Rivian, June 2023 — A Volume Read, Weeks Before the Q2 Beat

Executive summary

• The read, dated. On June 19, 2023 I flagged Rivian on its weekly bar chart: a symmetrical (converging) triangle — a descending resistance off the ~$17.7 March high over higher lows on support rising off ~$12 — with volume I read as early demand. I paper-traded it. To stay honest about what the tape did and didn’t show: the pattern flagged the base and the risk; the clean, unambiguous up-volume confirmation came with the July 3 catalyst, not before it (see “A note on the tape”).
• Paper-traded. This was a paper position. The claim is about the analysis and its timing, not a realized return.
• The catalyst. On July 3, 2023, Rivian reported Q2 production of 13,992 (+48% QoQ) and 12,640 deliveries vs ~11,000 consensus; the stock gapped up +17.4% to $19.56 on ~80M shares (2–3× its June average). (Verified — sources below.)
• What followed. RIVN ran to a late-July high near $28 — roughly a double off the late-June low (~$13.45). The read flagged the setup weeks before the catalyst; the breakout itself came on the news.
• The honest frame. One of two worked examples of a process (with the SPY note), not a hit rate.

What technical analysis is

Technical analysis, to me, is the study of supply and demand as they actually print — in price and in volume — not a story about why. A chart doesn’t tell you who is buying or what they know; it shows you the footprint they leave. When demand is quietly overwhelming supply, it tends to show in the tape — higher lows, a range tightening, volume behaving a certain way — often before there is any news to explain it, and sometimes before anyone can put a name to the buyer. Reading that footprint early, and staying honest about what it can and can’t tell you, is the whole of the method. This note is one worked example of it.

The setup

On the weekly chart, Rivian was coiling into a symmetrical (converging) triangle: a descending line of resistance off the early-March high (~$17.7) and a rising line of support off the April lows near $12 (anchored on the April 17 $11.88 low; the deepest print, $11.68 on April 26, briefly dipped just under it), tightening toward an apex through the spring. These are the two lines I drew on the chart, each anchored on a real weekly pivot, and they are how I read the structure live that June.

Then came a sharp dip — from the mid-June high back to a $13.45 close on June 26. My first read was that it might be a breakdown. It was not: price held above the rising support and the prior structure, then made a U-shaped turn back up. What I took it for at the time was the last shakeout inside the coil, not the start of a new leg down.

The read — the case I made

What I read on the weekly chart was accumulation. After Rivian’s long sell-off, interest had dried out — and then it started to pick back up. Higher lows pressed under a descending resistance, the coil tightened, and the dip that undercut nothing came on notably lighter volume. Volume drying up on the decline and then returning as price pushed at the top of the triangle is, to my eye, the signature of a buyer working a position early — quietly, before there is a reason in the headlines. That was the case I made, and the reason I took the paper position: an active bet on the read, not a wait for confirmation.

I want to be exact about what that claim is and is not. A chart shows volume, not who is buying; “accumulation” is my interpretation of the tape, not a named institution — and I come back below to why that distinction matters. It also has to stay honest about the tape itself: the single heaviest day inside the coil, June 16, was a quarterly-expiry (quad-witching) down day — mechanical, not a buyer’s footprint — and the clean, unambiguous up-volume came with the July 3 breakout. So what the pattern gave me early was the structure and the risk; the loud confirmation came with the news.

Learning to see it

The summer of 2023 was when technical analysis really opened up for me. I had found my way into markets through the charts a few years earlier, and by then I was deep in the CMT curriculum. I had just bought Technical Analysis of Stock Trends by Robert D. Edwards and John Magee — the book technicians treat as the bible of the field. Reading it, the patterns stopped being pictures in a textbook and started being shapes I could watch forming in real time, on real names.

