PLTR 

I’m looking at Palantir ( NYSE: PLTR ). Why is that? I will tell you why, because I look at it as an IPO. It has been trading less than a year, you see the kind of move it’s made. A lot of money to be made back here but none of it right now. That was yesterday, this is today.

But what I am looking at here is the fact that now we have a 200-day moving average, we’ve got a 50-day moving average. Great, they are clustered together, they’re stacked. They are in this moving average stack right here. And on top of that, we have the 20-day moving average, that’s the little thin blue line here and that is this middle Bollinger Band.

So we’ve got the 200-day, which is the wide blue line, the 20-day, which is the skinny blue line, and we’ve got the red, which is the 50-day moving average, within 5 percent of each other and the price is just barely right here. So what we really have going here is kind of a bona fide squeeze.

Now, you could say, and you would be right, well Dan, the real squeeze took place back here. Okay, yes it did, missed it, sorry. But the stock now is done, it has gone through this phase, these 3 phases of a squeeze that I discuss all of the time, which is, here’s the squeeze.

And then you could say either the Phase 1 breakout is right here. The Phase 2 pullback is right here. And then the Phase 2 follow-through to new highs is right here, yippee ki-yay. Then we get another pullback and we are off to the races, you could say that. Or you could say, well, this is actually the Phase 1 because this is just a brief little pullback and then this is the Phase 2, stopping at the 50, and now we are looking at a move higher.

The thing is, it doesn’t really matter. It is kind of like that stupid Elliott Wave Count, what the heck good is something when you are always having to change the count? That’s the thing that has always been amazing to me about the Elliott Wave proponents. It’s a religion where, on the wave changed, oh, well now I am recounting. Sure, great.

That’s not the way we trade, we trade on probabilities. And my probability tells me that now this stock has popped up above the 50-day moving average and has pulled back to here. I am saying that right now is probably a pretty good time to really watch this very closely because if there is buying that comes in here and props the stock up, then your next trading box is right here, which means that now you are buying near the bottom of the box and you are expecting this kind of move.

So the takeaway from this is, this is still in a basing pattern but the fact that it’s got a moving average stack, 3 deep, 50, 20, 200, and the price is right there in the middle of them. That is an explosive situation, still, and so watch this stock. I will set this alert for members, the real breakout would be above here, it would be above 25.76. But what I like to do is give myself early alerts so we will set it at 25.12, something like that. That is not a buy signal, that’s a “look at me” signal. Members, when you get this email at 25.12, all the email is doing is saying, check out Palantir ( NYSE: PLTR ) because it might be breaking out.

AAPL QQQ 

I want to look at Apple ( NASDAQ: AAPL ) today. The market started out, not really weak ( NASDAQ: QQQ ), but it did after China announced that they had, basically, some crappy numbers with respect to growth, retail, all of that kind of stuff. It started off on a negative foot and, frankly, I think that part of it might have been, I don’t know, I am just spit-balling here, it might have been what’s happening in Afghanistan, I am just sitting here kind of wondering. In any event, we’re still up and the trend is still intact, so that’s a good thing.

I am a little more cautious even than I was last week. When I say cautions what I am really talking about is, looking critically at all of my positions and I just want to keep the ones that are working. The ones that aren’t working, I don’t have as much patience for them, I am just speaking in generalities here, but I don’t have as much patience for them as I might, maybe I need to have more. I just like to cut down my account every once in a while. It is like I am going out and weeding the garden and taking away the stuff that’s not really working for me, we’ll put it that way.

One of the things that is working is Apple ( NASDAQ: AAPL ). I put this out as an active trade back here on the 14th, so almost 2 months ago. This was a really, really good entry, you look at where it was on the 50-day moving average. This was a really good entry here, right at the 50-day moving average, the stock trends up. When you get in a stock at the right time you actually have some ability to be creative. Then the stock comes up here, I was talking about this in today’s training session, your first add-on could be here. After a little pullback and a reinsertion of the trend, 3 down days, not really a big deal, then followed by an up day, so you are buying here and then the stock keeps going.

When I opened this trade this wasn’t the kind of stock that you would really get rich trading, like buying Tesla ( NASDAQ: TSLA ) at the bottom or something like that. But you wouldn’t really go broke, it’s Apple ( NASDAQ: AAPL ). Now we are up about 16 percent from where we were and this has basically been a pretty smooth trade. It’s been sideways, you can see this, I don’t have to count the days back, but that kind of leads me to the present time.

I believe that this is actually a breakout that you can add to. Maybe give it just right below today’s intraday low. It is a bit higher than the 50-day moving average than I would like, it’s all just relative to what has gone on before on the particular stock that you are looking at. So I look at this and it kind of feels a little bit high but what kind of trumps that analysis is, that the stock has been in a volatility squeeze, it’s been kind of squeezing for a while. And so when I see this then this kind of forms a new base, so to speak.

So you could buy this stock here if you wanted and keep a 5 percent stop down here. It is clear down at the bottom of this box, you could even take it down here, 6.5 percent. All I am saying is that this is actually not a bad time to be adding to your position. Could you be taking an initial position? Sure, you can. Just make sure you’ve got a stop that protects you in case the stock does retreat in case it needs more time to rebuild here before it ultimately moves higher. I like the way Apple ( NASDAQ: AAPL ) is trading. I actually just bought some more today. I like it, I hope you do, I hope you are making money.