I spent the majority of my time looking for the perfect stock. The right earnings, the right chart pattern, the right story. Hours on weekends going through setups. I’d find one I loved, buy it, then watch it go nowhere. And I’d come away thinking I’d missed something about the company.

I hadn’t missed anything about the company.

I’d missed the ocean.

There’s a concept that changes how you think about markets once you hear it.

Nine out of ten stocks are going to follow the general market. That’s not an opinion, it’s a historical fact that William O’Neil spent decades documenting. The best stock in the world is still mostly a hostage to the environment it trades in.

Think about it this way: Everyone is obsessed with which boat they want; which stock to buy, which chart looks cleanest, which setup is highest conviction. But it doesn’t matter what boat you’re in if the ocean is in the middle of a storm. You’re not getting from point A to point B regardless of how fast your boat is.

The market is the ocean. You have to watch it.

Markets cycle through three broad conditions. Uptrend. Downtrend. Sideways range. Your job as a growth investor is to know which one you’re in at all times, because each one calls for a different level of involvement. Aggressive, defensive, or patient.

The simplest tool I’ve found for this (and I’ve seen versions of this idea attributed to a few different market legends going back to the Market Wizards era) is the 200-day moving average. If the market is living above the 200-day and finding support there, the long-term trend is up. If it’s been struggling below the 200-day for an extended stretch, you’re in a bear market. That’s the broad lens.

But I think about it with a little more nuance than just bull or bear.

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I break the market into three time frames, and each one has a moving average.

The 21-day moving average represents the short-term trend. The 50-day represents the intermediate trend. The 200-day represents the long-term trend.

When the NASDAQ starts to reclaim the 21-day and trade comfortably above it after a correction (meaning the low of daily trading bars is sitting above it, not just poking through), that’s my signal to start pilot buying again. Testing the waters. Not full throttle, but back in the game.

The 50-day tells me the intermediate trend has recovered. At that point, I’m more active.

The 200-day closing back over tells me the long-term trend has reset. That’s a green light for the patient capital.

Now here’s where it gets specific for growth investors.

When you’re trading high-momentum names and buying strength, you don’t just want the market above these levels. You want the moving averages in order.

MA’s “in order” means: the 21-day is above the 50-day, and the 50-day is above the 200-day. All three sloping higher.

That configuration tells you money is flowing into risk assets consistently across all three time frames at once. Short-term, intermediate, and long-term all trending the same direction. That’s what I call growth mode. That’s when I’m initiating new positions and pressing my best setups:

When that picture breaks down and the 21-day starts to cross below the 50-day, or the 50-day turns sideways and starts threatening the 200-day, that’s a warning shot.

There’s a secondary signal worth knowing about.

When growth starts to fade, institutional money doesn’t just sit in cash. Fund managers are running client money and they have to stay invested. So they rotate. Money comes out of high-octane growth names and into defensive sectors. Consumer staples. REITs. Utilities. Procter and Gamble starts perking up when growth is rolling over.

If you’re scanning for setups and you notice a lot of regional banks and consumer staples names looking clean while your growth watchlist is a mess, that’s the rotation telling you something. The market’s risk appetite has changed, even if the index hasn’t fully broken down yet.

Pay attention to what’s setting up. It tells you where the money is going.

Here’s what I love most about this.

Individual investors have an advantage that almost no one talks about. We can go to cash.

Portfolio managers at Fidelity and BlackRock cannot do that. They’re managing customer money with mandates. When things get choppy, they rotate defensively. They can’t hide. We can.

Going to cash isn’t giving up, it’s discipline. It’s our biggest edge. the market will always give you another chance to deploy capital when conditions improve.

(Keep in mind that this doesn’t apply to indexing or other long term investment strategies.)

Right now the market is in a range. It’s a time to be watching, building your list, and identifying which stocks are refusing to break down while everything else does. This is also a good time for upside reversal set-ups.

And if you’ve done the work, you’ll be ready.

Ghost Alpha documents one trader’s real-time journey through the market. If this was useful, subscribe for weekly analysis, setups, and the occasional hard lesson learned.

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None of this is financial advice. This is one trader’s read on where leadership sits right now.

Three groups are leading this market. Keep your eyes on the leadership within these groups for potential entries into market leading moves.

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Theme One: The AI trade, and it lives in the chips.

When people say the AI trade, they mean four things wearing one jersey: semiconductors, memory, neoclouds, and energy. They tend to move together.

The chart that matters is SMH, the semiconductor ETF. It carries a 98 relative strength rating, which tells you plainly where leadership sits. Semis are the cleanest read on where this market wants to go.

The swing factor this week is Micron. MU reports Wednesday, and memory sits right inside this theme. A weak print is a speed bump for the whole AI trade. A strong one could be the trigger that sends these names straight up. It is the most important event on the calendar this week.

If leadership stays here, and right now it is here, you want a plan for how you would get exposure if the group keeps running.

Theme Two: Biotech is quietly setting up.

The chart here is XBI. It spent most of the year going sideways, basing and building, the same patient consolidation the AI names did before they ran. On Wednesday the 17th it broke out of that flat base to new highs on good volume.

For a while the assumption was that software would be the second engine of this market. Software is showing its hand a little, and it needs more time. Biotech is the group actually shaping up.

What we want now is follow-through. A breakout is a claim. Follow-through is the proof. Watch XBI to see if the move holds and whether the leading names confirm it.

Theme Three: Quantum found its footing.

The ETF to watch is QTUM. The major quantum names had a meaningful end to the week, several of them bouncing right off the 50-day moving average. When a whole group finds support at the same logical level, the market is telling you something.

Some of these names carry real earnings and sales growth underneath a story that already gets people excited. That is a rare combination.

QTUM is shaping up for potentially higher prices. The thing to confirm is whether the real leaders in the group follow through, because the ETF can only take you so far.

That is the map. Chips leading, biotech setting up, quantum waking up, and a Micron report Wednesday that could shift the whole tone.

If you want the specific names inside these themes, the pivots, the entries, and exactly how we are managing risk on each one, that is what the Weekly Trading Plan is for. It goes out with the charts and the levels.

Have a great week. Watch the leaders!

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This is what we are covering this week.

Market Pulse. A read on a clean uptrend with the moving averages stacked in order, the Russell confirming risk-on, and why Micron’s earnings Wednesday could decide whether the chip trade goes parabolic or stalls.

The Focus List. Ten names worth your attention this week. Charts, commentary, and the levels that matter for each one. Current holdings are tagged. The rest are setups we are watching.

Quick reminder before we get into it. Nothing in here is financial advice. This is one trader’s read on the tape and the names worth watching. Do your own research, manage your own risk, and never trade money you cannot afford to lose.

How we trade these names. Every name in here is traded the same way, and you should understand the rules before you act on a single one of them. We use a 5 to 7 percent stop from our entry, no exceptions. We know where we are getting out before we get in, and we set the stop the moment we buy. We manage risk first and chase gains second. Our entire edge is taking losses quickly and letting winners run, which means we are often out of a name fast when it does not work. Do not assume any name listed here is still a position by the time you read this. A stock appearing on the Focus List is not a signal to buy and hold. It is a setup we are watching with a defined risk plan. If you cannot define your risk and honor your stop, do not take the trade.

Let’s get into it.

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Reading wasn’t really my thing before I started trading. Outside of books about sports, non-fiction didn’t interest me much.

Then I got into the business, and I figured out pretty fast that reading is basically the second job. The first thing you do is trade. The second thing you do, if you’re serious, is read about trading. Everybody at the firm talked about books like they were scripture.

So I read them. How To Make Money in Stocks. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. The classics.

But the one everybody pointed to, the one that came up in every conversation, was Market Wizards.

Here’s my confession about the original Market Wizards: I didn’t know how to read it.

Every chapter was a different trader running a completely different strategy. One guy swears by one thing, the next guy does the opposite and also made a fortune. As a beginner that was confusing to me. I kept trying to find THE answer and the book refused to give me one.

It took years before I understood the assignment. You’re not supposed to copy any single one of them. You’re supposed to pull nuggets. Take the best of what each person figured out and see which pieces fit you. The book only made sense once I had enough screen time to recognize myself in the war stories.

So when Jack Schwager and George Coyle put out Market Wizards: The Next Generation, I pre-ordered immediately.

This one is different for me, and the reason is simple. These are my guys.

The traders in this edition are my generation. Same age, same markets, same war stories. They have battle scars from the same years I do. When they talk about getting humbled, they’re talking about the exact tape I was trading. That hits differently than reading about a legend from the 1980s.

The chapter that stopped me cold was the first one, Kristjan Kullamagi. The way I see him, he’s the next thread coming off William O’Neil and Dan Zanger. Growth, breakouts, momentum. Same DNA, new generation. That’s a chapter I’ll reread over and over again.

I took notes the whole way through. Five things kept showing up, across different traders running different systems. Those are the five worth your time.

1. Cut your losses quickly. And then cut them quicker than that.

You’ve heard this a thousand times. I’ve heard it a thousand times. It’s the first skill you build and the most important one you’ll ever have, and it’s still the rule most people can’t actually follow.

So the takeaway for me wasn’t the rule itself. It was how violently aggressive these traders are about it.

A few of them won’t even wait for a stop. If the trade isn’t working right away, they’re out. Not down 8%. Just not working. Gone.

Peter Brandt, in an earlier edition, talked about closing any losing trade before the weekend, and that one made it straight into my core rules years ago. But this generation takes it further. Some of them want the trade to pay immediately or they walk.

There’s something almost snobby about it, and I mean that as a compliment. You’re treating gains like an entitlement. You bought strength, so the strength better show up now. If it doesn’t, the trade already told you the answer. You’re playing defense first and you’re only willing to hold the names that prove themselves on day one.

2. Gamers make kickass traders.

This one’s my favorite, and it’s a little funny.

A bunch of the wizards in this edition play video games. And more than one of them draws a direct line between gaming and trading. The hand-eye speed. The competitiveness. The pattern recognition under pressure.

I grew up on this. PvP gaming, Xbox Live, that specific wiring where you’re reading an opponent in real time and reacting faster than you can consciously think. I always quietly saw the market as a video game. Same feedback loops, same instinct layer built on top of thousands of reps.

To hear some of the best to ever do it make the exact same connection was validating in a way I didn’t expect. Turns out the thing I thought was a distraction growing up was training.

3. Bad sizing is what actually kills you.

This is the one I needed to read, because position sizing has been my Achilles heel.

When I was at O’Neil, everyone wanted to be like Bill. I remember his son Scott coming out to the floor and telling us the firm was something like 200% long Tesla at one point. Aggressive beyond anything I’d heard. It made a permanent impression. I walked away thinking that’s how you make real money. Get the leader right, then press it hard.

And it worked. I’ve had triple-digit years sizing like that.

But here’s what this book made me sit with. The traders who last are obsessed with size, and a lot of them size down, not up. Some adjust position size based on the quality of the setup. The recurring theme is that getting big is the easy part. Holding the position through a drawdown from the top, without getting shaken out, is what separates the pros.

