═══════════════════════════════════════════

WEEKLY REGIME VERDICT

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BEARISH

Posture: no new entries — cash and existing positions only

Held for a fourth week. Broad short-term breadth closed above 50, so one condition has cleared. SPY and QQQ are both still below their 20 SMAs, and the restoration test needs the index, not breadth.

For the first time since mid-October, one of the four lights went out. The index didn’t follow. Friday took back most of the week’s gains in one session, and it came from the same place as every other bad day this autumn: the stocks that carry the AI trade.

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WHAT THE STRUCTURE SAYS

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SPY lost half a percent on the week and never reached its 20 SMA. The 8 EMA, the 20 and the 50 still sit in a tight band above price, and the 8 is now below both of the others. That band is the ceiling until a close proves otherwise.

QQQ is the problem. It fell another 2% and closed 1.6% above its 200 SMA. That’s the closest it has been since the regime turned. A close below it would take the Nasdaq out of Stage 2 on every horizon, not just the short one.

IWN went the other way again. It’s up for a second week, above its 8 EMA and 20 SMA, and 0.6% under a 50 SMA that is still falling. The badge stays UNMET because the 20 is below the 50. It’s still the only index moving in the right direction.

Key levels for the week:

→ SPY: 770.47 (20 SMA) is the level that matters, 2.0% above Friday’s close · support at the 200 SMA, 728.85

→ QQQ: 728.19 (20 SMA) is 5.5% away · support at the 200 SMA, 679.52 — 1.6% below

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WHAT BREADTH SAYS

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Every bar finished higher than a week ago. MMTW closed at 52.22, the first close above 50 since the regime turned, and that clears condition 2. S5FI, S5TH, MMTH and MMFI all rose with it.

Friday is the caveat. Every breadth series fell between 5% and 13% in one session. MMTW had been near 60 midweek. The week was a broadening. Friday was the reminder that it isn’t settled.

The concentration gap moved in two directions. On the 200-day row it widened again, to +14.39. On the 50-day row it narrowed slightly, to +18.67. That’s the third week in double digits on both horizons. Large caps and the broad market are still on different stories.

New highs edged back above new lows, at 1.07x. Thin, but on the right side of 1.

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WHAT MACRO SAYS

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The 10-year fell for a third week, to 4.933%. Direction keeps helping. The level still sits almost two-tenths above the 4.75% line, so condition 3 stays on.

VIX finished flat on the week, but Friday’s intraday spike to 23.93 tells the real story. Hedges went back on hard into the close, and VIX is still above every one of its averages.

Oil stayed above $100. December crude closed near $103 on Friday, lifted by the risk of renewed US strikes on Iran. Condition 4 isn’t close to clearing.

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WHAT ROTATION SAYS

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The shelter widened. Last week three sectors were confirmed. This week six are. Materials and Utilities moved up from EMERGING to CONFIRMED, and Consumer Discretionary crossed above 1.00, just barely, on a weekly trend too weak to trust. Health Care took the top of the tactical window at +6.84% against the index.

The divergence that matters is Industrials. A week ago it was a laggard on both windows. This week its slope turned positive and it’s ahead of SPY over ten sessions. That’s the first cyclical sector to turn in a month.

At the bottom, Communication Services fell hardest, −7.67% against the index over ten sessions, after Alphabet’s 12.6% drop on Thursday. Technology’s slope improved from −290 to −215. It’s still behind on both windows.

The search order at the bottom of that board is search order. It is not permission. Health Care, Materials and Energy have all run hard. Expect to look there first and find nothing armable — a sector up 5% to 7% against the index in ten sessions will fail the dynamic ceiling on almost every name inside it.

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MACRO — WHAT LAST WEEK DELIVERED

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→ FOMC, Wednesday: held at 3.75–4.00%, 10–2. Cook and Hammack dissented in favour of a hike.

→ Q3 GDP (advance), Thursday: 3.4% annualised, up from 2.2% in Q2.

→ PCE (September), Thursday: headline +0.5% m/m, 3.6% y/y. Core +0.3% m/m, 3.1% y/y.

→ Big tech, Wednesday–Thursday: Alphabet −12.6% on Thursday on negative free cash flow. Amazon missed on EPS and revenue. Intel guided Q4 well below estimates.

→ Friday: S&P 500 −1.82%, Nasdaq −2.86%. The money that left tech went to staples, health care and energy.

Fed funds: 3.75–4.00%. Strong growth and sticky inflation keep a December hike on the table.

Geopolitics: crude back above $100 on the risk of renewed US strikes on Iran.

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MACRO FLAGS — WEEK AHEAD

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→ Monday 2 November: ISM Manufacturing (October), 10:00 ET

→ Tuesday 3 November: JOLTS (September), 10:00 ET · US midterm elections

→ Friday 6 November: Employment Situation (October), 8:30 ET

Calendar note: Friday is an NFP session, which makes it a no-new-order day, so the last arming evening of the week is Wednesday, not Thursday. In a BEARISH regime that changes nothing. No orders are armed on any evening. If the regime is restored next Sunday, the calendar for the week of 9 November is checked fresh, and CPI lands on Tuesday 10 November.

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VERDICT RATIONALE

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BEARISH holds because the restoration test didn’t move. It needs a SPY close above its 20 SMA and QQQ back above its own. SPY finished further from its 20 than a week ago. QQQ finished further still.

Condition 2 cleared, and that is recorded. It’s the first condition to clear since the regime turned. It does not restore NEUTRAL on its own, and last week’s report said so before it happened. Breadth is recorded, never a gate.

