what i'm looking at this week 2025.12.14

🌟 Welcome!

Still in bull-ish-ish territory. Santa rally schmanta rally, we’re at the ed of the year and the big dogs may not even be playing right now through the end of the year, so it’s retail’s skittish game. Be careful out there!

📸 The Big Picture

They flipped and flopped all over last week, cracking into the tippy edge of our previous value area a few times, meaning they failed three times — then they closed the week dipping below the multi-day balance.

Does this signal the beginning of a new downtrend? or do they just need a breather before heading to test the all time highs (again)? The value area has expanded slightly, and there’s a two week balance she’s been keeping, but Friday definitively closed below the 2 week balance. On it’s face it’s bearish, unless there’s a gap up market open. Here’s my bull and bear case, along with further observations along the way.

Bull Case

The highs stayed higher this past week, i.e. they spent more time transacting around the highs than in previous weeks. If you ask me, last week's activity looked like a reverse squeeze based on the volume profile, yet another reason for me not to believe the sell off just yet. Meaning, if she squeezed down, it’s only a temporary condition. More observations:

• On a single day last week they traversed the entire value area pretty easily, which, imo is a consolidation move, not a "we know where we're gonna go right now" move...meaning she still has space to give it another go. And with the news looming this week, they could stage some goose operations.

• we cracked into the ATH area several times last week, after doing the same last week, but we have not started breaking down just yet even when they had a few chances to. The quarterly VWAP held (and bounced healthily) every time it was touched on the bottom side until end of week when closed slightly below at the end of the week.

• Even though we’re out side the 68% of the value area, we are within the 94 + 99% (2+3 std deviation) of the value area, so this value area is still in play until we lose PDVAL.

• You’ve seen it before from me but i’ll always say i’m not a pattern trader, but when i see a high-heel boot pattern forming i pay attention (okay to many it just looks lie a double bottom ;-) — and they’re there right now with the close. could be a nice gap up to start the session, and if they do, i’m paying attention, as they often will try to at least start things at previous day’s value area high, unless they’re not at all interested in higher numbers this week.

Bearish Case

• They closed at the lows. That’s a signal of a desire to explore some lower areas. They’ve closed far below the value area low of our 9 day value area (and previous day value area). They have their. work cut out for them to start to look bullish for the week, and between the value area low and some key lower numbers…it’s a shorter trip. there are two VPOCs below as well as a single prints area that represent Unfinished Business…they could fly through the SP area to the next VPOC below (24862) before heading back up (or decide to go lower).

  

That’s all i got for now…we continue in this balance, then we’ll test the highs another time to see if we can crack ‘em, otherwise, they’ll back off and take care of some unfinished business…perhaps before rebounding back upwards or exploring lower for value. a boatload of news today, so, given the skittishness of the small fries, we could be taken for a ride up and down yet again!

📰 News This week

a gajillion of news this week:

Heavy week! NFP on Tuesday, then full inflation report on Thursday.

Here’s to patience, learning, and profits!