My Trading Game Plan | August 14, 2026

My name is Gareth Soloway and I was a
losing trader until [music] I mastered
technical analysis. Logic and charts
beat hype and narratives every time. Now
I teach investors the same techniques
[music]
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 as always, we have a lot to discuss
today. Economic news has just broken
minutes ago and the charts are moving.
So as always, we'll focus on charts and
data, ignoring the nonsense hype and
narratives to give you guys the right
setups for the trading day. So first
off, 8:30 a.m. came today. We got retail
sales. It's usually kind of a non-event
number. You know, usually it's up a
little, down a little. This one was a
shocker. So take a look at this, guys.
This is a big number. A minus point six
number versus an estimate of point one
percent. Take a look at that, guys. So
again, why is this important? So number
one, it shows you that inflation is
hurting the consumer. We know that the
jobs number that was just reported over
the last week or so was weaker than
expected. We know that CPI kind of
getting back to a more in line with
estimates, but this is telling us the
consumer is weak. Online sales down
2.2%. Groceries down point one, autos
1.8% drop, gasoline obviously spiking
because of the cost. Now,
the the nature of this number,
it's obviously showing weakness. But
more importantly, you have to remember,
what have I said? Did I say the Fed was
going to most likely raise in September
or have I been a skeptic on that? And
the answer is I've been a skeptic. What
are we seeing in terms of the Fed Watch
Tool? Now, remember, going back a week,
it was favoring a rate hike in September
if you looked at the Fed Watch Tool.
Then we got the CPI numbers and it kind
of went to the other way. It started to
favor maybe slightly no rate hike and
just the Fed standing pat. Take a look
at this, guys. Look at this number. We
are now at a point where as of this
morning there is almost a 70% chance
that the Fed does nothing in September.
Not only that, but this, remember, it
was basically, if you looked yesterday,
it was about a 60 55 to 60% chance the
Fed did nothing in September. So, it's
just gotten more lopsided in that
direction. But what was interesting is
yesterday the odds still favored in
October a rate hike. Well, guess what?
Look at that. 57% chance now in October
there is no rate hike. Slowly
the potential for rate hikes have been
slipping away, just like I said they
would. And this, again, tells me no rate
hikes the rest of the year. I don't buy
it. The You can see the Fed Watch Tool
still shows that there might be one
later this year or early next year. I
say no, it's not going to happen. And I
even think rate cuts in 2027.
Wild stuff, guys. I mean, this is just
incredible how the data is now starting
to fit what I thought the the keys were
going to be between weaker labor market,
retail sales, which shows consumers
hurting, um inflation, which is still
ridiculously high, frankly, but it's
coming in to the point where
at least, if you believe the numbers,
the Fed doesn't have to push down, just
tighten as much as they would need to.
All right, let's get into the charts.
Take a look right here.
What we have, the S&P futures are
trading higher in the morning session.
We're not up a lot, right? So again, if
we look at where we closed yesterday, we
closed right around here. So the S&P
futures are inching up just a little
bit. Remember that we talked about a
potential breakout on the S&P 500. I've
been talking about this for the last
week or so that we had gone up into
resistance and then we were we weren't
pulling back really. We kind of had a
couple small down days, but it started
to form this sideways chop, which we
know in technical analysis is a bull
flag formation. So regardless of what I
want to happen, the answer is is that
that's a bullish pattern. The
probability favors a move to the upside.
Did we get that yesterday? You bet we
did. S&P 500 daily chart, take a look.
We pushed up yesterday. Here's your
sideways chop for the last week. Now
we're pushing up. Today, let's see if we
continue on that way. Remember, it's
also mid-August and mid-August to late
August uh also very keenly favors
neutral to upside bias because the
volume is so light in the market. All
right, so again, just rehashing this
chart. Let's take a look. Basically,
we've been stuck in this parallel uh
highs from the bull market of 2021. This
is your COVID low. Here's your bear
market lows. Then you had your big pop
and your drop, which was the tariff
sell-off in 2025. We then went up to the
high end of it, kind of chopped around
and had the sell-off earlier this year
into April. Then we broke out and you
can see very cleanly here, we broke out,
we went to this area, we pulled back to
support. We went up, kind of came back
into support. Up again, reattacked and
it couldn't break through. Path of least
resistance is up, sideways
consolidation,
now we can go higher.
