My Trading Game Plan | August 7, 2026

My name is Derek Soloway and I was a
losing [music] trader until I mastered
technical analysis. Logic and charts
beat hype and narratives every time. Now
I teach investors the same techniques
that made me a multi-millionaire. This
is my trading game plan.
Good morning everybody. Happy Friday. My
name is Gareth Soloway, chief market
strategist here at
verifiedinvesting.com.
And what a morning we have. The jobs
report has just hit the wires about 30
minutes ago. The markets are digesting
it and right now we have a strong rally
on our hands. Basically, a much weaker
number than expected and that is causing
yields, interest rates to fall. The odds
of a Fed rate hike in September have now
gone below 50%. In other words, it's
more likely that they will not be hiking
in September and the markets are
rejoicing. Let's take a look at the data
points here. Here we have them, guys.
You can see right now we got the number
in minus 23,000 jobs. So, a loss of
23,000.
That's against the expected 83,000
number that the market was anticipating
or forecasted. Right? So, this again is
a big miss of basically a 100,000 jobs
um in the overall economy. unemployment
rate that actually fell onetenth of a
percent to 4.1%. Now, you might be
thinking, well, the unemployment rate's
going down. How does that make sense?
Why is that, you know, bad? I mean, how
do we get a negative jobs number and
then the unemployment rate actually goes
down? And the answer is in the details.
So, what's going on is people are
leaving the workforce. In other words,
they're not counted as unemployed. So,
it's not that you're adding jobs, it's
that people are just saying, you know
what, I can't find a job, so I'm going
to stop looking. And that's what these
numbers are telling us. We also have,
you can see the labor participation
rate. That's 61.4%.
That's down.7%
since January. That's telling you people
aren't participating. Look at the
previous prior month's numbers. Revised
down. May's number which came in at
129,000 jobs revised to only 63,000.
June which was last month came in at
57,000 that got revised down to 20,000.
So a big difference maker there. All
right. You can see down here where the
jobs went. Local government education
minus 50,000 retail - 19,000 and
financial activities -14,000. Healthc
care continues to be the bright spot,
gaining 22,000 jobs. And then another
shocker, average hourly earnings only up
3.2% year-over-year.
And that's the slowest annual wage
growth in years. So this is some big
deal, folks. I mean this again, listen,
by no means is this telling us we're in
a recession, but it is telling us that
this strong facade of capex spending by
the meggaap AI plays is masking
underlying weakness in the economy,
which is something I've talked about for
ma basically 6 to 12 months that I
believe that there's an underlying
weakness and recession that many people
are feeling already in this economy.
Now, like I said, we had the Fed watch
tool on watch. We have this on our
website for everyone to see. But what we
can see right here is that the Fed watch
tool, you can see it has now swung to
favoring by 56%.
No rate hike in September at the
September 16th, 2026 meeting. No rate
hike. Now they're going to be pausing.
So again, unless we get some crazy
inflation numbers and we still will get
one more jobs report, then it's likely
that the Fed is on the sidelines, which
is something I've said. Remember when I
talked about Kevin Worsh and how he came
out in the last press conference and he
talked this tough game and said, "Nope,
we're going to do this. We're going to
do that. We're going to get prices under
control." And then he didn't give us any
details at all. It was kind of like a
whole lot of talk with no meat and
potatoes to back it up. And lo and
behold, here we go. Now he has an out to
do exactly what the president wants,
which is not raise interest rates and
potentially maybe by next year, lower
interest rates. Crazy stuff, guys. All
right, let's get into the charts and see
where things are trading here. The S&P
500 is trading up off of this news. It
is pulling back just a little bit, but
impressive surge on the back of this.
And again, I think it's one of the hard
things for people to get their head
around, which is, wait a minute, the
jobs data was bad or weaker than
expected, but the markets are surging.
Why? And the answer is very simple.
