Okay folks, so we've got lots to get ready for. Number One, I need to discuss very, very violently, the Catalysts and big events that are going to be happening this week. and then number Two, I want to discuss some trading opportunities and setups that you're going to need to know about before tomorrow starts. Okay, so for Catalyst, the big event this week is the Fomc meeting that will start on May 3rd, which is Tuesday.

The next rate hike announcement should happen the following day on May 4th, and markets are expecting the most likely scenario will be a 50 basis point hike. The Fed has been hitting at that for quite a while and the last few hints weren't really hints, they were just very, very suggestive. Now if you remember the last Fomc meeting from March 15th and 16th, that meeting literally marked the dead on reversal of the S P 500 and the overall market. After that, you saw basically two weeks of insane rallying to the upside and risk on trading until the market stopped trusting the Fed and the market erased that entire rally.

This time around, things are a bit murkier. the war hasn't ended, price increases haven't slowed down, and we also just got data that that first quarter was contractionary, and this quarter probably is as well. Raising rates into a contractionary economy is not low risk in any way, shape or form. It's just dishonest to say that the risk of a recession doesn't increase dramatically when you have a downward quarter right before you have any real meaningful tightening policies in effect, but at the same time, markets like certainty.

The Fed coming out this week, presenting their plan, moving forward, and also making a decision, gives the market some clarity, even if their decision simply meets expectations, that's something that the market can rally on. Do I think the Fed will go lighter now and become a bit more dovish now that we've had a contractionary quarter? I doubt it. And the reason is because the Fed looks more towards employment numbers than it does towards overall economic numbers. Employment is still meaningfully intact, so I don't think they're going to react much to this, but they may give some commentary on how they could react in the future.

If this gets even worse, May 5th, you have the Opec Meeting on oil production. Oil producers have been little lagging Larry's in terms of actually boosting production. They have been boosting production, but at a very, very slow pace. Despite the fact that there's a lot more demand on countries that aren't Russia, that's one big event to watch.

and decisions made at those meetings have huge implications in terms of obviously energy prices, but also where we think prices are going throughout the broader economy because oil prices drive all prices. And then May 6, you have the U.s Jobs Report for April, which will be watched very very closely. The contractionary economic report in terms of Gdp growth was unexpected by market and by analysts and by Wall Street as a whole Right now, markets are still expecting a very strong jobs report. Any underperformance from that segment could really spook markets, but on the flip side, if we do see weakness, I'd argue markets may start being less worried about the Fed because the Fed wants to support employment.

So if they do see again, employment numbers underperforming and underperforming month over month over month. This being the first month, then all of a sudden people are less worried about the Fed being super super aggressive. But then on the other side, recession fears are even stronger because people are like, hey, we're heading downward Despite the fact that the Fed hasn't even done much so I'd argue we're really walking on strings here. But I do think that given that we are now back towards lows in this overall range we've been holding them, the Fed may be able to really calm the markets again and ignite another multi-week rally this week.

If the Fed does what the Fed is expected to do and there's no big surprises from other reports, I would not be surprised if you see another momentary March 15th plus style rally. I just think you're kind of walking on eggshells here. next. Earnings: The ones that I'm watching are Monday, Mgm, Chegg and Expedia Tuesday Starbucks and Lyft Bp, Caesars Entertainment Wednesday, Etsy Twilio Skills which has been struggling with customer acquisition costs.

Mara and Uber Thursday you also have Royal Caribbean Shopify, Fubo, Lucid, Mercado Libre, Doordash and Wish. And then Friday you have Under Armour and Draftkings. now, the ones that I believe are potential shockers. This week, our first Airbnb.

I believe there's early indication that Spring and summer are going to be particularly strong months for travel, and Airbnb may be the first one to acknowledge that in their guidance for the next quarter or the next two quarters, especially if that trend had already started in Q1. Quite frankly, the amount of worry about covet or catching Kovid when traveling abroad is at a new pandemic look. Most of Airbnb's most lucrative marketplaces are now completely open, and you can easily travel there, whereas just as early as like six months ago, it was a little bit more dicey. The other one is Amd.

Amd is now down like 45 from November highs. Competitor Intel just warned that demand for computers is dropping dramatically, and Amd may be next to report similar problems. And I understand that a lot of people are like, oh, computer companies. Ew, that's like.

so last year, nobody needs computers. let's buy gasoline. I think right now when everybody hates these killer microchip companies, killer computer hardware companies, that's the time when you want to go and buy the dip on them. And so if Amd reports a terrible, terrible earnings report, great, it's time to buy Starbucks.

This is another one that's already down about 40 from all-time highs, but this may be another upsetter this week. I think there's a certain amount of reluctance to acknowledge that some Us companies had a lot of exposure direct exposure to Russia. Now, Starbucks had about 150 locations or so in Russia, which isn't a lot when you consider how many thousands they have on a global scale. But when you get into seizing operations in an entire country that's still an L and does drag down the growth rates and cancel out some of the growth rates that you may have had in other markets during that time period.

But it's also true that Starbucks is going into a period where a lot of consumers are paying more and more for things like energy or for their day-to-day life and food items. People start saying hey, maybe I don't want to spend eight dollars for black cold brew. Maybe I could just make that myself. So Starbucks is certainly a big watch this week.

Also, Expedia, because you got that potential travel boom. I want to see guidance on that. To some extent, the idea of a travel boom is kind of contradictory to the idea that people have less money to spend, but in terms of pent-up demand, the only areas that really have pent-up demand still from those coveted lockdowns is really that travel sector. You also have draftkings.

