https://youtu.be/-o05W9ad3pk Volatility futures flipped into backwardation today. The VVIX headed into the close north of 110, a level I call the foamy zone. That inversion means the market sees more risk over the next 33 days than over the next 61. When the curve inverts like this, the probability of outsized moves in the SPX goes up by an order of magnitude. The S&P 500 dropped 1.25% on Friday. The NASDAQ fell almost 3%. At least $1.4 trillion in market cap disappeared today. My guess is the real number sits closer to $2 trillion. On Wednesday, the S&P 500 sat basically at its all time high. Two days of selling later, I’m already hearing clients ask which dip to buy. I’m telling them to slow down. The advance decline line sits at 50/50. Traders are still thinking and rotating instead of dumping everything at any price. Financials finished green today.

https://youtu.be/9jiuBRdBUko The bond market flashed a warning today that I haven’t seen in a very long time. Traders would rather own bonds than the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ. The S&P 500 dropped about 90 handles into the close. Everyone will blame the hot CPI report. I see CPI as the fuse. The powder keg was already sitting there. Bonds sold off right after the CPI print. That’s exactly what you’d expect when inflation runs a little hot. Then the bond market turned around. It recovered the full point it lost and tacked on another half point. That rally makes no sense on an inflation scare. Traders were hedging. The real selling came straight out of semiconductors. I’ve warned again and again that nothing saves this market if semiconductors come down. I call today’s action duck and cover. Money rotated out of semis, the NASDAQ, and the S&P 500 to

https://youtu.be/0Q5njx5oxcE Microsoft and Palantir were all but written off earlier this year.  Since the start of the third quarter, they’ve been the two best performing mega cap tech names. Gianni Di Poce thinks Tesla could be next. It’s pretty much the only mega cap that hasn’t run in 2026. The S&P 500 is trading right where it was on Friday. Gianni sees the index digesting sideways near its all time highs while the money moves underneath. Semiconductors are taking a breather. Software caught the bid today as chips traded lower. Gianni isn’t bearish on semis. He calls them dead money in the near term and expects this correction through time to lead to another bullish outcome. He also flagged a warning sign. Utilities were the strongest sector last week, and Gianni reads those defensive flows as a rally starting to mature. He doesn’t think the market has topped. He does

https://youtu.be/bVSQrkKUU9M Brandon Chapman found a $13 box around SPY this week. Bank earnings land tomorrow morning. Brandon thinks those reports could turn that tight range into an accelerator. Today was Columbus Day. The S&P 500 usually finishes higher on this holiday, with most of the week’s gains coming on the day itself. This year broke the pattern. Brandon leaned into the seasonal tendency with the S&P 500 sitting in positive gamma territory. He took a long and looked for a close at the prior high. The trade didn’t work. A rally right before the close got a few traders near break even. The bond market was closed, and volume ran at 50% to 60% of normal. The S&P 500 still couldn’t finish higher on a light tape built for an upward bias. Tomorrow kicks off earnings season. JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup all report. Brandon also spotted a

https://youtu.be/90I1dYf_JtU Today’s 30 year bond auction just flashed a warning. The Treasury had to offer 5.62% to sell the bonds, and demand still came in lighter. Blake Young says borrowing costs are heading higher from here. Yields now sit at levels last seen in 2001 and 2002. Blake isn’t waiting for the squeeze. He screened 3,000 stocks for companies that don’t need to borrow and found 44 that qualify. Tonight’s video breaks down the auctions and his top setups from that list: The 30 year yield jumped from 5.31% to 5.62% while the bid to cover slipped from 2.6 to roughly 2.5. Blake reads that as a steepening yield curve and higher long term borrowing costs. Blake’s screen requires positive fixed charge coverage, growing free cash flow year over year, and long term debt to capital between 0% and 40%. He considers anything above 60% overleveraged. First Solar fell from

https://youtu.be/iC6hArNZ–M The S&P 500 stopped caring about economic data. It’s trading off bond auctions now. Today’s 10 year note auction went well. The S&P 500 rallied off its lows right alongside it. That first hour this morning was tense. Stocks had very little to do with it. The bond market sold off hard into the cash open. The 10 year yield pushed to 5.364%, closing in on 5.4%. Yields crossed 5% about two and a half trading weeks ago. They’ve shot straight up to 5.3% since then. Then the note auction hit at 10 AM Pacific. Bonds bounced off their lows and dragged the S&P 500 up with them. Bonds still finished lower. The S&P 500 closed down about 20 handles, a move of less than 0.3%. I don’t care about that move. I care that stocks now trade in tandem with bonds, and you know you’re in trouble when

https://youtu.be/5XAV62YDp1M The S&P 500 and the NASDAQ both closed at record highs today. Gianni Di Poce traced the buying to a source few traders are watching. Money is pouring into the US from Europe and Asia. Gianni says those funds have nowhere else to go. The timing gives it away. Gianni points to heavy buying overnight and early in the morning, when Asian trading peaks and European markets wrap up. The currency market backs him up. The dollar has turned higher against the yen in recent weeks. The euro just fell to its lowest level in months. Picture a fund manager in Europe sitting on billions of dollars. The bond market is a bloodbath right now, and that capital still needs a home. Only the largest US companies can absorb orders that size. Gianni explains that a fund can buy $50 million of Apple without leaving much of a mark

https://youtu.be/6VSH7pNONXo XP jumped 31% today. Someone bought 50,000 calls on it last Friday. Brandon Chapman caught that print and several others before Brazil exploded. The options market flagged this rally days before the headlines hit. The Brazilian ETF climbed 12.5% today. Brandon ties the move to the Brazilian election, where Flavio Bolsonaro may be expected to finish ahead of Lula da Silva. Petrobras rallied 11.5% on top of it. Brazil was the clear winner across global equities. Brandon found the setup sitting in the options tape over a week ago. Bullish out of the money calls kept hitting EWZ and other Brazilian names near the lows. Those buyers put dealers on the hook. Dealers sold the calls, so a rally forces them to buy stock to hedge. The stocks ran overnight and over the weekend. Dealers had to chase, and the gamma squeeze did the rest. Brandon compares it to

https://youtu.be/2n1bk7fkBVI The S&P 500 trades just off its record highs. Nearly 60% of its stocks sit in bear market territory. I see about 300 points of upside from here. I see about 800 points of downside. That lopsided setup drove everything I covered in this weekend’s update. I’ll start with the upside. I think the S&P 500 can reach 8,000 by the end of the year, and I’d even argue for 8,100. The downside could turn into an abyss. A drop to the bottom of the volatility box takes the S&P 500 under 7,400. A break of that box opens a straight shot below 7,000. I’m watching the bond market as the trigger. Notes dropped hard about 45 minutes after Friday’s open, and the S&P 500 slid right along with them. Apple recovered enough to steady the tape. That won’t hold forever. Nvidia isn’t bigger than rates, and nothing else

https://youtu.be/uyl6IPzTNFs The US dollar ran from 101 to 102.14 in a single session. Blake Young points out that a move that size can take a month or more. Blake reads it as foreign capital rushing into the US. He’s already mapping where that money lands next. The SPY whipsawed for more than three hours with single candles covering 25% to 50% of a full day’s range. It sat off just 0.1% when Blake recorded. Blake found the real move in bonds. The 10-year hit its lowest level in years, then reversed to test Monday’s high on volume running above 100% of average. Bonds and the dollar climbing together usually signal fresh capital arriving from overseas. Blake points to the euro sliding from 113.71 to 112.49 as more proof. The dollar index just cleared every resistance level back to early 2025. Blake calls it one of the largest single candle days