Morning Market Notes 09-17-26
Market Calendar
$SPX & $QQQ
Full reversal. SPY is up 1.26% premarket at 763.58, back above the 760 Call Wall it lost Wednesday afternoon. QQQ up 1.62% at 716.12, DIA up 1.20%, IWM up 1.43%, VIX 15.50 and down 12%, the biggest vol crush in weeks. Wednesday closed SPX at 7551, the lowest close since July, after Warsh sold the room during the presser. All of that and more is coming back before the bell.
The Fed did what was priced, 25bp to 3.75-4.00, 12-0 vote, dots showing one more hike this year. Then Warsh said he'd be hard pressed to call financial conditions restrictive, called the dots his colleagues' forecasts and not his, and said he's not in the forward guidance business. Equities read that as a chair who thinks rates are still too low and won't say how high they go, so the Dow gave back 700 points into the close with the 10Y sitting at 5%. Overnight the read flipped: oil pulled back, bonds caught a bid, and futures decided one hike plus a hawkish chair is not the same thing as a tightening cycle. Whether that holds through the cash session is the whole question today.
Gap-and-go mornings after a Fed dump can fade hard in the first hour, so let the first 15 minutes settle before you chase strength. QQQ is the leader again, 716 premarket, above the 715 key and clean through the 710 Call Wall it closed under Wednesday. Hold 715 and tech pulls the whole tape higher. Lose 710 and this bounce was fluff, nothing more.
Macro: Housing Starts, Philly Fed, and Jobless Claims at 8:30, Pending Home Sales at 10. Quarterly opex is tomorrow, so expect the 7600 and 7650 strikes to start pinning by the afternoon.
Let's have a sesh.
From cutting winners short to building a house.
jmtiffany was unprofitable, stuck in the rat race, and cutting every winner short the second it wicked against him. Then he put the same levels you just read next to real-time flow, and almost a year in, his prop payouts fund his personal accounts and the profits are building his house. Not everyone's year looks like that, but the fix was the same one every time: the flow told him the move was still on, so he stopped bailing early. You already have the levels. The flow is what lets you hold the winner.