold these dude’s feet to the fire and give them consequences for their actions.

MRNA Madness

Everyone is piling into MRNA now, but we were pounding the table back in February-May of LAST YEAR when it was $20-30. It’s gapping up to $120 today on news their Cancer drugs are kicking butt (that’s a 5-6x return in a little more than a year!). This is what the momentum traders call an “Episodic Pivot” - when news comes out that is not expected. That’s crazy because this one could be seen almost a year ago, a mile away. This was what I wrote back then.

Back then I was absolutely pounding the table on Healthcare and Biotech stocks. You should definitely sell into this strength if you still own some. Let the momentum traders have it.

I even did a free post that outlined the insider buying that was happening at the time. Check it out. That turned out well to say the least.

So how do you find stuff like this? You follow the INSIDERS. Back then, the Founder and CEO Stephan Bancel made his first purchase since he bought the thing before COVID (for those that don’t know, MRNA did the COVID vaccine and was all the rage in 2020-2021). Their CEO made a windfall betting on the stock at that time, and he just made another one with this drug release.

I go through these kinds of setups in the Chat now for Founding Members. We just went through one last night in a beaten down Semi that has extreme potential for a major rally. Insiders with good track records are buying it. I’m going to buy some this morning.

For Subs

We are going to see if anything has materially changed from the last 2 sessions where no one was hedging and Skew was plumbing extreme lows.

Read more

Welcome to the Daily Report, where I review the day’s market moves and their drivers. I share signals for two portfolios, along with many Special Opportunity trades throughout the year.

• Short-Term - 4-to-10-day trades, up 58% in 2025 and up 24.34% in 2026 (vs. 12.81% on SPX as of 8/4/26)

• My retirement accounts - Mean reversion systems averaging 10–20% long term

All setups are backtested, and trades are executed at day’s end or on the open tomorrow. I personally follow these signals—full transparency.

Let’s review what happened today!

New Folks

If you have questions, go here and watch the videos and read the FAQ. And feel free to send me a message - you’ll hear from me soon if you don’t anyway.

New Folks Start Here!

What Drove Today’s Move

Well, today was a rough one for the Momentum Folks. I saw nothing but people posting about getting stopped out today and “how bad” this market is. We again had another day where we gapped down and had zero bid for Intraday Rallies.

Yesterday I posted someone needed to tell the Mo-Mo folks the market had turned. Looks like it took a day longer than everyone else, but they got theirs today.

As far as sectors go, it was defensive with Staples and Healthcare rallying with Energy.

We continue to see the market “Split” in two. Stocks that go up when AI goes down are one market, and the other market is “AI” stocks and anything adjacent like $CAT. It hasn’t been this way since the early 1990s. It’s difficult to trade - if you are trend trading, I would avoid. For me, it’s not bad doing Mean Reversion because I buy the junk they sold last week and sell it when it goes back up a little bit.

Bitcoin Quietly Showing Strength

Bitcoin and the MNST are showing strength despite the general market malaise. Bio-Techs continued to show strength too. Both of those would rise if we were going to see Rate Cuts coming. Something to keep in mind if it continues.

Bonds Crashing

The headlines were everywhere today - we are getting almost full saturation now on Bonds. Everyone is a bond expert I think now. Carefully crafted headlines suggest this is a GLOBAL bond yield problem. No way man.

Yeah - since 2020 yields are higher everywhere. But in the last 2 weeks? No, this is almost a singular issue in the US (and Japan - both are tied at the hip financially due to the Yen Carry trade).

I’ve just taken a relative strength / rotation chart for the last 3-4 weeks to show you just what’s going on. We are seeing Corporate Debt (HYG) lead (top right corner), while the TLT (Long Term US Debt) sits in the far, bottom left corner - severely lagging. IEI (7-10 Year US Debt) is also doing OK. Again, if you want to buy bonds, know what kind of bonds to buy - now more than ever it’s important.

What I notice is just how much BETTER International Bonds have done - BWX (International Bonds ETF) is clearly the head and shoulders leader here from the last 3 weeks. So, when we see these headlines that make it look like it’s the “same” everywhere - it’s not. This is a US + Japan Government Long Term Debt problem.

For Subs

I got a lot of comments from folks that wanted to see a Deep Dive on Oil. I’m going to do my best to outline what the charts are saying here and the path forward, including a surprising chart that might help with whether or not a TACO is incoming.

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New Folks. If you have questions, go here and watch the videos and read the FAQ. And feel free to send me a message - you’ll hear from me soon if you don’t anyway.

New Folks Start Here!

Today’s Setup

We are struggling again overnight with a tepid bid from Europe and Asia.

QQQs are down 1% and the S&P500 down about 0.4%.

What went up yesterday is going back down. The Mo-Mo folks are getting all their stops hit again. The writing was on the wall yesterday. It’s death by a thousand cuts when there is no trend to ride and you trade momentum. It stinks when it gets like this.

We have been discussing the Semis getting up into a Shortable-Zone here where they’d meet resistance at the Anchored VWAP from up around “the Highs.” We hit that area and are seeing those trapped longs make themselves known to the new (even weaker) hands that have been gobbling up Semis over the last 2 weeks.

Negative Beta Like the 1990s

This is a wonderful chart that kind of explains what’s going on and how unusual it is right now. Dispersion is very high in the market right now - which just means a lot of stocks are not moving in the general direction of the Index. We have not seen this level of Negative Beta since the 1990s - just like the Dot-Com Bubble. It’s not shown on this chart, but we did the same thing back then.

If you’ll notice, the yellow distribution is forming two humps. This is indicative of two separate markets within the S&P500. There is one that more or less matches what the market is doing and the other one that is simply doing the opposite.