What I saw on Rivian’s weekly chart that June was one of those textbook shapes — a symmetrical triangle coiling tighter — and then the tell Edwards & Magee stress: the breakout came on a surge of volume. What struck me was that the same stock had already handed me the opposite pattern on the way down. Through 2022 it built a distribution top in the ~$40 area — the tape reads it as a double top, two highs near $40 and then a lower one, before it broke and the 2022 collapse followed. Distribution on the way down, accumulation on the way back up: the shapes rhyme because supply and demand leave symmetric footprints. Learn to read the one and you are already reading the other.

The catalyst

On July 3, 2023, Rivian reported second-quarter production of 13,992 vehicles (up 48% quarter-over-quarter) and deliveries of 12,640, ahead of the ~11,000 consensus; the stock gapped up double digits (close $19.56, +17.4%; ~80M shares) that session. At its Q2 earnings on August 8, 2023, Rivian raised full-year production guidance from 50,000 to 52,000. Sources: Rivian’s Q2 2023 8-K and its own release; contemporaneous coverage in the EV press.

I flagged the setup on June 19, 2023 — two weeks before the July 3 production figures were public. I was reading the tape before the number came out. I want to be precise about the claim: the breakout itself came on the July 3 news, so what I can honestly say is that my June 19 read flagged the setup two weeks ahead — not that I anticipated the breakout, or the catalyst that would carry it. The read framed where the risk and the opportunity sat; the news is what resolved them.

What happened next

Price held the dip, turned up, and broke resistance on the July 3 gap. From there it ran — $20.43 (Jul 5), $21.62 (Jul 6), $24.70 (Jul 7 on record ~232M shares) — to a late-July high near $28, roughly a double off the June low, and I let the paper position run with it. I count that as an outcome, not a target I had set: the trend topped in late July, before the August 8 guidance raise, which sold off, so I don’t stretch the “let it run” past that.

Skill, luck, or coincidence

The honest accounting matters more than the result. The read flagged a base and volume I took for accumulation before the news; the July 3 production beat was the catalyst that carried it. Those lining up is what the method is meant to do — but one instance is evidence the approach is worth studying, not proof it works. A single call, on a single name, in a paper account, cannot separate a real edge from a good coincidence; only a record can. This is one entry in that record, offered with the reasoning open.

A name, months later — and why it doesn’t matter

Months later, a filing put a name to a sliver of the demand — the Swiss National Bank had roughly doubled its Rivian share count that quarter. It is tempting to read that as vindication. It isn’t: the SNB is a passive reserve manager that doesn’t pick stocks, its stake is a rounding error, and a quarterly filing can’t be timed on a daily chart anyway. That is exactly why it is worth saying out loud. The tape showed interest building before anyone could name a source, and when a name finally surfaced it was an anonymous, mechanical one that changes nothing about the read. Price and volume carry the footprint first; the identity, if it ever comes, comes late — and doesn’t matter.

Method and caveats

Reproducibility. The exhibit recomputes and asserts every figure from committed data before it draws, and the daily CSV ships (validated and frozen with a provenance sidecar) — the bar the SPY note clears. The chart aggregates that daily file to weekly bars deterministically. The two trendlines are the ones Ken actually drew in the workbench — each endpoint snapped to a real weekly pivot and asserted by verify() before the chart renders — not a reconstruction; the caption gives the exact anchors.

Paper-traded. Stated plainly, and up front: this was a paper position — the claim is the analysis and its timing, not a realized return.

Sample size. Two worked examples of a process (Rivian and the September 2024 SPY note) illustrate a method; they are not a hit rate, and no win percentage is implied. Outcomes are a noisy read on process quality at short horizons.

A note on the tape. Honest disclosure the verification surfaced: the base’s pre-breakout volume was mixed — the heaviest single day inside the coil (June 16) was a quarterly-expiry (quad-witching) down day, mechanical rather than accumulation, not a sign of buyers. The unambiguous up-volume confirmation arrived with the July 3 breakout — the ~80M-share breakout day building to the record 232M on July 7. So the read framed the setup and the risk; it did not cleanly front-run the volume, and I would rather say that plainly than overclaim it.