Their business growth has been insane the last couple of years, and markets haven't been super excited to bet on unprofitable companies. We know that and in this market condition, it's down heavily. But my take on growth companies right now that you like based on the fundamentals and your conviction behind the fundamentals is to follow how the business itself is holding up. A lot of people would say it's all about the stock.

Charlie has nothing to do with the business behind it. Businesses are all garbage unless unless they're gasoline companies, gasoline La. But if you put your conviction in a stock, you're really looking at that business, right? I don't think there's much that growth companies can do right now to really regain their valuations or really get momentum. So right now you're just in this market condition where you have to find companies you like and if you want to buy them at good prices then do it.

But you have to have a long term time horizon and you got to have a really strong stomach. Similar situation with lucid and moral, lovely moral right now. companies that we may like the fundamentals on quite a lot and that are trying to grow into their industries. but again, growth companies.

The market doesn't like growth companies right now and more and more. it doesn't like any type of company, even mature companies. People are starting to say okay, well I could hold a mature company or I could just hold cash. I think it's clear that this is going to age to be one of the best opportunities that we've seen in probably decades, but it's tough to call bottom of a cycle, especially before you've seen the Fed make any big moves.

Okay, moving on to trade. So on Friday's video, I made a breakdown of two stocks to know before Monday Atrowitch fought to hold the fives all week, and then our Red Box play that popped up 72 or so at highs on Friday. Watch that video if you want a complete breakdown on the different setups. Nothing's changed over the weekend because the market is closed.

But my prediction on Redbox is you likely see an early morning, maybe pre-market pop, and then a profit-taking cycle, but once it goes down, you want to see it retain a higher low, similar to how it did here and here. That way you can more easily build a new wave of momentum on top of a higher foundation with the lovely outer Gator. The game is more fought on the options chain. I want to see those farther out of the money, call options that are on the lower end of the probability spectrum, expire in the money at the end of the week, and after finished up 1.58 on Friday, despite the market being down 3.7 And that's a sign that your institutional traders are very, very short biased on this.

Why? Well, because in bad market condition, dates institutional traders that are long on stocks systematically and algorithmically drag out capital from all of their positions, and the riskier positions go down about two to three times the overall market because of how much they're cutting back on risk. Which is why when you have down days in the market, everything kind of sells off in a blanket fashion, and the higher risk assets sell off a lot more. It's not because individual holders have all decided at the same time to sell, and it's just coincidentally, they all everything in the market sells off at the same time. It's because the institutional traders that are long tons and tons of different stocks have decided to algorithmically cut back on everything because risk increased that day.

So that's how the algorithm's like. Okay, risk's increasing. Well, I got to sell these riskier assets. I got to sell these assets.

Then I'm going to sell these assets. and then on the flip side, on days where things go up, it goes and re-buys them. And that's kind of how like the trade works on a macro level. Equity holdings are bought up or sold off based on perceived risk on that current day, which is usually catalyzed by some big movement really early on in the day or some big catalyst that was reported like the Fed's raising of rates, but without the overall market drawdowns have done nothing to the price, which suggests that the float is really, really locked up and with after hey we could talk all we want about whether or not you're going to get more buying pressure here.

But the thing is, if you look at how tight the setup is with Atra but also on Redbox, it's very, very clear that if you did get buying pressure, these would go pretty parabolic. The tighter the float, the more multiplying of an effect each buy order has. Last weekend, I also presented on the Uvxy and Svxy pair, and Uv Xy has continuously held its overall upper direction this week, providing more opportunities for traders. The para should continue being relevant into this week as well.

You also have the T Triple Q and S Triple Q pair. T Triple Q leverages the moves of the Nasdaq 100 and S Triple Q shorts them. S Triple Q of course, took the cake this week, but again, with leveraged Etfs, mind your direction, always ask yourself which member of the pair is above or below your red directional Sma line. Are you trading with the trend or against it? A lot of people say, oh Charlie, I feel that today is going to be a bearish day.

I'm going to bet everything on bearish and then it reverses and I'm like shite. I don't know what happened. I bet all on red and I got black skim. Folks, it's so much easier if you try not to fight the trend.

You don't have to try to fuel the energy of the market to see where it's going to go. or try to look into some crystal ball. Just look at the trend that it's following. One of the things that we like to look at is the red directional Sma line.

Are we above it or below it now? Does that predict 100 where you're gonna go? No, it just identifies a broader trend. It's sort of like if you go outside and you see not a single cloud in the sky and you're like, okay, well, it's probably not gonna rain today. Does that mean clouds can't come in two hours later and it starts pouring? No. But at least if you're looking at the trend, you can trade with the trend instead of against it.

Also, ask yourself, is there a big catalyst coming that could change the trend very, very rapidly? That could be a Fed meeting, which again is happening this week. That could be a market shattering earnings report from a big company that could be your neighbor Susan getting out of the house for the first time in a couple years. So make sure that you have a well-rounded view of how to trade these and don't be afraid to do paper trading either. But anyways, folks, keep your head up this week.

let's learn a lot and good luck If you are a member of Zip Trader u make sure to check in 30 minutes prior to market open tomorrow morning so that you can see the latest briefing and all the different catalysts that I'm watching. We're also going to have a list of Fda events and biotech catalysts on there that should be very, very relevant for trading opportunities heading into this week and next. And of course we'll keep you updated if anything new drops Anyways, have a good one folks, I'll see you in the next video.