Table of Contents
Market Overview
Key Index Charts
Earnings & Interesting Movers Recap: REGN, D, NEE, CAVA,INTU, IBM and FUTU
Earnings to Watch This Week: ZS, CRM, MRVL, SNOW, SNPS, DELL and MDB
1. Market Overview
Forget the prediction markets. Think of prediction classics.
I-81 is hard to call a desert by any means. Not by the scenery, and certainly not by the number of cars moving through upstate New York on a holiday weekend. It is not dark either around noon. The cool wind is easily handled by the AC, and these days the warm smell of colitas would probably surprise fewer people than the song originally intended.
Deer signs appear every couple of miles and there is no shortage of wildlife along the route. Bears, on the other hand, are harder to find. But what about behemoths? Not the biblical kind. The financial kind. “SpaceX files IPO prospectus with the SEC.” “OpenAI prepares confidential IPO filing.” Looks like we spotted two already. Which brings us back to another classic:
This could be heaven or this could be hell
Maybe it will be heaven. Maybe it will be hell. Personally, I have no interest in joining either camp.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some kind of permabear predicting the next bubble that would leave the world in ruins, though I’m also a little sceptical about the idea of a future where AGI handles all the work while humanity peacefully relaxes on clean but slightly overcrowded beaches financed by Universal Basic Income, Basic High Income, or whatever they decide to call it by then. Besides, if everyone ends up on the same beach, it probably stops feeling like paradise fairly quickly.
Maybe I’m just wired differently. I don’t really care about animal spirits. I get bullish when a stock approaches key support or clears meaningful resistance in a decisive way. I’m equally happy shorting the same stock and adding some puts on top when I see unfortunate trapped bulls running to the door.
That applies to SpaceX. It applies to OpenAI. It applies to whatever eventually becomes the next trillion dollar story. If SpaceX comes public, respects key levels, attracts demand and confirms momentum, I’ll happily buy it. If the tape falls apart, positioning unwinds and buyers suddenly discover that revolutionary narratives do not guarantee profitable entries, I'll be just as happy looking at the short side if locates are available
Meanwhile the bull continues challenging the cat in terms of number of lives.
They stab it with their steely knives
But they just can’t kill the beast
Well, at least they tried. And there will be other attempts going forward, though there is a difference between fighting the tape and shorting the hell out of it when the weakness is actually there. What usually happens instead is people trying to be cute and short the high while momentum is still accelerating, only to spend the next leg down trying to catch the steely knife when it is finally time to incrementally increase exposure and ride the wave of trapped longs. It is another all-time classic that somehow keeps replaying itself like a song stuck on an infinite loop.
There are reasons to be bearish, and some of the warning signs are difficult to ignore. A growing collection of macro concerns patiently waiting in the background. Even NVIDIA managed to deliver another stellar quarter this week, yet the reaction felt noticeably less enthusiastic than it would have six months ago. But there is a fine line between a red flag and those red numbers sitting inside your brokerage account.
Whatever the reason, it is sometimes better to leave the reasoning to an LLM of your choice attempting to evolve into AGI and focus on the process of making money rather than the process of being right. That said, you might never get the famous “Told Ya” moment, but who cares if you eventually cemented your spot on the beach, complete with endless margaritas and everything else the dream was supposed to include?
The funny thing about markets is that they rarely let people stop where they originally planned. Financial freedom often starts as the objective. Somewhere along the way it becomes the next setup, the next opportunity, the next story everyone else is suddenly obsessed with. At some point the money stops being the objective and simply becomes the scorecard.
No matter whether you call it trading, investing, hedging, speculation, gambling, or some sophisticated combination of all five, there is always a chart worth reviewing, an earnings report worth watching, an IPO worth discussing, or a behemoth promising to change the world.
Which brings us back to our prediction classics from which it all started:
You can check out any time you like
But you can never leave
2. Key Index Charts
In this section I highlight only the most important zones with brief comments. I use fully layered charts to identify them, but keep the charts here clean for clarity.