When you run the math honestly, a 25 to 30% position I can actually hold through the noise beats a 100%+ position that throws me out at the first scary day. Time and compounding do more work than leverage, and they let me stay in for the bigger move. The size that lets you sleep is the size that lets you hold.

4. You can’t impose your will on the market.

One of the wizards said this and it’s been rattling around my head since.

This is patience, really. The discipline to sit and wait for your best setup instead of forcing action. Kullamagi talks about how much he struggles with this, because he loves to trade and sometimes overtrades just to be in the action. That’s me. The hardest thing some days is not trading.

His fix is brilliant in its self-awareness. When he knows a setup isn’t his best, he sizes it small, because he knows he can’t fully stop himself from taking it. So he manages the trader instead of pretending the trader is someone he’s not.

Simon Russo framed the same idea a different way: be reactive, not predictive. Don’t force your opinion into the trade. React to what the market is actually doing. That might be the single healthiest way to hold the market in your head.

5. Focus on your process. Then have the discipline to follow it.

Across the whole book, the wizards are process-driven, not outcome-driven. They’re constantly innovating, reshaping their rules to fit changing markets and their own growth as traders.

But here’s the part that’s easy to miss. They follow the rules.

You hear it again and again. They have rules, they break them, they pay for it, they write new rules. Bill was the king of this. Watch his interviews and it’s just rules, rules, rules. Nobody wants to hear that. It’s not the fun part. The fun part is the setup and the run when you’re green.

The boring part is watching a trade you don’t own run without you because it didn’t meet your criteria. Sitting out a tape that doesn’t fit your conditions. That discipline is wildly underrated and brutally hard, because the market is a moving psychological target that never stops testing you.

Which brings me to the thing that actually changed my trading this year.

I physically write my rules down now. My own rules.

Most people start the way I started, by adopting someone else’s rule set wholesale. I bought How To Make Money in Stocks and decided that was my system, word for word. And that’s a fine place to start. But you don’t see real improvement until you stop borrowing rules and start molding them to fit you. Your tendencies. Your weaknesses. The specific ways you trip yourself up.

This book is full of traders who figured that out. That’s the meta-lesson hiding inside all five takeaways.

Final word.

This might be my favorite book in the series. Not because it’s better written than the originals, but because these are my people. We came up on the same stuff. We carry scars from the same years. 2022 was the year I mentally blew up. I didn’t lose the whole account, but I took a huge drawdown and something broke in my head that took a long time to rebuild. Reading other people describe their worst drawdowns, and what they pulled out of them, is the kind of thing that makes a trading book worth more than its setups.

Read the whole thing. But if you only read one chapter, read the first one. Kullamagi. There’s a generation of wisdom packed into it.

I have it on audio too. I’ll be going back through it more than once.

I write Ghost Alpha to document one trader’s real journey, scars included. If you want the trades, the rules, and the lessons in real time, subscribe and come along.

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This is what we are covering this week.

Market Pulse. A read on the Nasdaq bouncing off its 10-week line after a brutal 4.2% down day, why we are forecasting chop, and how that changes where we buy.

The Focus List. Eight names this week. Six we are holding, three more we are watching. Charts, commentary, and the levels that matter for each one. Current holdings are tagged. The rest are setups we are watching.

Quick reminder before we get into it. Nothing in here is financial advice. This is one trader’s read on the tape and the names worth watching. Do your own research, manage your own risk, and never trade money you cannot afford to lose.

How we trade these names. Every name in here is traded the same way, and you should understand the rules before you act on a single one of them. We use a 5 to 7 percent stop from our entry, no exceptions. We know where we are getting out before we get in, and we set the stop the moment we buy. We manage risk first and chase gains second. Our entire edge is taking losses quickly and letting winners run, which means we are often out of a name fast when it does not work. Do not assume any name listed here is still a position by the time you read this. A stock appearing on the Focus List is not a signal to buy and hold. It is a setup we are watching with a defined risk plan. If you cannot define your risk and honor your stop, do not take the trade.

Let’s get into it.

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One trade paid for the down payment on my first house.

June 2016. Twilio went public, and everyone in tech was buzzing about it. By then I was a few months removed from my time inside William O’Neil’s organization, working in software sales, watching the market from the cheap seats.

And I did the hardest thing a trader can do with a hot new stock.

Nothing.

No buy at the open. No chasing the first pop. I just watched it trade. A few weeks later, Twilio quieted down and built a short, tight shelf of price action. A classic IPO base. When it broke out of that base, I bought it. Heavily. It was a swing trade that ran 50 percent in a few weeks, and it was about as close to a perfect trade as I’ve ever made.

That trade became the down payment on my first house. That house got me to Austin in 2018.

The whole trade was decided before I ever clicked buy. It was decided in the weeks I spent waiting.

Tomorrow, SpaceX lists on the Nasdaq.

Ticker SPCX. Priced at $135 a share. Roughly a $1.75 trillion valuation and a $75 billion raise, which makes it the largest IPO in stock market history. Nearly three times the size of Saudi Aramco’s record.

Every headline, every group chat, every guy at the office who has never mentioned a stock in his life will be talking about it tomorrow.

Which is exactly why I want to talk about the IPO base today.

The problem with day one.

A stock that just went public has no price history. None.

No support levels, because nobody has defended a price yet. No resistance levels, because nobody is trapped above the market waiting to sell at breakeven. No read on what institutions are doing, because they just got their shares this morning.

When you buy an IPO at the open, you are trading blind against insiders and funds who know exactly what their stock cost them. They have all the information. You have a headline.

The fix is simple. Let it trade.

I learned IPO bases studying Mike Webster’s work in his masters program, and his IPO study is the cleanest framework I’ve seen on the subject. Full credit to Webby here. The core idea is this:

Give a new stock a minimum of two weeks. Most proper IPO bases take two to five weeks to form. In that time, the stock corrects or goes sideways, and something valuable happens. Price history gets created. The pullback lows become support. The early highs become resistance.

Now you have a structure. A short consolidation with a defined ceiling. And when the stock breaks through that ceiling on real volume, you have an actual entry with an actual stop underneath it.

You went from gambling on a headline to trading a setup.

Google did it the textbook way.

Google came public in August 2004 at $85 and popped about 27 percent. Then it spent roughly five weeks doing nothing. Drifting sideways, volume drying up, building the base.

When it cleared the top of that base, it ran 68 percent in 33 trading days. The patient buyer got a defined entry, a defined stop, and the entire move. The day one buyer got the same move with five extra weeks of stress and no risk management.

Boston Beer never gave you one.

Sam Adams went public in November 1995 at $20 and popped 63 percent on day one. Huge brand. Beloved product. Maximum hype.

It never formed an IPO base. It just rolled over.

Two years later it was an $8 stock, down roughly 75 percent from that day one high. Anyone who chased the open owned every point of that decline. Great company, great beer, brutal trade.

That’s the part nobody tells you. Some IPOs never give you the setup. The base requirement protects you from those too, because no base means no trade. Passing is a position.

So here’s my plan for SPCX.

Watch. Two weeks minimum, no exceptions, no matter what it does out of the gate.

If it builds a proper base, it goes on my watchlist with a defined buy point and a defined stop, and you’ll see it in the weekly plan. If it never sets up, I’ll let the biggest IPO in history sail right past me, because there is always another trade and staying in the game is rule number one.

The analysis tomorrow is the easy part. Sitting still while everyone around you buys is the hard part.

Twilio taught me that the waiting is the trade.

None of this is financial advice. I’m one trader documenting my process in real time. Do your own work and protect yourself first.

Most people come to software stocks backwards. They hear a ticker on a podcast, they buy it, and then they try to figure out what the company does after the fact. I did that for years before I learned a system. The order should be reversed. You understand the business, you understand the group it lives in, and then the chart tells you when.

So here are ten software names I think every investor should know in 2026. Some I own. Some I’ve worked at. Some I’ve pitched against in a deal. A few I’m watching and haven’t touched. For each one I’ll tell you what they do, give you the fundamental picture as it stands right now, and walk you through what I see on the chart.

A couple housekeeping notes. Several of these had earnings or corporate actions in the last few weeks, so the numbers below are current as of early June 2026. CrowdStrike has a 4-for-1 stock split effective July 2. Keep that in mind when you pull up the chart later this summer and the price looks a quarter of what you remember.

This is not financial advice. Please speak to a financial advisor before making investment decisions as they carry risk. I am simply a trader sharing his process.

Ok - lets dive in!

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1. Snowflake (SNOW)

What they do: Snowflake is a cloud data platform. Think of it as the warehouse where a company keeps all its data, except the warehouse lives in the cloud and scales instantly. When Snowflake IPO’d it was the talk of every SaaS company in the country. Everybody knew somebody who got stock and woke up rich. It earned that hype because it solved a real problem for builders. It’s a platform for developers and data teams, a toolbox rather than a plug-and-play app, and that’s exactly why it stuck.

The fundamental brief:

• Product revenue grew 34% year over year in the most recent quarter, an acceleration from 30% the quarter before. That reacceleration is the whole story here.

• Net revenue retention sits at 126%, meaning existing customers spend 26% more each year. That’s the engine of a great consumption business.

• Over 13,600 accounts are now using Snowflake’s AI features, and management is positioning the platform as the data foundation underneath enterprise AI.

• Remaining performance obligations (contracted future revenue) are over $9 billion, so the demand is visible, not hoped for.

• Still expensive on traditional metrics, which is the tax you pay for owning a fast grower at scale.

What the chart says: Strong reaction off earnings, now consolidating. It’s pulled back into the lows of the earnings gap-up and needs time. This is a big move digesting at its own pace. With the recent broad-market selling, the move now is to wait for it to go sideways and build something constructive before thinking about an entry. Not ruling it out at all. Just not ready.

2. Twilio (TWLO)

What they do: Twilio is a developer’s dream. Full disclosure, I own it and I used to work there. You create an account, connect a card, and use their APIs to wire your app into the phone network. Want your app to send a text or place a call? Twilio’s huge supplier network handles it through a few lines of code. They won the hearts and minds of developers the way the best infrastructure companies always do, by letting builders access powerful tools immediately without asking permission.

The fundamental brief:

• Revenue grew 20% year over year last quarter to $1.41 billion, the fastest growth in more than three years.

• Messaging growth accelerated to 25%, and voice grew 20% for the sixth straight quarter, both helped by new AI use cases.

• Operating margin jumped to 7.7% from 2% a year ago. The profitability turnaround is real and showing up in the numbers.

• Generated $132 million in free cash flow and bought back $253 million in stock during the quarter.

• Management raised full-year guidance. The one watch item is gross margin pressure from carrier fees, expected to shave roughly 200 basis points this year.

What the chart says: Looks really strong. It broke out of a high tight flag, digested, and went first, ahead of most of the other software names. It digested beautifully, came off the 21-day EMA to new highs, and has been holding those highs well. This is a clear leader of the market and one of the strongest names on this list.

3. ServiceNow (NOW)

What they do: ServiceNow owns the IT service management space. If you’ve ever submitted a help-desk ticket at a big company because your laptop died, it probably ran through ServiceNow. They started in IT ticketing and have spent years pushing into adjacent workflows, taking shots at content management and other enterprise use cases. They’ve become a sort of platform for how large organizations get internal work done, and lately the market has treated the stock almost like a momentum name.