Where is the upside target that I've
been talking about for the last few
weeks based on the details in the
technical analysis I've done? It's
looking like 81 to 8200 would be not the
not the next point where we'll get a
pullback. Like pullbacks will happen,
right? But that to me is standing out as
a major potential cycle high for the
market. The the point where the market
could actually be at risk for a 10 to
20% drawdown versus just a, you know, 3%
pullback like we've been seeing. All
right. So, that's where we are right now
on the S&P. Remember, futures are
pointing to a positive move. This is one
of the reinforcements here. Take a look
at the US dollar. It is falling and
potentially breaking support. Now again,
I know for you and I who make money and
we we go to the store, we like a strong
dollar. Like I don't like when my dollar
weakens because it buys less and it
drives me nuts. It actually encour- ages
inflation because when we buy goods
overseas, which we buy so much as a
country from overseas, it means that our
dollar, because it's weakening against
other currencies, buys less of that
good. Thus, those prices are higher to
us, aka inflation. Um but the bottom
line is the market likes a weak dollar
and the market likes low interest rates.
And that's what we're seeing here on the
US dollar. The dollar is trying to break
technical support. Now, one little side
note here.
Yesterday, there was a 30-year bond
auction. $25 billion were auctioned off
by the Treasury, the US government, and
it went for the highest interest rate.
In other words, the players that were
buying the 30-year bond auction
yesterday, they demanded about a 5.216
interest rate. That is the highest
interest rate in 25 years on the 10 the
30-year bond. Now, the reason why that
is scary, it tells you that players, and
I've talked about this before, that are
buying something that takes 30 years to
mature, they are starting to say, "You
got to pay us more in interest to take
the risk because we don't believe you as
the US government will actually ever pay
us back, or if you do, you're going to
print so much money to print away the
debt that what we're making, we need to
make more to offset that risk." And
that's something that as a citizen, and
it doesn't matter what country you're
in, this is unfortunately any fiat
currency that is not backed by a
physical asset like gold,
it drives the government to get
more and more lenient on their policies
and spend more money because there's no
repercussion, there's nothing that's
tying it to it, there's no physical
nature. They press a button on a
keyboard and boom, there's a trillion
dollars.
And so, when you're a politician and you
got to be reelected every four years,
you don't want to make the hard choice
and say, "Hey, listen, I'm going to I'm
going to vote for no spending, and yes,
I understand it's going to go make us go
into a recession, but we'll come out of
that recession stronger," which is what
would happen,
because you just when you're in a
recession and if you get blamed for
that, you're not getting reelected. And
this is part of the issues of our
system, right? And again, it's just
something we have to deal with, but as
citizens, we can under stand it
and then utilize the ability to buy gold
and buy other physical assets to almost
back our own fiat, right? And so, you
can almost be your own treasury, you're
and you are your own treasury, frankly,
your own bank. You just have to make the
right decisions. Now, it's not to say,
"Am I fully in
gold?" No, of course not. I obviously
have money in the bank, uh but at the
same time, I do have these other things
that should offset, and it's part of the
preparation that I think we all have to
do. Sorry to get on a tangent, by the
way. I never like to, you know, get
distracted, but I do think these are
important things. All right. 10-year
yield flat to positive today. Notice
again, even though the dollar's
declining, yields are not going down,
and this is a warning sign that the US
debt, which by the way just hit 40
trillion yesterday, is at a meteoric
pace and likely to continue, so interest
rates are just not going to go down that
much. I mean, again, even buying the
10-year 10-year bond, in 10 years,
what's the US deficit? If it's gone in,
you know, I think since 2000 and what,
17, it went was it 14 trillion and now
it's at 40 or whatever, 17 trillion. The
point is it's going up so quickly that
there's
it's unsustainable. Put it to you that
way. All right.
Let's get into some stocks that are
making moves today, guys, and what we
see here very, very cleanly is that the
AMAT earnings were were, by the way, the
AMAT earnings were very, very good, but
the problem is is that the stock was up
so much on the daily chart. Look at this
run here on the daily chart over the
last year,
that even good earnings do just not It's
just not going to cut it. I mean, that's
just the bottom line. It's just not
going to be good enough, and that's the
problem here on these numbers. So, the
numbers were good. It just is a matter
of
they're not good enough for a stock that
has run that much. Now, as a trader,
where am I looking to day trade this?
