Trading Apologist
The Weekly Market Digest · Sunday, October 11, 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. The S&P 500 put in a record weekly candle close, with the highest daily close coming on Tuesday as it made its first fresh high since August 13, and it did that against a 10-year at its highest level since 2002. Markets largely shrugged off the hawkish tone of the September FOMC minutes, and Thursday's tech selloff tied to OpenAI and Iran headlines did not end up spreading, though it does set up the S&P to take the lead from the Nasdaq for the next week or two. Consumer sentiment dropped to 46.3 with inflation expectations climbing again, and CCC credit spreads hit 12.15% even as AI stocks were setting records, which is the kind of divergence worth paying attention to. The more encouraging story was in bonds: the 10-year auction came in stronger than expected, the 30-year was decent, and MOVE fell most of the week with a three-down-bar signal, which looks like the lead for yields easing ahead. My suspicion is the strong directional move for tech, and maybe crypto, gets pushed out to later this month or early November. On the earnings front, the season kicks off in earnest this week: the big banks report Tuesday and Wednesday, and we want financials participating to keep this bull market sustainable, then ASML reports Wednesday before the open and TSMC Thursday before the open. The week after brings the start of the main tech earnings stretch. On the tools side, the AI Trade Desk took its biggest step yet, with 5-minute and 15-minute charts now live and closing the main gap with TradingView, so your full charting workflow can now run on the desk.
It was a full week. The S&P 500 put in a record weekly candle close, with the highest daily close coming on Tuesday as it made its first fresh high since August 13, and it did that against a 10-year at its highest level since 2002. Markets largely shrugged off the hawkish tone of the September FOMC minutes, and Thursday's tech selloff tied to OpenAI and Iran headlines did not end up spreading, though it does set up the S&P to take the lead from the Nasdaq for the next week or two. Consumer sentiment dropped to 46.3 with inflation expectations climbing again, and CCC credit spreads hit 12.15% even as AI stocks were setting records, which is the kind of divergence worth paying attention to. The more encouraging story was in bonds: the 10-year auction came in stronger than expected, the 30-year was decent, and MOVE fell most of the week with a three-down-bar signal, which looks like the lead for yields easing ahead. My suspicion is the strong directional move for tech, and maybe crypto, gets pushed out to later this month or early November. On the earnings front, the season kicks off in earnest this week: the big banks report Tuesday and Wednesday, and we want financials participating to keep this bull market sustainable, then ASML reports Wednesday before the open and TSMC Thursday before the open. The week after brings the start of the main tech earnings stretch. On the tools side, the AI Trade Desk took its biggest step yet, with 5-minute and 15-minute charts now live and closing the main gap with TradingView, so your full charting workflow can now run on the desk.
Asset Watch
Single-name setups worth a look.
Asset Watch: TE (Evervolt Shares Hit the Market) · Oct 9
T1 Energy dropped about 10% after registering 7.25 million shares for resale by Evervolt Green Energy, the company it bought its solar cell patents from. No new capital is being raised: these shares are payment for the patents, and two more cash installments totaling $48 million come due on October 15 and October 30.
Asset Watch: AAPL Drops 2% on Reported iPhone 18 Pro Order Cuts · Oct 9
Apple dropped about 2% in premarket trading after Nikkei Asia reported that suppliers were told to cut October component orders for the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max by at least 15%, with suppliers blaming the $100 price increase Apple added to cover higher memory chip costs. Apple has not commented, and it is not known whether the cuts extend past October.
Asset Watch: U and the Google AI Gaming Partnership · Oct 7
Google and Unity announced an AI game creation partnership, with Google's Playground platform now live and Unity Spark arriving later this year, and U spiked as high as $50 pre-market before giving the move back as the 30-year Treasury yield broke out to 5.70%. No financial terms were disclosed, so this is a distribution story for now, not a revenue one.
Also this week
The Weekly Alpha
The week's flagship posts: the market recap, the live calls, and the watchlist review.
Weekly Trade Recap: 10/5 - 10/9 · Oct 11
This week ran to 7 trades across 7 names, mostly position management: adds to BILI, IBM, and two other beaten-down names, a trim on Apple, and two cuts on Friday. I also walked through the new Trade Tracker on the community site, which replaces the old Google Sheet starting this week.
Weekly Market Prep Zoom Call - 10.05.26 · Oct 5
We opened Q4 with markets pushing higher while the 10-year and 30-year yields and the dollar are all at or near fresh highs, a combination that does not add up and that we expect to resolve with a turn in rates within the next week or two. We also went deeper on the bull market math, with a continuous run from the late 2022 low pointing to an S&P 500 target near 10,000 if the average historical bull market plays out.
Markets & Macro
The bigger picture across rates, commodities, and the tape.
Credit Spreads Explained: CCC Spreads Hit 12.15% While AI Stocks Set Records · Oct 5
CCC-rated debt spreads closed at 12.15% this week, the widest since November 2022, while Nvidia set a new all-time high and the Nasdaq-100 closed at a record. Before the dot-com peak, junk spreads widened for nine months while the Nasdaq kept climbing, and before 2007 credit gave four months of warning, so the divergence is worth watching even if it is not a timing signal on its own.
UoM Consumer Sentiment Falls to 46.3 as Inflation Expectations Climb Again · Oct 9
The University of Michigan's preliminary October consumer sentiment index came in at 46.3, below the 47.5 forecast and the lowest since May's record low, with year-ahead inflation expectations rising to 4.7%. Markets barely moved: stocks slipped slightly, Treasury yields rose, and the dollar pushed higher.