The fundamental brief:

• Subscription revenue grew 22% year over year last quarter. At this size, that’s exceptional.

• The AI product line (Now Assist) is the catalyst. Customers spending over $1 million a year on it grew more than 130%.

• They run a “Rule of 55+” profile, meaning growth plus margin comfortably clears the 40 that defines a healthy software company.

• Raised full-year subscription revenue guidance and authorized an additional $5 billion buyback.

• Reminder: NOW completed a stock split, so the share price is far lower than the four-figure number long-time watchers remember.

What the chart says: Strong move right off the bottom, but it ran straight into resistance at the 200-day moving average. One of my hard rules is that I don’t buy stocks trading under their 200-day. So for now I’m watching to see if it can chop higher and eventually build a proper base. The business is dominant and the customer base is sticky, which is why it stays on the list, but the chart needs more work before it’s actionable.

4. CrowdStrike (CRWD)

What they do: CrowdStrike is cybersecurity, specifically endpoint protection and threat intelligence delivered from the cloud. They’re servicing one of the hottest areas in all of enterprise software right now. AI has made cybersecurity more important, not less, because the same tools that help defenders also help attackers. CrowdStrike has a strong brand and a deep customer base in IT security, and that matters in a category where trust is the product.

The fundamental brief:

• Revenue grew 26% year over year last quarter to $1.39 billion. Annual recurring revenue crossed $5.5 billion.

• Here’s the update to watch: CrowdStrike is now GAAP profitable, posting $27.8 million in net income versus a loss a year ago. Non-GAAP EPS rose to $1.10 from $0.73.

• The earlier knock on this name was negative earnings. That story is actively resolving as profitability scales.

• Management is guiding toward a long-term goal of $20 billion in recurring revenue and keeps raising the outlook.

• A 4-for-1 stock split takes effect July 2, 2026. The chart will look very different after that, mechanically, not fundamentally.

What the chart says: Looks excellent. Broke out of a base, pushed above the 200-day, and everything is lined up: 10-day over the 21-day, 50-day over the 200-day. Strong move, then a few days of pullback that digested the gains well. I’d put it right next to Twilio in terms of leadership. The only thing that gave me pause was the earnings picture, because I buy fundamentals first and the chart second, never the other way around. With profitability now turning positive, that concern is fading.

5. Palo Alto Networks (PANW)

What they do: Palo Alto is the other heavyweight in cybersecurity, with roots in network firewalls and a platform that now spans cloud security, identity, and AI protection. They’ve been around a long time and built a great name over those years, which counts for a lot in security. Same tailwind as CrowdStrike: AI has raised the urgency around protecting the enterprise, and Palo Alto sits right in the path of that spending.

The fundamental brief:

• Just reported (June 2). Revenue grew 31% year over year to $3.0 billion, a real acceleration from the steady 12-to-15% range they ran for years.

• That jump was helped by two big acquisitions, CyberArk and Chronosphere, expanding them into identity and observability.

• Next-Generation Security ARR grew 60% to over $8 billion. That’s the part of the business the market cares most about.

• Free cash flow grew 57% to $910 million. The cash engine is strong.

• They posted a GAAP net loss this quarter on acquisition costs, but raised full-year earnings guidance, so the profitability trend is intact.

What the chart says: Looks a lot like CrowdStrike, almost identical. Strong move up, two days down, nothing wrong. A completely deserved pullback that’s digesting gains. Technically healthy. The sales reacceleration into the 30s is a genuine catalyst, and it shows up in both the numbers and the tape.

6. Datadog (DDOG)

What they do: Datadog is observability, the software that tells engineers whether their applications and cloud infrastructure are healthy. When something breaks at 2 a.m., Datadog is the dashboard that tells the on-call engineer where and why. I’ll be honest, I don’t have deep firsthand knowledge of the product, but I know the company hires extremely well. Some of the best salespeople I worked with at previous companies went to Datadog, and that tells you something about how they build.

The fundamental brief:

• Revenue grew 32% year over year last quarter and crossed $1 billion for the first time. That’s the strongest growth in eight quarters.

• AI workloads are now a real demand driver. Major hyperscalers are using Datadog to monitor GPU and AI training infrastructure.

• Remaining performance obligations grew 51%, so future demand is highly visible.

• Non-GAAP EPS of $0.60 beat handily, though GAAP net income is still thin at around $53 million. Worth knowing the gap between the two.

• High-value customers (over $100K in annual revenue) grew 21% to about 4,550.

What the chart says: Looks good. Very strong recent move. I’m waiting to see if it builds a base and goes sideways for a bit before I’d act, but the fundamentals are among the most impressive on this list and the group it operates in is strong.

7. Cloudflare (NET)

What they do: Cloudflare serves a specific and important purpose. They’re network security and performance. When you run an enterprise, you want to protect your network, keep employees off dangerous sites, and stop attackers from getting in. Cloudflare sits in front of all that traffic. AI has scared a lot of people on the security front, and Cloudflare directly addresses that fear. Network security is its own niche inside the broader software group, and the people who work there tend to be specialists, not generalists. I went up for a role there once. They wanted people who understood the security space specifically, not just SaaS.

The fundamental brief:

• Revenue grew 34% year over year last quarter to $640 million, with growth accelerating.

• Deals over $1 million grew 73%, the fastest pace for that cohort since 2024. The enterprise is showing up in size.

• 42% of the Fortune 500 are now paying customers.

• Here’s the news item: Cloudflare announced a roughly 20% workforce reduction (about 1,100 people) to shift to an AI-first operating model, with $140-$150 million in restructuring charges. Strong quarter, big internal bet at the same time.

• Gross margin slipped to the low 70s as lower-margin developer and AI products grew. A trend to watch.

What the chart says: This one is interesting. It built a very long base, consolidating for over a year in a wide cup formation. It tried to break out to new highs in May, failed on a disappointing earnings report, and dropped hard, about 23%. It never quite cleared the old 260 highs. Then recently, off that low, it rallied impressively, pushed above 260, and has been digesting sideways above that level, which I think is healthy. From a relative strength standpoint it looks excellent. A lot of names got hit in the recent selling and this one barely shows a down day. Next to Twilio and Datadog, it’s taken the least damage. That kind of relative strength is worth paying attention to.

8. MongoDB (MDB)

What they do: MongoDB is a modern database. Traditional databases store information in rigid rows and columns, like a spreadsheet. MongoDB stores it in flexible documents, which developers love because it bends to how applications actually work instead of forcing the app to bend to the database. Their cloud product, Atlas, is the growth engine, and they’re increasingly positioned as a place to build AI applications on top of the data a company already runs.

The fundamental brief:

• Revenue grew 25% year over year last quarter to $688 million, an acceleration from the 22% they’d run in prior years.

• Atlas, the cloud product, grew 29% and is now at a $2 billion run rate.

• The stock jumped more than 20% on this report and management raised full-year guidance.

• Non-GAAP EPS of $1.32 beat by a wide margin. GAAP net income is still small, so mind the GAAP-to-non-GAAP gap here as with several names on this list.

• Vector search and AI features are growing faster than the overall company, which is the forward-looking signal.

What the chart says: It looks like it’s forming a cup with handle. It’s early and still needs to digest, but if it can get back over 400, that becomes a meaningful level to watch for a potential entry. The distinguishing factor is that it’s actually building a pattern. I’d want to see the moving averages tidy up first, specifically the 50-day getting back above the 200-day. The 20%+ earnings pop is the kind of move that can resolve a base like this, so it’s firmly on the watchlist.

9. JFrog (FROG)

What they do: JFrog occupies a niche in software supply chain management. When developers build software, they pull in hundreds of outside components and packages. JFrog is the system of record that stores, manages, and secures all of those building blocks as they move from a developer’s laptop into production. It’s not a household name, and it was newer to me too, but the position they hold is mission-critical for the companies that use them.

The fundamental brief:

• Revenue grew 26% year over year last quarter to $154 million, with cloud revenue up 50% and now over half the business.

• Net dollar retention is 120%, improving, and gross retention is 97%. Customers stay and spend more.

• Security and software-supply-chain attacks are a growing tailwind, which plays directly to what JFrog sells.

• Like several names here, GAAP shows a small net loss while non-GAAP EPS is positive at $0.27. The cloud mix shift is the thing driving the model forward.

• The board authorized a $300 million buyback, a sign of management confidence.

What the chart says: Really strong. It broke out of a high tight flag I was watching and digested the gains well. Everything is in order, all the moving averages lined up. This was one of my shortlisted names alongside Twilio and DigitalOcean. The combination of a clean technical setup and 26% growth with a 50% cloud business is exactly the kind of profile I look for.

10. DigitalOcean (DOCN)

What they do: DigitalOcean is cloud infrastructure built for simplicity, aimed at developers and smaller businesses rather than giant enterprises. Where the big hyperscalers can feel like flying a 747, DigitalOcean is designed to let a solo developer or small team deploy and scale an app quickly. More recently they’ve leaned hard into being an “AI-native cloud” built for inference and agentic workloads, which is their attempt to ride the AI wave without competing head-on with the giants.

The fundamental brief:

• Revenue grew 22% year over year last quarter to $258 million, and they raised full-year guidance with 2027 growth now expected to exceed 50%.

• Here’s the correction to my first read: this was a strong quarter. EPS came in at $0.44 against a $0.26 estimate, a roughly 69% beat.

• AI customer ARR grew 221% and million-dollar-customer ARR grew 179%. The AI pivot is showing up in the numbers fast.

• Adjusted EBITDA margin is healthy in the high 30s to low 40s. This is a profitable grower, not a cash-burner.

• They raised equity and paid down debt during the quarter, strengthening the balance sheet for the AI buildout.

What the chart says: Technically strong. The flag was powerful, a jump from around 100 to a little over 160. It didn’t quite clear 100%, so it’s not textbook high tight, but it’s a strong move. When it broke out, though, it didn’t run far. It stayed right above its pivot rather than moving out quickly the way Twilio and JFrog did. That’s not necessarily bad, and it could still work. All the moving averages are in order and the relative strength looks good. I originally passed because my first read had the earnings going the wrong way. Looking at the actual numbers now, that was wrong, and this one deserves a fresh look. Early, strong, and worth watching.

How to use this list

You don’t need to own ten software stocks. You probably shouldn’t. The value of a list like this isn’t the ten names, it’s the habit. Pick the two or three that fit how you think, learn the business until you could explain it to a friend, and then let the chart tell you when the market agrees with you.

Right now most of these are digesting big moves. That’s not a problem, it’s a process. The leaders here (Twilio, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto, JFrog) have already shown their hand. The base-builders (Snowflake, MongoDB, Cloudflare, Datadog) are telling you to be patient. And a couple (ServiceNow, DigitalOcean) are puzzles I’m still working through.

The system doesn’t ask you to predict. It asks you to prepare. Build the watchlist now, so when the setup comes, you’re not meeting the company for the first time.

If this was useful, subscribe. I document the real trades, the real losses, and the real process, one week at a time.

