Rebels Edge · Tue, Jul 21, 2026
Oil Shock, VIX Over 30 & Market Panic — Is This the Buying Opportunity?
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Jon Najarian and Justin Nugent discuss an oil-price spike, a VIX surge above 30, and whether the subsequent reversals signal a buying opportunity amid Middle East tensions. They highlight oversold market indicators, bullish options activity in United Airlines and Marvell, and company developments involving Hims & Hers, Live Nation, and Paramount Skydance.
- WTI briefly approached $120 before retreating to roughly $96; Najarian favored taking profits in energy stocks.
- Nugent viewed the VIX reversal, oversold breadth, and major stocks near their 200-day moving averages as potential support for a market bounce.
- The hosts discussed prediction markets and crude futures as indicators of expectations for the conflict’s duration, while acknowledging uncertainty.
- Hims & Hers rose about 44% on a Novo Nordisk agreement; the hosts discussed peptide expansion opportunities but cautioned about competition and margins.
- Live Nation rallied as an emerging DOJ settlement appeared to avoid a Ticketmaster breakup, with $200 million in damages discussed.
- Airlines faced higher fuel costs, but large United Airlines call and call-spread purchases suggested positioning for a rebound over the next month or two.
- Tencent reaffirmed a $1 billion commitment connected to Paramount Skydance’s Warner Bros. Discovery deal.
- Nugent highlighted a bullish Marvell Trade Monster AI signal involving April 17 expiration and noted supporting unusual options activity.
Full transcript
Welcome back to The Rebel's Edge. Joined again today by Justin Nugent. And Justin's going to be telling us what the Trade Monster AI and his gut are telling us about the markets today.
It's a tester, but remember these create great opportunities, folks. So we're going to be telling you about those opportunities today on The Rebel's Edge.
>> [music] [music] [music] >> Welcome back, folks. That is Justin
Nugent. I am Jon Najarian. Pete apparently caught some sort of a bug coming back from California. And so Justin kind enough to jump in again today as he did two different days last week. So thank you very much, Justin.
Great to have you, sir.
I appreciate it. I will join as many days as you will allow me to.
Uh-huh. Well, be careful.
>> [laughter] >> Well, um Justin, let's dive right into what's going on with global macro markets. And obviously, folks, we couldn't have the show today without touching on the big surge in oil prices. And we hit 119.50
roughly uh for WTI.
Brent even higher than that. And when that happened, folks, um we sat there looking at the chart going, "Well, the last time we hit 120 was back in 2022." And Justin, maybe you remember a war going on back then, but I don't. But oil
was 120 back in 2022.
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, I was trying to pull up I saw this thing and it was it was asking how many days during the prior presidency was oil priced higher than it was uh priced now. And I tried to pull up that statistic. I couldn't find it.
But yes, I I concur with everything you just said.
Well, um there you see chart that uh uh Jared has pulled up here on TradingView. And we have pulled back substantially, by the way, folks. Not just $19, but we're down to 96.33
per barrel right now. And like I said, we hit 119.48 in the early morning uh trade. And it's basically a 24-hour commodity. But just like gold and silver are. But this was something uh that when when a customer called me and
asked, "What should I do here?" I said, "You should be selling energy or 50% of your energy stocks." But again, I can't pull the trigger for you. I can just tell you what I'd do if I held your position. And she had a lot of energy, Justin. So
I think it's a smart idea to take some profits there instead of half of the price when if it if and when it falls back into the 60s, which I say is coming. Just not today. Probably not a month from now. But it is coming. Um once this is resolved over there, we'll have all that uh Venezuelan oil on the
market.
Not all of the oil fields in Iran will have been destroyed. So we'll have a lot of that on the market as well.
All right. Well, Justin, um as far as uh uh VIX, let's hit how high it got today because that was a spike I think not a lot of people saw it coming. We did have some unusual activity in the VIX, but my gosh,
uh this was an incredible pop to the upside through 30. What did you think of this?
Yeah, [snorts] I mean, well, the VIX opens up and what does it open up? About 17% higher, right? Already it's pretty high, right? It's around 30 prior to that. And then yeah, just falls down here pretty hard. And I think it's actually trading in the red now. So that's a good thing for normal markets.
