WHERE WE START NQ settled yesterday at 29,722.50. The Nasdaq 100 cash index closed at 29,529, a gain of 1.17 percent, so Monday was a tech-led bounce after last week's heavy selling. Overnight, NQ has traded between roughly 29,780 and 29,530, a range of about 254 points. As we write, price sits near 29,590. That puts us in the lower quarter of the overnight range and about 130 points under yesterday's settlement. Yesterday's regular session high in the cash index was 29,789 and the low was 29,461. In NQ futures terms, allowing for the roughly 190 point premium futures carry over the cash index, that is about 29,980 above us and about 29,650 below us. Overnight trade has already dipped under that lower figure, which tells us the sellers were willing to work beneath yesterday's floor while most of the US was asleep. The levels we are watching: the overnight high near 29,780, the overnight low near 29,530, and yesterday's settlement at 29,722.50 as the line between a recovery day and a give-back day. We are not quoting a moving average this morning because the readings we could check did not agree with each other, so we are working from range edges and prior session levels instead. WHAT IS ACTUALLY MOVING THE TAPE The driver is renewed doubt about artificial intelligence spending. South Korea's market fell about 4 percent overnight, led by chip and memory names, and that pulled semiconductor and data center shares lower here before the bell. Monday's rebound in those same names is being handed back. The second driver is oil. Brent crude has pushed above $110 on tighter Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz. Higher energy prices keep upward pressure on inflation expectations, which keeps upward pressure on bond yields. The 10-year Treasury yield is holding near 5.1 percent and the 30-year near 5.43 percent, both little changed overnight but both at levels that make expensive technology shares harder to justify. The split is worth noticing. Dow futures are higher by about 0.2 percent while NQ futures are lower by about 0.4 percent. Money is moving out of growth and into industrials and energy, rather than leaving the market altogether.

WHERE WE START Friday was ugly. The Nasdaq 100 cash index closed at 29,187, down 2.50 percent on the day, and the week finished down about 5.5 percent. That was the worst week for the index since April 2025. NQ futures settled Friday near 29,391. Overnight the tape turned. The Sunday evening session traded down to roughly 29,250, which dipped just under Friday's futures low near 29,269, and then reversed higher through the night. The overnight high has come in around the 29,750 to 29,800 area, and NQ is trading near 29,750 as we write, up roughly 360 points or a little over 1 percent. So price sits near the top of the overnight range, not the middle. That matters. Friday's futures high was far above, around 30,225, so the prior day high is about 475 points away and out of reach for an ordinary session. The prior day low has already been swept and reclaimed before the bell. Above us, the 20-day and 50-day daily moving averages sit close together a little under 30,000. A moving average is simply the average closing price over the last 20 or 50 days, and traders watch it as a rough dividing line between strength and weakness. NQ is below every major daily average right now. That makes this morning's move a bounce inside a weekly downtrend, not a recovery of the trend itself. WHAT IS ACTUALLY MOVING THE TAPE The driver is an executive order signed Friday that waived certain sanctions, import restrictions, and tariffs tied to the Russia and Iran sanctions act. Oil fell on the news, with Brent down about 2 percent to around $108, and Treasury yields eased with it. The 10-year yield is near 5.06 to 5.10 percent, down from about 5.24 percent a week ago, and the 30-year is near 5.43 percent. Both are falling. Cheaper energy and lower yields help growth and technology names, which is why NQ is leading this morning and the Dow is not. A better than expected China GDP figure added to the tone. Underneath that, last week's real problem has not been solved. September inflation data came in hot, and the market grew worried about how AI data center buildouts are being financed after credit spreads widened on that group. This morning is relief from the oil and yield side. It is not an answer to the credit question.

Praedor finished positive on every day this week. On four of those days the results were modest. Today it made more than the other four combined. Only Praedor traded live today. Micro is the MNQ contract at $2 a point. Standard is the NQ contract at $20 a point. Praedor — one trade. Plus 367 points. • Short 29,897.25 at 9:40:00, target 29,530.25 at 1:04:39 PM (+367 points | $734.00 micro | $7,340.00 standard) Praedor's week, in points: Monday plus 88, Tuesday plus 60.25, Wednesday plus 87, Thursday plus 55.25, Friday plus 367. Five sessions, five positive days, and two of those days began with a losing trade. Week total: plus 657.5 points. In simulation. These results are separate and not part of our live totals. • Secutor: two trades, two wins. Plus 60 points, $120 on the micro, or $1,200 on the standard contract. • CROSSFIRE, a new strategy we are building and testing in simulation, is up $2,800 on the micro as of this writing. The market: stocks opened mixed, with smaller companies jumping more than 1 percent early. Then technology weakened as the morning went on, and by midday the S&P 500 was down about 0.7 percent, with technology the weakest sector and more than half of all stocks lower. The worry was the same one that has driven this week: how the artificial intelligence build-out is being paid for. CoreWeave, a data-center company carrying about $50 billion in debt, fell again. Nvidia's chief executive, Jensen Huang, said CoreWeave's finances are improving and that Nvidia does not need to support it, but the selling continued. Memory chip makers fell again on fears of cheaper competition from China. The market is starting to sort AI companies into two groups: those that can pay for the build-out from their own cash, and those that must borrow for it. The first group has what is called free cash flow, the money left over after a company pays its bills and its investments. Companies with plenty of it can spend on AI without asking anyone. Companies without it depend on lenders, and this week lenders started asking for more. That is why one heavily borrowed company can move an entire sector. It has become a test of whether the money will keep coming.

WHERE WE START The Nasdaq 100 cash index closed Thursday at 29,935.59, down 15.22 points, or about 0.05 percent. That small number hides a wild session. Price traded up near 29,985 and spent part of the day far below the close before recovering most of the loss. NQ futures settled around 30,145. Overnight, price fell to roughly 29,960, then worked its way back up. We come into the open close to flat, within a few points of yesterday's settle, and in the upper part of the overnight band. That band is only about 175 to 200 points wide, which is narrow for this market. The levels we are watching: the prior settle near 30,145 as the line between buyers and sellers, the overnight low near 29,960 as the first shelf below, and the round 30,000 mark sitting between them. Above us, the record high for the index is 31,361, still roughly 4.8 percent away. WHAT IS ACTUALLY MOVING THE TAPE The real story is the semiconductor washout pausing for breath. The iShares Semiconductor ETF fell eight sessions in a row and lost about 12.6 percent from its October 2 close. Money leaving chip stocks went into government bonds, and that pushed yields down hard. The 10-year Treasury yield is near 5.09 percent, down from a 24-year high of 5.36 percent set last week. The 30-year is near 5.43 percent, down from 5.73 percent. Falling yields usually help growth stocks, and that is why index futures are steady rather than sliding. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh also spoke on artificial intelligence and productivity at the IMF meetings, and the dollar fell afterward as traders leaned toward the Fed holding rates steady in October. HOW WIDE THE DAY SHOULD BE The VIX closed at 16.45, down about 2.5 percent. The VIX is an annual number, so we convert it to one day by dividing by the square root of 252, the number of trading days in a year. 16.45 divided by 15.87 equals about 1.04 percent. Applied to an NQ price near 30,145, that gives us: One standard deviation: about 312 points. That is about $6,250 on one NQ contract and about $625 on one MNQ contract.