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This week we are doing things a little differently. This one is free for everyone, and it is a broader look at the market than usual. More themes, more leadership, more names worth watching across the board.

Here is what we are covering.

Market Pulse. A read on whether the QQQ keeps riding its trend or needs to rest, and what a pullback would mean for how aggressive we should be right now.

The Focus List. Seven names we are actively trading or watching closest. Charts, commentary, and the levels that matter. Holdings are tagged.

The Broad Watchlist. A wide sweep of the strongest setups across software, AI, semis, financials, and a few institutional anchors. Rapid fire, with the level to watch on each.

Quick reminder before we get into it:

Nothing in here is financial advice. Talk to an adviser. This is one trader’s read on the tape and the names worth watching. Do your own research, manage your own risk, and never trade money you cannot afford to lose. The number one rule is to stay in the game and live to invest another day.

Let’s get into it.

Market Pulse

We are in a confirmed uptrend and the job this week is to prepare for every scenario rather than predict one.

The market can absolutely continue higher. The rotation into software has been real, and that alone could power the next leg. But we are extended from the moving averages, and a pullback here would be healthy, not a problem. The Qs have been riding the 10-day cleanly, so a test back toward 720 would be natural and would do more good than harm. It resets the stage, retests prior highs, and gives us a real launchpad instead of a tired drift higher.

That is the read we are leaning toward. A pullback that holds and then goes. We think it, but we do not need to be right about it, because the plan does not depend on it. We manage each position stock by stock, we keep our stops, and we always have a way out in case of catastrophe.

What this means for sizing: stay on offense while names are working and lows hold above the 21-day, but be ready to ease off the gas rather than running full margin the whole time. Sometimes the right move is to chill. The market moves to disappoint the most people, and right now the crowd is still skeptical and top-calling, which usually means up.

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Sentiment Check

Here is the part that should keep us interested. After two months of the market grinding higher, sentiment is only just now entering the Greed zone at 60. A week ago it was 58, a month ago it was 66. We are not in euphoria. We are in the polite end of greed.

That gap matters. If we get the sharp pullback we are watching for and sentiment slides back toward neutral, the next move up would have a far bigger launching pad underneath it. That is jumping the gun for now, so we just keep watching.

What we are actually seeing tells the same story. X is full of bear cases right now. AI is fake, the theme is a Ponzi, the money is not real, pick your flavor of doom. There is a lot of negativity out there, and the index is reflecting exactly that. Sentiment has not caught up to price action, and there is no overwhelming euphoria to end this run. The market moves to disappoint the most people, and right now that still means up.

The Focus List

$SNDK, SanDisk [HOLDING]

Long since April and up over 100% on the position. This is our Stars Aligned trade, and the precedent is Qualcomm in 1999. It has broken out of the high tight flag and cleared 1600, and the structure is holding.

This is a place to scale out, not in. Here is the locked plan. A close below 1580 takes us from oversized down to full position, and we put the oversize back on at a reclaim of 1600 if it sets up again. A close below 1520 takes us from full down to our 15% core. The core does not get touched unless the 21-day goes, which drops us to a starter, and a break of the 10-week (50-day) closes the trade entirely.

The boogeyman here is volume. It is drifting higher on below-average volume, which can cut either way. What we want to see is what Qualcomm did the week after its high tight flag broke: a stalling week that ran up and then reversed to close flat. If we get that, we get excited, because that is the template doing its job. Manage it day by day on a closing basis.

$CRDO, Credo Technology [HOLDING]

We are up about 20% here, bought off the 10-week. There is not much to do because they report earnings Monday after the close, which locks out a clean new entry. Buying a stock the day it reports is a gamble, so proceed with caution.

We are holding through only because the cushion is there. If it gaps up on the print, that is a great opportunity to buy an earnings gap, one of our favorite ways into a stock. If it gaps down, the 21-day is our line in the sand. For a fresh holder who bought at the 10-week, a break of the 10-week is the exit. For us, given where we bought, the 21-day is where we live. Below that is too much drawdown to carry.

$NBIS, Nebius [HOLDING]

The price action last week was the story. Over the last three weeks it has been tightening, contracting, less and less volatility. That is exactly what we want to see. It broke out of its base at 140, ran to a high of 233.73, and has been coiling since.

We are playing this as an ascending base on the daily, and we have already built a position off upside reversal entries. It is actionable at 233.72 because that clears the ascending base. The discipline we learned the hard way here: we buy light on the breakout and heavy on the reversals. The breakout add is the smallest, last bite, never the entry and never early. We jumped the pivot by a buck twice and got punished for it. Next add only on a clean break and hold above 233.72.

$STRL, Sterling Infrastructure [HOLDING]

This started building a high tight flag and came down a little more than we wanted in the flag, so it is not the neatest formation. But it found support at the 21-day and has reversed higher, and we have been building off those upside reversals off the low.

We are watching for the flag breakout around 890, which is where it becomes actionable to add. Strong earnings, strong sales, excellent technical action, and the infrastructure-plus-AI build-out is underappreciated right now. This is the best-acting name we own and it is bucking a weak tape.

$TWLO, Twilio [HOLDING]

This is how we are playing software, and we have been in the space for almost 15 years. Twilio is loved by developers, the fundamental story is strong, and we know this business inside out. It gapped up on earnings like a leader and was underpriced at the end of April, then spent the last month digesting that gap and building a high tight flag on the 21-day.

We have been building off the bottom of the flag on upside reversals. It is actionable to add around 203.71, the pivot of the flag. Other software names get more attention, but this is the one we have conviction in. Stop sits at 180, the low of the upside reversal day.

$ONDS, Ondas Holdings [HOLDING]

A drone company that gapped up on news of federal drone funding. It had the earnings gap, then an inside day that consolidated nicely within the gap bar, then a constructive upside reversal that closed right back near the gap-day close. We bought it at 12.42 on a break of resistance inside the larger base.

No plans to add here. We are using a general percentage stop rather than the technical level, because the technical break near 11 is more drawdown than we want. It is actionable at the gap-day high, so an entry at 1380 would be constructive, playing continuation of the earnings momentum. That is an aggressive entry and it is not for everyone. It moves violently, so we keep it small.

$CRCL, Circle [HOLDING]

This one has been tricky for a lot of people, and the fundamental story is excellent. Last week was constructive. It cut below the 50-day and 200-day, then put in an upside reversal, our favorite entry. We entered on the second day after the reversal, using time as confirmation.

If you missed that, the more constructive spot is around 120, which clears a lot of resistance inside the consolidation, with a full position around 130. It is also four weeks tight on the weekly with a weekly upside reversal. The last time it printed a weekly upside reversal, it ran 176% to its recent high. We will see if that repeats or if it is different this time.

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The Broad Watchlist

A wider sweep of the strongest setups on the board. Rapid fire, with the level that matters on each. These are watching unless noted.

$DELL, Dell [WATCHING] Broke out on the 263 catalyst, now a 32.7% gap up. Amazing strength, but it has run. Aggressive players work the intraday highs for a momentum add. Proceed with caution this far extended.

$IBM, IBM [WATCHING] Strong up day, above the 200-day, clearing prior consolidation. A little extended from its last breakout. The 320 level is the prior resistance to clear. We want it to digest and give us a high tight flag or a 200-day retest on an upside reversal. High on the list, not yet actionable.

$FROG, JFrog [WATCHING] Covered in last weeks plan. High tight flag broke out, big day Friday up 9%. Strong mover. Watch for pullbacks.

$CRWD, CrowdStrike [WATCHING] Same setup. Broke out, strong Friday, relative strength 94. Nothing to do here yet. Wait for a pullback and a digestion of the gains.

$SNOW, Snowflake [WATCHING] Strong gap up. The entry was the gap-day high at 244.92, now 255.55, with resistance at 280. Very extended. We want it sideways to give us something to trade. Nothing actionable up here.

$INOD, Innodata [WATCHING] Caught the earnings gap and sold into strength. It has built a clean base since, in the spirit of a high tight flag, and the flagpole ran 100%. First buy point inside the base is 100, the actual breakout is 114.77. Around 115 is where it is actionable.

$DAVE, Dave [WATCHING] A mention, not a buy. Relative strength up to 89. These are not names we trade, but we want financials acting well in a bull market, and they are starting to catch up. Healthy sign.

$GEN, Gen Digital [WATCHING] A character change. Broke out at 20, ran into the 200-day, consolidated right underneath it, then had a super strong breakout from that flag on Friday. Beautiful chart. Fundamentals are not the blowout we would like, but the price action is excellent.

$AVGO, Broadcom [WATCHING] Long consolidation since mid-April, broke out Friday on strong volume. Everything you want to see. Actionable within 5% of 442.36. We want follow-through from this fresh breakout.

$FLEX, Flex [WATCHING] A clean high tight flag. Consolidated after a high of 147.34 and broke out Friday. Relative strength 98. Actionable within 5% of the pivot. We would rather it digest up here and give us an upside reversal entry.

$DOCN, DigitalOcean [WATCHING] Another software name, still consolidating sideways. Was on the watchlist alongside Twilio. Actionable around 170.

$MRVL, Marvell [WATCHING] Chopping but not violating the 21-day. We are watching for an ascending base, but it has not done anything yet. It needs a real pullback and some base building before it is actionable. A liquid leader and an institutional darling, so it stays on the list. Better merchandise to trade right now.

$WDC, Western Digital [WATCHING] The other side of the memory trade. Very similar to SanDisk, just not quite as strong on the last session, right at a new high of 525.15. We want it to hold above 500 in the same way we need SanDisk to hold 1600.

$KRYS, Krystal Biotech [WATCHING] Strong, consolidating well off a long base. Watching for the breakout pivot.

$GLW, Corning [WATCHING] Got shaken out before earnings and took profits. It is forming what looks like an ascending base and finding support at the 10-week. Not as high-octane as the other AI names, but interesting around 200 if it can clear that consolidation and get above it.

$AMZN, Amazon [WATCHING] Long base in the mid-200s since December 2024. Recent dip below the 200-day reset the base, then a run to 278.56 and sideways since. Actionable above 250. An institutional anchor to balance out the high-octane names if you need stability.

$TSLA, Tesla [WATCHING] Consolidating since December 2024, lots of digestion sideways. The perfect entry was the 5/19 upside reversal. The second-best spot is a break above 455.

$BE, Bloom Energy [WATCHING] A comment, not a buy. This one is a mess and has been our toughest teacher. Almost impossible to buy on strength, messy consolidation, violent swings. We want the violence to ease and a cleaner base. The fundamentals are amazing, and if you buy weakness with disciplined stops it could work. It does not fit our personality right now.

$COCO, Vita Coco [WATCHING] Was the talk of the town, then forgotten. Strong run to 80, then two weeks tight going into a third. We want a break above 80 on violent volume and a big move up. That would be interesting.

$RKLB, Rocket Lab [WATCHING] Amazing move off a cup with handle, textbook breakout at 93.10. It has gone, drifting up and finding support at the 10-day. Watching for the next base, a strong pullback, or a 21-day pullback. One we have wanted and struggled to get into.

