❓ Weird Doji? Let's Test It
Daily Market Model Update for 5/1/26
*This one is long, make sure you click through to the site to read it, because your email provider might cut off the bottom of the email and there are some good charts in there at the bottom!*
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
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 had some very heavy Call Positioning today at the 675 level on QQQ that ran us up like a magnet. We closed under any levels where 0DTE Call Buys could make any money though. Thanks for playing!
A number of members were able to short it at that Red Line during the day and made some good money. There are some good traders in our little group!
I was doing research all day, organizing myself with some new datasets and trying to streamline some processes so I can get some automatic alerts for setups. The longer I write this note, the more I realize I don’t have the time to cover EVERYTHING I want to the degree of depth I desire. So, I’m working on better processes for myself.
Believe me, I’m developing some nice new signals for the next year or so. Really happy with new stuff in the pipeline, incubating.
Still A Lot of Folks Shorting
I still see a lot of folks shorting this market - particularly via borrowing shares at this stage (they got blown up the other day trying to use 0DTE options). XLG 0.00%↑ XLG (Top 50 Stocks ETF) was actually Hard to Borrow today all day long. That’s not super common - it usually happens near Major Lows, not near all-time highs.
Once again, I’ll say it - a lot of folks are still shorting this market.
Today we did get a Gravestone Doji on a bunch of the indexes - we gapped em’ up and closed em’ on the lows. I can only find one other candle in the last 30 years on the SPY like today.
We closed at a 1 year high and almost on the lows after a gap up of 0.25% or more.
It happened of course during the Dot-Com bubble. Right before the first rupture in Russia’s Economy triggered a default that wiped out one of the fanciest Hedge Funds there ever was - Long Term Capital Management. You should ask GPT to explain that one to you if you are too young to understand what happened. It was a really, really bad time to be in markets. But first we went up for a final hurrah before it dumped.
It would not surprise me at all to see an event of that magnitude show itself in the coming months.
AAPL Earnings Popped but Stock Faded
One of the big reasons we saw the odd action on the SPY was related to Tim Apple stock. It gapped up on earnings - but that stock almost never holds a gap up on earnings.
I reviewed the setup in real time for our folks in the Chat and it helped one of our members short AAPL today and flip some quick puts for a 25% profit. Again, I say - we got some pretty good traders in there that are armed with the power to ask me questions and run ideas by me. I don’t think anyone else tests stuff for their subs like I do. I literally sit there and figure out how to make you money when I’m Day Trading.
I will post the backtest on AAPL for Subs tonight too.
Lots of Questions on the System I Posted Last Night
Leave some comments if you want to see me post more content on little systems like that. I can do that if you folks want. I have no less than 10,000 things sitting in my archives that I can’t / won’t trade that work.
I will say this though - when I was learning how to trade, I’d scour anything I could find and copy systems, but it always ended up never sticking (e.g. I would lose money) because I couldn’t actually trade - I couldn’t internalize the bigger concepts, I didn’t know how stuff worked and was programmed and always ended up hitting a pothole.
I kept trying to find the magic settings or code and it wasn’t for a long time that I realized there weren’t magic settings or code - you have to learn how the market works.
The little system I posted yesterday illustrates two concepts critical to trading momentum:
Find something running real damn hard.
Buy it and hold on for dear life - trail it with simple stop.
Options often work well for this too if you have terrible discipline. That does work (not on every stock, but on a lot of them). Why? Because you can’t stop a freight train barreling down tracks at a million miles per hour on a dime. It needs to slow down first. Inertia is real in markets.
For Subs
We are kind of not doing a whole lot right now, just waiting on this thing to come in.
I do have a present though - it’s a Special Opportunity Trade I’m taking on one of the only areas of the market that is bombed out right now - no one is looking here, I assure you.
I’ll do another little lesson tonight with a trading system while we wait for more trades, you folks seemed to like that last night. Momentum will continue to be our focus. Of course, all the rules will be there for you too and a back test too.