Trading Apologist
The Weekly Market Digest · Sunday, August 30, 2026
Hi everyone,
I hope you had a good weekend and got some time to step away from the screens. Before the next trading week gets going, I want to take a quick look back at everything we covered this past week.
The week in brief
It was a full week. On the macro side, we dug into PCE coming in hot underneath a tame headline, payrolls revised down for a fourth straight year, and Kevin Warsh ending forward guidance at Jackson Hole, which is a meaningful shift in how the Fed communicates. Japan's rising rates and the yen at 160 were a thread running through several posts, and I think that story is still being underpriced by most market participants. Hedge funds posted their biggest weekly sale since April 2025, and we looked at what China's gold buying actually looks like when you read past the official numbers. On the earnings side, 18 companies reported and 11 of them beat, giving us a 61% beat rate with an average price reaction of plus 2.9%, and while Tech ex semis had only a 29% beat rate, the tape still rewarded those reporters with a plus 7.5% move on average. We also shared a new position sizing framework and worksheet, and a full breakdown of my chart setup, so if you have been looking for more structure around how I size and manage trades, those are worth pulling up.
It was a full week. On the macro side, we dug into PCE coming in hot underneath a tame headline, payrolls revised down for a fourth straight year, and Kevin Warsh ending forward guidance at Jackson Hole, which is a meaningful shift in how the Fed communicates. Japan's rising rates and the yen at 160 were a thread running through several posts, and I think that story is still being underpriced by most market participants. Hedge funds posted their biggest weekly sale since April 2025, and we looked at what China's gold buying actually looks like when you read past the official numbers. On the earnings side, 18 companies reported and 11 of them beat, giving us a 61% beat rate with an average price reaction of plus 2.9%, and while Tech ex semis had only a 29% beat rate, the tape still rewarded those reporters with a plus 7.5% move on average. We also shared a new position sizing framework and worksheet, and a full breakdown of my chart setup, so if you have been looking for more structure around how I size and manage trades, those are worth pulling up.
Asset Watch
Single-name setups worth a look.
Asset Watch: TE - T1 Energy Gets Permission To Build · Aug 27
TE popped nearly 10% on news that its stranded Norwegian battery facility, a 926,000-square-foot building sitting empty since European subsidies collapsed in 2023, received permission to convert to a data center. The fade after the open reflects the market reading past the headline: the building and the power were already there, and this approval was the final piece needed to unlock the asset.
The Weekly Alpha
The week's flagship posts: the market recap, the live calls, and the watchlist review.
Weekly Trade Recap: 8/24 - 8/28 · Aug 29
We ran 10 trades across the week, and I owe you an apology on one of them: the CELH exit alert went to Discord only and never reached Patreon, so I cover it first in the video. Highlights include a full exit on BW at a 31% loss, new entries in AKAM calls and Lithium Americas shares, and adds to NVDA and GOOGL calls that brought my averages down on both.
Weekly Market Prep Zoom Call - 08.24.26 · Aug 24
Commodities were the main theme this week: energy broke out first, metals followed, materials looked poised, and crypto was playing catch-up. The indices told a different story, with institutional flows on Closing Hour Tide and Pulse showing distribution into strength, keeping a September correction on the table even with heavy support at 7600 and 7500 on the S&P and the 20-week moving average nearby.
Markets & Macro
The bigger picture across rates, commodities, and the tape.
Why the SaaS Apocalypse Trade Broke · Aug 30
Salesforce jumped over 20% on a big beat and raised guidance, breaking the crowded SaaS short trade that had cut many software names in half this year. The real lesson is one we have covered here before: AI does not kill software, it splits it in two, and the winners are the horizontal platforms and systems of record that AI agents actually need to read from and write back to.
Rates, the Dollar, and the Yen at 160 · Aug 28
Markets initially cheered Warsh's Jackson Hole framework but sold off through the afternoon as the hawkish implications sank in: the 10-year and 30-year yields rose, September rate-hike odds on Kalshi moved from roughly one-in-three to a coin flip, and USD/JPY touched 160, the weakest yen level since the August 2 intervention, as widening US-Japan rate differentials pressured the carry trade again.