$MXL, MaxLinear [WATCHING] Covered last week. Shook us out a few times on violent moves. It found support at the 21-day and has flushed a lot of investors. We wait for the new high. The most recent shakeout was 106.28, so the entry is 106.30 to clear that resistance. Do not jump the gun.

$INTC, Intel [WATCHING] One of the first to go parabolic after it was depressed. It has digested the gains surprisingly well off a high of 132.75. It broke a downtrend on a pocket pivot then reversed off it. We want it to bounce off the 21-day and give an upside reversal. Otherwise the entry is 133.

Closing Thought

The strongest tell on the board this week is where the setups are. They are stacked in software, and the AI trade is still fully intact. Some attention has shifted off the memory trade, and that quiet could actually be the setup for the next leg there.

A pullback is what we are expecting, and we are treating it as a gift rather than a threat. We scale out of what is not working and into what is. We give the leaders a little more room to breathe in a tape like this, and we keep our stops no matter what.

Do not let anyone else’s numbers pull you off your game. There is a lot of noise out there, a lot of people lying about returns. Play your plan, manage your risk, and the gains will come to those who are still standing.

See you on the other side of the open.

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“It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It was always my sitting.” -Jesse Livermore

I read that in “Reminisces” and it sounds simple. Almost obvious. Like something you put on a coffee mug or a t-shirt.

Then you actually try to do it.

The money is in the sitting. Everyone hears that and pictures the same thing: some stoic investor holding a position while the world burns around him, unmoved, zen, untouchable. And yeah, that part is hard. Your net worth is on the line. A bad outcome is always one headline away. The margin account staring back at you is real, it is your house, your freedom fund, your future. Feeling that weight and staying put anyway is genuinely difficult.

But that is not even the hardest part.

The hardest part nobody talks about is the stock next door. You are in a name up six percent on the day, holding your position, doing everything right. Two tickers over, something is running twelve. Thirteen. You watch it move in real time. Your stock is working and somehow you still feel like you are losing. That feeling will make you sell a winner to chase something faster, ruin your average cost chasing a move you already missed, and shake yourself out of the right trade for no reason other than impatience. Sitting tight is not just about holding through pain. It is about holding through someone else’s gain.

Then there is the wall of worry. Every bull market has a boogeyman. Right now you can take your pick: oil near a hundred dollars, yields at multi-decade highs, credit stress building under the surface, bearish divergences that someone on social media is very excited to show you. And there will always be someone ready to call the top.

After “The Big Short”, everyone wants to be Burry.

There is something about the bear case that is irresistible to a certain type of market participant. Calling the top is the trade that makes you look smart forever if you are right and gets forgotten immediately if you are wrong. The asymmetry of the reputation payoff means there will never be a shortage of people telling you the market is about to roll over. In the middle of a power trend, people will find a reason. They always do.

The wall of worry lets me know the uptrend is actually healthy. The worry is what keeps enough people on the sideline to fuel the next leg up. A market with no worry is a market near its top.

The dopamine is the other thing. Pressing the buy button feels good. There is no cleaner hit in trading than entering a new position, watching it tick up, feeling like you saw something nobody else saw. The problem is that the market knows this about you. It will give you setups that feel real just to shake you out of the one that is. The discipline is not just sitting in your positions. It is sitting on your hands when there is nothing to do. Going to the gym. Reading a book. Play a new video game. Closing the screen and trusting that your levels are your levels and the market will come to you or it will not.

Sometimes the best trade is no trade.

And then there are the days when you do everything right and nothing works. You followed the rules. You managed the risk. You did not chase. And the account still went against you. There is nothing more frustrating in this game than process discipline without results. Those are the days the market is testing whether you actually believe in your system or whether you just believe in it when it is working. I have been there recently. Felt the pull to call it, step back, shut it down. The market will do that to you.

Sitting tight is a skill. Built through repetition, through getting shaken out enough times to recognize the pattern, through learning the difference between a stop that needs to be honored and noise that needs to be ignored. You build a plan before the market opens. You set your levels. You decide in advance what would change your mind and what would not. Then when the chaos hits, and it always hits, you have something to hold onto besides your feelings.

The market will test your conviction, your patience, your process, and your sense of self. Sometimes on the same day.

Sit anyway.

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This week we are doing things a little differently. Three names get the full breakdown with charts and levels. The rest of the portfolio gets targeted notes below the paywall.

This is what we are covering this week.

Market Pulse. A read on where we are in the current confirmed uptrend and what a pivotal moment in the tape means for how aggressive to be on new buys.

Three Lead Ideas. One AI semi, one software name, one crypto-adjacent play. Full charts, full levels, full reasoning on each. Free for everyone this week.

The Rest of the Portfolio. Five more names with current positioning, key levels, and what we are watching. Current holdings are tagged.

Quick reminder before we get into it. Nothing in here is financial advice. This is one trader’s read on the tape and the names worth watching. Do your own research, manage your own risk, and never trade money you cannot afford to lose.

Let’s get into it.

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Market Pulse

We are at a pivotal moment. The follow-through day in April established the current uptrend and the tape has been rewarding disciplined buyers ever since. The trend is intact but we are not in a “buy everything” environment. This is a stock picker’s market right now and the divergence between what is working and what is not is wide.

The leading AI names have been the engine of this run. The down days we have seen so far have not been distribution days. They have been rotation days, with money moving from AI semis into transportation, energy, and software. That rotation tells us risk appetite is still healthy, just moving around.

What we are watching this week: whether the leading names continue to build constructive bases above their 10-day moving averages or start to crack them. A cluster of 10-day violations across the leaders would be the first sign to tighten up. Until then, we stay engaged and keep sizing into quality setups.

Position sizing this week: normal for breakouts from tight flags with defined stops. Light for early entries ahead of the pivot. Patience is the edge right now, not urgency.

The Focus List

$MXL, MaxLinear [HOLDING, NEW]

This is the AI theme idea for the next few weeks.

MXL has put together five consecutive quarters of earnings acceleration versus the same quarter a year prior. Sales growth went from negative to plus 43% in the most recent quarter. The fundamentals are backing the chart, not fighting it.

The pattern is about as clean a high tight flag as this market has produced. It has been consistently closing above the 10-day moving average since the April follow-through day. The flag is bounded between $80.25 on the low end and $104.27 at the high. It has been using upside and downside reversals within that range, and the right side of the base looks healthy.

We started buying on a pocket pivot on Wednesday May 20th when MXL broke its internal downtrend line within the flag. Friday’s shakeout forced us out, but we bought back into the upside reversal by end of day. That Friday low at $88.50 is the stop. Anything trading below $88.50 and we hold light until the base resolves.

For most readers, the clean entry is the breakout at $104.27. We will be adding as it crosses $100, treating that as a Livermore century mark, and building to full size at $104.27. Relative strength rating of 99. This is the primary idea heading into the week.

$TWLO, Twilio [WATCHING]

This is the software idea and the rotation hedge.

Twilio has always been the developer community’s API company, and that identity is getting a second act. As companies build AI infrastructure and connect telephony components to it, Twilio is the vendor sitting in the critical path. Voice AI integration gives the fundamental story a new angle.

The chart is where the risk is defined. Twilio was building a high tight flag and found resistance at $200. It pulled back and reversed off the 21-day exponential moving average, which is currently sitting around $180. That is the line in the sand.

We like this setup because the downside is clear and the asymmetry is there. The plan is to start building a position here, add through $190 on a cross, and go to full size on a cross of $200 into new highs. The stop is $180, period. If it loses the 21-day, we are out.

Relative strength at 93. Good earnings and sales growth. Software has been lagging the AI names but on the rotation days, it has been the beneficiary. This is how we stay in the market during AI down days without going to cash.

$CRCL, Circle Internet Group [HOLDING]

This is the crypto-adjacent idea and the slow play.

Circle is not a fundamental story in the traditional sense. Earnings and sales are not yet at the levels we usually require. We built conviction here the hard way, by going deep on the business. Circle is the stablecoin infrastructure company that has done the regulatory homework no one else has done yet. As AI agents become a real part of daily commerce, stablecoins are the payment rail between them. Circle is the only entity positioned to clear that transaction at scale right now.

The chart has done its part. A cup formed from mid-March to early May. A short handle tried to break out and failed, but it never undercut the breakout day low at $105.36. That $105 level is real support. The 50-day moving average is above the 200-day and both are relatively flat, which is constructive.

We own it here. The last three weeks have been exceptionally tight, trading within 1.5% on weekly closes with volume completely dried up. That is a Bill O’Neil tightness signal. We are adding on a cross of $120. The next significant level is $130, which would be a full breakout of the cup. The stop is the 50-day, with $105 as the emergency exit.

This one moves on its own clock. It is not going to run with the AI heat. But if that setup resolves, we will be sized and ready.

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There’s an aha moment in every sales career where you realize you know something your boss doesn’t.

Not because you’re smarter (although I have had some terrible managers in my career), but because you’re the one sitting across from the customer every single day. Your buyer will tell you things they’ll never put in a survey or say on an earnings call.

I remember a quarterly business review early in my tech career. Our VP was running down the list, asking each rep what they were seeing.

“What are the customers saying?”

That’s the question that I always think about.

We knew it weeks before he asked. We knew it before any analyst updated their model. We knew it because the deals told us. The urgency in a customer’s voice told us. The ones who suddenly stopped returning calls told us. The ones who wanted to get something signed before the quarter ended told us.

“We keep losing to Microsoft. They have all of the relationships because of the stickiness of O365.”

That information didn’t come from a dashboard or a spreadsheet. That knowledge came from real conversations with our customers.

The people closest to the customer know the truth about a business before anyone else does. Leadership catches up eventually. The market catches up last.

I didn’t connect this to investing until years later. But when I did, it changed how I looked at every stock I’ve ever bought since.

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In enterprise software sales, almost every deal you work is a competitive deal. The customer doesn’t just come to you. They bring in three or four vendors, run a formal evaluation, score everyone, and pick a winner. And when that contract gets signed, it means something.

It means your product beat the competition on a level playing field. It means the customer trusted your company over every other option they had. It means the market voted.

Now think about what it means when a company is winning those votes quarter after quarter. When revenue doesn’t just grow but accelerates, when the growth rate itself is getting bigger every three months, when customers keep choosing them over and over in competitive situations against real alternatives. That’s a signal that goes way beyond a number on a spreadsheet.

Salespeople always want to go work for the winning company. Everyone in a competitive industry knows who the dominant player is. Customers know too. And the revenue line is where all of that shows up in a form that any investor can read.

One strong quarter of sales could be a fluke. A seasonal deal. A one-time contract that pulled in a lot at once. But three quarters of accelerating revenue, where growth is building on top of itself, that tells you something real is happening in that marketplace. Customers are choosing this company over and over. Demand is real and it’s intensifying. You don’t need to understand every technical detail of the product or the dynamics of the industry to read that signal. The sales numbers are giving you the answer directly.

That’s the cheat code I wish someone had handed me when I first opened a brokerage account.

When I started studying investing seriously, I read everything I could get my hands on. Technical analysis. Fundamental analysis. Books from traders who lived inside price charts and books from investors who lived inside balance sheets. I was looking for a system that made sense to me, something that felt like it had a real foundation under it.

