 Hi, everyone. This is Mike Kramer with a weekly check-in. Today is Monday, July 24th. It's around 515 New York time. US markets are closed. So we'll start off with the NASDAQ 100. That index has stalled out a little bit. We did get up to just shy of 16,000. We got to a high of 15,932 on July 19th, and we've been trading a little bit lower since. Now interestingly, we had about four days above the upper Bollinger Band and about four days with an RSI above 70, which I consider to be an over-debought condition. So not unusual to see a pullback and a move back into the Bollinger Bands and to see that RSI come back down. So at this point, hard to say if this is just a regular consolidation that's going to lead some to some more sideways price action or if we're going to continue to drift lower. Now the one thing that is interesting and worth keeping an eye on is this NASDAQ has now, NASDAQ 100 is now drifted below the 10-day exponential moving average for three days in a row. This is something that it hasn't done very often over the course of the last couple of weeks and months. You can see it certainly has flirted with that exponential moving average on a couple of occasions. And also it has acted more generally as a level of support. So you can see here there were a bunch of days. But this was really before we saw the index really take off. And since that time, you can see we fell below here. We bounce right back, fell below here, bounce right back. Here it acted as support. Here you can see we fell below, bounce right back, acted as support. And so this is really the longest it's been below. And that's an interesting little development that you want to keep an eye on. Obviously, if we continue to stay below this exponential moving average, could be an indication that there is actually a change in trend happening. If we pop back up above it, that could also be an indication that we're going to try to retest the 16,000 region once again. Now, if we look at the NASDAQ a little bit more short term, the one thing that is interesting, that looks like it may be developing at least on the cash market here, is if you just draw a little bit of a line here, you can make out the faintness of a consolidation pattern. Also, you can see here that there's a big level of support right at this 15,430 region, with a big gap to fill down to 15,300. So clearly, if we were to break below this 15,400 region tomorrow, that would probably set up a decline back to 15,300. And in order really to keep this index from really drifting much lower or seeing these declines continue, you're going to really need to see not only the index take out the highs of the day, probably 15,500, but also really close above that 10-day exponential moving average. Although I really don't like the way the setup is at this point, and I don't like that we closed right at support. Not only that, you tried to rally in the afternoon, you gave it all back in the final hour, you closed under all the previous highs and even some of the lows. And so that's really a pretty negative pattern, and I would be really watching for a drop to about 15,300 tomorrow. On the DJI, we've continued to move higher. Now, the Dow Jones industrial average has moved up quite a bit over the last couple of days. In fact, you can see there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 green candles. I don't remember the last time I've seen 11 green candles on the Dow Jones. And you can also see that we're in overbought territory here with the average trading above the upper Bollinger Band. Today we closed right on it, basically, just a touch below it. And you also have the index in an overbought position with an RSI. So certainly, the Dow is looking like it may be a little bit overextended here. It's even looking like it could be due for a period of consolidation based off of some of those conditions. Currently, we're at resistance, again, at 35,400 or so. The next level to look forward, coming around 35,800, really, for this index. For the Dow to continue to move higher tomorrow, you're going to want to see it quickly take out 35,460 and then continue on its way. Otherwise, you have to think that after 11 days of 11 green candles, you're due to see some sort of period of sideways movement or at least a period of a pullback. When you look more closely here, you can see that there may be a bit of a bump-and-run pattern forming in the Dow. It's a little bit even of a stretch. But again, this is sort of your key trend line right in this region here with a break below 35,200, really contributing to what could be a much bigger drop back to this 34,600 region. It's a retest of the breakout. That's how I would look at that. Obviously, you've had really big movements in UNH. You've had very big movements in Goldman Sachs. We talked about those stocks being critical to helping to lift the Dow. Certainly, they have come through. Now, the price faction in the FTSE has been a little bit strange because last time we were looking at the FTSE, we were talking about this level of support around 7,300. We tested it two times and we held it. We talked about if we held this, it could lead to a move higher back up to this 7,460 region. We've continued even beyond that because now we've broken through this downtrend, which is a pretty powerful signal. The other really big key here is, how do you want to interpret this pattern? Is this near completion? Because this is where we started. If you look, there's some nice symmetry between the two sides of it with the way at least the shapes are. If you were to think about it as potentially an inverse head and shoulders and you were to measure from here to here and then use the breakout, you can see that we're almost right back to where we started at 7,700. Also, we saw that there was a strong move into the close, basically closing at the highs. Really, for this index to continue to move higher tomorrow, you want to see this rally start out and just continue. You don't want to see any sort of gap lower, any sort of pullback. You