Morning Commentary for Monday, August 18, 2025 by Peter Cook

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We got through Op-Ex this month and we are in the "window of weakness" as Cem Karson likes to say. It's proving its mettle this morning with a mini-liquidation event in crypto land over the weekend. I've been bearish on #Ethereum since the end of the week last week. I have also been called an idiot for doing so (same thing happened a few months ago when #Gold topped and it hasn't gone anywhere for months). Gold acting pretty healthy hanging in here digesting gains for 4 months I have to admit. Sell signals can often just mean a stock goes sideways to "burn off" overbought conditions and gold is doing that right now. The big thing I noticed that changed from Friday to Monday in the Options chain is a large, chunky put spread was added at 640 / 635 on #SPY. This is probably going to be there until September, and it could be interesting if we go down to 640 to test it. I would anticipate support at 635-640 on #SPY as a result and if we go under 635 things will get very bearish very quickly. #Housing data this morning showed builder sentiment remains low. I personally expected this to be a "beat" based on the performance of the stocks over the last few weeks. Often when the stocks go up, the sentiment improves. Not in this case. Builders again are slashing prices about 5% and the use of incentives has reached it's highest levels since the pandemic (66% of builders using buy downs or incentives like that to bring people in the door). It's rough out there and people are simply not budging because everyone believes rates are going down. 

 

Speaking of rates, bonds are resting on a key level with #TLT at 86.29. That is the Quarterly VWAP for the fund and can be a spot to see institutions come in an buy it. There should be a pretty big directional move coming for bonds on the weeklies and the catalyst is clear. Jackson Hole should cause them to move. 

Levels:

All the best;

 

 

Peter Cook

NQ Chatroom Moderator (Go2Mtg)

Hamzei Analytics, LLC

 

Sign-up link: https://www.hamzeianalytics.com/HAPDTS_NQ_details.asp 

Morning Commentary for Friday, August 15, 2025 by Peter Cook

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We got some retail sales today, they were pretty good actually, but weak without cars.  I see that anecdotally down here.  Lots of people are trading in cars and buying EVs now that the tax credit is expiring.  Should be a good quarter for #TSLA.   People asked me why we didn't sell harder on the #PPI news yesterday and the answer is that the market was pretty hedged and it's close to Op-Ex.  The real move is going to come after this afternoon and into Monday.  

#PPI is very bad, it will flow to #CPI and it's getting worse because the tariff rates are only about 9% now, headed up to 15% as the Tariffs finally get implemented.  All of it will be getting worse not better and it's showing up all over the place in the data. 

We did get Consumer Sentiment this morning and it was not good at 58.6 (a big "miss").  People are back to being worried about Tariffs again.  Year ahead inflation expectations surged from 4.5% to 4.9%.  

We got import export prices this morning showing a very large increase of 0.4% m/m in imports.  That's inflation from #Tariffs again showing up in another report.  That's not good.  

While we did see the puts at 642 give us support yesterday and some of them are still left.  So, 642 on #SPY is still support, but it's not large support.  Under 642 on #SPY and we can sell pretty quickly.

I'm still leaning hard on that as support and will press longs today.  If we go under 642 on #SPY, I will not take long trades.  It's pretty simple today. 

Levels:

All the best;

 

 

Peter Cook

NQ Chatroom Moderator (Go2Mtg)

Hamzei Analytics, LLC

Sign-up link: https://www.hamzeianalytics.com/HAPDTS_NQ_details.asp