Peter Lynch stopped me cold.

Lynch ran the Magellan Fund at Fidelity for thirteen years and turned it into the best-performing mutual fund in the world during that run. The guy had a track record that made every other professional investor look sideways at their own career. And when he sat down to write about how he actually thought about stocks, he kept coming back to one thing.

He had a chapter called “Earnings, Earnings, Earnings.” Just that word, three times. Like he wanted to make absolutely sure the reader understood what mattered most.

His argument was simple enough that it almost sounds obvious in hindsight. A company that grows its earnings year after year will eventually be worth more. A company whose earnings are shrinking will eventually be worth less. The stock price will follow the earnings over time, not the other way around. All the noise around a stock, the headlines and the analyst ratings and the macro commentary, fades into the background when you understand that the earnings are the engine and the price is just reflecting it.

When I read that, something clicked. Because Lynch was describing from a finance perspective the exact same thing I had spent years learning from a sales perspective. The front-line signal was the same. The logic was the same. He just had a different word for the revenue momentum I had watched play out in deal cycles throughout my career.

When two completely different disciplines, built by people who came up through completely different worlds, arrive at the same conclusion independently, that conclusion tends to be true.

Lynch confirmed what the front lines had already taught me.

So here is what I actually look for, kept as simple as I can make it:

Revenue growth is the first thing I screen for, and I want to see it above fifty percent and accelerating. Quarterly, year over year. I want that growth rate moving higher. Forty percent one quarter, sixty the next, eighty after that. Each quarter confirming that the demand for this company’s product is building, that customers are choosing it at a faster and faster rate.

Revenue growth is the front-line signal. It tells you the market is voting for this company in real time.

Earnings growth is the second thing. I want to see that above fifty percent as well. Revenue tells you the company is winning customers. Earnings tell you the company is converting those customers into actual profit. Both matter, and I want both moving in the same direction at the same speed.

Those two filters alone, applied consistently, will take a universe of thousands of publicly traded companies and narrow it down to a handful. From there, the price chart tells you when to get in and where to put your stop. The fundamentals give you the conviction to hold through volatility. The chart gives you the timing and the risk management.

You do not need to be an expert in every industry. You do not need to understand the technical details of a semiconductor product or the regulatory environment of a healthcare company. The revenue growth number will tell you whether customers are choosing this company over the competition. The earnings growth number will tell you whether the business is financially healthy enough to sustain it. That combination, identified early, is how regular investors find the stocks that change their portfolios.

This is not a complicated system. And it works.

Most people who feel intimidated by investing are really just intimidated by the language around it. The jargon. The acronyms. The sense that there is some insider knowledge they are missing that everyone else on Wall Street already has.

There isn’t. The people who make money in markets over time are mostly doing a version of the same thing. They are finding businesses where demand is real and accelerating, where the sales line is growing faster than expected, where the earnings are confirming the story. And then they are patient enough to hold while the rest of the market catches up.

You have already seen this pattern play out in the real world, whether you realized it or not. You have watched a company go from a product people were talking about to a product everyone was buying to a stock that had already tripled before most people thought to look at it. The signal was in the revenue growth the whole time.

The only skill you are actually building when you learn to read earnings and sales data is the skill of listening to what the market is already telling you.

The front lines always know first. Now you do too.

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Ghost Alpha is a weekly newsletter documenting one trader’s active investing journey, built on the CAN SLIM methodology and over a decade of real trades. If this was useful, subscribe below. There’s a lot more where this came from.

This is what we are covering this week.

Market Pulse. A read on whether the NASDAQ holds its steep uptrend channel or needs to rest, and what the Russell 2000 at its 21-day tells us about how aggressive to be with new positions.

The Focus List. Nine names worth your attention this week. Charts, commentary, and the levels that matter for each one. Current holdings are tagged. The rest are setups we are watching.

Let’s get into it.

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There’s a guy named Stanley Druckenmiller.

If you’ve spent any time around traders, you know the name. People in the business talk about hedge fund managers the way other people talk about athletes. LeBron, Jordan, Brady. There’s a tier of names that everyone in markets agrees on, and Druck is at the top of it. Thirty percent annualized returns over thirty years. Never had a down year. The kind of track record that doesn’t make sense.

What makes him different from most of the legends is that he’s elusive. No book on Amazon. No course. If you want to learn from him, you have to dig through old interviews and piece it together yourself. The mystique adds to it.

The most famous story about him is when he broke the Bank of England. He was running Soros’s fund. He’d built a thesis that the British pound was going to crack against the Deutschmark. He’d done the work. He believed the trade was as close to a sure thing as anything in markets ever gets.

He went to Soros with the position size. Big position. The kind of size that would make most fund managers sweat.

Soros looked at him and said: what’s wrong with you? Why is it so small?

The lesson Druck took from that conversation defined his career.

When you know you’re right, you have to be right big.

That trade made Soros’s fund a billion dollars in a single day.

Here’s the tension every trader has to resolve.

Ask any successful trader what the number one rule of this game is and they’ll give you the same answer. Survival. You have to stay in the game. The math of compounding only works while you’re still playing. Time does most of the work, but you have to give time the chance to work.

Everything I learned coming up under the O’Neil system was built around survival. Cut losses fast. Keep small losses small. Trim what’s broken and add to what works. The whole framework exists to keep you alive long enough for the winners to do their thing.

So how does that reconcile with Druckenmiller saying you have to be right big? On the surface they sound opposed. One framework says protect the downside. The other says swing huge. Which one is the real rule?

I spent years wrestling with this.

The answer is that they’re sequential, not opposed.

Cut your losses fast on most trades. That’s the foundation. That’s how you stay solvent through the years when nothing is working. Small wins, small losses, manage the book, live to trade another day.

Then every so often, the market sets up a trade where everything lines up. The kind of trade where you can see it before it happens. Where the chart you’re watching matches a chart you studied at 3am. Where the market, the theme, the leader, and the precedent all point in the same direction.

That’s the trade you stomp on.

Most traders get the first half right and miss the second half entirely. They cut their losses well. They just go their whole career being technically correct and meaningfully underpaid because they size every trade the same way.

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Before I tell you the framework, let me tell you about a stock called Twilio.

This was 2020 to 2021. I was working at Twilio at the time, and like most employees at growth companies, I’d been accumulating company stock through the ESPP. You buy and hold a piece of the company you work for. Standard stuff.

My original grant on accepting the offer was around ten thousand dollars worth of stock. By the peak of that move, it was worth eighty. The business was firing on all cylinders. Everyone in the company was watching the price.

Then Twilio broke its 50-day moving average.

I sold every share.

A coworker found out and asked me what I was doing. We were killing it. Why would I sell?

I told him I had a rule. I don’t own stocks below their 50-day moving average. The company can be great. The chart is something else. The chart was broken, so I was out.

He thought I was nuts. I loved Twilio. I still love Twilio. It’s a great business and I’m grateful for everything that job did for my career. The business was one thing. The stock was a chart, and the chart had told me to leave.

That sale turned out to be the top.

Twilio went on to a years-long downtrend. The eighty thousand would have become twenty, then less. The rule saved me from giving it all back. The rule worked even when I didn’t want it to. The rule worked even when it cost me a story about riding my company stock to the moon.

That’s the example I come back to in my own head every time I’m tempted to break a rule. Rules work because rules work. That’s why you have them.

That’s the survival half of the equation. Now let’s talk about the other half.

The Stars Aligned framework.

The whole point is to give you a checklist for when it’s appropriate to bet big. Not a feeling. Not a hunch. A specific, comprehensive checklist that has to be fully met before you size up.

If even one item is missing, the trade can still be a great trade. It just gets sized like a normal A-grade setup. The “stomp on it” sizing is reserved for when the full checklist clears.

Four items.

1. A leading stock you’re already up on. At least ten percent, ideally fifteen. This is two things in one. The stock has to be a proven leader, a name that has already led in a previous leg of this bull market, established itself as a top relative strength name, and is now setting up for the next leg. And you have to be up on it. You’re playing with house money. You’re taking a bigger swing with profit, not principal. Soros said it himself in his interview with Charlie Rose. The asymmetry of pressing into a stock where you have a cushion is completely different from initiating a concentrated position fresh.

This is the one most traders get backwards. They see a fresh breakout, feel the conviction, and stomp on it. Then they get shaken out on the first normal pullback because they have no room to be wrong. The fix is patience. The first breakout in a name isn’t where you bet your year. The first breakout is what gives you the cushion so you can bet your year on the second or third base.

2. Market in a power trend. The general backdrop has to be healthy. Indexes above their key moving averages, leaders working, the kind of tape where you can use margin without flinching. I’ll write a full post on power trends another time. If you’re not sure whether you’re in one, you’re probably not. Power trends are obvious when they’re happening.

3. Leading theme. Bull markets are thematic. Every cycle has a story. In 1999 it was the internet. In the 2010s it was cloud and software. Right now it’s AI. The leading theme is usually obvious if you look at what’s pulling the indexes higher. Your stars-aligned trade should be in that theme.

4. Historical precedent that gives you a technical thesis. You need an old chart that matches the current setup. Same shape, same behavior, same setup, same role in its cycle. When you can pull up a chart from twenty years ago and trace it over your current chart, you have a precedent.

The precedent gives you the technical thesis. It tells you what the breakout should look like, how the stock should behave in the days after, where the moving averages should sit, what the volume should do. There will be variations. The precedent gives you shades of what to expect, not a one-to-one prediction.

Here’s the part that’s hard to explain unless you’ve felt it.

When the trade starts moving, and it moves the way your precedent moved, the stock starts to feel like a magnet. Every move pulls you deeper into the conviction. The chart is doing what the precedent did, and you can almost feel the next move before it prints.

That feeling is the stars aligning. That feeling is what tells you the precedent is real and the trade is the one. You either feel it or you don’t. When you feel it, you size accordingly.

How much is “big”?

This depends entirely on you. My number is not your number.

For context, my normal max position size is twenty to twenty-five percent of total equity. On a stars-aligned trade, I’ll go to forty or forty-five percent. Roughly double my normal max. I also double my risk budget. I normally risk one percent of total equity per trade. On a stars-aligned trade, two.

William O’Neil himself used to go to two hundred percent of his account on his big bets. Margined to the gills. That’s the legend version. Most of us are wired differently. I’m not built to sit with that. Forty-five percent is the upper limit of what I can hold through volatility.

What matters is the ratio. Whatever your normal max is, a stars-aligned trade should be roughly double it. The conditions are doubly favorable, so the size gets doubled.

One thing has to be said clearly.

Having the stars align does not guarantee that the trade works. The trade can fail. It can fail spectacularly. The bigger the size, the bigger the consequence if it goes wrong.

That’s why the checklist matters. That’s why you do the work. That’s why you study the precedent until 3am. You’re earning the right to bet big by doing the homework most traders skip. The size is the reward for the work, but the work doesn’t guarantee the outcome.

The rules from the survival half of the equation still apply. The stop is still the stop. The 50-day moving average is still the line. If the precedent stops working, you cut. The size up changes the upside if you’re right. The rules stay the same.

