Trading Apologist
The Weekly Market Digest · Sunday, September 6, 2026
Hi everyone,
I hope you are getting some real rest and time away from the screens this long Labor Day weekend. Before the holiday-shortened trading week gets going, here is a look back at everything we covered this past week.
The week in brief
It was a busy week with a lot of moving parts. The jobs number on Friday came in well above expectations and flipped rate hike odds back into the conversation after lots of back and forth all week. Yields broke out, erasing the relief from the Treasury's own bond buybacks and forcing the market to reckon with what higher yields mean for valuations. On the earnings front, 5 of 8 reporters beat estimates for a 62% beat rate, but the tape was not rewarding it, with an average price reaction of minus 1.9% across reporters. Even the strongest pocket, tech outside of semis, managed only a 60% beat rate and a modest plus 0.8% average reaction, which is softer than the longer run pattern we have been tracking. Looking ahead to the holiday-shortened week, the first session back after Labor Day statistically tends to trade heavier, and if the S&P 500 gets oversold on the four hour, especially on a close of the daily gap at 7600, that could set up an earlier September bottom than most anticipate. On the position side, I am looking to add to NVDA and ENTG after their strong closes to the week, would like to get back into some IBIT calls for Bitcoin exposure, and still want to trim the QCOM and IBM hedges. Beyond the macro and earnings action, we also shipped a meaningful wave of indicator updates and new tools this week, including the TA Money Flow guide, the Trend Ribbon and Adaptive Trend guides, and the new Pair and Rotation Trading framework on the AI Trade Desk, so if you use our indicators it is worth checking the guides section for the latest.
It was a busy week with a lot of moving parts. The jobs number on Friday came in well above expectations and flipped rate hike odds back into the conversation after lots of back and forth all week. Yields broke out, erasing the relief from the Treasury's own bond buybacks and forcing the market to reckon with what higher yields mean for valuations. On the earnings front, 5 of 8 reporters beat estimates for a 62% beat rate, but the tape was not rewarding it, with an average price reaction of minus 1.9% across reporters. Even the strongest pocket, tech outside of semis, managed only a 60% beat rate and a modest plus 0.8% average reaction, which is softer than the longer run pattern we have been tracking. Looking ahead to the holiday-shortened week, the first session back after Labor Day statistically tends to trade heavier, and if the S&P 500 gets oversold on the four hour, especially on a close of the daily gap at 7600, that could set up an earlier September bottom than most anticipate. On the position side, I am looking to add to NVDA and ENTG after their strong closes to the week, would like to get back into some IBIT calls for Bitcoin exposure, and still want to trim the QCOM and IBM hedges. Beyond the macro and earnings action, we also shipped a meaningful wave of indicator updates and new tools this week, including the TA Money Flow guide, the Trend Ribbon and Adaptive Trend guides, and the new Pair and Rotation Trading framework on the AI Trade Desk, so if you use our indicators it is worth checking the guides section for the latest.
Asset Watch
Single-name setups worth a look.
Asset Watch: HOOD - A $4 Million Day Onchain and Three Analyst Upgrades · Sep 3
HOOD jumped about 15% to $123 after Morgan Stanley upgraded to Overweight with a $150 target, Scotiabank initiated at Outperform with $136, and Piper Sandler raised to $145, all in three days. Robinhood Chain earned $4 million of network revenue on September 2, more than any blockchain that day and 22 times its take six days earlier, though memecoins drove it rather than tokenized stocks. The gas subsidy ends September 29, and whether fees survive that is the real test.
Caterpillar Went From Bulldozers to AI Data Centers, and Now It Wants Robots · Sep 2
Caterpillar partnered with FieldAI to bring AI-driven robots and digital twins to jobsites and factories, running on NVIDIA computing. CAT posted its first $20 billion quarter in Q2, with power generation sales up 72% on data center demand and a record $72 billion backlog stretching to 2030. The stock nearly doubled in the first half before pulling back about 27% from its June peak, and it is now sitting on its 200-day moving average for the first time since the rally began.
