Meta - To Long, Or To Short?

Updated
I have to say that Meta is one of the hardest charts that exist to read right now, mostly because for 9 straight months, an unprecedented feat in the history of Facebook, it has gone up in a straight line, and bigly.

You only see it clearly on the monthly:

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And yet the problem with the bull thesis for a new all time high is the '22 bear raid took out all the sell side all of the way back to 2016.

Although you can have, and speculators and hodlers have been fortunate enough to have had, a significant retrace afterwards, stocks taking long term lows is usually kind of like when a person turns 50 and starts urinating blood.

It means something is wrong with an organ and the time they have left to live is not so long and not so bright.

Even the weekly is insanely one-directional

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This stock will have attention tomorrow as post-market earnings have produced another $20 gain, but notably, as of time of writing, have brought the price only to $319, still underneath the July high.

Geopolitical risks abound in the markets right now. Much is happening with Mainland China and the International Rules Based Order. You can consult my previous calls, which are below, for my thoughts on the situation.

But the Cliff's Notes of it is that the 24-year persecution and organ harvesting genocide of Falun Gong by the Jiang Zemin faction and the CCP may soon be made public worldwide if President Xi weaponizes those sins to protect China, its 5,000-year-old culture, and himself from the IRBO intending a Maidan Revolution-style coup to replace him with someone from Taiwan that happens to be a fine lapdog to the global regime's interests.

What is the bull thesis for Meta? Facebook is something of a panopticon data collection system and advertising network rolled into the guise of a social media platform where people voluntarily disclose their location, interests, likes, connections, and spend time interacting with friends and family.

Meta's rebrand is to force the world into something of a Nintendo 64-level version of Second Life, where you're supposed to literally sit in your cube eating the cricket crackers under a bunch of blankets with the furnace/AC off with the VR headset strapped to your face while you do data entry all day.

It's really the kind of dystopian thing the Chinese Communist Party really likes, because it means you can be submissive and agreeable slaves that don't threaten its stability and still produce work.

If mankind's future is truly to return to tradition (it is), what place does Meta have in it?

Meta has very little place in the future, and that's a fundamental problem, really, for everything that revolves around people living chained to computers and phones.

A really notable thing is that the Chinese Government, especially under Xi Jinping since he took power in 2013, has not allowed Meta/Facebook to set up shop inside Mainland China.

The world's most notorious totalitarian regime and the creator of social credit and censorship does not want Meta/Facebook's influence impacting their citizens.

Ain't that something. And yet, you're supposed to be bullish on this... because it's going up.

You just want something to go up so you can buy it and feel pleased when you see green, not sell, and then feel sad when you see red, red, red, and are liquidated.

This is modern humanity.

So here's the question with Meta: is it a short, or is it a long?

The truth is that with Meta, it's gone up in the kind of straight line that makes Apple blush for 9 straight months.

When something trades like this, you can never say "it's a short."

Instead, you can watch for when it does become a short.

And we're in the zone. Although the biggest gap has been filled, the monthly candles show that the bodies of the winning streak's candles are still respecting the range created by the February of 2022 doom candle that ended the Party.

On the daily, the last five days of price action, which correspond with a Nasdaq that may very well have topped but an SPX that does not seem to have topped yet, are the most bearish they have been during the entire bull run.

And so, if you want to get long on open, I can only encourage you to exercise caution. You may really have upside as high as $343. But you may also have upside no higher than $325.

It may also gap up on market open and then sell off, and that kind of a sell off at this kind of a time may mean you are trapped.

To confirm a bull thesis, $343 needs to be broken and maintained

To confirm a bear thesis, the first thing we need to see after the earnings manipulation is for the $288.30 double bottom to be broken.

From there, if $258.88 is broken, the trend is over and will have reversed, even though you may see further upside in the interim.

A break over $325 and then a rejection under $288 would be the most bearish. If that unfolds, it's no longer a dip to buy. Instead, long term puts while the VIX is so suppressed might really be really, really valuable.

And the problem for both bears and bulls is the $40 range that "confirms" whether there's forever uppy or forever doom.
Note
Not all rallies last. If this earnings pump were to fail, the pattern would amount to a stop raid on the July high. Confirmation would be it taking the $288 low.

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Based on what the indexes are doing, the likelihood is higher than normal.

Unless you really believe the markets are headed for a new all time high.
Note
I think, based on what Meta did today and what the indexes did today that Meta is now most definitely a short, and a very good short.

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More or less if you wait until SPX 4650/Nasdaq 16,000 again and give the puts some time on the contract, that will be really good.
Note
Can meta keep going in August, or was Friday's "new high" just a raid on stops for more doom?

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I'd say if you're long the top you should be cautious and if you're long from somewhere lower, consider trimming, or at least hedging.
Note
Meta, frankly, still looks pretty rough in terms of a long. But it also sucks in terms of a short.

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I think you have to wait until Nasdaq is playing with 16,000 again to go short.

But the July high may have been the high for Meta.
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