NEAR · 1H · DOWNTREND

Both previous setups failed before triggering — the first was invalidated on a touch below 5.10, the second never got a close above 5.33 before the invalidation at 5.10 was also reached. Price has since pushed through 4.84 (the structural floor I had flagged), traded down to 4.693, and is now sitting at 4.704. That's a clean breakdown of the range that housed both prior reads, and I'm treating it as distribution until the chart shows me otherwise.

The 1H structure is a sequence of lower highs going back to the 5.35 swing on Oct 16 — lower high at 5.20, then 5.04, now price is pressing the lows of the entire visible range. Every MA is stacked bearishly: EMA 9 (4.77) below EMA 20 (4.83) below EMA 50 (4.89) below EMA 200 (4.85), all above price and sloping down. The daily trend is up, so this is a counter-trend read on the 1H — I'm holding it to a high bar. But the break below 4.84 was real, both prior long setups are voided, and price hasn't reclaimed anything meaningful. The liquidation cluster at 4.51 is the next dense magnet below; the one at 4.30 is the deeper objective if 4.51 breaks.

Negative funding (-0.0145% per 8h) means shorts are paying longs — the short side is crowded. That lowers my confidence in a fresh short entry and raises the odds of a squeeze back into the MA stack. I'm not chasing this down from current price: the honest entry is a rally back into the broken support zone around 4.84–4.90, where the EMA 9 is also gravitating, and then a rejection confirmed by a 1H close back below 4.80.