The Venezuela Oil Deal Is a Services Story Before It Is a Supply Story · Sep 1
The White House published terms of a Venezuela oil deal giving North American Blue Energy Partners 100-year concessions on 17 fields holding roughly 65 billion barrels of proven reserves. The US government gets a 35% equity stake at no cost, the right to buy 20% of production at cost, and veto power over the board. NABEP has committed up to $100 billion in infrastructure investment, and Venezuela is projected to collect around $200 billion in royalties over the first 25 years at $65 oil, with Brent currently above $90.
The Weekly Alpha
The week's flagship posts: the market recap, the live calls, and the watchlist review.
Weekly Trade Recap - 8/31 - 9/4 · Sep 6
We ran 10 trades across 10 names this week. The theme was stop discipline, and it cut both ways: I exited Palantir and Reddit on technical breakdowns from extended conditions, but added to ALB when its stop level only wicked, because it is coming off oversold at the start of a recovery, and the difference is where each chart sits in its cycle. I also took profits on Circle near the measured-move target for a nearly 70 percent gain on that trim, and closed out the long-running Adobe position at a 13 percent overall gain.
Weekly Market Prep Zoom Call - 08.31.26 · Aug 31
September is historically the weakest month for the S&P 500, though midterm years often put the low in October, and my base case remains that we do not make fresh lows below the consolidation range held since May. The near-term work has shifted to the dollar: yields rising alongside a strong dollar means the market believes the Fed on inflation and hard assets struggle, while yields rising alongside a weak dollar signals distrust of the borrower and the currency, which is when gold, silver, and BTC lead. DXY is oversold and a move toward 103 would clarify which regime we are in.
Markets & Macro
The bigger picture across rates, commodities, and the tape.
Memory Rallied on a Day the Market Wanted to Sell · Sep 5
Memory stocks ran hard on a down tape: SK Hynix up 7%, SanDisk up 8%, Micron up 5% through $1,000, and the DRAM ETF up 4% to a new high while the S&P 500 fell. The bid was not a reaction to the jobs headline but the market catching up to a week of demand confirmation from Nvidia, Broadcom, and Dell, plus hard pricing evidence with HBM3E spot trading at 4 to 5 times contract. I bought the DRAM ETF, and CPI on the 11th and the FOMC on the 16th decide whether the rest of semis follows.
Jobs Triple Expectations, Hike Odds Flip Back · Sep 4
August payrolls came in at 162,000 against 55,000 expected, and hike odds on Polymarket jumped back to 53%. The composition tells a more cautious story though: 59,000 of those jobs were restaurants and bars, wage growth slowed to 3.1% below both CPI and PCE, and real wages are still falling. The tape read it the same way I did, with yields spiking then going flat and crypto giving back the most. Waller set inflation data as his condition, not jobs, so CPI on the 11th is still the print that decides September.
Korea's Retail Army Has Gone Home · Sep 4
Korean retail net buying collapsed 90% in August to KRW 5.4 trillion from KRW 54.5 trillion in June, and the July leverage crackdown we covered is the reason. The caps, higher deposits, and mandatory courses removed the buyer entirely, not just the leverage. The only real bid left is Samsung and SK Hynix buybacks running at KRW 1.6 trillion a day through mid-October. The KOSPI is coiled in a symmetrical triangle resolving around September 9, and my read is to fade 7,000 because a buyback-only breakout is a rally to sell into.
Working and Saving is Never Going to Be Enough · Sep 2
Since 1964 the S&P 500 is up 10,084% and the average hourly wage is up 1,196%, and that gap is not a chart trick. Wages follow the cost of living while assets follow the money supply, and M2 is up 5,775% over the same period. In 1964 one unit of the S&P cost 31 hours of work at the average wage. Today it costs about 240. Working and saving harder is not a strategy that closes that gap.
