Chart Dump

Lots of great setups again. Going through my old list...

Support Breaks Galore

Gold hasn't broken yet. Commodities are relatively strong today, I'm down on XLE, FCX and DOW puts. I bought 1 DTE GDX puts in case gold does break though.

Visa and Mastercard look like ServiceNow because they're all in the tech sector. I'm not sure if V and MA will pull tech down, or vice versa, but it's kind of a weird sector with two stocks tied to the consumer and interest rates in with tech companies.

Cashed Up for the Week

I'm long GDX, TLT. Have some puts on AMR riding the Spruce Capital play. Otherwise mostly cash. Will be looking to add consumer finance shorts this week, DFS looking like my first choice. I keep going back to the well on MA, V, MCD, POOL those are all going to be beauteous shorts at some point. Eyeing XLE, SMH for sectors. Still like crypto carnage plays like SBNY. Also looking at adding ZN (futures) calls way out in December.

The S&P 500 could get to 4100 area. Not a forecast, but I'm watching to see how the market reacts. If the lows aren't taken out, odds of a bounce increase.

BTC could run to $40,000 in a general bounce.

The ES is lokoing diamondy this morning. The move out of this pattern should be a powerful one.

My read in the very short-term is the bears have to put up or shut up. They take out the lows and the bottom drops out on this market, or the bulls are going to meander this higher with or without a squeeze. It doesn't mean the low is in, only that this potential breakdown moment has passed.

Easter Charts

Consumer Credit

Rally for a Month?

Pondering...late April has been a good shorting time when "sell in May" works. Earnings seasons should be ugly this spring...

Only a Matter of Time

Until you need a UnionPay card to travel internationally.

Reuters: Russian banks rush to switch to Chinese card system

You might think who cares, but when push comes to shove, nations will be forced to choose which system they will use. If a nation knows it will lose tourist money one way or another, it will choose to lose the least amount. There will be outliers. Perhaps Vietnam will choose the West, even if it is the worse economic choice, because they value sovereignty more. Maybe Thaliand can remain independent and doesn't have to choose. Otherwise, I expect much of Asia will be closed to Westerners who don't have UnionPay cards. Should the U.S. dollar collapse, much of the world may be closed to Visa and Mastercard.

Everywhere You Want to Short

Visa Breached Long-Term Support

The Destruction of Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

WashEx: Amazon to ban Visa credit cards in United Kingdom

Amazon announced Wednesday it will no longer accept Visa credit cards issued in the United Kingdom starting January, citing high transaction fees charged by the company .

The news comes after the U.K.'s departure from the European Union, which got rid of mandated caps on credit card transaction fees. Amazon said consumers are still allowed to use Visa debit cards, Eurocards, Mastercards , and American Express cards.

...“The cost of accepting card payments continues to be an obstacle for businesses striving to provide the best prices for customers. These costs should be going down over time with technological advancements, but instead they continue to stay high or even rise," an Amazon spokesperson told MarketWatch . "As a result of Visa's continued high cost of payments, we regret that Amazon.co.uk will no longer accept UK-issued Visa credit cards as of 19 January, 2022."

Blockchain replaces network fees that are percentages of transactions with fees the run into the ones of pennies. Amazon is being aggressive now because it can. This is the start of a major trend.

Chartwise, Visa is approaching the bottom of its channel. Mastercard has further to go. If support is lost, it may be time to aggressively short. After the credit card companies, the big target for blockchain will be Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon, Google and their cloud services.

I'm not really sure why they qualify, but Mastercard and Visa are top-10 components of the S&P 500 Technology sector. They combine for 5.8 percent of assets. The story here is the narrowing of the bull market. Short opportunitues grow, even as the headline indexes make new highs.