What I Missed in the Nasdaq Close Thursday’s Nasdaq close looked quiet until I looked at how many stocks had fallen. The index had given up only a little, yet declining stocks comfortably outnumbered advancing ones. That changed what I wanted to watch on Friday night in Singapore. QQQ and the chip stocks are on my watchlist. The question in my notebook is how many stocks can hold a rebound alongside them. I started with QQQ on two charts. The weekly chart showed a strong recovery, even as Treasury yields and the dollar rose. On the daily chart, QQQ was still below its falling 21-day average. The rally had brought it back to an area where buyers had supported it before the selloff. Buyers who liked that area on the way down have had a chance to see it from the other side. I want to see whet
Why I’m Waiting on Teva Teva caught my eye for something it barely did. During last Thursday’s selloff, its price hardly moved. By Tuesday’s close, though, it had already climbed far enough from its recent average that I wanted a better entry. It’s on my watchlist for Wednesday night in Singapore. Before I’d consider an order, I’d like to see who shows up when the stock gives a little ground. Tuesday gave me a reason to keep looking. The inflation reading came in hot, Treasury yields jumped, and long bonds sold off. I would have expected that combination to leave a fairly broad dent in stocks. Yet the equal-weight S&P 500 finished flat. The main index lost a little ground, and both the S&P and the Nasdaq stayed inside Monday’s trading range. The Nasdaq had also tried twice to get p
# What Friday’s Bounce Left Unfinished I keep coming back to where the Nasdaq finished on Friday. QQQ gained ground, yet its whole day fit inside Thursday’s range and it closed in the lower half. If I’d looked only at Friday’s percentage change, I’d have missed how much work buyers still had to do. That’s where my Monday night watchlist starts. I’m using it to decide what deserves a closer look before I consider an order. On the S&P 500 chart, the late-July low sits close to the 200-day moving average. I can mark that area before the open. The harder part is deciding what I’d want to see there. Heavy selling on busy volume would get my attention, but I’d still want to know where prices finished that day. A close near the low would leave me with a different impression from a recovery th
When the Reaction Matters More Than the News Tonight I’m treating the market’s reaction as information in its own right. These are my watchlist plans for the 4 November session, not orders or fills. A widely anticipated outcome can still trigger a sharp selloff, and that is a useful reminder that agreeing with the consensus does not tell me how prices will respond. The lesson I want to carry into this session is patience with a purpose. I can prepare a shopping list without deciding that every lower price is an opportunity. Before getting interested in an individual stock, I want to see whether the broader market is finding its footing or simply pausing on its way down. An attractive chart deserves more scrutiny when its surroundings are deteriorating. SPY and QQQ are my first checkpoints.
# When the Reaction Matters More Than the News Tonight I’m treating the market’s reaction as information in its own right. These are my watchlist plans for the 4 November session, not orders or fills. A widely anticipated outcome can still trigger a sharp selloff, and that is a useful reminder that agreeing with the consensus does not tell me how prices will respond. The lesson I want to carry into this session is patience with a purpose. I can prepare a shopping list without deciding that every lower price is an opportunity. Before getting interested in an individual stock, I want to see whether the broader market is finding its footing or simply pausing on its way down. An attractive chart deserves more scrutiny when its surroundings are deteriorating. SPY and QQQ are my first checkpoint
# Patience Before the Next Entry My main takeaway from the 3 November market review was to give a promising setup time to prove itself. I’m keeping the ideas below at the watchlist stage while I work through confirmation and entry quality. What stood out was how differently parts of the market were behaving. Weakness in technology existed alongside strength elsewhere. That makes the headline index an incomplete guide for my own decisions. I want to compare the major indices, sector performance and the average stock before deciding how much confidence to place in one bullish chart. The same care applies to the areas attracting defensive buying. A familiar company or a defensive sector can still be stretched after a strong run. I need to look at how far price has travelled and where I could
# Who Pays for a Chip Rally? SPY finished October close to where it began. If I had stopped at that chart, I might have gone into Monday night looking for signs that an uneventful month was finally waking up. Put QQQ and the semiconductor fund SMH beside it and I get a different picture: plenty had already happened, just out of sight of the headline index. Tonight I’m watching how those three behave together. These are observations I want to make, not orders or fills. The chip chart gives me something concrete to watch. SMH came back to its average price over the past two hundred sessions, near another measure that weights this year’s trading by volume. I can see why that patch might attract buyers. I can also see how easy it would be to count two lines meeting as two votes in favour of a
# A Broader Market, a Stricter Entry The lesson I am taking into tonight is to look beyond the headline index without relaxing my entry discipline. Weakness in large technology companies can dominate the screen even when other areas are improving. That gives me a reason to widen my watchlist, but it does not make every alternative a good trade at any price. These are plans I am considering, not orders placed or fills completed. What interests me most is the reaction to earnings. A company can report growth, improve its outlook and still sell off. I want to pay attention to that response instead of arguing that the news should have produced a rally. Expectations and positioning matter. If good news cannot attract sustained buying, I need a better reason to take risk than enthusiasm for the
Growth Still Has to Pay Its Way My main takeaway from the 28 October close is that growth deserves a closer look when it requires an ever larger cheque to sustain it. I am paying more attention to the cash a business keeps after investing, and to how it funds the next round of expansion. For 29 October, these are watchlist observations and plans to evaluate, not a record of orders or fills. The AI discussion makes that distinction especially useful. A strong cloud growth number can sound impressive, but it does not answer every question. I still want to know whether the business is generating cash, whether investment is becoming more demanding, and whether shareholders are being asked to help finance it. Revenue growth and the cost of achieving that growth need to sit next to each other in
Small Caps Improve, but Execution Still Matters My plan for tonight is to watch whether small-cap strength holds and stay selective around earnings. These are watchlist decisions, not orders or fills. After reviewing Tuesday’s close, I’m more interested in the quality of the recovery than in how green the headline indices look. The gap between SPY and its equal-weight counterpart, RSP, is a useful reminder. A stronger headline index can still depend heavily on a narrow group of technology names. I want to see whether that strength spreads to more companies. If participation stays uneven, I need to judge each setup on its own merits instead of treating an index rally as permission to buy whatever has fallen. Small caps gave me something more encouraging to study. IWM recovered its short-ter