And uh that's I think that's probably going to continue. To be entirely honest, I mean, you can look at a lot of different metrics, whether you're looking at the S&P being oversold on a certain basis, whether you're looking at where markets typically bottom, right around the middle of March. Well, that's also, you know, close to where we bottomed last year, whether you're looking at a whole
lot of different breadth oversold indicators, your McClellan oversold indicator, or even just the presence of prices near the 200 MA, not just in the spy, but in so many large stocks out there. The market usually moves in tandem. I think you've got a lot of reasons to uh look at some of these patient buyers and make
an assumption that they're probably reaching into their pocket and making a bet. No, by the way, last thing I'll say, money market funds are now up to either 8.4 or 8.7 trillion. That I wouldn't expect to get dipped into quite yet. But I would say as we start to get closer to that uh period where Powell is
out, we're about 66 days out from that.
May 15th is the day. I made a countdown calendar for anyone wondering on the market outlook. As we start to get closer to that and as we start to hear more from Warsh, I think you probably start to see people price in what's going to happen to rates. And I think that outlook is going to change from where it is right now.
Well, I would agree. And I can't wait.
Um I mean, sir. Famously, I think guess all three of us, you and Pete and I have said that this guy hasn't exactly covered himself in glory, J. Powell that is.
Um nor have many of the other Fed governors who say that they are data-driven and then refuse to react to the data. Um let's talk about prediction markets because crude oil was part of that. And as Justin and I discussed last week, folks, um
crude or rather prediction markets are a $6 billion entity right now. In other words, there's about $6 billion collectively across all of the different prediction markets. And there are a bunch. Obviously, the two largest, Kalshi and Polymarket,
are the ones that we cite mostly. But there are a ton of others. And apparently, some members of Congress, which Justin brought to my attention a week ago, wanted to uh regulate those entities, those prediction markets, because somebody was gaming those markets. In other words, somebody
thought that they knew that Soleimani was going to be taken out and so forth.
Well, that's a $6 billion market, but they're more than willing to let Congress trade on a $69 trillion market all day long. So which do you think, folks, is a bigger thing that disrupts the world or that lets one
group that's got the information profit more than the other group? And I actually posit it's the $69 trillion stock market, not Polymarket and Kalshi.
What do you say, Justin?
John, I think you're mistaken. It's not Congress that trades. It's Congress's husband or wife that trades.
>> Yeah. So let's let's get that out of the way. No, I'm kidding. I agree with you entirely. I'll throw another hat into the ring of the Polymarket game here.
Um that is First of all, you want a real degenerate market? Here's one that I would never do. Bitcoin up or down in the next 5 minutes. That's for anyone looking to just go play roulette. There's your roulette. That exists on Polymarket. Secondly, more importantly, kind of a cool one.
Um Iran-Israel-US conflict ends by and then it's a prediction market. Right now, they're essentially, "Hey, buy May 15th." And you know what I think is really interesting about this? They're saying by May 15th, that's not just the day that Powell's out. That is also where
crude futures predict that this conflict likely ends by. Crude futures are essentially pricing in probably an end there. Crude down to back around the 70 markish in September, which would be in time for those November midterms.
Now, whether or not that happens or not, I don't know. But that would be the wisdom of both the crude futures market and the Polymarket as well.
Can you imagine, Justin, the idiot that wants to bet on nuclear Armageddon, more or less, because there are various nuclear posits that have been placed on Polymarket and Kalshi, even though they say they don't they don't want to pay off on
Soleimani's death because they say, "We don't want death to be part of this." Well, you could have not let them list it then, folks.
To both Polymarket and Kalshi, I say, "You should pay up, suckers, or don't let them post it." But to the person that wants to buy nuclear Armageddon, who are you going to be getting the money from?
>> [laughter] >> I'd rather buy into Jesus.
>> Make it to your account is what I'd like to know.
>> [laughter] >> I I don't think any of us could spend that. Forget about the you know, the grave dancing and all the rest. Who's going to be able to spend that if indeed it's nuclear Armageddon?
You're sitting there looking out the window going, "I called it." There's a big mushroom cloud in the distance.
All right, folks.