Brazilian Stocks at a Record: What the Bolsonaro Odds Shift Means · Oct 8
Brazil's Ibovespa jumped 7.7% on Monday, October 5 to a record 206,912, its best single day since March 2020, and $EWZ surged 12.6%. The trigger was Senator Flávio Bolsonaro finishing first in the presidential first round with 47% against Lula's 45%, flipping Polymarket odds of a Bolsonaro win from 63% to roughly 85%. Investors are betting his spending-limit pledges mean cheaper borrowing ahead for a country carrying 83% debt-to-GDP, though Lula came back to win the 2022 runoff from a similar position, and this year's runoff is October 25.
Also this week
Record Close on the S&P 500 · Oct 6
Sector Relative Strength
Week of October 05 · % change vs prior week's close
Utilities (XLU)+3.95%
Software (IGV)+3.85%
Energy (XLE)+3.60%
Oil & Gas E&P (XOP)+3.60%
Cons Staples (XLP)+3.32%
Healthcare (XLV)+2.84%
Cons Discretionary (XLY)+2.55%
Financials (XLF)+2.33%
Real Estate (XLRE)+1.84%
Materials (XLB)+1.17%
Comm Services (XLC)+0.02%
Industrials (XLI)-0.41%
Biotech (XBI)-0.45%
Technology (XLK)-0.49%
Small Caps (IWM)-0.86%
Homebuilders (XHB)-2.00%
Regional Banks (KRE)-2.37%
Semiconductors (SMH)-4.26%
Memory (DRAM)-7.38%
S&P 500 (SPY)+1.21%
Equal-weight S&P (RSP)+1.61%
Market Recaps
Every market recap from the week in one place: the daily and morning notes plus the weekly recap.
Overview Weekly Market Recap - Oct 9, 2026
Community & Tool Updates
Indicator releases, new tools, events, and community happenings.
Quant Exclusive: Advanced Perp Trading - Class Recording · Oct 10
The Advanced Perp Trading class covered the Deviation Bands, Stack Attack RSI, and Mean Reversion indicators alongside the AI Trade Desk for real-time liquidation levels. A big portion of the session focused on sizing leverage to asset volatility, defining entries and exits before you are in the trade, and using your emotions as a signal rather than suppressing them.
Q3 2026 Portfolio Review: Flat in the Brokerage, Up About 13% With Crypto · Oct 5
My brokerage account finished Q3 up 0.14%, essentially flat after an 88% gain in Q2, with the account swinging from about negative 13% in late July to positive 23% on September 22 before giving it all back in the final six sessions. Adding crypto perps and cold storage, I am up about 13% on the year, and I am heading into Q4 with 28.8% cash and a plan to cut small-cap high-beta names on the next rally.
AI Trading Desk Update: 5m and 15m Charts Close the Gap With TradingView · Oct 11
Miles shipped 5-minute and 15-minute charts to the AI Trading Desk this week, closing the biggest gap we had versus TradingView. The update also lets you reorder and full-screen the lower panes, upgrades the crypto liquidation and order book indicators, and adds a free-tier Basic Deep Read that resets weekly.
Trade Tracker Update: Moving From Google Sheets to the Trading Apologist Website · Oct 7
The Trade Tracker is moving off Google Sheets and onto the Trading Apologist website, under the Community section at tradingapologist.com. You will need to log in with your Patreon details to access it, and I will be turning off sharing on the old sheet at the end of this week. The sheet has been a liability because past members have kept using the link, so this move keeps the tracker with current members only and puts everything in one place.
Also this week
Discord Scammer Warning · Oct 5
News
The stories that moved names on our radar.
Starlink Mobile Gets Its Indoor Coverage, and US Wireless Carriers Sell Off · Oct 9
SpaceX agreed after the closing bell to buy a nationwide block of low-band 800 MHz airwaves for Starlink Mobile, and Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile each fell 6% to 7% in after-hours trading. SpaceX itself rose only 2% to 3% after hours, not enough to recover the 4.2% it lost during a session dominated by selling in AI names after reports that OpenAI's revenue is lower than previously believed.
Perpetual Futures in the US: Where Americans Can Trade Perps Today · Oct 9
Perpetual futures are now legal for US traders on regulated venues, with Kraken, Coinbase, and Kalshi already live after the CFTC approved the first one on May 29. Regulated perps have expanded beyond crypto into gold, silver, and a stock index, and individual stock perps are in the pipeline. A big thank you to Darwinning for tracking the latest data on this, and note that using a VPN to access onchain exchanges like Hyperliquid still puts your account and funds at real risk.
AI Agents Now Use 5 Times More Tokens Than People: Compute Demand or Efficiency Story? · Oct 9
AI agents on OpenRouter hit 7.3 trillion tokens in early August, five times human usage and up 14-fold since February, which reframes the compute demand story: agents run around the clock and no longer tie AI usage to how many people are typing into a chat box. The complication is that more than 85% of those tokens are cached repeats priced at 10 to 50 cents on the dollar, so the real question is cost per finished task, not raw token volume. This fits into the broader picture we have been building this week around thin AI adoption and efficiency as a possible second leg of the AI trade.
Also this week
Earnings Reports
Every earnings print I covered this week, linked to the full post.
This week we had 3 reporters with a 67% beat rate, as 2 beat and 1 missed. The tape treated reporters well overall, with an average price reaction of +2.0%.
Cons Defensive was the strongest sector at 100% with a +3.0% average reaction across 2 reporters. That fits the longer run pattern of steady positive reactions, while the other sectors were not strong enough this week to change that read.
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