Sometimes you just keep your head down and keep working, and then one day, you look up and realize you have reached a milestone you had almost forgotten about! For me, this milestone was something I had tucked away while I focused on the work in front of me and prioritized becoming consistently profitable.

I started The Trader Reset Newsletter at the end of 2023 as a way to hold myself accountable week to week. I wanted to make sure I stayed on top of my market analysis and trade analysis, but I also wanted to share the things I was learning along the way.

My first newsletter was about the stages of a stock's life cycle, which I learned about through Mark Minervini’s book Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard. At that point, I had already been trading for a few years, and realizing I had somehow missed something so foundational was wild to me!

There were times back then when I felt like I was on a roll, and other times when I felt like I would never figure this thing out or never find something that worked for me consistently. But as I kept doing the work, I was also slowly taking everything I was learning and simplifying it into a strategy that worked for me. And before I knew it, I had documented and defined that strategy well enough to make it teachable!

Enter milestone 🥳 💃🏽

Last week, I formally taught my Daily Base Breakout and Post-Breakout Retest strategies for the first time in a short workshop. My priority in trading has always been becoming a master trader, but I have always loved sharing what I know and helping other people grow. So being able to talk about what I do and have people not only resonate with it but find it helpful is an incredible win for me!

I definitely still have more to do. You all know I consider myself good-ish, and I want to get from where I am now to great. I have a goal of reaching seven figures through trading profits, and there is still a lot of work between here and there. But this was one of those moments when I could look up and realize that the work I had been doing all along really was adding up!

So I say to you as well: keep your head down and keep working. The milestones will take care of themselves!

If you would like to learn more about my strategies, the full workshop replay is available inside the Trader Reset Community. And don’t miss the other fun thing from last week: I sat down with Christopher Uhl at OVTLYR for a great conversation about my trading journey and what I’ve been working on. Watch it here.

All in all, it was a week with a lot to celebrate! ☺️

All right y’all, the internet is under the impression that we are going to have a crash. No one has really given specifics on when, but that seems to be the sentiment right now. 🧐

So let’s look at what price is doing. For this week, I’m looking at both the S&P and the Nasdaq because a lot of the high-flying names this year have been Nasdaq components.

On SPX, the range I have been using is roughly 7,300 to 7,600. We entered that range around May 6th, and price stayed in that 300-point area through early summer until the strong rally at the end of July.

After that rally, it first looked like we were getting sideways digestion. Now price has started to sell back down. A lot of times when price breaks out of a range, it comes back to retest. The bottom of the August 4th candle is around 7,629, and the prior high from June 2nd was around 7,620. So coming back toward that gap line / prior high area is still normal price action after a strong rally and breakout.

Would I have liked price to hold 7,700 and just digest sideways before continuing higher? Definitely. I think that would have shown a stronger push to the upside. But price pulling back toward the 7,600 area after breaking out of the box is not automatically alarming.

Here are this week’s potential scenarios:

Retest 7,629 / 7,600 and Hold

Bounce First

Fall Back Into the Prior Range

The Nasdaq is a little different because it briefly attempted to break out of its range and sold back into it.

The level I’m watching now is around 25,875 / 25,950, where we also have the 50 MA. If Nasdaq can hold there, that is a perfectly fine place for support, but we would still need to see it eventually break out of the range. If Nasdaq loses that area, then we could rotate back down toward the bottom of the range around 25,000. And as long as 25,000 holds, Nasdaq is still range-bound. If Nasdaq loses 25,000, then the next support I’d be watching is around 24,440, which was the July 29th pivot area.

Conclusion

The Nasdaq is also a good example of what topping can look like on the daily timeframe. It is moving sideways, and a direction has not been picked yet. With a topping stage, we can still go back into Stage 2. It could just be sideways digestion before another advance, but it could also be sideways movement that leads into a decline.

I always note that when there is an area above that price cannot break through, especially when you start seeing it on the daily and weekly together, a lot of times we need to sell, reset, and base before price is ready to start building again. Sometimes this range-bound, sideways market takes time before it really starts selling, like last year, when we stayed range-bound for about four months.

If we do break below the range, what I’d be watching for is the break, the retest, and then whether that bounce can hold. If the bounce cannot hold, that is usually where the more accelerated selling shows up. So that’s pretty much where we are right now. SPX broke out and is retesting, while Nasdaq is still inside its range.

I’m taking it week to week and watching how buyers respond at each level. Join me inside my free community for Morning Market Review on Monday at 9 a.m. ET. We’ll look at the levels together, see how buyers respond, and talk through names that are potentially setting up for trades.