Let's take a look. Well, if we look at
this here, guys, we can see it's coming
down to the 500 level. I'm going to
start to eye a day trade at 481.75,
this pivot low. On a swing trade basis,
I've got to monitor this trend line
closely. This would be a level where I
might get interested. I don't like the
fact that that would be the fourth hit
because fourth hits have a little higher
probability of breaking, but I still
think for a quick trade, for a quick
bounce, that might be a nice little
swing trade level that's around 458, 460
on the charts. All right, so we'll keep
an eye on that as well.
Reddit. Reddit surging this morning. Uh
they got added to the S&P 500. So, this
stock is going nuts today and having a
big gap up. Where would be the trading
levels on this? And right off the bat,
there's a gap fill approaching at 178.
That's going to be a little high risk,
but that should be a major resistance
point. If it gets through that, you
probably head up towards this level
around 186. 186 should also be a
fantastic level. Safer, but I don't know
if it will get there. Speaking of trades
that I gave you guys, remember yesterday
I said Dell, and this was it This is the
exact chart that I gave you guys. I said
between 505 and 510, this is going to be
a good shortable level. Um and sure
enough, I took it in the day trading
room yesterday, and look at that. It
pulled back beautifully closing at 494,
and it went down right now it's it's
trading at 490. Great trend line, and
again, this one went as high as 514
yesterday. So, again, my 505 to 510 even
got pierced, and it still came back for
a great money maker that I gave out
right here in my trading game plan. All
right, back to some stocks on the move
today. We do see new holdings making a
good push on earnings here. This stock
again has been kind of beaten down a
little bit overall.
If we take a look at the gap up, you can
see it's trading right at this pivot
point. I don't want to trade that
because it's already there or above.
What I do see is look at the gap right
here. There's a big gap fill at 1665.
That actually looks like a good day
trade level. Is there any swing trade
levels here? Nope, I don't have anything
at this point. I'll stay on the
sidelines. Now, one of my favorite
shorts right now is DB. DB,
first of all, look at the vertical move.
I love charts that are extended like
this because it's like pulling a rubber
band, right? You pull that rubber band
tighter and tighter and tighter, and
then when it finally gets let go, it
snaps back harder. And so, when you look
at a chart like this that has had such a
massive run in such a short amount of
time, it does get me excited for a swing
short. I did take a swing short with
members of Smart Money Stocks and ETFs
at Verified Investing here. And again,
we can see right up into a longer-term
trend line here. Beautiful trend line
right through pivot points, and we're
right up into that level. So, look for
this one on a swing trade basis. This
should pull back. Another one that I
really like, I love a short on the
financials right now. You have this XLF,
which is the ETF that tracks the
financials. Look at the parallel that
we've been stuck in. Every time we get
up or pierce this upper trend line, you
get a bigger pullback, and look at where
we are right now. We're right up in
there, and then generally it finds its
way back down to the low end of this
parallel. So, it's still in an uptrend.
It's just utilizing the resistance to
short it and the supports to buy it as
long as the uptrend holds. That's all
you're really doing here. But again, I
like the XLF. It basically bases it off
JP Morgan. Look at JPM, guys. I mean,
look at this trend line on JP Morgan.
Beautiful ram into resistance there.
Bank of America looks the same. They are
all beautifully the same. All right. So,
very, very cool on that front there.
All right. Now, one thing I did want to
go over real quickly, guys, and I think
this is really, really cool, is that
there's an opportunity for you guys to
get a lot of technical analysis right
here at verifiedinvesting.com. I want to
show you this because I think this will
be a game-changer for a lot of you. So,
if you go to verifiedinvesting.com
and you take a look here, and I'm
bringing it up just as we speak. Bear
with me. Is that obviously what we have
here is our website, and there's tons of
data on the website, right? I mean,
there's so much. But, if you just create
a free account and go to my dashboard,
there is even more. You have your gold
calculator right here. All right, this
is the gold calculator I've shown you
guys here. And again, you can put in all
your metrics and figure out what your
gold target for the next bull run is. I
have it all preset to what the current
conditions are. Here's Garrett's base
case, which is $13,000
by 2029 to 31. And you can even mess
around. You can change all these
metrics, and the numbers will change
here. But, that's just the gold
calculator. That's not even including
what else you have. You have technical
analysis in and insight articles, daily
charts right here, which all are
tradeable levels, swing trading and day
trading. In fact, this was a trade we
took this morning. Uh Nick posted it. It
was a great drop in Uniswap um intraday.