Money Creation Keeps Diluting Our Dollars & Fueling Inflation · Aug 30
M2 hit a record $23.22 trillion in July, its 27th consecutive monthly increase, and is now $1.43 trillion above the 2022 peak that preceded the only sustained contraction in the measure's modern history. Growth is running close to 7% annualized within 2026, slightly above the long-run average, and it is happening on a much larger base with inflation already above target. Each monthly increase dilutes the purchasing power of every dollar already in circulation, and this is the chart sitting underneath nearly everything else we have covered this month.
Also this week
Sector Relative Strength
Week of August 24 · % change vs prior week's close
Software (IGV)+5.93%
Technology (XLK)+1.30%
Financials (XLF)+1.08%
Comm Services (XLC)+1.01%
Utilities (XLU)-0.09%
Cons Staples (XLP)-0.60%
Cons Discretionary (XLY)-0.64%
Materials (XLB)-0.67%
Regional Banks (KRE)-0.83%
Semiconductors (SMH)-1.20%
Real Estate (XLRE)-1.33%
Small Caps (IWM)-1.38%
Energy (XLE)-1.51%
Industrials (XLI)-1.61%
Homebuilders (XHB)-1.78%
Oil & Gas E&P (XOP)-1.90%
Biotech (XBI)-1.90%
Healthcare (XLV)-1.98%
S&P 500 (SPY)+0.50%
Equal-weight S&P (RSP)-0.44%
Market Recaps
Every market recap from the week in one place: the daily and morning notes plus the weekly recap.
Community & Tool Updates
Indicator releases, new tools, events, and community happenings.
Position Sizing: The Framework and the Worksheet · Aug 24
Position sizing is the fourth decision, not the first, and this week I walked through the full framework on our Zoom call after Rick James asked how I choose size. Before I ever look at a name, I decide how much of the account is in play, where that capital points by sector, and what the trade structure is. Right now I am running about 60% deployed versus my usual 20% because volatility is elevated and long-term entries are not offering the risk-adjusted returns I want, and I included a worksheet you can apply to your own book.
My Complete Trading Chart Setup · Aug 27
Many of you asked for a full walkthrough of my actual chart setup, so I put together a video covering every tool I use daily: Deviation Bands, Adaptive Mean Reversion, Stack Attack RSI, volume, VRVP, and the specialty tools like Adaptive Levels and Adaptive Trend that stay hidden until I need them. Follow along and by the end your charts will match exactly what you see in my videos.
News
The stories that moved names on our radar.
Warsh Ends Forward Guidance at Jackson Hole · Aug 28
Fed Chair Kevin Warsh used his first Jackson Hole speech to end forward guidance, the practice of pre-announcing rate paths that the Fed has leaned on since 2008. His replacement is a discipline rather than a decision: rates will move when inflation is clearly and sufficiently moving toward 2%, with no hints in advance, which changes how we should read every Fed communication going forward.
Payrolls Revised Down for a Fourth Straight Year · Aug 29
The BLS annual benchmark revision cut payrolls for the twelve months ending in March by 79,000, making this the fourth straight year of downward revisions and the seventh in the last eight, with nearly 2.5 million jobs erased over that span. The good news is that at just 0.1% of total employment this is the smallest markdown in the streak, suggesting the overcount is shrinking.
Meta Pays $18 Billion To Make A $1.4 Trillion Question Go Away · Aug 26
Meta settled its teen-safety trial for up to $18.1 billion spread across 47 states and territories, removing a worst-case liability that its own filings pegged near $1.4 trillion. The deal includes product changes like a two-hour default daily limit on teen accounts and overnight blocks, and Meta admits no wrongdoing.
Earnings Reports
Every earnings print I covered this week, linked to the full post.
We saw an 61% beat rate this week with 11 beats and 7 misses, and the tape rewarded reporters with an average price reaction of plus 2.9%.
Healthcare led the group with a 50% beat rate and plus 8.4% reaction, while Tech ex semis was the weakest on paper with a 29% beat rate but still a plus 7.5% reaction. The defensive side was softer, with Cons Cyclical at 100% and minus 2.5% and Cons Defensive at 100% and minus 1.8%, while Semis and Memory ran at 50% and minus 0.8%. That mix is broadly in line with the longer run pattern of solid beats but only modest tape follow through.
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