SPY
The S&P 500 ETF is still immune to steely knives, at least for now, with key resistance shifting to 768 and key support moving higher to 727.5.
QQQ
Both key support and resistance levels for the Nasdaq 100 ETF also shift higher to 695 and 736.5, respectively.
IWM
The Russell 2000 ETF is ripping with the same magnitude it was previously dipping, with key support now sitting around 270.5 while resistance shifts higher to 297.5.
TLT
The most interesting and important chart remains the 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF, which is attempting to reclaim the key weekly BSL highlighted multiple times. The winner here may dictate the next major move and rule them all, though dictators rarely end well. Key support shifts to 82.75, while resistance remains intact at 86.
BTC
Bitcoin is showing some strength over the weekend, though strength below the 200-day moving average remains questionable. Key support shifts to 67k, while resistance also edges slightly higher to 86k.
ETH
Ethereum bounced off the key support at 2000 highlighted last week, though it continues to underperform Bitcoin and should be watched closely. Key support shifts to 1800, while resistance now stands at 2275.
3. Earnings & Interesting Movers Recap
Below are snapshots from the Price Action Playbook: Research dump for the week
REGN 646.5(605.5)
Regeneron reported mixed late-stage melanoma trial results after its Phase 3 study evaluating fianlimab in combination with cemiplimab failed to achieve statistical significance on the primary endpoint of progression-free survival versus Merck's Keytruda in first-line unresectable or metastatic melanoma. While the overall trial missed its primary objective, the high-dose combination arm demonstrated encouraging efficacy trends, extending median progression-free survival to 11.5 months compared to 6.4 months for pembrolizumab, though the result narrowly missed conventional statistical significance thresholds. The study enrolled 1,546 patients across multiple treatment arms and showed no new safety signals, an important outcome for combination checkpoint inhibitor therapy. Management emphasized that the program retains a potential path forward through an ongoing Phase 3 head-to-head study against Bristol Myers' Opdualag, preserving optionality for what remains a strategically important immuno-oncology franchise despite the setback in this pivotal readout.
As you can see, price respects both areas, though bulls still lack the strength to reclaim and hold either one. Let's zoom out to understand the logic behind them:
605.5 is the long-standing POC reinforced by an old but highly reactive weekly pivot high at 606. I’d argue this pivot is probably the reason the POC formed there in the first place, but we can leave that discussion for another time.
Meanwhile, 646.5 marks the convergence of another highly reactive weekly pivot high and a fresh weekly UTL.
D 70 - NEE 91.5(89.5)
NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy announced a definitive all-stock merger that will create the world's largest regulated electric utility, combining Dominion's southeastern utility footprint with NextEra's industry-leading regulated and renewable energy platform. Under the agreement, Dominion shareholders will receive 0.8138 shares of NextEra for each Dominion share owned, resulting in approximately 74.5% ownership for existing NextEra shareholders and 25.5% for Dominion shareholders in the combined company. The merged entity will be more than 80% regulated, serve roughly 10 mln customer accounts across Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and operate approximately 110 GW of generation capacity spanning multiple energy sources. Management highlighted expected operating and capital efficiencies alongside growing electricity demand trends, while also proposing $2.25 bln of customer bill credits across Dominion's regulated territories. Dominion shareholders will continue receiving the current dividend through closing and receive a one-time $360 mln cash distribution at completion, after which they will participate in NextEra's dividend growth framework. The transaction has received unanimous board approval and is expected to close within 12-18 months, subject to customary regulatory and shareholder approvals.
To be honest, all-stock and cash-and-stock M&A deals were some of the best setups back in 2013 when I started getting serious about trading, both from a risk/reward and probability standpoint, and they probably deserve a big and beautiful mechanics breakdown. Though not today.
Let's take a look at the mentioned areas for both and the logic behind them, keeping in mind the correlation affecting price action here: