CPI is on Wednesday.

You guys know the drill by now. I don't really care about the number, I just know it'll potentially be a tradable event for us.

The bid is going to dry up

We've been up only since the start of Q2, and I have really high conviction that as we get into summer, the bid across risk assets dries up.

Strong assets will go into consolidation while the weak ones pull back.

There's momentum loss showing on the S&P now. I'm not saying it can't make another higher high from here, but the momentum loss that started in May is going to get more present into June and July.

So I expect a range to build out, something like 7200 to 7600, with the impulses up getting weaker as that momentum loss increases.

For a performance play in metals, I’m looking at copper. The fundamental thesis lines up with a strong chart, so I’m looking to bid pullbacks.

Bitcoin played out how I thought

82k to 84k held as strong resistance and we failed there.

I didn't expect us to go down in a straight line as fast as we did, but I told you guys I expected the lower 60s, and we traded all the way down to 58ish.

From here Bitcoin should build out a new composite, somewhere around 61 to 64. It's too early to call it exactly, so let's watch it instead of trying to predict it.

Q3 is where we enter more of a compression stage.

64-65k is strong resistance right now, and maybe it pops to 66 or 67k, but it most likely rejects and heads back toward the lows.

Be prepared for it to attack those lows.

If it attacks them and they hold, that's a reason to bid.

The thing I’m watching for is momentum loss as the composite builds out. I really think this plays out like the 2024 range, lower lows and then finally a higher low.

Cash accumulation mindset

Core positioning is still Bitcoin, S&P, and cash.

Through the summer I want to be accumulating cash.

Anything I'm making from day trading, higher time frame trades, business stuff, I'm hoarding it so I'm ready in the later stages of Q3 to allocate to positions I have conviction in.

I haven't added to any risk in a long time, so I’m ready to deploy when it makes sense to go risk-on.

Q3 I plan on taking a bit easy on myself. I've got a few trips planned.

Once a year you've got to let yourself wind down and get a mental reset. Going 100% all the time leads to nasty burnout, which is something I always used to struggle with.

In Q4 I plan to push really hard and do what I know works. That's pretty much it. Good luck out there.

Saylor this. Saylor that.

I don’t care.

People always want to fixate on the “why”, the narratives.

I’ve been trading just fine without them.

8 down, 4 to go

We're 8 months into our drawdown, and historically, Bitcoin bear markets run about a year, so hypothetically we have four months left.

Will it play out again?

I don't know, but that's the mental model I’m using.

The orange rectangle is a mentally proposed accumulation range that could form here.

If you stuck it out from 126k and you're still sitting here 8 months later in the 60s, this is not the time to go "nah, I'll see you later."

More FUD can hit, something drastic can happen to Saylor, but this is the time to seek opportunity.

Don't give up at the home stretch.

The levels I'm working

Everything converges around 64-65k: Previous week's VWAP, the anchored VWAP from last week's capitulation, the 12-hour trend, and our two-month composite value area low.

Base framework: 12-hour trend should probably reject on the first test. Get back above 65k and it brings in the high side of the two-month composite, potentially 71k, where that thin inefficient move down can open up some drastic inefficient moves up.

For now, I'm not too bullish about getting through 64 to 64.5. I bought the Saylor FUD this morning, been taking profit a little on the way up, looking to get out around 64.6.

Building my hedging skills

Last week I closed the hedge at 66k that I had opened around 79k, which protected some of the April rally gains.

Did I close a little early? Sure. Do I care? Not really.

My hedging is still a work in progress, and there's no way to just wait for a bull market and knock out perfect hedges. I’m getting the reps, I need to learn through fire. No better time than now.

My positioning

I'm around 65k average on Bitcoin now, bought more over the weekend around 61k, and I still have a bunch of cash sitting in reserve.

If Bitcoin goes to 40k it's not going to hurt me, I'll have the reserves to buy that too.

Here's the inverse, though.

Say Bitcoin absorbs the FUD, rounds off here, and goes into a fresh uptrend.

I'll be more upset sitting in cash and having to start buying at 80k than dealing with a little drawdown on an asset I already want to own.

I'm blindly optimistic that Bitcoin probably hits new all-time highs, if not next year then the year after.

If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't even be trading Bitcoin.

I’m basing whether I trade alts at all on whether BTC reclaims the 65k massive resistance with some strength.

If it does, I’d expect it trades up to the local range highs 74k-83k and brings alts along for the ride.

But BTC is still in a structural downtrend, so I'm keeping my HTF short from 89k until I see major strength.

This selloff looks more psychological to me, so I lean toward that long playing out short term.

I'm not compounding the short unless we push up and fail at 65k. And I’d wait for the rejection before doing anything.

HYPE

I closed my position and I've been waiting for a reason to buy back, but the consolidation is too janky and wide to get a clean entry, even though HYPE looks undeniably strong.

I'm leaving it until it reclaims and builds a higher timeframe range.

ZEC

Zcash had the structure to break up but instead broke down and cascaded on news of the glitch where you can mint infinite tokens.

There was zero strength where I might have been interested in longing around 540, so I didn't take it, and that's exactly why the system works. I look for the location and confirm relative strength.

NEAR

NEAR has a lot of relative strength but structurally still looks terrible.

I need a reclaim of 2.2 with decent price action for another leg before I jump in.

TLDR

Everything depends on BTC and whether it can reclaim 65k.

Reclaim and we get some alt rotations.

BTC is attempting to base out for the first time after a week of continuous selling. 65k is the pivot point.

I took a swing short in the 81s and have since covered a decent chunk. I don't want to hold P&L into a chopping market, and this move down was faster than I expected.

Saylor announcing that 32k Bitcoin sell brought a bunch of fear, and the STRC thing is a mess on top of it. I think it takes some time to settle. If I'm wrong, fine, I'll get on board if momentum turns the other way.

The one-hour respected its trend for a week, so it wasn’t smart going against it. People countertrend longing during clear downside momentum is exactly how the liquidations racked up so fast. Wait for momentum to slow before going countertrend.

If flow gets constructive above 65k I can see a rotation into the 68s.

The initial bounces were shorts closing, not real demand. The spot skew is sitting on the ask around 60-70 million, so it needs aggressive spot buying to follow through. The passive cushion did step up higher on the pullback, which is what you want to see for continuation.

Monday's New York open sets the tone for the week.

If price chops back down to the lows, watch the flow there — whether spot buying is constructive, whether there's absorption, whether the passive bid steps up.

Expect chop and volatility, so be careful how you're positioning.

Stop trading HYPE (or any other alt) solely based on what Bitcoin is doing.

The only reason to ever touch a higher-beta asset is if it's outperforming the benchmark. That's the whole incentive.

If it's not outperforming, all you've built is a leveraged way to underperform the market. Go ask anyone who sat in POPCAT.

People traded BTC based on what SPX was doing. Then Bitcoin dropped 50% while SPX printed all-time highs every day for seven months.

If you decided not to trade HYPE based on Bitcoin's chart any point in the last four months, you'd have missed HYPE’s entire move into new highs.

A coin ran into the top 10 by market cap on a solo rally while Bitcoin held a higher-timeframe downtrend. I have not seen that before.

If it's outperforming, I'm interested.