Market analysis for April 1st, 2024

Welcome back traders. I hope you all had a nice three day weekend and regardless of your faith, you were able to take some time to reflect on gratitude. Shortened trading weeks are always a mixed bag for me as a full-time trader. The breaks from trading are nice (and needed), but we put on a lot of weekly credit type setups that generally suffer from the one missed day of theta erosion.
Last week was NOT that way. On Wednesdays live zoom feed I laid out three scenarios for Thurs. A best case, a worst case and the expected results of our big trades for the week. The best case involved: #1. Scalping bringing in a solid result. #2. SMCI staying flat. #3. MSTR going down. #4. NVDA going up. #5. All our weekly trades expire fully profitable. #6. All three 0DTE's make money. Well...to say we hit the best case result for the day, and the week was an understatment!
My net liq was up over $20,000 dollars on Thurs. MSTR and NVDA were the biggest contributors but everything helped. Scalping brought in over $1,000 dollars and we killed it on all of our 0DTES. Even with a shortened week we got 14 total 0DTE trades on and, once again, all of them...all 14 were profitable.
For the week my account was up over $50,000 dollars. That's an amazing week for us. I loved seeing everyone in the trading room posting the P/L for the day. Its very comforting to see the success with so many members. I was asked if we we again trade things like NVDA, MSTR, SMCI, DJT etc. My answer was, "Yes. Every day, all day."
These may not be great investments (or maybe they are?) but they are perfect for trading.

On to the markets:

• PCE printed in line with expectations last Friday, indicating no change in the Fed's plans.
  PCE (excluding food and energy) was 2.8% on a 12-month basis, up 0.3% from a month ago, matching analyst expectations.
  “Nothing really super surprising. Obviously not the numbers the Fed wants to see, but I don’t think this is going to catch anybody off guard when they come back to work on Monday”  - Victoria Greene, chief investment officer at G Squared Private Wealth
• The March jobs report this Friday will be the biggest headline of the week. It's expected to show 216,000 nonfarm payroll jobs added and unemployment falling to 3.8%. Kalshi tells a different story, with forecasts coming in hotter.
  
  Fed Chair Jerome Powell, interviewed at the San Francisco Fed on Friday, said the February personal consumption expenditures data was “more along the lines of what we want to see,” adding, “It’s good to see something coming in line with expectations.” At the same time, Powell reiterated that the U.S. central bank is not in a hurry to lower interest rates, emphasizing that policymakers are awaiting more evidence that inflation is contained. “The fact that the U.S. economy is growing at such a solid pace, the fact that the labor market is still very, very strong, gives us the chance to just be a little more confident about inflation coming down before we take the important step of cutting rates,” he said.
  U.S. rate futures have priced in a 3.9% chance of a 25 basis point rate cut at the next FOMC meeting in May and a 65.9% probability of a 25 basis point rate cut at June’s monetary policy meeting.
  
  We've now had five green months in a row. Is the bull market getting tired or just resting before the next leg up?
  
  One interesting statistic is the fastest growing brands. Take a look
  

Here's a list of Thursday's most active. You'll find a lot of these in our trading room. 

Expected moves for this week are actually worse than they were last week! 
SPX Expected Move --
--last week -- 54.11 (4--day expected move)
​--next week-- 62.52 (5--day expected move)
1% Move with 12% IV for SPY
1.4% Move with 18% IV for QQQ
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Markets continue to hit their heads against these ATH levels 

Our trade docket for the day is busy, as it is every Monday:
/MCL, /ZN, DIA, GLD, IWM, NVDA, PYPL, CRM, ORCL, SBUX, VKTX, SPY/QQQ 4DTE, SPX/NDX/Event contract 0DTE's,PAYX, DJT, MSTR.

My lean today is Neutral.

Intra-day levels for me:
/ES; 5321/5326/5333/5341 to the upside. 5314/5308/5302/5294 to the downside.
/NQ; 18510/18549/18574/18682 to the upside. 18481/18445/18409/18389 to the downside.

If your interested in making an extra $50,000 this year with 5k of capital come join us in our live scalping room every Tues. and Thurs. 

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If you're interested in trading 0DTE setups, I think you'll find we offer more setups than anyone (at least three a day) and our track record this year has been nothing short of stellar.

I hope you all have a great trading week. Let us know of your success' and failures this week.