just want to see it continue to move up. I think that's going to really be your key because if you start seeing a pullback in the footsie, that could be a signal that this pattern, this inverse head and shoulders pattern is maybe complete. It's not quite overbought yet, so there is some more room for it to rise. Again, like we said, it could move a little bit higher still before this inverse pattern is complete. I would watch for that specifically. If you start really seeing a struggle at the 7680 level, it could be an indication that it's hit resistance and it's failed because you can see that the 7680 region has been a level of resistance now for some time. This is an important level if the footsie is going to continue to move higher from here. We also have some big earnings coming tomorrow. We'll take a look at Alphabet. Just for full disclosure, I do own Alphabet. It is a long-term position of mine. What I find most interesting about Alphabet is not so much how the technicals or the estimates look. It's really how the options market is positioned. What you notice here is that the one-week 95% moneyness option right now is trading with the same implied volatility as the 105%. In fact, it's trading just slightly above it, which indicates there's a really strong demand for calls on this Alphabet. You can see that the SKU has really been falling more towards the call side of the equation, and that's suggesting there's a lot of demand for people looking for upside in Alphabet following results. What's interesting is when you look at the open interest levels in Alphabet, there's a lot of calls on the open interest with levels all the way up to 130 with a concentration, really, between 122 to 130, and a big concentration at 125, and then, like I said, 130, and even up to 134. With the implied volatility levels in Alphabet being so high that when the announcement comes and the news comes out, it's likely you're going to see a very sharp drop in implied volatility in both the calls and the puts. It's not unusual to see that. You can see other past instances around earnings when that has happened. What this means is that if you begin to see implied volatility drop sharply, the call values will start losing implied volatility and will start decaying at the same rate or equal to or faster than the puts, depending on where implied volatility is going into the print tomorrow, potentially put downward pressure on Alphabet, one, as market makers begin to unhedge their positions for calls, and two, as call owners begin to sell their calls. That could position Alphabet to actually move lower following results, regardless of what they are. It's something to be mindful of tomorrow, especially with where this implied volatility levels are. The higher the implied volatility is for the upside, the more likely it can be that you're going to see a move lower in Alphabet following results. When we look at Meta, Meta's position just slightly differently because you can see it's much more even in terms of open interest for puts and calls. You can see again that you have some decent size open interest for the calls, but you also have some decent amount of open interest for the puts. In fact, there's a large open interest position here in the puts at 300 that are already in the money. When you look at Meta, it's the same story with the implied volatility. There's just a lot of demand for the calls on this. Again, with Meta being on Wednesday and Alphabet being on Tuesday, this scenario could change some. You're going to want to keep an eye on where implied volatility levels are going into the print, because if you see the call in implied volatility or demand for upside higher than that of downside, what you could see again is also a similar situation where these calls up at these levels start losing value and the puts actually start to gain value if the stock were to stay below 300 and you were to begin to see the call sellers, you were to see call sellers emerge and some unwinding of the hedges from market makers could push it lower. Likewise, again, you're just going to want to watch and see how the positioning of the options market is from that standpoint. When you look at Alphabet from a technical standpoint, you could look at Alphabet and argue that there's the potential here for a double top pattern. You would really need to break below 115 for that pattern to be confirmed. If it were to be confirmed, you could be talking about a stock that can move back down to 103 to 105. If you look at Meta, Meta has just been climbing in basically a near straight line now for some time. I think at this point, the interesting thing about Meta is that that uptrend has been broken. It could be a significant sign that the rally we've seen in Meta is over. We're in a period of consolidation now or at least a retest of some of these big moves. I mean, there is support at 236. There is also a gap to fill at 208. More importantly, you could argue that the gap at 314 has been filled. Although I typically like to see gaps when they're filled, they're filled to completion. In that case, it would be 325. But I know that some people would say, well, you filled the gap, this is enough of a fill to complete it. So I think that the breakdown of this trend line is pretty significant. And then when you factor that with how the positioning is in Meta, it looks like you could see a further downward extension on this stock and potentially alphabet. And it may not even matter if the results are good or bad. It may just, the only thing that may matter is how the market is positioned going into those prints. And you'll have to just kind of see how it goes from there. Because again, if implied volatility for demand is very high and there's a lot of open interest for the calls on both of them going into the mornings of those respective reports, it could be a setup for the market to push them lower after results again, no matter what they say. Anyway, I hope that the hope just finds you well and have a great rest of your week. Bye.