Other than my long from 57k, I’ve been mostly sitting on my hands, but we have the FOMC on Wed which may give me some opportunity to send some intraday trades.

TradFi fear move

The major thesis remains the same, we’re in this macro uptrend, so continuing to be trend respectors. I told you guys the summertime bid would dry up and we’d compress, and that’s just creating the runway for a strong Q4.

I thought we’d be wedged between 76 and 73. We’re quite a bit tighter than that, value area high 75 and value area low 735, but the momentum loss is clearly prevalent. Any dips on the S&P into 7,300 represent value buying territory.

The question is whether the rest of the summer selling is just this slow grind, or whether we get some panic selling. I’m kind of hopeful there’s a fearful move, because that’s the best opportunity to allocate. But you’ve got to be prepared for both.

57k is my hard invalidation

Macro plans on the corn are locked in and I’m waiting for them to play out. We got the Q2 rally, the Q2 pullback, and now the fresh composite stage.

60 to 57k is the region I want to see held. 60k is my loose invalidation and 57k is my hard invalidation on longs.

65 to 66k is pretty strong resistance, and the cap for the upside is in that 68 to 73k range. Anything in the lower 60s is a value buy.

Staircase up, elevator down

We’re in the later stages of this long. The slow grind has been really great for being long, but the momentum loss is kind of present now.

My thesis was deviate the range straight up into the range highs, get people really optimistic and bullish in the summertime, and then fake them out. Staircase up, elevator down.

I want to see us V back up this week and give one more leg higher, ideally over 68k, which would put us in good swing short territory. But I’d rather take profit too early than roundtrip.

Single names I’m most interested in going into Q4 are SpaceX forming a macro bottom, Lockheed, IBM and Google.

Good luck out there, and cheers.

Welcome to the Mickey Mouse bear market. We’re nine months in and there really hasn’t been much going on.

Each leg down is less severe

We’re entering the 50 to 60 day point of our local composite, the third two-month composite of this bear market, and we’re showing signs of high time frame momentum loss.

Look at the totality of the drawdown. Each leg down has become less and less severe, right? First 126k to 90k, then 90k to 60k, the last one 80k to 60k. I’d call this six months of price action trading in the same region.

Nine months in, it does make sense to start looking for accumulation ranges. It’s not unheard of that other coins bottom before Bitcoin does.

Your last chance to hedge

I’m going to repeat what I always repeat. If you want the safest approach, just wait for the weekly trends to flip. The bottom end is 68k, the top of the 200 is 73k.

We’re still underneath it, and if and when we push into it, that’s your last opportunity to go net short, remove some risk, or hedge out some spot. Price leads narrative, not the other way around.

66k is the line in the sand

My base case, at least until we tag the weekly trend, is drift up higher. Targets shouldn’t go all the way to 80k, but anything into the low 70s I think is obtainable.

We opened this week right at previous week’s VWAP. Any dips into previous week’s value low at 64.4 are long opportunities. Any trades up into 66k, previous week’s and previous month’s value high, is a very sticky point that’s going to be tough to trade through.

Same thing I always give you anytime we’re trading into resistance. You need active taker flows and strong spot bids, otherwise a perp-led move into thick asks is fadable.

VVV, one of the best looking coins out there

The hourly trend that carried VVV through the weekend is breaking right now. I’d prefer a bigger pullback into daily demand and daily trend, so I’m looking to be optimistic around 12.8.

It’s given me flashbacks to trading KAS last cycle, which pulled back severely for weeks before starting a fresh ripper up. Don’t ask me about fundamentals on this coin, I really don’t care.

HYPE respecting the weekly trend

I’ve been looking for Hyperliquid to be any type of trend respector, and this looks like quality respect. We’re holding above 50 with weekly trend confluence, and prior lows where bidders came in.

The weekly trend is literally where you want to be the most optimistic in any high time frame trending asset.

TLDR

• Drift up higher until we tag the weekly trend. Low 70s obtainable, not 80k.

• 64.4 is previous week’s value low, that’s the dip buy. 66k is stacked previous week and month value high.

• A push into 68-73k is your last chance to hedge or go net short.

Take care.

We’ve had some really good rotations of memes like Pepe and Shib and I’m finally out of my crude trade.

Why I don’t trade bottoms like this

On the left there, 2023 into 2024, that’s very ranging price action.

Consistent highs, consistent lows, going side to side month to month. When a range breaks, the longer the consolidation the further the move, and it’s a really easy place to trade because you’ve got an invalidation right there in the range where you built the value. One tap, two tap, three tap.

On the right is downtrending price action. Consistent lower highs and lower lows. That to me is, well, where’s my invalidation on these trades?

