Market On Open - Monday 21 August 2023

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The Ghost Of Jackson Hole

This week's FinTwit Fear Meme is the Ghost of Jackson Hole.  The most recent Fed Chair speech at Jackson Hole, last year, was followed by the market declining, so, of course, so will this year's speech.  But, if you arrange your shoes in a particular way and hang three cinnamon sticks outside your front door, you will be protected from the Ghost, and verily shall your portfolio rise regardless.  (This being about the same level of logical as the FinTwit method).

Technically each of the equity indices reached a level last week that could legitimately be a local low.  Doesn't mean they can't go lower but does mean that the most likely next move for us is, up.  Of all the events coming up this week the one that matters most to the tech stocks we cover is Nvidia earnings which is Wednesday after the close.  The company ramped expectations so much last quarter that only a heroic performance will keep the stock moving up.  And if Nvidia heads for the basement there is a good chance that so does AMD, SMH, and with it, the Nasdaq.  In staff personal accounts we are hedged on NVDA on a single-stock basis, but biased long.  And we retain a small SQQQ position to give us some downside protection in the Nasdaq too (we're heavily overhedged long using TQQQ).  We start the week with a bullish outlook but await a punch in the face from reality whereupon we can start reloading on short index ETFs if needs be (having unwound much of our short positioning towards the end of last week per Slack alerts).

The Heart Of The Matter

For our paying members only we now walk through the shorter- and longer-term outlooks for the S&P500, the Nasdaq, the Dow and the Russell.  

We also include more detailed Cestrian staff personal account trading plans in our charts - these are disclosures rather than commandments, we include them to (1) clarify our own thinking and (2) to help explain what we think about the direction of markets. Paying Inner Circle members can reach out in Slack anytime to discuss.  You will, of course, make your own decisions as to how to use our charts.