Man vs Machines with Jeff Bierman Archives

The Bond Level Holding Up Everything

September 5, 2026

Hey Trader, It hit 111 degrees here on Tuesday. By five in the afternoon it had cooled off to 101. Right now it is 94 outside. The heat is not really the story. The humidity is. That kind of buildup is what we call Indian summer. It signals the end of one season and the start of another. The bond market is giving off the same signal. It sits in a very precarious position right now. I call it Humpty Dumpty. It is perched on the edge of a wall. When it falls off that wall, it blows out the bond market. Then it blows out the stock market right behind it. Bessent is buying Treasuries to hold that level up. He is doing it because a major buyer is pulling back. That buyer is Japan. Their rates just hit the highest level in about 40 years. In this article

How to Tell A Washout From A Real Breakdown

September 2, 2026

Hey Trader, A stock breaks support and closes red. Your screen calls that a sell – a real breakdown. So you get short. That trade costs you twice. You hand your shares to the buyer at the low, then you pay him again on the squeeze. Best Buy did this to people after earnings. It cracked support, traded down to 76.70, and closed back up near resistance. The shorts got three bucks out of it, from 82 down to 79. Then it turned and ran to 90 in about a week. I missed that trade. I flat out missed it, and the chart was telling me to load the boat. Today I want to show you the one reading that separated the sell from the buy. It came out of an Equivolume box, not a candlestick. Nine million shares traded that session against a three million average. Wide boxes on

One Box Replaces Three of Your Indicators

August 31, 2026

Hey Trader, Your candlestick shows price. Volume sits in a separate panel underneath. That split makes you read the chart twice. You process price, then process volume, then decide. The lag costs money. A breakout on thin participation looks identical to a breakout on heavy participation until you drop your eyes to the histogram. By then the candle has closed. I pulled up GAP this morning. Volume exploded on the earnings session, then fell to a death knell days later. The price candles never warned you that participation had walked out. But there is a chart that did…a chart type that puts price and volume inside the same box. It’s called an Equivolume chart. Richard Arms built it. He also built the TRIN and the tick sitting on your platform right now. The height of the box gives you the range. The width gives you the volume. The color and

When I Parked Next to Bill Gross & Mohamed El-Erian

August 29, 2026

Hey trader, Twenty-five years ago, I drove into the same office as Bill Gross and Mohamed El-Erian every single morning in Newport Beach. Bill parked a white four-door Mercedes there. Mohamed parked something closer to a Bentley. They walked left into their building. I walked right into mine. I never worked a day beside either of them. Yet, I’ve been listening to them ever since. That habit has made me more money than any indicator I’ve ever put on a chart. Today I want to explain why, and I want to show you exactly what El-Erian is saying right now about the bond market. Smart People Make You Better I defer to people who are smarter than me. I’ve done it my whole career. There are a lot of people in this business who do the opposite. They look at someone smarter and they get offended. They get intimidated. They

Valuation Headroom Tells You How Much Upside

August 26, 2026

Hey Trader, Fundamentals are back in fashion…but not the way you think. Taking a price-to-earnings ratio only tells one part of the story. To get the rest, you have to compare it to the growth rate, commonly known as the PEG ratio. Photronics was a great example this morning. The stock failed to hold its early gains. Why? Because its P/E and long-term growth rate were 15. There was nothing left to push price higher. So, naturally, when a stock’s P/E ratio sits below its growth rate, you’ve got some upside potential. I call this concept valuation headroom. It not only tells you whether a stock has upside but how much. Let me take you through this concept in detail so you can learn how to do this simple analysis for yourself. The Genesis Cog Scanner flags these gaps in real time. Valuation Headroom Explained Valuation headroom measures the distance