Alliance seems to think it’s the market sussing out stocks AI will benefit vs stocks where AI will disrupt. I think it’s much larger than that - we have full-fledged State Run Capitalism making itself known. Markets are adapting to that. If you are in, everything is fine but if you are out - well, it’s a rough time for you. AI is obviously happening at the same time, but it’s larger than just AI.

Markets are very different now than they were even 2 years ago.

When TACO?

Oil Stocks are up again - but oil itself continues to sit there doing nothing. That’s a little interesting to me. Some of the Refiners are just out of control up here - I keep trying to sell Call Spreads on MPC and getting whomped. It will eventually come down. We are reaching pretty severe levels of overvaluation here. Iran has kind of taken away Trump’s ability to unilaterally negotiate with himself, so we’ll need to see if they can come up with a way to cool things off that the market will believe.

At the same time all this is happening, the approval ratings are plummeting for Rs and PolyMarket is back to showing Dems with a narrow lead to win the Senate (the House is already decided at 88% for Dems, barring some kind of major disruption). That means the chances of a Lame Duck Presidency are very high now for the Trump Admin. I want to make sure everyone knows I’m not getting political to get political - I’m showing that the last time this happened, it produced the April lows and the TACO > Memorandum of Understanding debacle that caused a massive Short Squeeze. Am I calling a bottom here? Absolutely not, far from that. I just want to point out the context of what is happening here - and remember, some of this Tech stuff has a lot of put flow.

If you want to read the post where I called the lows back in April, it’s here. It’s definitely worth a read just to kind of remember what conditions were like back then!

I’ll be updating those models tonight for everyone in the Daily Note - they are definitely showing something interesting here.

For Subs

We got some hedging going on - I’ll cover where they decided to buy their puts and on which ticker. Hopefully this rising Vix helps us trade while Day Trading!

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I keep track of only a few tried and true, time tested “Macro” data points. Those will keep you out of high inflation, rampant speculation and inform you of incoming poor economic conditions.

I have added a new section that tracks all the major ETFs for signs of MAJOR Tops and MAJOR Bottoms. I review all the charts. For long term investors this is a must see.

Let’s look at the models!

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ISM PMI (Updated August 3rd, 2026)

This model is a broad measure of how well the manufacturing industry. Why keep track of the manufacturing industry? Because it’s the single most sensitive area of the economy🏭. When manufacturing catches a cold🤒, it leads the stock market most of the time - the stock market gets sick shortly afterwards🤮.

PMI have held up well during the Iran War, they are still firmly in bullish configurations and accelerating. Services PMIs (not shown) are also bullish.

The equity curve for the PMI model is shown, so you can see that it’s very good and it goes ALLLLLLL the way back to 1960.

CPI and PPI (Inflation Numbers, August 12th-13th, 2026)

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Welcome to the Daily Report, where I review the day’s market moves and their drivers. I share signals for two portfolios, along with many Special Opportunity trades throughout the year.

• Short-Term - 4-to-10-day trades, up 58% in 2025 and up 24.34% in 2026 (vs. 12.81% on SPX as of 8/4/26)

• My retirement accounts - Mean reversion systems averaging 10–20% long term

All setups are backtested, and trades are executed at day’s end or on the open tomorrow. I personally follow these signals—full transparency.

Let’s review what happened today!

New Folks

If you have questions, go here and watch the videos and read the FAQ. And feel free to send me a message - you’ll hear from me soon if you don’t anyway.

New Folks Start Here!

What Drove Today’s Move

We suffered through another weak day. Breadth was poor, we caught no intraday rallies, and it was pretty one-sided. It was a lot like Friday.

No one told the Momentum Folks though. We are back into this environment where the bid is singularly in a handful of Chip names, and the rest of the market sells off.

You could tell today that Energy was weighing on the market. We are seeing Consumer stuff get crushed. Notice that the Financials were weak today, we have been looking for this. Trump said he wasn’t going to “extend” the Ceasefire with Iran (which hasn’t worked anyway) and Iran said they are going to get more aggressive in the War now. That’s not great.

Inflation and Rates

Bonds are in free fall - the markets are simply not buying the inflation data from last week (I’ll have more to say about the disturbing trends we have seen over the last few months with inflation later).

Here is the Options Flow for TLT (US Long Term Bonds) that will help provide a lot of context as to what is going on here. We are seeing people press Calls on the bonds here because we are hitting that magic 5% line for rates that has produced some action from the Admin in the past. So far, it’s just dropping like a rock as these folks are stuck in a Long Squeeze. Kevin Warsh’s very dumb idea to yank guidance from markets is producing a pretty typical response - pricing higher to incorporate even more uncertainty from this Administration.

No bottom in bonds till the Fed gets their head out of the sand and starts hiking. That’s still the theme here.

Volatility Wakes Up

We’ve been watching the setup in volatility for a week now and it’s finally popping. $TDEX (Tail Hedge Index) was up 20% today as a lot of people started reaching for puts again. We are still nowhere near the level of Vix that we should be at right now, it should be much, much higher.

Checking In on Intraday Returns

The day trading has been really poor for a while now - I’m taking papercuts most days now, which is annoying. We are seeing material weakening in the bottom indicator here, which is what the stock market would look like if you were only invested from the Open to the Close of the US Trading Session. Under that Orange line is where really poor market environments reside. We are dangerously close to dropping under it.

Two Days Down at a 2-Year High

We did close down for the last 2 sessions and it’s coming off a major rally to all-time highs. I looked at what happens typically tomorrow when we pull this pattern, and it’s not bullish usually. This is what your account looks like if you buy it today, hold through tomorrow on average when it’s been down 2-Days in a Row and we made a 2-Year High just 2 days ago. You lose money on average.