You could stick RSI on and buy the RSI lows, and it does get you pretty close. But during that entire time your EMAs are all pointing down. It’s down to the right.

They’re very different in terms of price action, and I’m just not convinced we’ve seen full time-based capitulation yet.

Still short from 89k

Bitcoin’s reclaiming 65k, but I’d want to see it start clearing 66 for any real moves. Buys in that 65.7 to 66k region could be really good if we can get that momentum.

But here it just looks like a lower high in a bearish move, so I’m not jumping in. Structurally you’ve got downtrending price action. I’ve drawn that terribly, but you get the point.

So you either long 65k, or you take a short here and assume continuation down, with a wider stop than I’d normally give it because Bitcoin’s been a bit wickier than usual lately.

I’m still short from 89k. The only thing that closes that is a confident reclaim of 66, not jumping in for a couple of hours and then selling off.

The 40s are the genuine bottom

The short takes us to the 40s, and that’s always been the region I think is the genuine bottom. It wicks in and people see value at 40k.

Everyone thinks of it as, oh, we’re going down, it’s bad. Bitcoin is a gigantic Ponzi scheme designed to do this, go up, go down, go up, go down, until the end of the fiat money system. I think of it as quite a positive.

VVV is played out

VVV’s done and dusted for me. It’s probably going to keep going, and if you want to hold 50% or run the whole thing, please do.

We got some nasty wicks at the highs with sellers putting pressure on. It was a good trade. Took profits and moved on.

Zcash always surprises people

ZEC is very high on my radar. It goes in these structural downtrends and then as soon as it shifts it runs pretty well.

I want a long out of this consolidation, but I’d need a bit more of it first, to prove it’s an area of value and not a fake pump that runs back down.

Pump keeps doing this wonderful thing

We’ve got that classic thing I call the giraffe pattern, where it runs up, consolidates, and runs again.

On the higher time frame it’s one of the few coins that actually looks like it could have bottomed. Half a year of range, we’ve reclaimed the EMAs, and a 140% move from here isn’t hard to see. All of this is contingent on Bitcoin breaking 65k.

I join momentum, not vertical candles

I always like to join trends and strong breakouts. I don’t like to buy consolidation at lows, Doc’s much better at that than I’ll ever be.

I don’t think I can join Pepe here, a large part of that move is played out. Joining just vertical candles is just dumb, we’ve all done it and given our money to the market at some point.

I’m holding my shorts and hopefully looking for some longs, setups on Pump and Zcash. Now it’s a bit of a waiting game.

Au revoir.

The weekly trend shifted bearish in late 2025 and has capped every reversion and counter-trend rally so far.

It remains resistance until a decisive flip or sideways consolidation, but the slope is getting less steep as price develops

I don’t really use channels, but price has stayed bounded by one, closing slightly above it and retracing to slightly higher lows. A decisive push through the previous day high gives a chance to trade back towards the previous week high.

~65 is the pivot for roll-over or continuation, where the 7d rolling VWAP and the monthly 1 std dev band sit.

Weekend value developed higher, but weekend positioning is fickle, and on the developing yearly we’re still inside the 1 std dev band, ~62.5 the low side.

Poor highs left behind. Passive spot is skewed to the ask side, so moderate supply. A sustained bid takes out the previous week high. Unravel through 65 and it’s lower.

TLDR

• Lower timeframe: ~65 interim pivot, with confluence to take out the previous week high and leg up, or roll over. It came on a weekend squeeze, so the Monday New York session is important.

• Medium timeframe: still counter-trend rally realm, a higher timeframe downtrend with grinding reversion that lacks decisive momentum.

• Higher timeframe: the conventional cycle says another few months of bear. Optimistic case is sideways chop, so pay attention over the next month or two.

$ETH

It’s not a secret that Ethereum has been outperforming Bitcoin in recent weeks.

Lots of people have taken notice of the subtle glimpses of relative strength between the two. Granted, we are still talking about downtrending assets here, for a bit of healthy perspective.

I did well on the rally into this critical inflection point, but nothing to cry home to mom about.

I think the real strength will come in if we’re able to flip the $2,000 region. That would allow me to justify a much larger position, with much higher targets.

Simply because the flip of that region would represent:

• a -60%, 9-month downtrend being broken for the first time

• a deviation back inside the previous range, which held for 5 months as crucial support

The logical assumption on a reclaim would be an immediate move into the range highs, about 20% higher.

And because the trend will have shifted on higher timeframes by the time we get there, it wouldn’t hurt to speculate that we may well have established enough momentum to move beyond the range as well.

We made the same call when HYPE reclaimed the $36 range low into the $36-50 range. We assumed price discovery instead of capping the potential for the trade at the range highs.