Daily Commentary: January 24, 2025

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Pete’s An Idiot

Posted by Pete Stolcers on January 24
www.oneoption.com

That might be true, but not when it comes to trading.

PRE-OPEN MARKET COMMENTS FRIDAY – My goal as a trader is to stay one step ahead and it can only happen when you have an acute sense of awareness. Many traders view today’s price action relative to yesterday’s price action and that is fine if you are day trading. You have no overnight risk and you don’t have a portfolio of positions that you have to unwind. When it comes to swing trading, you have to be able to see at least a month out. You don’t want to get blindsided by a large move. The price action tomorrow is the result of the price action for the last few months. In an up trend, the climax comes very quickly and there’s an incredible amount of pain inflicted on short-term swing traders during the first leg lower. Many swing traders are leveraged and they have options positions. They look great one day and they get destroyed in a heart beat. I don’t want that to happen to you and that’s why I keep beating this drum.

I’m looking ahead for you and I am telling you that I do NOT like what I see. This is a time to be in cash and to tread very cautiously. Have very little overnight exposure and focus on day trading. Many of you will heed my warning and many of you will do your own thing. “Maybe this time Pete is wrong.” Look, the market is making a new all-time high and I am missing this move!

I’ve seen this movie many times before and this is just a sad reality of trading. A few months from now you won’t be trading and you will say to yourself, “I should have listened to that guy.”

In order for the market to move lower, it is going to take a round of “heavy” news. It could be a hawkish Fed next week, it could be that earnings guidance is “light”, it could be a big drop in new jobs, perhaps it’s new tariffs or a litany of other things. The market has taken a number of body blows in the last few months and there is a knockout punch coming. We have a lot of news pending in the next two weeks.

What if the news is good? How do you know that job losses are coming? How do you know that earnings guidance will be “light”? Maybe the Fed is going to be “dovish”. Maybe Trump will postpone the tariffs. Those are all possibilities and based on the information I’ve gathered, the odds for those outcomes is low. This is all about the odds and that’s why I am urging you to stay flexible and to stay in cash.

I’ve mentioned credit concerns so let me be clear on this. I hope I am absolutely wrong on this. They don’t happen overnight and I am not looking for a 30% market drop in the next two weeks. That’s not how these things unfold. When credit conditions start to surface it keeps a lid on economic growth. We are in that phase right now. Next, they start to worsen and government stimulus programs and central bank easing are ineffective. I believe we are seeing signs of that as well. You will see a nice quick market move off of the high (20%) and that destroys traders. From that point on, it is a gradual drip lower. Hopefully central bank money printing and lower interest rates stimulate economic growth and credit conditions don’t deteriorate. It’s too early to tell. Right now I am only concerned with the first drop and I sense it’s coming.

In October of 2023 I was chest pounding telling you to get ready for a big move higher. The market was still in a decline. We didn’t get our face ripped off with shorts when it bounced like a lot of traders did. We caught that rally and we rode it hard for 10 months. I don’t want you to get your face ripped off so don’t have a bunch of bullish swing trades on. The upside is very limited and the downside is great. Do not try to mild the last drop out of this move higher. Catch what you can day trading.

We made a new high yesterday and we are likely to keep floating higher on very light volume. There is no news to stand in the way so Pete will look like an idiot for a few more days or perhaps a few more weeks. Look for dull action today. Any early bid check needs to find support. Once it is established, you can try a few longs. Add if the SPY makes a new high for the day. Stocks that were super strong yesterday and that had heavy volume will be your best picks. Make sure that the early dip is small and that the stock has relative strength and good volume. My pick Sunday was ANET and that is a classic example of what you should look for. Day trade them, but take gains and keep your overnight risk low.

Support is the low from yesterday and resistance is the all-time high.

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