Compare it to what it looks like when we haven’t made a 2-Year High and are down 2 days in a row. I keep seeing a lot of stuff about how buying new highs is bullish, etc. Sometimes it is, but short term, it’s not bullish, it usually indicates conditions were overbought and need to cool off.

For Subs

I run through Mid-Cap stocks and some positioning data that matters here. We did get some signals on some systems tonight.

Read more

New Folks. If you have questions, go here and watch the videos and read the FAQ. And feel free to send me a message - you’ll hear from me soon if you don’t anyway.

New Folks Start Here!

Today’s Setup

We are treading water and flat overnight as we await new catalysts in the absence of and volatility or volume really.

We got some data from the New York Fed that suggests prices paid for manufacturers are declining. That’s good.

Retail Review

Retail folks were selling MSFT and software stocks like NOW on Friday. And it’s interesting that we are seeing the SCHD (Dividend Stocks) being pounded to the buy side. The total orders is very low for most of these names - it’s Summer and no one is trading. Of course, everyone’s favorite stock SPCX is perenially bid by Retail.

The SCHD is shown below. The Weekly charts look just like they did in 2021 right before everything fell apart. Dividend stocks are very, very overvalued now. I would rather wait until the next time I see Green Dots to own them. The Forward Yield on this thing is a measly 3% - I can get 3.5-4% just sitting in cash!

For Subs

I’ll review the setup - it’s a lot like Friday.

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I focus on the MAJOR themes and the MAJOR trends of the markets in this report. All the models I present are back tested with results so you can see that they work🤔.

This post is long - so make sure you read it on the Substack App or Website so you get to see the bottom of it - Email can often cut the message short. Let’s get into the weekly models!

What Happened This Week

This week was a typical, very slow Summertime week that had one major catalyst, and it was the PPI and CPI (Inflation) reports. I covered them in detail in the Daily Notes as the data came out but the TL/DR of it is that a lot of the data is simply not matching up with past instances of inflation here and frankly even private providers of inflation data are saying the data is not right and likely to need revisions later.

I am going to do a deeper dive soon on the CPI and PPI reports since Trump fired the Chief Statistician of the BLS. It’s still unclear who is going to lead them. Trump’s initial idea was to appoint a flunky and that was broadly met with Boos. Now he’s onto trying to smooth things over and appoint a Data Nerd back into the job, but the damage is extraordinary from the last year and a half at the BLS - a third of the leadership is gone from DOGE stuff, budget cuts, and hiring freezes that have led to early retirements and brain drain.

Stock markets are taking the data at face value, and we are seeing a reliable bid back into the stuff that was leading up until the start of earnings season (when everyone realized the AI stocks are very, very overvalued), but that stuff is now hitting resistance in many places.

The XSD (Semis ETF that is more broad-based than SOXX) is actually hitting the Anchored VWAP from the Highs and finding predictable resistance. This is where a low risk short could be played with a stop just overhead around the Green Line. This looks like a setup for Chop to me, with support at the Gray Line (Yearly VWAP) and Resistance at the Green Line / Falling White Line.

Bonds Don’t Believe Inflation Data

Despite stocks eating up the inflation data, the bond markets are not having any of it, and that’s the theme we are going to covering this week. Bonds were down almost 1% this week despite data that would suggest inflation has peaked. They remain mired in a major downtrend.

People probably forget because we all have the attention span of a toddler these days, but back in January Trump ordered Fannie and Freddie Mae to start trading again in the Mortgage Bond markets in order to “keep mortgage rates down.” Here’s how that went - he pretty much bottom ticked the Mortgage Rates (top ticked the Bonds).

So, now we have Fannie and Freddie sitting on losses most likely in these Bonds (remember if rates go up, bond prices go DOWN). That’s how they went bankrupt in 2008 and had to be rescued (and it’s why they are still owned by the US Government to this day).

So - why does this happen? It seems completely illogical for markets to act this way. Well, not really. Markets are forward looking, and one big effect that continues to be under reported (because it’s difficult to quantify) is the premium being charged for US assets simply due to the uncertainty associated with basic policy that shouldn’t be difficult to get right. Things that were just never questioned before are now being loudly talked about as uncertain.

When Trump does something like firing someone as important as the Nerd that crunches the numbers for inflation and unilaterally declares (without proof) that the numbers are being politically motivated as fake, then it causes markets to charge a premium to assess the uncertainty that now the numbers going forward could very well be MORE fake than usual. Right now, SOFR Swaps for the 10-year Treasury expiring in a year are still trading at 4.23% while the 10-Year Treasury itself is trading at 4.6+%, which is almost a 0.5% premium - it’s real.

Firing the BLS nerd ripped the Economic Policy Uncertainty Index (EPU). These kinds of sharp increases are widely associated with reductions in Industrial Production, GDP, etc. because businesses spend less when things are uncertain. Different Economists have calculated that this caused about $20 billion in damage to the economy, which is like 20x more than the entire budget of the BLS.

I’ll talk more about this kind of thing in a deeper dive later but suffice it to say that it’s a theme that has been running through the markets for a while now and has gotten acutely worse. It is one reason why the US Bond markets simply will not get off the mat and go up (even when the rest of the world is seeing their bond markets rally over the last couple weeks). It does matter.

What’s Going on Next Week?

The big thing I’m looking at this week is a swath of Consumer names that report this week. We got HD and LOW as well as TGT and WMT. BJ also reports.

Of note, the Consumer Discretionary Sector peaked at the election in 2024 and has done nothing since, almost 2-Years of malaise.

These names should supply use with an excellent read on the Consumer. I’ll cover these setups for subs in the Daily Note - we might get some earnings trades out of them.

