Weekly Trading Plan | April 20, 2025
The Rally Is Mainstream. That's the Warning Sign.
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.