Uh let's talk about Hims and Hers because this one, whether you need hair, whether you need ED medications, those were two of the big things they started off with, but then they went for the GLP-1s. In other words, the semaglutides and all that kind of thing that have
become so popular. Um and the president and others really pushed the drug companies to take the prices down on those cuz many people were paying a thousand dollars a month or more for that apparently. Well, Hims and Hers basically made their own special
compounds using multiples of those and then they got that taken away from them once they could produce enough, once Novo Nordisk and Pfizer and all the rest, once they could make enough of these semaglutides,
they didn't have that exclusivity really anymore. But now they're striking a deal, Justin, with Novo Nordisk, Hims is, and that's why the stock's up 44% today.
Yeah, and I think, you know, GLP-1s gave Hims sort of this new life, right? And then this is helping them a lot because now we're saying, okay, they can lean on this, but the stock market likes to look out to the future. You know what I think is going to be interesting is this sort of peptide revolution that's sort of hitting us right now where GLP-1, okay, well,
that's been around a pretty good amount of time, right? It's just sort of now seeing this big mass adoption.
But there's a lot of other interesting peptides out there and sort of the you know, you might call it maybe the research chemicals space or etc. that a lot of people are are using pretty liberally, but honestly, a lot of those people are leaning on some kind of sketchy Chinese labs to to get them.
Would not be surprised if in a year or two down the line we end up looking at Hims as a perveyor of not only GLP-1, but a lot of those other um peptides that are sort of starting to get pretty popular and are very weird to get over here.
Well, yeah, and you know, an awful lot of folks are trying to the longevity trade, the the trade where you're betting on you living longer and living better as you're living longer. Um so everything from retatutide to many of those
peptides that Justin just touched on, folks. I wouldn't be surprised. What I would caution, however, is that it is a commodity business. I mean, briefly, they tried to put uh oh, what is it? Some sort of exclusivity, trademarks, all the rest on these
semaglutides and on, you know, again, those peptides and Kennedy, the health secretary, recently just basically said, nope, we're not letting you guys do that. These have been out in the public domain for a long time. So, could Hims have a cleaner product than
as Justin said is offered basically through Temu or whatever. [laughter] And the answer is yes, they could, but take a look at the stock. When it was in the 50s, after a 40-some-odd percent jump today, it's 22 bucks. So, um these commodities, once it becomes
commoditized and anybody can compete in the space, I don't know that their profit margin is this big anymore. I think it's more like that.
So, we'll keep our eye on it for you, folks. I know Justin will. All right, let's take take a look at Live Nation because they're getting a pop today and it's another one of those situations, Justin, where a man with a briefcase can steal more than a man with a gun.
Anybody who's gone to a concert and looked at the actual price on the ticket versus what they've had to pay for Live Nation and Ticketmaster sort of things knows that these things have been marked up like crazy.
And the fact that they're going to have to pay 200 million in damages to participating states in this lawsuit by the DOJ, well, I would say that they would probably do that almost annually and still make a nice fat profit because they
are basically they're not the performer, they are marking up the performance ticket and then selling it through, you know, what is no longer very high-tech means to deliver those tickets to the public and I think they're probably marking them up too much, Justin. What
do you say?
Yeah, but hey, they dodged the breakup bullet and now Ticketmaster lives to fee another day. Excludes the bad pun there.
And that's why they're up a ton right now.
Obviously, the DOJ originally sought a full divestiture in 2024, but the emerging deal has seemingly fixed all that. So, Ticketmaster lives on and yeah, it's it's popping.
Well, airline stocks, keep an eye on these, folks, because obviously, the price of crude that trade throughout the weekend, of course, again, it's 24-hour trade and jet A and so forth, diesel, fuel oil, all the rest of those derivatives of crude oil
are something that these airlines, in some cases, Southwest used to hedge.
I don't think they hedge anymore, but these airlines, it's 25% basically of their costs are borne by the price of fuel. And so when fuel goes up, there's no doubt that they're less profitable, especially since they've already sold the tickets in most cases
at a price that probably should be higher if they were taking into account a 25% or a jump like we saw, as much as 30%, I think Justin said over the weekend. So, we're keeping our eye on JBLU, on AAL, on LUV, which is Southwest, on UAL.