Absent that, we do get FOMC minutes on Wednesday - but I think the market already knows what they say. Remember the end of the month has NVDA earnings as well as the “Jackson Hole” Speech by Kevin Warsh - typically Jackson Hole has served as a place where FOMC heads announce major policy shifts / stuff. Warsh needs to do major damage control after he rope-a-doped markets into believing he was tough on inflation (he is not).

Weekly Show and Tell

Each week I review a chart or model that I would normally keep behind the paywall, I hope you can make a couple bucks off of it! 🤑

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Today we are going to talk about an area of the market that is pretty heated now and it’s Singapore. Singapore?! No one is talking about Singapore. So, why is this thing going nuts? Well, in a time of considerable Geo-Political uncertainty, Singapore stands out as very stable (and VERY rich!). Their currency has done fine this year, and they have a lot of banks that make up their economy (and the Banks have been VERY strong over the last few weeks).

But all good things must come to an end. We are seeing longer term sentiment hit some very extreme levels that are typically associated with weakness over the coming months.

Now - how does this help me trade the US markets? Well, knowing that Singapore (especially since COVID) has become a major banking center lets me use this kind of Sentiment to time the Financials Sector in the US.

Let’s zoom the Sentiment Chart in and replace Singapore’s stock market with the US Financials Sector. Look at the prior two times we got the Sentiment for Singapore up here. Financials in the US topped and went into multi-month drawdowns of about 15% to 20% both times.

So, how am I using this kind of thing in my own trading? I’m avoiding Financials now. They are setting up to top. If these kinds of “outside the box” idea appeal to you, I can help you spot these kinds of Inter-Market dynamics for all kinds of other stuff!

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Welcome to the Daily Report, where I review the day’s market moves and their drivers. I share signals for two portfolios, along with many Special Opportunity trades throughout the year.

• Short-Term - 4-to-10-day trades, up 58% in 2025 and up 24.34% in 2026 (vs. 12.81% on SPX as of 8/4/26)

• My retirement accounts - Mean reversion systems averaging 10–20% long term

All setups are backtested, and trades are executed at day’s end or on the open tomorrow. I personally follow these signals—full transparency.

Let’s review what happened today!

New Folks

If you have questions, go here and watch the videos and read the FAQ. And feel free to send me a message - you’ll hear from me soon if you don’t anyway.

New Folks Start Here!

What Drove Today’s Move

We re-traced down and knocked out the entire PPI Pump from Thursday. It was pretty risk off despite the fact that the breadth wasn’t bad - the IWM was green on the day.

What I noticed that I didn’t like was the Bonds were down almost 1% and the US Dollar was dumping another 0.5%. That’s the kind of thing that gets the Admin attention (stocks down, bonds down, dollar down), and I’d say based on what I reviewed yesterday, they have to be concerned the US Bond markets are just not rallying with the rest of Fixed Income.

The PPI print was supposed to be good for interest rates - remember, inflation is abating? Well, we are not seeing bond markets act like it’s going away. They are getting irritated that the odds for a Rate Hike keep going down, dragging long term rates higher.

No bond rally till Fed Hikes rates (or maybe Bessent does something insane, we can’t rule that out).

I heard a good comment from Michael Howell this morning and it went something like this “everyone thinks the Fed controls inflation and long-term rates by using short term rates but it’s actually the long-term rates that govern the short-term rates and Fed’s monetary policy.” He’s 100% right. Markets are telling the Fed it’s much, much too loose. And we’ll get long term rates higher because of it.

Retail Sales came along with Consumer Sentiment, and I reviewed the Retail Sales this morning already (it was terrible). One comment I’d add to what I said earlier was that the very high gas prices have been contributing to Retails Sales in a “positive” way - like it’s a good thing people are getting their wallets ripped open by a gas pump and raked over the coals. Since gas prices fell for a month or so into July, we saw the Retail Sales contract. That’s not everything though - it’s only one component.

We are seeing broad based weakness start to materialize. Not just poor folks anymore. Once the Rich folks got caught in the 30-50% drop in the Semis, they closed up the wallets too.

XLK Finishes the Week in the Nosebleeds

XLK is back at the Blue Bands. Good luck is all I can say.

Consumer Sentiment

The Consumer Sentiment came out and the new wrinkle here is that we are now finally seeing MAGA cohorts drop significantly in sentiment. Business owners saw expected Business Conditions drop 17% over the long run - that is really not good at all because these are like 90+% Republicans.

Sentiment among Republicans is now almost 19% lower than it was prior to the Iran War and it dropped 10% in just one month from last month. Old folks saw major drops in Sentiment.

Year ahead inflation expectations are running at 4.3%, well above the 3.4% before the Iran War.

This is a fun chart from the UMich Survey. It’s the Stock Market holdings of the Rich, Middle Class and Poor. Notice anything? The Rich and Poor have gotten smacked during this AI bubble as it popped - Pink Arrow go down. The Green Line in the Middle is mostly flat. That’s pretty funny, I think. But it explains what I’m talking about - rich folks are fine as long as they are getting rich - but once they get caught in a drawdown, sentiment is dinged, and they tend to want to spend less and they start looking up there in DC and asking what the heck is going on.

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I go over two areas of the market to avoid right now with some Custom Breadth charts.

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New Folks. If you have questions, go here and watch the videos and read the FAQ. And feel free to send me a message - you’ll hear from me soon if you don’t anyway.

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Today’s Setup

We are treading water so far this morning, but we got some truly terrible Retail Sales data this morning. Let’s unpack it. We are seeing the effects of high gas prices materialize. The CEOs of WMT, TGT, BJ and COST have all said it - material tightening is happening and even middle to high-middle class folks are feeling the pinch.