Here’s what took me a long time to understand.

The breakout is step one of fifty.

Stars-aligned trades are position trades. The whole point is to ride them. My target hold time is six to twelve months. Sometimes longer. NVIDIA has been longer.

Once you’re in the position, the work changes. You trade around a core. Trim into strength. Add back on pullbacks to key moving averages. Defend the position when it shakes you. Sit through the wiggles. Let the precedent play out over weeks and months.

This is where most traders mess it up. They get the entry right. They size correctly. Then they take profits on the first ten percent move because holding something that size feels uncomfortable. They turn a stars-aligned setup into a regular swing trade and leave the move on the table.

If you’re going to take profits at ten percent, you didn’t need to size it up. The whole reason to do the work is to ride the move.

Bringing it back.

Druckenmiller’s lesson and the survival lesson work together. You survive on the small trades so you can be there for the big ones. You cut losses on the regular A-grade setups so the winners can compound. Then every so often, when the stars actually align, you take the shot you’ve been waiting for.

Most of your trades will be about staying in the game.

A few of your trades will change your life.

The work is figuring out which one is which.

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This is what you are getting this week.

Market Pulse. A read on where we are in the cycle, what the trend is telling us, and how aggressive we should be right now. Nothing else in the plan matters if we get the market wrong.

The Focus List. Eight names worth your attention this week with the chart, the commentary, and the levels that matter for each one. Names I am currently holding are tagged. The rest are setups I am watching.

Video Commentary. A walk-through of the same market read and the same Focus List in motion. Entry points, ideal exits, and the fundamental story behind each name.

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The walk back from lunch felt different that day.

It was 2018, and Tilray had just put up the biggest dollar day of my trading life. Real money. The kind of number where you start doing the math on your apartment lease and your car payment and how long you could go without a paycheck.

I remember thinking, very clearly, I don’t need this job.

I didn’t quit. But for about 72 hours, I walked around like a guy who was about to.

Then came the next trade.

It was a Chinese ADR. I won’t pretend I remember the ticker. What I remember is the setup looked like it had octane, and I sized into it like a guy who had just figured the market out. Bigger than I should have. Earlier than I should have. With less of a plan than I should have, because plans are for people who haven’t just had their biggest dollar day.

It went against me almost immediately.

And I remember the cold. That’s the only word for it. A cold feeling in your stomach that has nothing to do with the money and everything to do with the realization that the version of you who walked back from lunch a few days earlier was not, in fact, a genius. He was a guy who got one right and immediately tried to cash the lottery ticket twice.

It was, functionally, a gambling loss. I don’t gamble. I tell myself I don’t gamble. But that trade was a bet, and I knew it the moment I clicked the button.

Your worst trade almost always comes right after your best one.

That’s the pattern. It’s not bad luck. It’s not some cosmic karma rebalancing your account. It’s a math problem dressed up as an emotional one. When you have a big winner, your sense of what’s normal recalibrates upward. The next setup that walks through the door doesn’t have to actually be better. It just has to look good enough for the new, inflated version of you to oversize into it.

And oversizing is the thing. Not the entry. Not the thesis. The size.

Mike Webster taught me something I didn’t fully understand at the time.

In the late 90s, his account ran up something like 1,600 percent. Real number. He was a serious trader at a serious firm, and that’s what he did. Years later he went back and stress-tested the QCOM trade, that legendary 1999 run where the stock went up something on the order of 2,000 percent.

Some of the guys at the firm went all in. Margin. Concentration. Two hundred percent loaded in a single name. The kind of position that makes a career.

And they finished the year up around 500 percent.

Five hundred percent is a great year. Five hundred percent on a stock that did 2,000 is a tragedy.

The reason isn’t a mystery. When you’re 200 percent in one name, you have no room. Every wiggle is a heart attack. Every drawdown is a margin call waiting to happen. You can’t hold. You can’t breathe. You’re not riding the move, you’re hostage to it. So you cut on the first real shake, and you spend the rest of the year trying to climb back into a position that has already left without you.

The backtest Webster ran was the part that broke my brain. If those same traders had used a controlled core position, capping out somewhere in the 25 to 30 percent range, and just let time do the work, they would have multiplied their returns.

Smaller size. Same stock. More money. Because they had the room to actually hold it.

That goes against everything we’re conditioned to believe.

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We’re trading like dopamine addicts now. Everything is instant. Your brokerage app has confetti animations. Your portfolio updates by the second. Your X feed is full of guys posting screenshots of one good trade and acting like they cracked the code.

Time is the variable nobody respects. And time is the great equalizer.

Warren Buffett doesn’t use margin. He doesn’t use leverage in any meaningful way. He uses time. That’s the whole edge. He bought what he bought, sized it where he sized it, and let the years do the math. We look at his returns and think the secret is the stock picking. The secret is the holding.

This is where I am right now in my own development.

What I’m working on this year, and what I’m trying to actually demonstrate in real time on the Substack, is becoming a position trader. Not a swing trader who got lucky and held for a few extra weeks. A real position trader. Someone who can sit with a core in a true market leader for 12 to 18 months and look back at the chart and say, calmly, that he aced the test.

The proof of concept I have is NVIDIA in my IRA. I sized it, I sat with it, and I let it work. The reason that one worked wasn’t because I’m smarter in my IRA. It’s because the structure of the account forced me to be patient. No itchy trigger finger. No screen-watching. Just time.

This week I’ve been studying the QCOM chart from 1999, pulling up the weekly, walking through how that move actually unfolded, where the bases formed, where the shake-outs were, what it would have taken to hold through them. It’s homework. The lesson is the same lesson Webster pulled out of it: the guys who held smaller and gave it room ended up with the trade. The guys who maxed in got chopped out of their own thesis.

The live application is SNDK. I’m in it. It’s where I’m trying to actually run the playbook. Smaller starter, real plan, real levels, real space to be wrong for a minute without panicking. A core position I can live with through a 10 percent shake, and a max position I have to actually earn into.

It’s a less exciting way to trade. It’s also, by every piece of evidence I’ve ever seen, the way that actually compounds.

The afterglow is the danger zone.

If you’re reading this and you’ve just had a big winner, congratulations, genuinely. Now watch yourself. The next trade you take is the one that’s going to test whether the win was a result of your process or a result of you getting one right. The market does not reward you for being a genius last week. It rewards you for being disciplined this week.

Plan your trade. Trade your plan. Size like you might be wrong, because sometimes you will be.

And when you’re not, when you actually catch a leader and the chart starts working, give the trade the one thing nobody wants to give it.

Time.

Ghost Alpha is a documentary of one trader’s CAN SLIM journey. If this hit, the best thing you can do is hit subscribe and stick around. The good stuff compounds.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. We’re in a power trend. The Nasdaq is resilient, the Russell is showing real strength, and my portfolio is fully invested in what I believe are genuine market leaders. And yet, sitting here fully allocated, I still feel underinvested.

If you’ve ever felt that way, you’re not crazy. That feeling is FOMO wearing a rational disguise. The antidote isn’t more buying. I believe it is trusting the process.

Here’s where I stand. Fully invested. No margin yet. My goal isn’t to make all my money in one shot, it’s to ride out a longer-term cycle in the right names, build cushion, and let time work in my favor. Every add, every trim, every hold needs to be something I could defend in front of a jury of my trading peers. That’s the standard I hold myself to.

Let’s get into it!!!

The Market

The Nasdaq did what you’d expect after a big run - it went sideways. Kind of…

What you might not expect is that it also quietly drifted higher, posting higher lows the whole time. That’s not a market that wants to pull back. That’s a market looking for a reason to go up.

This is what a lockout rally feels like. Every pullback you’re waiting for just doesn’t come.

The index I’m watching most closely is the Russell 2000. I posted a video about this last week: the Russell is my traffic light for risk-on versus risk-off. When small caps are healthy, growth stocks have room to run. Last week we got a clean pullback to the 21-day moving average, followed by a strong reversal bar on Thursday, and a follow-through day right off the 10-day. That’s exactly the kind of action that makes me want to add exposure.

Key price to watch: The Russell’s 21-day moving average. As long as we’re above it, the environment stays risk-on.

For additional exposure when I want to get more aggressive, I’m adding to my Russell 2000 position via the index ETF. Until my individual leaders give me clean entry points, this is where I’ll be putting incremental capital to work.

Charts don't analyze themselves. ☕

The Positions

SanDisk (SNDK): My biggest position. After earnings, it opened down nearly 9% and then reversed to close up 8.25% into new highs. That’s not a stock that wants to go lower.

I started building this position in the 700s, around the follow-through day. That feels like a long time ago now. The stock is extended, and I don’t have a clean place to add here.

The price I’m watching: 1050. That’s the low of Friday’s earnings candle. I treat that as the new floor. An undercut of that level wouldn’t force me out, but a decisive close below the 50-day moving average would. We’re nowhere near that. This one gets space and patience.

Bloom Energy (BE): My second-largest position at roughly 20% of the portfolio. The story here is messy in the best possible way: sloppy base, then a gap, more sloppy action, then another gap, and now it’s starting to tighten. Three straight days of upside reversals heading into Friday. The kind of action that makes a bull flag.

The number I’m watching: 260. That’s the low of Thursday’s reversal candle. As long as BE holds above 260, I’m giving this room. A decisive break there and I’d consider trimming down to roughly 15%.

If I didn’t already own it, 290 is the episodic pivot entry - a clean break above that level on volume is an automatic add. I own it, so I’m watching and waiting for a consolidation to form.

Marvell (MRVL): Newer position. I bought it in stages - first a “psyche buy” just to get in, then added off the 10-day. The weekly chart is showing what looks like two tight weeks, and if it prints a third, that’s a genuinely constructive base forming at this level.

The range I’m watching: 150 to 170. A break above 170, especially on a gap, is an automatic add in my book. The 10-day is right there and the 21-day is catching up - when those converge, it gives me cleaner levels to work off.

My line in the sand: 146. That’s a lot of rope, but I believe this is a true market leader with institutional support, and I’d rather give it space than get shaken out of a name I’ve high conviction in.

Comfort Systems (FIX): This one doesn’t run like Marvell. It walks. Ever since it broke out of its base above 1500, it’s been a steady climber - respecting the 10-day the entire way up.

I added on Thursday after a good move off the 10-day, and the key candle I’m watching is that Thursday bar: low of 1749.13. I want this stock to respect that level.

A decisive break of the 10-day and I’d lighten up. A break of the 21-day and I’m mostly out. But I don’t expect either - the character of this stock has been consistent all the way up, and there’s no reason to expect it to change.

Google (GOOGL): Bought the earnings gap using a one-hour opening range breakout. It’s up a little, acting tight near new highs, and there’s not much volatility. That’s fine.

The level I’m watching: 365.82. That’s the low of the gap-up day. Google needs to respect that. If it does, I’m holding and letting the moving averages catch up. No clean add here yet.

XBI (IRA): Biotech ETF in my IRA. Not a core focus, but worth noting: it pulled back clean to the 50-day on lower volume. Constructive. No plans to sell, no plans to add - fully allocated in that account - but if you have dry powder, this is a sensible spot to consider.