Interest rates. So, interest rates and
the odds now of no rate hike. Markets
are addicted to cheap money. They want
cheap money. It's the drug of the market
and the system. And until that breaks,
the markets are going to rejoice on the
back of this. Okay, so that's where we
are at this point, guys, on the ES
futures coming back in. Let's look at
the S&P 500 here. Uh, if we go to the
S&P 500 daily chart, you guys know we've
been following a couple things. So
number one, we keep talking about how we
had this move up, consolidation,
breakout, retrace, support, resistance,
support, resistance, support, and then
we finally broke out. And sure enough, I
do think we're headed up to this level
right up here, which is your next
resistance point. And again, that's just
above 7,800 around 7833. Now, will we
hit that today? It's un I'm uncertain on
that, right? That's very tricky to know
if we're going to be able to get that
high. That would be a gain of about 120
points on the S&P 500. That would be
about one and a half percent. It is
possible, but that's what I'm watching.
So, keep an eye on this as our next
trend line resistance. Notice again, it
takes basically pivot points going back
a ways and connects them through. If we
get through that point, I'll give you
guys the next level of resistance. But
suffice it to say, I'll start getting a
little bit more neutral from the
breakout bullishness once we tag that
7830 level. If we get through that, my
next level, and I'll just tell you guys
now, I won't show it to you because I
don't have time in this broadcast, but
if we get through 7830 or so, we're
likely going to 80 uh 8,000 to 8,100 on
the S&P, which sounds like a big move,
but I think it's only about 3 to 4%
higher from current levels. So, it's not
a huge move, but again, it would be the
next leg up into the next major
resistance. Okay, so let's go into a
couple other charts here. Take a look.
This is the US dollar decline on the
10-minute chart. So, this was intraday.
Look at the dollar as soon as that jobs
data hit having that big collapse.
Again, the dollar is getting a small
technical bounce. But what I'm seeing
here, see this trend line down here? If
we flip over to the daily chart, this is
what is a major alert for me. Now, it's
not breaking yet. It's kind of piercing,
but if the dollar breaks here, this
could begin that next move down. Now,
this brings up another important point.
Remember last week and early this week
when I discussed the dollar yen
intervention, the coordinated effort by
the US and the Japanese central bank to
intervene and strengthen the yen uh
against the dollar. And the US did it by
selling euros to buy yen, which again is
is so number one to have two countries
actually intervene together in a
coordinated effort is somewhat
unprecedented. But then to use the euros
and sell the euros, well guess what? Now
we're seeing the issue here. The dollar
is already starting to decline. If you
start dumping the dollar, if the US
government starts dumping the dollar to
strengthen the yen, it's only going to
add more fuel to the selloff in the
dollar. So this is a big deal here,
folks. We'll have to keep an eye on it.
But the dollar, the DXY is piercing this
major trend line. Let's watch and see
how this goes. Now, this is really good
for gold and silver and it's very good
for Bitcoin as well. And remember, I g
came out a couple days ago and I said,
guys, Bitcoin is going to break out here
most likely based on the charts. Again,
Bitcoin is starting to push. We're now
above 65,000. I think there's upside to
71, then potentially 77,000 on Bitcoin.
I'm a big bull near term. I still don't
think Bitcoin's bottomed in the bare
market, but I do think there is a
chance, a solid probability of a bigger
than most people expect rally in Bitcoin
and bon honestly kind of following gold.
Gold broke out of that wedge pattern
today. It's having another monster surge
on this data point and again eventually
it will lift it. Rising tides lift all
boats as they say. All right, the
10-year yield. Look at the drop on the
10-minute chart on the yields. All the
way down to 4.6%. Small bounce here.
daily chart on the 10-year yield. Again,
basically just reversing this move uh
from the prior day, but nonetheless,
yields coming down is good for gold.