I’ve long argued all we needed to do what knock down the AI trade and we’d see a material pullback in the spending from the Rich - we did that and now we have a terrible Retail Sales print. Contraction is bad. And we now have 2 months in a row of contracting Retail Sales. That hasn’t been seen in a long, long time.

Markets are holding up because - as usual - they only care about if the Fed is going to hike and kill the Bull Market.

If the economy starts to tilt into a recession, then the Fed will have an excuse to ease (which Ironically will make it worse when rates go up). We really need prices to go down and the only way they can move down is either people stop buying stuff (which looks like is happening) or the Fed hikes and knocks the speculation down and we get some credibility back into the Financial System.

Fed is Already Easing Financial Conditions Materially

The other thing to make sure you understand in the back of your mind is that we got the Fed Balance sheet data yesterday and it’s moving up materially now week over week. That doesn’t look like much, but when that goes up, it means that money is going to buy stocks (and bonds). It acts like a Rate Cut. There is no reason for them to be doing this - they should be tightening, getting the thing back down to Pre-Covid levels. Not enough people talk about this.

I’ll zoom in on the last year or so.

Banks Have My Focus

I’m watching the banks for signs of stress. The momentum indicator is getting pinched on the bottom - that usually means a bigger move (directional) is coming. When it’s sitting in the overbought region like it is now, the probability increases for a swift push downward.

For Subs

I’ll be trading in the chat, but if it’s as bad as it’s been for the last week, I’ll just hang it up. Important developments on the Skew and Gamma here.

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Welcome to the Daily Report, where I review the day’s market moves and their drivers. I share signals for two portfolios, along with many Special Opportunity trades throughout the year.

• Short-Term - 4-to-10-day trades, up 58% in 2025 and up 24.34% in 2026 (vs. 12.81% on SPX as of 8/4/26)

• My retirement accounts - Mean reversion systems averaging 10–20% long term

All setups are backtested, and trades are executed at day’s end or on the open tomorrow. I personally follow these signals—full transparency.

Let’s review what happened today!

New Folks

If you have questions, go here and watch the videos and read the FAQ. And feel free to send me a message - you’ll hear from me soon if you don’t anyway.

New Folks Start Here!

What Drove Today’s Move

We melted higher today, driven by the PPI Inflation report that showed tamer inflation than forecast.

The momentum trade is repairing itself - I’m seeing more and more folks back in the saddle after big drawdowns buying breakouts again. Good for them.

The Momentum Factor has had a healthy reset towards the Yearly VWAP (Grey Line) and it’s bouncing. Some Semis are still trading OK - but most are not making new highs. Many are hard to borrow as we squeeze late shorts.

For all the bluster about how inflation is peaking here, the bonds really just didn’t respond much to the PPI (and CPI) reports. For what it’s worth, they are definitely setup to the long side here, but it’s concerning they haven’t rallied yet (see below).

Just because the US Government Debt can’t rally doesn’t mean the other areas of the market haven’t done pretty well. The Business Development Corps have had a field day the last few weeks and were up another 2% today. We have been holding these for the long term since they pay 10-15% a year and were bombed out a few months ago.

Corporate Debt has also been doing well. This is the Senior Loan ETF. I like to trade this one in lieu of holding my cash on Money Market Accounts when the time is right. It’s been a nice long for a few weeks, now it’s time to get out again. I cover these signals for Subs Daily.

Even International Bonds have responded well over the last week or two.

It’s bad when the only one not rallying is the US Government Debt. We might have missed the window here - which would make things really dangerous if Fixed-Income- as-a-Whole swings back down / rates up again. Keep that in mind.

Vix Up 1% Stocks Up 0.5%

We were pinging this pattern (Yellow Dots) most of the session today (Intraday) - pretty much until the last 20 minutes. It does not take a phD to see that this is not bullish. This is a bizarre combination of sold Call Spreads getting slammed on the upside (causing very fast upside vol) mixed with heavy shorting in select pockets (like the XLK ETF). This is a weird market right now - it’s not normal to see the XLK ETF with this much put buying and yet the QQQ is sitting heavy with tons of Call Buying. It’s so bifurcated right now.

HPE gapped up today on Lenovo earnings and closed on the lows. This looks like the same spot where they hit it with a ton of selling last time.

It reminds me of MSFT a few months ago.

NFLX Up on Ackman Pump

Bill Ackman is back pumping his stocks. NFLX was up 5% today after it was revealed he was buying it again. We were buying it back there at the Green Dots. We’ll be selling into this once we get near that White Line for tidy gains.

Shipping Stocks Going Parabolic + European Defense In Vogue

BWET (Tanker Shipping ETF) is going parabolic here as the US hits the bottom of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve soon. Speculators are betting on demand for tankers being extremely high when re-building the SPR starts. I have done work on what happens when the SPR is rebuilt and oil tends to average +15-20% a year when the SPR is getting re-filled. It will be an inflationary impulse for years. Combine that with the War Debt and this is a total disaster that’s going to be with the US for decades to come.

In a similar kind of theme, European Defense ETFs are also becoming overbought. Many new ones just launched in the US. This is ARMY. There is another one that just launched called AMMO - how clever. When you see all this crap starting, you know it’s probably closer to a top than not.

So - it’s looking like we might see a turning point soon in Iran again - many of the stocks are getting extended (especially the ones that would benefit from conflict spreading and getting worse).

For Subs

I go over a nice sentiment metric for Gold and Silver. It’ll help you manage your long trades.

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New Folks. If you have questions, go here and watch the videos and read the FAQ. And feel free to send me a message - you’ll hear from me soon if you don’t anyway.

New Folks Start Here!

