The summertime thesis is playing out more or less perfectly:

Uptrend in Q2, start to stall as we hit summer, momentum loss persists through most of Q3, then we see where things go.

If you’ve been around a while, this is par for the course. If you’re newer, you’re watching the boomer traders run the same pattern every year and wondering why.

You push in Q1 and the first half of Q2, unwind as Q2 fades, take some time off in the summer to recharge, then come back end of Q3 to lock in and push hard in Q4. Rinse and repeat.

This way you can have success without torching the work-life balance all of us need. When you’re starting out, fine, push it. But every few years you’ve got to pull back the reins and actually live a little.

That’s more or less just me preaching to myself.

Bitcoin

I think this summer will play out like 2023: a summertime rally that loses momentum and gets rejected in the 70k region, probably quicker this time. Then compression, a fakeout around Q4 open, then a fresh trend in Q4.

I’m treating the 65k-55k region as an accumulation zone and don’t expect dramatic fresh lows unless we lose 57k convincingly, then BTC likely goes into the 40s.

The odds of a real bullish momentum move in summer are extremely low, so I’ll look to short/hedge any summertime rallies into the 70k zone.

The painful move I want to see

Around quarterly opens it’s very uncommon to just grind up and ride off into the sunset. There’s almost always a fakeout first. If you’re going up, you go down first.

So if we’re getting the Q4 bull move, the last thing I want is a clean grind up with no resistance and all optimism. I want a painful fakeout at the end of Q3 or the start of Q4.

Q4 2024 is the template. The September front-run pulled back, scared everybody, all the October yappers flipped to “we’re going to zero,” and then we traded up.

So if October just trades up without spooking anyone, that flips me against my own Q4 bullish thesis. I’d look to play defense, hedge, maybe readjust exposure.

It’s still months out, but no painful move around the Q4 open is a huge warning sign for me.

One more long, one more short

On the medium time frame, value area high is 64.5, value low 61.2, both shifted up about 200 points recently.

We’re trading outside value, so I lean toward rejection, though a push higher wouldn’t shock me. Either way I don’t think this move up succeeds, and I expect a stab back into the lows.

From there we could be setting up a good bid into July. Bid zone is 61 down to 58, give or take. I like getting long around 60k or slightly below for a two-to-three week swing.

Then a move into the 70s, probably a stab above 70 into 71, 72, and a clean rejection.

So maybe we get a swing long into a swing short, roughly a 10,000 point rotation. The short is the clearer, higher-EV side because it’s going with the macro bearish momentum. This is probably the final big swing event before Q4.

The meta lately is staircase up, elevator down. The long side takes longer, the short plays out quicker.

TradFi and the rest

Same S&P plan. Momentum keeps stalling, value’s drifted up, but I don’t see any massive all-time highs. A tag into 7650 or so is within reason.

7000 to 7200 is the value zone for buys. Bids below 7k into the upper 6ks are where I’d shove pretty hard, and a news-panic selloff is where I deploy real capital.

Gold and silver look terrible, not advocating for either right now. Copper’s the one I like, strong narrative, decent momentum. A pullback into the $6 range interests me.

REMX has been ride or die for about seven months and I’m still confident on rare earths. XLE round-tripped on me, up 20% now from up 40%. Should’ve closed it at the peak of the war talk, but it was a long-term thesis, so I’m chilling for now.

Core positioning is Bitcoin, S&P, and cash. I’ve been hoarding cash for a while, partly to deploy later and partly because I want to buy a house soon.

Names I’m watching for risk-defined entries later this year: Google, Apple, IBM, Lockheed, copper.

I also like SpaceX as a multi-year hold, but it’ll probably take longer to bottom. Expecting classic altcoin pattern: initial runup, supply unlocks, gets nuked, forms a macro bottom, then trends up.

For alts, HYPE and VVV are pretty much the only things on my radar.

Slowing down for summer

I’ve been slowing the intraday trading down like I said I would, going from 6 to 8 trades a day to more like 1 to 4 a week.

I’m leaning into selectivity so I can free up energy for the big-picture work and enjoy myself a bit more over the summer.

Remember for high timeframe plans, these are educated guesses, and I’ll adjust if I’m wrong.

Caring about being right or wrong isn’t what matters, it’s how you react. When I’m wrong I usually adjust without getting crushed. If I’m right, hopefully we all make money together.

Good luck out there and cheers.

The trading’s been going well, no huge bangers, we’re just getting on base every single day, small chips in the right direction.

Previous week value rotation

We start the week with previous week value bias, the best framework I’ve had over the past three to four months. We opened with a very clean tag of previous week’s value area low.

I took a trade Saturday when low time frame showed me we’d hold that low, combined with rolling daily VWAP.

That opened up the idea for this week, and we got the perfect rotation right around the weekly open.