Map The Cliff Before The Market Falls

August 24, 2026

Hey Trader, Does it feel like we are about to fall off a cliff? Yep, and the technicals back it up. We’ve been on the brink of collapse before. Yet, nobody knows when the break actually comes, and that includes me. So when things finally go South, traders freeze at the exact moment support gives way underneath them. The S&P 500 is living that problem right now. The gap at 7635 in the ES marks the end of this run, and the RSI is barely holding 50. I stacked on the S&P 500 this morning. Now, I’m going to show them to you. I call this market a cliffhanger. You prepare for a cliffhanger by mapping the levels in advance, then reacting when they break. The map does the work that prediction never could. What A Cliffhanger Actually Means Here Back in 1993 there was a fun film called “Cliffhanger,”

Managing Risk Starts Before the Fill

August 22, 2026

Hey trader, Thirteen years ago, I stood in an operating room wearing scrubs and a mask. My wife had a C-section because my daughter arrived about seven days late. The doctor handed me the baby wrapped in that usual hospital towel. I looked back at her and asked what I was supposed to do now. She told me not to worry. She said I’d figure it out. My daughter turns 13 this week. She started eighth grade this morning. I think I figured it out. That advice works beautifully for fatherhood… It falls apart the second you apply it to a trading account. I watch traders open positions with no exit in mind. They intend to figure it out once the loss starts to sting. By then, the position is making the decision instead of the trader. I’ve done this for 38 years. I ran a hedge fund for 11

Broken Correlation Has Set A Liquidity Trap

August 19, 2026

Hey trader, SanDisk jumped nearly 15% last Thursday. By Monday, it was up almost 40%. Today, it’s down almost 15% from the highs. It’s like no one can decide whether they want to own or sell the stock. Actually, that’s pretty much what’s happening. Stock correlation, the tendency for different stocks to all move together, has collapsed to its lowest level in market history. You see it everywhere these days. Healthcare climbs while semiconductors fall. Staples jump while energy drops. It creates some pretty epic moves, but also presents serious risk. We have an environment ripe for what I call a liquidity trap, where a stock doesn’t just fall…it takes a swan dive. I want to take you through this concept so you understand the risks that lie before us. Because I promise you, this market isn’t like anything you’ve ever seen before What The Liquidity Trap Actually Is Correlation

Why You Lose When You’re Right

August 17, 2026

Hey Trader, A short can be right on direction and still pay you nothing. It’s frustrating. Traders take a valid breakdown, then watch it grind sideways until they walk away from the business. The S&P 500 did that to people last week. They shorted a real break underneath a bearish flag formation. The MACD slope behind that break measured nine degrees. Those traders have lost 500 S&P 500 points. Their direction was fine. The angle behind it never paid them a dime. It’s the angle of the slope that decides the size of your check! In fact, I got an email this morning asking me about Nike. I won’t touch it, and the slope is my entire reason. By the end of this article, you will know the exact angles I require before I risk a dollar on a short. You’ll also learn why a flat MACD turns a correct

Breakout or Fakeout Hinges on One Price

August 14, 2026

Hey Trader, Is it a breakout or fakeout? Traders frequently ask me how I know the difference. They feel like they’re always getting stopped out. And no clear signal exists. They just aren’t looking in the right place. It all boils down to one price: the close. I look at the close of the chart time period, daily, weekly, or otherwise. But why are closing prices so important? Why isn’t it the largest volume node or some other esoteric measure? Allow me to explain why the simplest solution here is the best solution. Why The Close Beats Every Other Price Price moves all day on perception. Sentiment, tick charts, and zero DTE flow shove it around from the opening bell forward. Flatten out a full day of that noise. The price settles into intrinsic value by the close. That settlement makes the close the final judge. Every other print during

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08.00	OJ & Mac \| Overnight review \| FREE SESSION 08.30 09.20 Don Kaufman \| Early volatility 09.20 10.30 Jeff Bierman \| Market structure 10.30 11.30 Brandon Chapman \| Ghost Hour 11.30 12.30 Gianni Di Poce \| Macro overview 12.30 13.15 Corey Rosenbloom \| Options tactics 13.15 14.00
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14.00	Tony Rago \| Futures Trading 14.00 15.00
15.00	Blake Young & Mac Holbrook \| Market wrap 15.00 16.00

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