NVDA (IRA): I’ve held NVDA for nearly two years. It was my top performer last year, and my average cost is very favorable. But I’ll be direct: the last two days have seen it underperform on a relative basis. Down 4% in a market that’s been resilient. The leaders of the last cycle aren’t always the leaders of the next.

I’m not selling based on my cost basis and position history, but I’m not initiating here either. My mental stop is the 200-day moving average. As long as it holds that, I hold. If it loses the 200-day, I reassess.

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Closing Thoughts

This past week I got to spend time with Mike Webster - William O’Neil’s right-hand man for decades - and also talked markets with other traders. The thing that stuck with me: there’s a lot of aggressive buying out there right now. Even traders who are fully allocated feel like they’re missing something.

That feeling is normal. It’s also a signal.

When everyone is scrambling to get more exposure, the discipline isn’t in finding more names. It’s in protecting what you’ve already built. The money is in sitting. The conviction is in the work you did before you entered the trade, not the urgency you feel after it starts moving.

I’m focused on four or five names I know deeply and can manage closely. Once I start spreading across seven or eight, the attention thins out and the decision-making gets shaky. That’s a personal rule I don’t break.

The plan for now: hold the leaders, let the cushion build, and add exposure to the Russell index when the market gives me confirmation rather than FOMO.

Trade well this week.

Ghost Alpha publishes weekly trading plans and CAN SLIM analysis at ghostalphatrade.substack.com. Follow along on X at @GhostAlphaTrade.

People who were paying attention between 1995 and 1999 talk about that period the way people talk about being at a great concert. You had to be there. The Nasdaq went up 400% in five years. Cisco, Intel, Microsoft. Companies that were building the infrastructure for a world that was just starting to come online. The internet was real, but most people were still figuring out what it meant. The ones who were watching the price action of the leaders knew before everyone else.

I think about that a lot when I look at what is happening in AI right now.

Tonight changes the narrative.

After the close on April 29, four of the largest companies on earth reported earnings. Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta. Together they have committed somewhere north of $650 billion in AI capital expenditure for 2026 alone. Tonight was the first real accountability test. Were the revenue and margins keeping pace with the spend?

The answer, mostly, is yes.

Microsoft reported revenue of $82.9 billion, up 18% year over year. Azure grew 40%. Their annualized AI revenue now stands at $37 billion, up 123%. Alphabet beat on revenue at $109.9 billion with Google Cloud growing at a rate analysts had been pricing in as a stretch. Amazon posted a strong beat across the board with AWS growing 28% to $37.6 billion. Meta beat on revenue and EPS, raised Q2 guidance to $58 to $61 billion, and told the market it is spending even more on AI infrastructure than it previously planned.

The market punished Meta after hours for the capex raise. The stock dropped more than 6%.

That reaction tells you everything about where we are in this cycle.

The noise versus the signal.

A few weeks ago, OpenAI reportedly missed its 2025 revenue targets. AI stocks sold off. The narrative that spread across every financial media outlet was simple: maybe AI is not working. Maybe the spend is getting ahead of the revenue.

I want to offer a different frame.

I spent years working in SaaS. Software as a Service is the layer most people think about when they think about technology. The application. The thing you log into. Salesforce. Workday. HubSpot. We are trained to evaluate technology at the top of the stack because that is where we interact with it.

AI is not the same.

OpenAI is a product. It lives at the top of the stack. But the infrastructure underneath it, the compute, the fiber, the data centers, the power, the chips, that is the real story. That is what Cisco was to the internet. And the hyperscalers, Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, they are the ones building and monetizing that layer right now.

OpenAI missing revenue targets tells us something about consumer adoption curves at the application layer. It does not tell us anything about whether the infrastructure buildout is real.

Tonight’s earnings tell us the infrastructure buildout is very real.

What the price action is saying.

Here is what I keep coming back to as a trader. The market votes every day. And for the past several months, certain names have been standing out in a specific way. Relative strength versus the S&P 500, holding key moving averages while the broader market struggles, volume patterns that suggest institutional accumulation rather than distribution.

The universe of companies that sit inside this AI infrastructure theme, data centers, fiber optics, electrical components, energy, chips for compute, these names have been telling a story in the charts that is hard to ignore.

NVDA. Marvell. Nebius. Comfort Systems. Bloom Energy. Sandisk.

Not all of them are setting up right now. Some have broken down on earnings and needed to be cut. That is part of the process. But the ones that are holding, the ones that are building bases while the market figures out what tariffs mean and whether the Fed will move, those are the names worth watching.

The honest take.

I do not know if this is our 90s. Nobody knows that until it is over.

What I know is that every major technology cycle in history looked obvious in hindsight and uncertain in real time. The people who built wealth in those cycles were not the ones who waited for certainty. They were the ones who understood the thesis early, sized into the leaders, and held with conviction while everyone else debated whether it was real.

Tonight did not answer every question. Meta’s capex raise spooked the market. There will be more volatility. There will be more headlines about AI revenue misses and whether the spend makes sense.

But four of the most profitable companies in the world just told us they are spending more than ever on AI infrastructure and that the revenue is accelerating. The hyperscalers voted.

That is the signal. Everything else is noise.

Not investment advice. For educational purposes only. Do your own research.

If you want to go deeper, the weekly trading plan with specific setups, entries, and risk levels is available to paid subscribers.

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Friday closed strong. Big caps caught up to the rally. Semis have done something I haven’t really seen before. Straight up for weeks, no real digestion, leadership broadening. The Nasdaq engulfed five months of consolidation in eleven trading days. That kind of move doesn’t repeat often, and when it does, the temptation is to chase. The discipline is to…

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My first brokerage account had $400 in it.

Footlocker commissions, saved up. I was in college, had a kid on the way, and a soon-to-be wife. Young to be starting a family, young to be thinking about any of this. But I had this pull in the back of my head that I wanted to build something. Not in a vague hustle-culture way. Just a real, quiet certainty that I needed to get in the game.

So I opened an E-Trade account and stared at it for a while.

I didn’t know what I was doing. What I did know was that I didn’t want to put money into things I’d never heard of. My uncles loved penny stocks and biotechs, names nobody outside of a pump-and-dump chat room could pronounce. That didn’t feel like investing to me. It felt like gambling with extra steps.

So I bought one share of Apple. Split-adjusted, somewhere around $320.

One share.

That’s all $400 got me, after fees and the pocket change I didn’t want to touch.

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A few weeks later I’m at a barbecue and my uncle asks what I’m holding. I tell him. Apple. One share. He looks at me like I’d just told him I buried the money in the yard.

“Apple? You can only get one share of Apple. Look at this thing I’m in, it’s $3 a share, you could own a hundred of these. Same money.”

He pitched me some biotech working on a cure for something. They were always curing something. I nodded, said okay, and over the next year I drifted toward his side of the map. Started nibbling on penny stocks. Some pink sheet names. A few of them are still sitting in an old account at $0.03 a share, frozen forever like insects in amber.

Then I got the job at William O’Neil.

If you don’t know the name, O’Neil wrote How To Make Money in Stocks and built the methodology behind IBD and MarketSmith. I worked there in sales and coaching, walking financial advisors through the software. Part of the deal was you had to read the book, study the system, and pass a test. Once you passed, they gave you a company trading account to trade real money alongside your personal one.

I remember compliance asking for my personal account details. I had about forty bucks in it. I was embarrassed handing that over. Forty dollars, from a guy who was supposed to coach advisors on how to pick winning stocks.

But reading the book was the part that rewired me.

Because what O’Neil spent chapter after chapter explaining, with data, with examples, with decades of receipts, was the exact opposite of what my uncle told me at that barbecue. The biggest winning stocks of all time didn’t start cheap. They started expensive, by retail logic, and kept going up. High priced stocks are priced high for a reason. They’re the best merchandise on the shelf. The institutions, the funds that actually move markets, prefer them. They want the liquidity. They want the quality. They don’t scroll the sub-$5 bargain bin looking for a deal.

Here’s the part I wish someone had carved into my brain at 20.

A 10% move on a $100 stock is the same as a 10% move on a $10 stock. You don’t get paid on share count. You get paid on the percentage move.

Read that line again if you need to. It’s the single most expensive thing to not understand as a beginner, and it cost me years.

Every time my uncle said “you could own a hundred of these instead of one of those,” he was selling me on a feeling. The feeling of owning more. Of doing more. Of participating more. But the math doesn’t care how many shares you have. The math cares whether the stock actually goes up.

Apple, the one I bought for $320 and felt sheepish about, did what high-quality merchandise does. It kept going. If I’d just held it and added nothing, ignored every barbecue conversation, I’d be sitting on generational money today. I’m not. I did what most young investors do. I got talked out of the good trade and into the bad ones.

So here’s the practical takeaway if you’re sitting with your first $400, or $4,000, or $40,000.

Don’t buy anything under $20 a share.

That’s it. That one filter alone will remove an enormous amount of garbage from your field of vision. It will keep you out of most of the pink sheet lottery tickets, the pre-revenue biotechs promising miracles, the shell companies, the story stocks with no earnings. It’s not a perfect filter. There’s more to a good investment than price. But as a single cut, it punches way above its weight.

You’ll miss some great trades by doing this. You will also miss almost all of the worst ones.

There are reasons institutions don’t fish in the cheap end of the pond. You shouldn’t fish there either, especially not when you’re starting out and every dollar matters.

My uncle meant well. Most uncles do. But the first real job of a new investor is to quietly stop taking stock tips from people who don’t have a system.

You don’t need to own a hundred shares of anything. You need to own the right one.

Thirteen days up in a row.

I’ve been doing this long enough to know that kind of tape doesn’t happen often. And honestly, it was one of the more impressive stretches I can remember. Not just because of the move itself, but because of how it moved. Consistent. Methodical. The kind of action that tells you real money was doing the buying.

But here’s where it gets interesting.

Leaders were already in motion before the follow-through day. If you were watching closely, the real move in the best names started before April 7th. What last week looked like, particularly in the high-quality names, was more consolidation than continuation. High tight flags, short stroke patterns, ten-day surfing. Leaders digesting their gains while the rest of the market caught up. That’s a healthy dynamic. That’s what you want to see.

I’m writing this Sunday with Iran news hitting and Dow futures down roughly 400 points. So yeah, the pullback everyone’s been talking about might be showing up Monday morning.

I wouldn’t be surprised either way. We open lower and close strong, or we just come in clean. The more relevant question for me isn’t what the index does on Monday. It’s what the leaders do. That’s always the question.

A pullback to the 7,000 area on the S&P would be completely normal. Even a 50% retracement of the recent move is workable in the context of a broader uptrend. I say this not to minimize what’s coming, but to be clear about what I’m watching for: I want to see the leaders hold up better than the indexes. That’s the whole point of trading individual stocks instead of just buying the ETF. On the way up, leaders outperform. On the way down, they hold better. That’s the deal.

One more thing before we get into the book: we’re in a full-on uptrend, but this isn’t the tape to be aggressive adding new positions. For anything I initiate from scratch, I’m starting at half size. The move has been too straight up. Half position first, then I let the stock prove itself before going full.

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