Morning Market Notes 08-31-26

Market Calendar

$SPX & $QQQ

Month-end opens risk-off. The US and Iran traded strikes over the weekend for the first time since July, oil ripped 3%, and the protection bid is back: VIX up 6.6% to 15.38 premarket. SPY off 0.37%, QQQ down 0.32%. Sellers get the first look at the open.

This is a Hormuz story. US forces hit Iranian rocket launchers near the Strait on Sunday, the IRGC answered at US bases in Jordan and the UAE, and energy is the only green on the screen, Chevron and Halliburton both up 2% plus. Rates aren't helping either, the 10Y is parked near 4.72% after Warsh's hawkish Jackson Hole speech. SPX is set to open right around the 7700 Put Wall, that's the line dealers care about this morning.

Macro calendar is empty today. The week's main event is Friday's jobs report, so expect the tape to trade headlines until then.

Let's have a sesh.

He almost quit. Then $100K in prop payouts.

TigerWould put in two years on options and twelve months on futures with only a few green months to show for it, and he almost walked away. Then he put the same read you get in these notes every morning next to real-time flow and pulled $100K+ in prop payouts in 2025, $65K inside his first two months as a member, $15K in the first six days of 2026. His words: "Within weeks, I wasn't chasing the market, I was in the move." Nobody hands you his numbers, but you're already doing the reading, the only thing missing is the flow.