Flat open, building a range

We’ve got a pure single-sided move off the weekly open, no bottom wick, a flat open.

I treat these the same way I treat CME gaps. A lot of the time they get repaired, especially in a rangebound environment. Down here I’d be looking at Bitcoin as building out a longer standing range.

I’m not too worried about the daily trend. The 12-hour trend has been the better read, it shows you more cleanly when to derisk and re-risk.

The minute the one hour trend broke, that’s when the rangebound environment started, and I think this keeps ranging rather than reverting straight back up.

66.2k opens the door

A lot of overlapping anchored VWAPs from swing highs and swing lows and the weekly trend are all converging around 70 to 72k.

So a strong move through 66.2k lets me speculate for a run to 70-72k, but we’re not there yet. Still focused on the lower time frame range.

I’m treating any time we get back up into the weekly trend as an opportunity for shorting, hedging and closing longs. It’s the upside magnet, but once we’re there it flips.

TLDR I’m looking for the previous week value rotation, and above 66.2k the door opens to much higher prices. The thing I really want to see is spot-led, or at least spot-supported, moves. Single-sided, purely open interest (perp) moves revert and retrace a lot harder and faster.

Just survive a few months

Zooming out, my mindset over the past few weeks has shifted more toward the high time frame.

The scalping skill set still matters, it’s what keeps me confident that I can remain in this game for decades, but the real capital growth comes from being a high time frame optimist and having your chips stacked in the right bets for when the good times return.

We’re in extreme opportunity mode up here, but it’s a time-based argument now. We likely have to survive three or four months and the sky looks a lot brighter.

Anything can happen between now and then.

When people talk about Saylor, I’m not really buying into it. He’s been raising more cash the last couple weeks, so he’s just kicking the can down the road on the dividends. My honest take is it’s overblown, people will forget about it.

It’s the classic argument:

Low prices, we look for a narrative for why we shouldn’t buy.

High prices, we attach to one for why we shouldn’t sell.

Metas, indicators, frameworks, they all change, but human psychology doesn’t.

It’s why I’m a big proponent of just ignoring the news. Trade price action, flows and simple frameworks, because all the news does is take you out of your plans.

When you make really robust plans, you owe it to yourself to see them out, win, lose or draw.

I hope you guys have a good week.

It’s the 22nd of June and it’s the start of the bull run.

No, I’m joking. I don’t know if it’s the start or end of anything, but hopefully we get some rotations.

Structurally we’ve got a decent attempt at breaking 64k. I’m not saying blind long here, but if we get some momentum, this is where I’d look for a long up to kind of 73.

Zoom out and the daily structure’s nice, consistent higher lows, and the breakdown attempts before this absolutely failed.

Flip 64k with strength and that’s the long trigger. Push above and reject again and that’s a short.

I’m more focused on alts as usual

There’s a bit of an attempt to revive the Solana trenches.

SOLBTC has some strength, but I can’t get excited until we reclaim kind of 78ish and really reclaim that former consolidation area.

Might be the absolute pico bottom, and that’s fine if it is. I’ll buy some form of strength, I don’t want to jump in too early.

Similar story with PUMP

They’re trying to revive this chart, which honestly I think is pretty much impossible. They’ve max extracted hundreds of millions from the industry, there’s no real reason you should own this token.

But if they make a meta out of it and focus some liquidity, I’m all down for that, because that’s where we get secular runs. Very high on my radar. The RR right now is pretty piss though, that’s why it’s meh.

ZEC’s at a decent point

We’ve had the range reclaim, so a tiny bit of relative strength and we go for a rotation up to the local highs. Really really nice.

HYPE’s coming into an interesting level, and it has literally died

I want to run it again, I think it’s still one of the best fundamental plays in the whole space, like I’ve said for a long long time, but we’re in a structural downtrend, and there’s no incentive to blind bid it until that changes.

So we wait.

Quiet week, nothing else really worth talking about.

We need Bitcoin to push, and 64k is the trigger for pretty much everything. We’ll see what runs if we hit it.

That’s pretty much it.

Traveling this week so here’s a quick update.

Base case: a few more tumultuous months with pockets of outperformance and then actual up.

HYPE keeps outperforming, and the uptrend is still pushing into price discovery.

Price action has stalled sideways lately, and the liquidity traders will start calling ‘double top.’ I’ve got no reason to walk away from the approach that’s worked for months now.

If the high timeframe trend is lost, then I’m willing to have the conversation about a reversal. Until then, the bears are doing their best to keep this sideways instead of letting it run vertical into another ATH.

As for the broader crypto market, I’m generally uninterested. I’d much rather keep playing the same principles that worked for me in a fairly mundane environment: play the outperformers, and let the market do most of the heavy lifting.