It came right down here. This was a 618
Fibonacci retrace, multiple vertical
trend line right here, and it already
bounced beautifully. I think it bounced
5 to 10 cents right off of this 320
pierce. It was a great little trade
setup. And again, some of these are day
trades, some of them will be swing
trades, but the point is it's all for
you guys in terms of having that. And
you can just keep scrolling down. We got
our ear earnings calendar. We got our
economic calendar here with all of the
numbers. We have all of the numbers here
laid out graphically beautifully. You
have your alpha action, which the
traders are giving continuous analysis
throughout the day in in short little
bits. You got your fear and greed
indicator, and so on and so forth. So,
really, really cool on that front, guys.
And again, don't even need to pay a
dime. This We We wanted to create
Listen, there's obviously services where
I show my my live portfolio, and you can
follow my exact entries, how many shares
or how many tokens I'm buying, or
whatever it is. But, also you don't need
that. Just join for free and get all
access to incredible wealth of technical
analysis. All right, back to the charts
we go here. We were just talking about
JP Morgan, but let's go on to some of
the commodities here and take a look.
So, if we go to gold, gold had a
pullback day yesterday,
and today it's getting a little bit of a
bounce, probably because the dollar is
pulling back on the back of these weaker
than expected numbers. But, right now
again gold is kind of in a little bit of
a holding pattern. It's deciding does it
want to make a bull flag like this, in
which case it's going to make another
run up, or is it going to have a bigger
pullback to maybe support here, or
potentially all the way down here? And
that's what we're watching to see based
on how this chart materializes in the
near term. If we look at silver, take a
look at silver here. Uh silver ran into
resistance. It's up a little bit today,
but just consolidating as well. Watching
to see what type of pattern formation,
which then will guide us to what is the
next likely move. Crude oil today, guys,
going into the weekend is basically
flat. Again, we're stuck in a wedge like
I've told you. In wedges, once the wedge
gets tight, it's not even worth it for
me to short it here and buy it here cuz
the risk reward's not good enough. Here
it was a great buy. It was a great
short. Took both those trades with you
guys. Even told you about them in these
game plans. We made great money. Now
it's not. I'm just waiting. Just like
apparently the stalemate is between the
US and Iran, we're on a holding pattern
here as well. Natural gas, guys, up a
little bit today. It still has not been
able to burst through this 283
resistance. If it does come down, the
next support is 257 on this. But, I will
say this, there's more and more chatter
about how Europe has a major shortfall
in natural gas inventories. And I have a
feeling that as we get close to the
winter winter, and the essentially
natural gas is used more in winter, you
actually could see a pretty nice move up
on natural gas. So, keep that on your
radar. Right now, the chart's kind of
eh,
but at the same time, and by eh, by the
way, eh is a technical term. No, I'm
just kidding. But, the point is is that
if it breaks out, okay, game on. Until
then, we're in a holding pattern much
like oil. Lastly, Bitcoin. Now, Bitcoin
and crypto are both inching lower today.
We're still above this major trend line
here, so that's still a net positive for
the chart, but it hasn't stopped price
from trying to retrace to it. There was
another delay on discussions on the
Clarity Act, and I'll tell you folks, I
mean, it every time there's a delay, you
just see crypto inch a little bit lower.
And again, the positive is if something
actually positive happens with clarity,
the Clarity Act, you will see a squeeze
in a lot of these coins. And so, for me,
believe it or not, I'm accumulating. I
am accumulating down here as long as
these breakouts
um even though the bearish sentiment is
is palpable, I am a believer that I
still think that by the midterms we'll
have something firm. And even if not, at
some levels, these things a lot of the
altcoins are getting so low, like XRP's
at a buck. And you can love or hate it,
I couldn't care less. I just trade the
charts, but the chart down to about 95,
96 cents, there's a ton of support here
on the charts. It should hold. I'll keep
you guys posted. All right, I got to get
to my trading room today, guys, and day
trade this market. Thank you so much for
tuning in. Like, subscribe, share with
friends and family. Thank you guys so
much, and I'll talk to you soon. Don't
forget, weekly wrap-up later today at
4:20 with me. Take care.