Also this week
Growth Is Up, Hike Odds Are Down · Sep 3
Sector Relative Strength
Week of August 31 · % change vs prior week's close
Oil & Gas E&P (XOP)+2.57%
Semiconductors (SMH)+2.33%
Energy (XLE)+2.11%
Regional Banks (KRE)+1.21%
Technology (XLK)+0.77%
Utilities (XLU)+0.66%
Biotech (XBI)+0.46%
Financials (XLF)+0.05%
Small Caps (IWM)-0.03%
Healthcare (XLV)-0.09%
Cons Staples (XLP)-0.84%
Comm Services (XLC)-0.85%
Industrials (XLI)-1.06%
Real Estate (XLRE)-1.17%
Homebuilders (XHB)-1.29%
Materials (XLB)-1.47%
Cons Discretionary (XLY)-1.88%
Software (IGV)-4.50%
S&P 500 (SPY)+0.01%
Equal-weight S&P (RSP)-0.53%
Market Recaps
Every market recap from the week in one place: the daily and morning notes plus the weekly recap.
Thursday Daily Market Recap - Sept, 3rd, 2026
Community & Tool Updates
Indicator releases, new tools, events, and community happenings.
New on the AI Trade Desk: Pair & Rotation Trading · Sep 6
Miles just shipped three new trading modes to the AI Trade Desk built around one idea: rotating between winning assets instead of retreating to cash. Switch Pair tells you which of two names deserves your capital right now and alerts you when leadership changes; Spread Pair tracks the statistical spread between two correlated names and flags entries and exits; more pair trading resources are coming in the weeks ahead.
Action Needed: Old Confluence Bands & Mean Reversion Scripts Retired — Plus a Big Indicator Update Wave · Sep 6
The old Confluence Bands and Mean Reversion scripts are officially retired and now flatline with an on-chart notice if you are still on them. The current versions are TA Deviation Bands and Adaptive Mean Reversion, and those are the only ones that will receive updates going forward. If your chart suddenly shows a flat line where your bands used to be, you need to switch to the correct indicator.
The Premarket Movers Reads Just Got a Major Upgrade · Sep 4
Miles built a major upgrade to the #Premarket-Movers channel on Discord, and it went live this week. Instead of just showing what is already moving, the new engine scans roughly 550 names every morning, scores each one on gap size, RSI extremes, relative volume, squeezes, 52-week levels, and unusual options flow, then surfaces the top 60 worth watching before they move. It is the same playbook we trade from, now running automatically each day so you are not hunting for setups from scratch.
Also this week
Indicator Guide: TA Money Flow · Sep 6
News
The stories that moved names on our radar.
Mac Demand No Longer Needs More Employees · Sep 1
OpenAI bought tens of thousands of Mac minis and Mac Studios to train computer-use agents, and Anthropic rents Mac mini capacity through AWS for the same work, decoupling Mac demand from headcount for the first time. Apple's Mac revenue was $10.4 billion last quarter, up 29%, and the new Macs launched with up to 512GB of memory to serve this demand. Apple does not need to win the model race because macOS only runs on Apple hardware, so whoever wins trains their agents on Macs.
China's Biggest Memory Maker Takes the Pentagon to Court · Aug 31
CXMT, China's largest DRAM maker, sued the US Department of Defense in federal court asking to be removed from the Pentagon's list of Chinese military companies, a designation that bars US customers and suppliers from working with it and extends to products containing its chips from June 2027. The lawsuit joins a wave that has been winning, with a federal judge recently blocking the same designation for WuXi AppTec and an appeals court handing DJI a partial win. A CXMT victory would remove one of the structural supports for the memory shortage trade.
Why ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok Went Down Together · Sep 3
ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok went down together, and the fact that three competitors failed simultaneously is the concerning part because individual outages happen most months but simultaneous ones do not. Anthropic logged the incident at 9:26 AM ET, identified the cause 15 minutes later, and deployed a fix just after noon, but no company has named a shared root cause. The real story is dependency: the productivity cost of an outage now scales with how much work has been handed to agents.
Also this week
Earnings Reports
Every earnings print I covered this week, linked to the full post.
This week 5 of 8 reporters beat estimates for a 62% beat rate, and the tape was not kind with an average price reaction of minus 1.9%.
The strongest sector was Tech ex semis at a 60% beat rate and plus 0.8% average reaction on 5 reporters. That is weaker on both counts than the longer run pattern, which has been stronger overall than this week.
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