Today’s Setup

We are ripping higher this morning on a good, old-fashioned Retail FOMO from “tame” PPI (Inflation) data. You can almost hear the sound of “Get Me In!” from the crowds.

Here’s what we are working with. The Prior Revised Ex-Food and Energy - Y/Y looks wrong to me. We didn’t go from 4.7% > only 0.4%.

It looks like the fix is in here, everything has been revised lower (except for Services on the bottom, that’s actually revised HIGHER) ahead of elections (just in time!). I did have someone ask an intelligent question and it was along the lines of what the impact has been since Trump basically fired the top Statistician at the BLS. I’ll endeavor to take that question on over the Weekend or early next week - I’m sure it will be eye opening.

I did see some commentary from private providers of inflation data (some of them very friendly to Trump) and they are scratching their heads about the CPI yesterday. One of the biggest areas where it looks like the BLS is especially putting their thumb on the scale is with Food Prices. Look at Coffee over the last 2 months - these are Coffee Futures, so it’s not difficult to see that the price of Coffee has gone from 240 > 320 in that span, which is 33% higher.

Guess what the CPI for Coffee did this month? It declined. People will say the CPI methods are slow to react, with lag. We’ve covered it already - none of this stuff is matching up with prior inflationary spikes. The methods shouldn’t be so different that you get 30% less inflation when oil does what it did in 2008 and 2022.

It’s not just one thing like Coffee. Beef, Poultry and Eggs declined -0.7% according to the CPI despite those markets looking a lot like the Coffee chart. This is the ETF that tracks agriculture commodities MOO. The thing has been ripping in July. That’s the Pink Arrow. And we are being told food is going down in price. Again - I keep going back to this - using the stocks is the way to know the truth.

I say this all the time - we trade the market we GOT, not the one we WANT. We’d like a market with clean data, but we got a market with data that’s being adjusted to beat when it is release and heavily revised upward to “miss” later - the markets doesn’t care and only react to the initial release.

We should expect heavy upward revisions on the BLS CPI and PPI later, likely when elections are done, quietly done on a day when it doesn’t matter like on a random Tuesday during Thanksgiving week or something. Obviously, longer term this is bad for markets because it’s causing mis-allocation of capital as we speak this morning.

And that is where the money will be made, later.

All of this non-sense is coming on the heels of record interest in Food Inflation over the past year too.

For Subs

I’ll be trading in the chat, but I’m not sure how much we’ll find today to buy - it looks like a trend up > bump into Call Wall > Sit and Spin kind of day.

Read more

Welcome to the Daily Report, where I review the day’s market moves and their drivers. I share signals for two portfolios, along with many Special Opportunity trades throughout the year.

• Short-Term - 4-to-10-day trades, up 58% in 2025 and up 24.34% in 2026 (vs. 12.81% on SPX as of 8/4/26)

• My retirement accounts - Mean reversion systems averaging 10–20% long term

All setups are backtested, and trades are executed at day’s end or on the open tomorrow. I personally follow these signals—full transparency.

Let’s review what happened today!

New Folks

If you have questions, go here and watch the videos and read the FAQ. And feel free to send me a message - you’ll hear from me soon if you don’t anyway.

New Folks Start Here!

What Drove Today’s Move

Today we got some “tame” inflation data that sent some of the speculative stuff up and the rest of the market down. I reviewed the Inflation Data in the Morning Note, so I’m not going to re-hash it here.

Bonds yawned, the Yen is resting on support, and we await PPI data tomorrow. PPI measures inflation at the begining of the Supply Chain, CPI at the end. So, PPI is going to be farther along and more useful for trading than CPI is.

I will point out despite the breathless cheering by the CNBC about “tame” inflation, bonds were red again today. Bonds aren’t playing any games with the Fed or Scott Bessent - they want hikes, now.

It’s Summer and the days are really boring. This is a month that typically ends up being weak and we’ll get to see very soon if people wake up and sell stocks once the Kiddos go back to school and come back with all kinds of Germs and everyone is sick. It started this week in my neck of the Woods. I’m telling you - people get pissed off when that happens.

Little Lesson in Trading

Since not much is going on in markets, we can go over a fun little setup that might help you if you are starting your trading journey. I get asked often how to find setups that work and it’s not that hard honestly as long as you internalize the actual concepts that work and don’t deviate from them.

Buying stuff going down works, selling it when it goes back up works too. It sounds stupid, but let’s review a little setup that is super easy and works for the most part.

It’s the Three Days Down Pattern. It is pretty much what it sounds like, you buy a stock when it’s down 3 days in a row, sell it when it goes back up or get out after a certain amount of time (my favorite).

Let’s do one for today. CDNS is a Semi that sits at the beginning of the supply chain, doing Chip design. Semis have gotten wrecked in the last few months after a Bubble formed and too many Retail investors used leverage to run prices up to unsustainable levels.

When I’m looking for a stock that might work with something like this, I like to find one that has a Weekly Chart that is at least in an uptrend long term. Meaning it slops up and to the right - that’s not scientific - you don’t need much more than your eyeballs to tell if things are going up and to the right or down and to the right.

You want to see a chart going down and to the right for comparison? Here is TSCO from 2015-2016. Skip doing this method if it looks like this.

Now we head over to see what happens when CDNS goes down 3 days in a row. For that, I have an indicator I have programmed on bottom. We can see what happens when we buy it when it’s down 3 days in a row and I’ve just programmed it to sell a week later. There is nothing special about a week. But if you are trading short term edges, they don’t last much more than a few days, so I would recommend 3-5 days as a hold time for any little edge you might be testing.