It's good for the the the obviously the
stock market, and potentially even good
for Bitcoin. Now, we're going to turn
our attention, guys, to big movers in
the stock market. As always, we'll get
to gold, we'll get to silver, oil, nat
gas, and Bitcoin. But let's take a look
at some of these bigger names here.
Teams is having a monster rally on the
earnings report that they put out. Now,
Team Atlassian Corporation, this has
been a software play that the market has
thrown out as like they're never going
to be anything. And I love situations
like that because when everyone else
hates on something and people overpric
like basically it was like OI is going
to kill all of these names like Adobe
and team and I mean you can go on and on
and we talked about this. I mean these
things got battered down. Well guess
what? All of a sudden earnings are
showing that team isn't dying. It's
actually had a great earnings report.
The stock is up 30% on the morning
session. Take a look here guys. What a
move. And you can see the selloff on
this thing. I mean, look at this
sell-off. Absolutely incredible. Went
from $327
down to a recent low of $57.
Then on earnings, look at the move from
a close yesterday of $110 to almost $150
a share. Epic move here on team. Now,
where is the resistance point? The only
level I'm eyeing, and this would only be
for a day trade, is going to be in this
vicinity. There's a very key zone here.
And basically, if we got up to this
level here between basically 167 and
176, low pivot here, you see all this
sideways chop, the high pivot there, the
low pivot right in here, that would be
the zone. So, it still has to go quite a
bit higher for me to kind of nibble on
this on the short side. But absolutely
tremendous move. And you could argue
that look at the chart setup, right?
Could this have been a cup and handle
pattern? And now the move up does look
like very similar to what we see in
technical analysis. Airbnb, great pop on
this. And again, Airbnb, everyone talked
about how, you know, booking was going
to be done by AI and all this stuff. And
we're just not seeing it fully yet.
Maybe it hasn't advanced enough, but the
bottom line is Airbnb is doing great and
the stock is rallying. Now, if we look
at the bigger chart here, there is a
trend line up here at 170, this pivot
high. We're at 161 and change. That
would be a short level for me today as a
day trade if it gets there. Again, on a
swing basis, I'd have to look back here
and find a secondary factor. So, I
probably would not look to short into
strength. In general, it's a very rare
case where I'm swing trading a short the
day of good earnings. And the main
reason is is because oftentimes good
earnings, especially in a market that's
near all-time highs, is going to
continue for a couple more days to kind
of exhaust the buying, right, before it
peters out. And so, in general, I'll day
trade these things going up, but I'm not
going to swing trade them and hold them
for longer periods of time looking for
bigger gains. TTD, not so good here,
guys. I mean, this is just flatout
nasty. Now, full and fair disclosure, I
had a small position of this going into
earnings, and it just shows you that
even though I'm not perfect, I certainly
make mistakes. Luckily, it was a very
small position. Um, but nonetheless, I
was looking at this. I'm like, wow, it's
trading at a 10 forward PE, all of these
things. And I was like, all right, you
know, it's worth a small shot. Of
course, if it goes down, I can dollar
cost average, which is what I'm starting
to do now on my swing trade. But the
idea here is that again, this this
report was nasty. I mean, it just it
just now listen maybe the positive is
that it's as bad as it's going to get.
You know, maybe management threw out the
baby with the bathwater as they said,
which is what I'm hoping. Um, but
essentially they missed on earnings,
they missed on revenue, they lowered
guidance. The the saving grace to me is
the CEO bought $148 million in stock
back in March at around$25 to $26. So,
the CEO is now down 50% on that buy, 50%
on his entry. Um, and you got to assume
he's going to work his butt off to make
that back. In other words, he's down
about $75 million on that buy. Now,
again, doesn't mean it can't go to $10
as we see. I mean, even today, it was
trading at multi-year lows. We're now
back at 2018 levels on this chart. So,
let's go to the look at the chart. Where
is where am I looking as a day trade?