Those Middle East tensions, certainly people worried about, well, is is the Strait of Hormuz going to be closed or will the oil still flow? And that's a big question, Justin, that obviously is a day-by-day, hour-by-hour question, right?
Yeah, exactly. So, over the weekend, we started to get this news that G7 nations were going to hold this emergency meeting on oil to basically determine if they were going to release the oil reserves. As of 44 minutes ago, it looks like according to Reuters, they have decided not to release those oil reserves just yet.
But I will say regardless, just the announcements that maybe they're thinking about doing that definitely seemed to help overnight cuz you're exactly right. Yeah, overnight they they had popped, I believe, to about 30% higher in those in that future session right around like 12:00 a.m. or 1:00 a.m. and they're certainly well off that
high right now. The only thing I'll say about airlines is that I was on a show called The Take sitting in once again for for Pete today with our lead UOA analyst and we were looking at some of the UOA that we were spotting in the airlines and you know, over last week, it was all about the puts, they were right and now it does
look like you know, I I don't want to get too specific, but uh there's there's one airline in particular. John, can I am I able to say something like this? Like the specific airline or should I leave it? Okay. Uh UAL in particular is what we were talking about on the show. They were coming in with 20,000 calls. They came
in again while we've been filming and hit another 20,000 call spreads. So, a bet to the upside over the next month or two in UAL is seemingly what they would be what they would be aiming for here and I the more
five-figure contract counts that I see in that name, the more convinced I personally am.
Yeah, well, I like it as a trade.
When you look at where it was the Friday before the shooting war started on the 28th, so on the February 27th, United was up around 115, 116. So, if you think that there could be a resolution here, even though last Friday the president
said unconditional surrender and that spooked a lot of people. Um we could be looking at United Airlines seeing retracing, as Justin said, half of that move from 116 back down here to 88 bucks and say, hmm,
if you have recouped half of that, the stock is, you know, in the 90s, you know, high 90s and that would be a nice profit on those calls that they've been accumulating. And there are several of those out there, folks, where whether it's Justin's Trade Monster AI or our
unusual activity with the Heatseeker, they are definitely buying back in and playing for a bounce cuz it was 85 earlier today United was and now it's more like 88, 89.
All right, Justin, one more. Let's do Paramount Skydance. And turns out that Tencent Holdings, which is the company that's behind TikTok, I think, aren't they one of the big owners of TikTok?
But anyway, a Chinese company, a media company in China, they are saying once again that, hey, we already said we'd put a billion-dollar commitment on the table for this deal.
They said that back in December, folks.
The deal being, of course, Warner Brothers Discovery, WBD, and Tencent apparently says, "We're still good for it, guys. You're doing this big deal. We'd like to do it with you." What do you think of that, Justin?
Tencent's a monster. I think Tencent is You know, I'm not a big Chinese stock market guy, to be honest. I just think it's it's a super weird volatile market that is usually super news-oriented, and it's it's a little uncomfortable sometimes. But, if there was a stock
that I just think is just such a monopoly in a sense, it would be Tencent. Man, they have so many stakes in so many things. It feels like they're a little bit more of like a venture capital fund or a hedge fund than they are just a a company. They're incredible. So, yeah, I mean I
it's it's an interesting one, for sure.
They've hands in a lot of different pots.
Well, uh we don't have a video for you guys today, but what we do have are two quick takes from Justin and I on the uh World Baseball Classic, which is going on in Puerto Rico. I'm actually in uh uh Costa Rica right now, Justin, instead
of Puerto Rico, visiting with some friends. And uh uh another beautiful place, not an island though, a peninsula uh that we're on right here, Papagayo peninsula. But, I remember there's a lot of uh intrigue and a lot of uh interest
in the World Baseball Classic in Puerto Rico. And one of the things that I found especially interesting, Justin, was and I had no idea, but do you know that Great Britain plays baseball?
>> [laughter] >> No, I did not, actually.
Um I did not.
Yeah, they do.
Um and that you can bet on. I'm and I looked looked at it on Polymarket and Kalshi. Um they actually uh uh of course, we know Japan, and they're quite a power uh because, you know, look at Shohei Ohtani, um fabulous player, uh
you know, most valuable player and all.