Here is the Equity Curve for that system. That’s not bad! It’s all the way back to 1996 too - I would probably cut it off and only use the last 10-15 years simply because CDNS has only been a bigger, Mega Cap type stock for that period of time. Size does matter - and this works well with stocks that are larger.

If I use the last 15 years, it looks like this. Again, not bad.

The profit factor on the system is 1.68, which is good but not great (still good enough to trade though for an average person). If we randomly enter and exit after a week, the profit factor is 1.42, so there is real edge here by waiting until we are down 3 days in a row. If you want to know what Profit Factor means, it’s just how much money I make on the winners divided by how much money I lose on the losers. It’s the single best metric to use in my opinion for a quick idea of what will work or not. I like to target 2-3+ for trading systems I use. I even have some systems that have 7+ profit factors.

The Nifty thing is that you are only in the market for about 25% of days. CAGR is 11.7% a year and the drawdown (Closed to Closed Trade) is about -24%. That’s just for one stock.

You can imagine the doors that open if you just take a simple pattern like that, scan for stocks that are meeting your criteria and test to see what happens a week later.

You can also imagine what happens when you start asking questions like:

• What happens if it goes down 4 days in a row?

• What happens if it goes down 3 days in a row and the S&P500 is down on the day?

• What happens if it goes down 3 days in a row and it’s a Tuesday?

All kinds of variations like that. It never ends. Which is why trading is so fun - like a puzzle, constantly getting solved and re-solved every day.

For Subs

Updating some notes on Vix here. Important!

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New Folks. If you have questions, go here and watch the videos and read the FAQ. And feel free to send me a message - you’ll hear from me soon if you don’t anyway.

New Folks Start Here!

Today’s Setup

We are seeing a typical response on a bigger economic release and that is a rally followed by a retracement in the first 30-60 minutes of the session.

Let’s unpack CPI and see how it looks under the hood. It looks like the report was pretty much inline, with the narratives that if there was no War in Iran, we’d be fine being thrust out there in the media.

Keep in mind this report was during the brief period where energy prices declined due to the short-lived Memorandum of Understanding being in effect. It’s much worse again now.

As far as what is inside the report, basically everything went up from last month and almost all of it is north of 2.5% - keep in mind the target for inflation is 2% or less, not 2.5%. Food was up 3%, with Restaurants at 3.4% and stuff from the Grocery Store up 2.7%.

Let’s look at how some of the key ETFs and stocks are reacting. It looks like we are seeing a bid back into the speculative stuff again. Momentum is having one of those classic days that were so common a few months ago. Frankly, other than that little bid into Mo-Mo, market is not impressed.

As far as sectors go, it’s Tech and then nothing else really. Energy is conspicuously not going down nearly as much as you would expect. Healthcare is weak, but it’s insanely overbought on the Weeklies and prone to profit taking.

And the odds of a Fed Rate Hike are dropping past October > into December. And even in December it’s only a 45.1% chance of a hike now.

You would think that this kind of elation would result in a bid for the US Bond market, but you’d be wrong. Bonds are treading water.

Just to kind of drive this point home - when the 2 Year Interest rates were last at 4.2-4.3% (where they are now), the Fed had rates 50 bps (2 hikes) higher than now. When the 10-Year Interest rates were last at levels they are now, the Fed was between 3 and 4 hikes higher than now. And the 30-Year Interest rates (which don’t have much to do with the Fed itself, but they do own about half that market post COVID and its important to realize hikes directly influence the US Government Finances now) are well north of 5.25%, which is 6 hikes higher than here. The bond markets are not buying any of this manipulated, massaged and heavily influenced data, they are demanding higher rates now.

The Japanese Yen is on the radar for either more intervention here or support developing at the Monthly and Quarterly VWAPs (pink arrow). Remember, the way Scott Bessent did the Yen Intervention was to let Japan take out loans instead of selling more US Treasuries on the open market. This had the direct effect saving the US from another big rise in rates from a flood of Japanese selling that would have entered the markets.

For Subs

We are going to review the Gamma Profile and see if we can find where resistance might be today.

Read more

Welcome to the Daily Report, where I review the day’s market moves and their drivers. I share signals for two portfolios, along with many Special Opportunity trades throughout the year.

• Short-Term - 4-to-10-day trades, up 58% in 2025 and up 24.34% in 2026 (vs. 12.81% on SPX as of 8/4/26)

• My retirement accounts - Mean reversion systems averaging 10–20% long term

All setups are backtested, and trades are executed at day’s end or on the open tomorrow. I personally follow these signals—full transparency.

Let’s review what happened today!

New Folks

If you have questions, go here and watch the videos and read the FAQ. And feel free to send me a message - you’ll hear from me soon if you don’t anyway.

New Folks Start Here!

What Drove Today’s Move

Today was a pretty much textbook trend down day. I was Day Trading it and it cut me up. I finished with a scratch kind of day, but was in trades all day long. People say they want to be a trader, but boy when you sit in front of the screen for 6 or 7 hours and it doesn’t move and you just watch it droop lower, not making any money - it sucks.

We are seeing some Real Estate names look attractive here short term for a bounce - the resumed Oil price increases and quagmire in the Middle East are pressuring US bond markets and Scott Bessent’s Yen Intervention has backfired by sending people running for the hills in Real Estate. This is something to watch going forward as a new theme. If Real Estate falls apart the Fed is going to have to act. I continue to watch BANKS for the next move here. If they follow Real Estate, it’s not going to be pretty.

Inflation ETF Sending Signals for Tomorrow?

CPI (Inflation) is tomorrow and the market is supposed to react pretty heavily to it. We are seeing the stocks that go up when inflation goes up ripping higher and higher. INFL is starting to setup short here for what it’s worth. Could be a catalyst tomorrow for these folks to sell.