$12ish, give or take. There's going to
be a key level downs sloping trend line
there. The stock right now is down about
30% on earnings. And you can see again,
zooming out, this stock just back here,
folks, in 2024, late 2024 was $141. It's
now $1249.
It's an incredible fall from Grace. Now,
just to be clear, the company is still
profitable. Uh they have over about they
have about 1.5 billion in cash. It's
only a six billion market cap. So, there
are factors that make it attractive. Um,
but needless to say, the the the
management fumbled this in epic per pro
proportions. I mean, it's just pretty
unbelievable, frankly. So, all right,
let's continue on here, guys. Uh,
Twilio, big pop on Twilio here. Daily
chart here. Again, a good move to the
upside. If we zoom out on this, you can
see that back in 2021, this was one of
the top stocks out there. It has such a
massive move up. We're just getting back
to recent highs. I think it's going to
go higher. This level in here would be
where I would swing trade it uh on the
short side around 275 to 276. This
little inside pivot is probably my first
level to do that. Just a couple other
stocks before we move on to uh gold and
silver. But what we have is I'm eyeing
Microsoft as a swing short. There's a
gap fill at 507. At 512 there's a
Fibonacci 786 retrace from the all-time
high here to this recent low. So that is
right in at this 507 to 512 level. That
is on my radar for a swing short. All
right, let's move on to gold, guys. Gold
having a blastoff today. Again, you had
the big breakout candle, the pause day,
and then another move up today. We're
now actually hitting near-term
resistance. I gave you guys this um just
a few days ago. I said first resistance
is going to be around 4375.
Where am I getting that from? pivot low
and this base plate right here. And
actually, you could extend this out to
this low over here as well. So, this is
the first test on gold on the bull move.
I'll be watching very closely to see if
it can get through or does it start to
trickle back down. We'll watch this
closely. Silver. Silver above this first
trend line but into the second trend
line. This is a huge move on silver. Can
it break through this level? This is
what I'm going to be watching here. And
again, basically a daily close above 64
with confirmation that would get me more
bullish on silver vi right now. I'm more
neutral, maybe even expecting a pullback
until proven otherwise. Uh oil today, we
saw oil rallying yesterday a little bit,
pulling back today, which is also good
for the markets. So, a little bit of a
downward move on crude oil here. Uh
nothing really to write home about, but
again just watching and waiting on crude
to see if there's a deal between the US
and uh Iran. Here's natural gas catching
a good bid today. Didn't quite get to my
technical level. Doesn't mean it can't
in the next few days into next week, but
at least today it is getting a solid
bounce. Um we see natural gas up about a
buck uh 1.75% today on the day. And then
lastly, Bitcoin, guys. This has been
something I've been eyeing. You have a
very similar chart to gold, right? If we
look back at gold, you have this downs
sloping wedge, right? And then price
broke out. If we look at Bitcoin here,
we have our downs sloping wedge and
price is breaking out. Can we get that
big move up in Bitcoin? First resistance
will be around 67. But this is a very
optimistically bullish chart right now
on Bitcoin. The question again is, can
it push up and make that move like we've
seen in gold? All right, guys. Wow, what
a day. Don't forget, guys, I will be
back at 4:20 for weekly wrap-up live.
And don't forget, at 1:30 today, we have
uh Crypto Combat, Wrecked or Rich
debuting again. We kind of took a
hiatus, but today we have three traders
trading $10,000 portfolios on the on
crypto or in crypto. And basically, we
have 45 minutes to make as much money as
we can. You watch us trade live. you
watch us trash talk. It's at 1:30 PM
right here on our homepage of Verified
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This is this is probably our most fun
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that's it's just fun and we just we just
I mean we use leverage. I'll use I think
I I'll use like 200x leverage today and
I'm going to try to blow these guys out
or I'll get wrecked. One or the other.
But you join that and check that show
out. It's a lot of fun. Have a great
rest of your day. I'll speak to you a
little bit later. Have a good one and
take care.