Uh but, Japan's got great teams, Panama's got great teams, Mexico's got great teams, even Canada has great teams, and there've been some pretty good fights uh on the field because apparently, um a lot of these folks don't like each other, especially the
different style of baseball that they play. Um but, the WBC World Baseball Classic, you can go over to Polymarket and pick your team, and uh just like anything else, it will uh give you the opportunity. Do you know who else has a baseball team?
Israel.
I know Dominican Republic, but Israel and the Dominican Republic um are playing today, and uh apparently, the Dominican Republic is dominating that game. I'm not surprised.
>> [laughter] >> Interesting. Yeah, I'm looking at the uh the WBC page on Polymarket right now.
Yeah, I love to see these moves in real time. This is so cool. Obviously, you can see you know, Great Britain, Brazil, super flat, back and forth, 52-48.
Uh now, Great Britain up 83 to 18 over here. So, obviously, it looks like they are probably dominating the game that they're playing, I would have to imagine.
Yeah. Well, when you look at the major league rosters, folks, and you see how many uh of these great players are coming from Cuba, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and so forth, you you can't just write off Japan, of course, because I think might have been either the Dodgers or the Yankees were
the first ones to really bring in some great players out of Japan, but they've just been lights out, many of these Japanese players, extremely disciplined, and uh obviously, uh many of them huge stars in the American game. But, again, going down through this list, it's amazing how many
of these uh countries that you wouldn't have picked. And again, the Netherlands and Israel.
I didn't know those guys uh would have been part of this, but they're in the uh the first round of Pool D playing each other, and you can bet on them right there on Polymarket. There you go.
All right, Justin, let's hit one more sports headline, and that is college basketball March Madness. So, here we are. We're in March. A lot of these teams, you and I talked about it last week that Duke had leapfrogged over Michigan.
Has anything changed for you as far as which team uh in college ba- down on right now, the NCAA basketball?
And I'm talking about the men for now, but if you want to throw out a women's pick, feel free.
I'm already uninformed enough about the men's picks for me to be stepping into women's college basketball. That'd be a wild thing for old Justin to try and do here, but I think [laughter] I said that uh I think I said I liked Arizona when we first talked, and I'm going to you know, I'm going to stick with the one I came with. I I think the odds are pretty poor right now, but I'm going to
I'm going to lean on them to say, "Hey, plus 475 sounds good to me." Um yeah, I'll I'll I'll say Arizona.
All right. And a dark horse still, folks, even though Pete's not with us today, I'll say is Nebraska, who I think just had a a fabulous game against Iowa over the weekend. And so, but that's a dark horse. That's not a favorite.
Favorite, I still got to go with Duke.
But, um dark horse, yeah, I like the way Nebraska plays. So, that's it. All right. Well, Justin, thank you very much, sir. Great job. Uh folks, he is the guy behind the Trade Monster AI. So, if you guys would like to learn more about that, um just
dial up one of your helpful sales people at Market Rebellion, and they can tell you all about it. Uh we also have coaches and mentors for you at Market Rebellion's. So, if you need a little tuning up or trading strategies, uh by all means, sign up for that. And Justin,
anything before we go?
I'll say one more. Yeah, at the at the open, you said I would say something about Trade Monster AI, and I would love to. I will just say uh this is one of those rare situations where there is both Trade Monster and UOA.
Uh and not to just keep giving away too much in this Rebel's Edge, but uh Marvell today, here and now, in the '90s. That's what they like for uh April 17th's expiry. That's the most compelling signal I'm seeing in Trade Monster. It comes after yes or after Friday's gap up, and
that's uh that's the Trade Monster one that I'm seeing. And in the UOA, I definitely won't say what it is, but they are hitting Marvell there as well, similarly. So, that would be your your chocolate and peanut butter or or uh whatever the good mixture analogy is.
>> Now, you're going back to Lapreski, chocolate and peanut butter.
>> [laughter] >> All right. Well, thank you, Justin.
Great job, as usual, sir. And folks, uh we will be back tomorrow with another Rebel's Edge. Comes your way at 1:00 p.m. Eastern time. Thanks for joining us. Have a great day, everybody.
Transcript from the show's YouTube captions; automatic captions may contain errors. Educational content, not investment advice.