Lower Highs Forming in Semis

A lot of semis look like the chart here on the ETF. We are approaching and stalling at the Anchored VWAP off “the highs.” This is an ideal, low risk place to short semis. If it goes back over the yellow line, it’s a tight stop. But if we roll over here, it’s going to be another avalanche down, especially if we break the Anchored VWAP off the lows (around 514, not shown).

For Subs

Updated models for Offense Defense and we are closing up another trade on TSLA for +4%. I just want to lock in gains if we turn down. I’ll buy it back if lower.

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New Folks. If you have questions, go here and watch the videos and read the FAQ. And feel free to send me a message - you’ll hear from me soon if you don’t anyway.

New Folks Start Here!

Today’s Setup

Not much going on this morning again. Pakistan is cooing about “progress” between the US and Iran. I’m ignoring that because the US also fired on a ship that tried to outrun the blockade today. I’ve gone through the setup here - Bonds are at the pain point, Bessent is already intervening in the Yen to keep a lid on the short-term rates. We should see something soon out of the Middle East.

It’s a classic lazy Summer Day. Markets are expected to continue to trade in a narrow range with a downside tilt. Skew is rising on the 0DTE side, meaning people are kind of prepping for a little whoosh downward.

NVDA is unveiling some kind of Open-Source Model. Markets are yawning. Weeklies are flashing Sell Setups on NVDA, I’ll pass on this one.

KKR is riding high though. Private equity is making a comeback since I was pounding the table on them a few months ago near the Green Dot. Remember when everyone was freaking out that they owned “Software Loans.” Turns out, AI Maximalists were wrong (some of them even blew up their hedge funds!), Software is fine. KKR and others didn’t even have high exposure to Software contrary to popular belief. Screaming deals they were.

We are at some resistance here. I know a few of you were long KKR from the 80s - it’s not a bad time to trim and take profit up here.

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We are going to talk through levels for support today. I’ll outline what I’m looking for in order to get back in there and Day Trade after a little while off.

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Welcome to the Daily Report, where I review the day’s market moves and their drivers. I share signals for two portfolios, along with many Special Opportunity trades throughout the year.

• Short-Term - 4-to-10-day trades, up 58% in 2025 and up 24.34% in 2026 (vs. 12.81% on SPX as of 8/4/26)

• My retirement accounts - Mean reversion systems averaging 10–20% long term

All setups are backtested, and trades are executed at day’s end or on the open tomorrow. I personally follow these signals—full transparency.

Let’s review what happened today!

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If you have questions, go here and watch the videos and read the FAQ. And feel free to send me a message - you’ll hear from me soon if you don’t anyway.

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What Drove Today’s Move

Welp - markets are going their best again to go to work on the Trump admin.

Gas was up about 5% today; Diesel has been going nuts and it’s another one of those “High Prices” kind of days in the market. Small Cappers really took it on the chin today, as it’s starting to become obvious that maybe the rates are going to start doing damage here.

This is the weekly chart of the US Bond Market without Dividends. It’s pure price action. We are seeing a little Green Dot develop, which tells me we are at the pain point again for rates and the Admin. Probably the Fed too.

What could the catalyst be for bonds higher? CPI is coming out this week and it’s likely to be doctored up as good as they can get it to make the number lower. Trump is considering cutting and running in the Strait and just declaring victory, trying to fight the rest of it with economic sanctions. At some point there will be resolution in the Middle East and that alone should move things back to a more normal level everywhere. And the last way we could get a bid into bonds would simply be a big old fashioned huge stock market selloff associated with an “event.” I’m watching banks very carefully right now.

Gas Futures are ready to bump up against the Red Line again, the one that is going to get them tap dancing up there in DC again.

China Getting Overbought

We traded this one off the Green Dots and not it’s starting to develop that Red Hump that typically comes before selling happens again. Be ready for it.

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Closing up more trades. +15% on SLV (Silver, we nailed that one), +8% on UUUU (Uranium), and finally closing some longs from the Medical Devices ETF (IHI) up 10%. All excellent trades, very good stuff. 11 trades in a row so far on the Special Opportunities list that have been winners.

I’m surprised it’s that good to be honest - I think I’ve got 31 or so of these trades this year and only 2 were losers. One was just a lotto with very low probability of success too.

I have a new signal tonight. Those that have been with me know it’s a familiar one, but it’s important and you want to see it.

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New Folks. If you have questions, go here and watch the videos and read the FAQ. And feel free to send me a message - you’ll hear from me soon if you don’t anyway.

New Folks Start Here!

Today’s Setup

Not much going on this morning. Markets still remain on watch for Iran developments and anything coming out of Trump’s mouth.

Banks look very, very toppy. I’m starting to sell some call spreads on some names.

INTC looks like they are planning on selling a bunch of shares on the open market. Would have been smarter on the way up at 140 though. It’s still a sign of a top. When the company themselves is selling their own shares, you know it’s a bad deal.

Retail seems to be undeterred and is buying it for the most part this morning. They love them some SPCX.

Later this week we get CPI and PPI - you know how I feel about those things if you read the Weekly Note.

AAPL Setting Up Long

AAPL remains under pressure after a poor earnings release, but it’s sitting on the Green Line (Quarterly VWAP) where institutional folks like to accumulate shares. Last time, it held up there and rallied.

AAPL is down 9% in 9 days. When it’s still in a primary uptrend and over the 200 Day SMA, it’s been a good signal for a rally in the next week.

Equity curve looks good, about 62-63% chance of higher by about 3-4%.

Mostly this morning I see it as risk-off and one of those “high oil prices” days where tech does OK, but the rest of the market suffers.

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We are going to talk through some interesting developments in Skew and the implications for today.

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