What restores NEUTRAL: a SPY close above its 20 SMA at 770.47, together with QQQ back above its 20 SMA at 728.19. SPY is 2.0% away. QQQ is 5.5% away.

What would make it worse: QQQ losing its 200 SMA at 679.52, 1.6% below Friday’s close. Then SPY losing its own at 728.85, 3.6% below.

The four conditions, as they stand:

→ SPY closed below its 20 SMA — FIRED, 755.72 vs 770.47

→ Broad short-term breadth under 50 — CLEARED, MMTW at 52.22

→ US 10-year above 4.75% decisively — FIRED, 4.933%, falling for a third week

→ A Middle East supply headline moving oil sharply higher — FIRED, crude above $100 on the risk of renewed strikes on Iran

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WHY THERE IS NO WATCHLIST THIS WEEK

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Paid subscribers will not receive a Watchlist or a Trade Plan this Sunday. This is the third week in a row, for the same reason.

A BEARISH verdict means no new entries. The scan keeps running in the background. Six sectors are now ahead of the index, more than at any point since the regime turned. When it does turn, the list will not be short of candidates.

This week tested the rule from the other side. A condition cleared, breadth broadened, yields fell again. It would be easy to call that enough. But the index closed lower, and the Nasdaq is now closer to its 200-day than to its 20-day. The system doesn’t upgrade on improvement. It upgrades on the close that proves it.

Cash is a position. For one more week, it’s the only one the system allows.

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WHAT’S COMING NEXT WEEK

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v3.101 is going under review.

Next Sunday we announce how the system evolves — built on eleven years of backtested data, not on how the last four weeks felt.

The rules that run today stay in force until then. Nothing changes mid-week, and nothing changes because the tape is uncomfortable. When it changes, you’ll see the evidence first.

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Trade Tight · Think in R · Focus on Process

— Radu

KISS Trading

───────────────────────────────────────────

⚠️ Educational only. Not financial advice. Always DYOR.

═══════════════════════════════════════════

WEEKLY REGIME VERDICT

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BEARISH

Posture: no new entries — cash and existing positions only

Held for a third week. SPY is still below its 20 SMA, QQQ is still below its 50, and all four conditions are still firing — one of them by less than a fifth of a point.

This was the week breadth came back and the index didn’t. More than half of the S&P 500 is above its 50-day average again. The index itself finished lower. When those two disagree, this report goes with the index — because the index is where the conditions live.

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WHAT THE STRUCTURE SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

SPY finished slightly lower on the week and never got back to its 20 SMA. The 8 EMA, the 20 and the 50 now sit in a three-point band above price, and the closer they bunch, the more weight the first close through them will carry — in either direction.

QQQ is the reason Thursday hurt. The Nasdaq fell 2.6% in one session after Meta raised its spending floor, and QQQ ended the week 4.4% below its 20 SMA. Its 8 EMA is now below both the 20 and the 50.

IWN did the opposite. It rose 2% on the week and reclaimed its 8 EMA and 20 SMA. Its 50 SMA is still 1.8% overhead and falling, so the badge stays UNMET. It’s the first index to move in the right direction since the regime turned.

Key levels for the week:

→ SPY: 770.15 (20 SMA) is the level that matters, 1.3% above Friday’s close · support at the 200 SMA, 727.01

→ QQQ: 735.24 (20 SMA) is 4.4% away · support at the 200 SMA, 677.30

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WHAT BREADTH SAYS

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Every bar on the board rose. S5FI went from 45 to 58, back above 50 for the first time since early September. MMFI rose ten points, and MMTW from 40 to 49.84. That’s one good Friday short of clearing condition 2, and Friday wasn’t good: every breadth series dropped more than 2% on the day.

The broadening is real, but look at where it came from. The S&P members rose much faster than the broad market. The concentration gap widened to +12.19 on the 200-day row and +19.81 on the 50-day. That’s the second week in double digits on both horizons. The specification calls a gap that persists structural, not noise. It has now persisted.

New highs fell back under new lows, 0.85x. Last week’s 1.20x was the defensive sectors setting records. This week they held, but nothing new joined them.

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WHAT MACRO SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

The 10-year closed at 4.999%, its first close under 5% since September, and down for a second week. Direction keeps improving. Level doesn’t count until 4.75%, and it’s still a quarter-point above.

VIX barely moved and stayed above every average. The hedges bought in mid-October haven’t been taken off. That is the opposite of the complacency we flagged in September.

Oil did the most work. WTI rose 4% on Thursday to around $105, and Brent traded above $110. October has now seen more attacks on commercial shipping around the Gulf than any month since the war began. Condition 4 isn’t close to clearing.

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WHAT ROTATION SAYS

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The same three confirmed sectors as last week: Energy, Staples, Health Care. Energy leads both windows, at 1.23 against SPY structurally and +7.45% tactically, with the steepest slope on the board. Staples and Health Care follow within a point.

Behind them, five sectors are emerging, all above the index over ten sessions while still behind it structurally. Materials is the strongest at +6.20%, then Utilities, Real Estate, Financials and Discretionary.

Technology moved from FADING to LAGGARD. A week ago XLK was still ahead of SPY on the structural window; now it’s at 0.9905, behind on both. Its weekly slope fell again, from −198 to −290, the weakest on the board. QQQ, Communication Services, Metals and Mining, and Industrials sit with it.

Two weeks ago Technology was the only confirmed sector. Since then, every sector that can lead in a strong economy has fallen behind, and every sector that leads in a defensive one has moved ahead. That’s not rotation inside a bull market. It’s capital looking for shelter.

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MACRO — WHAT LAST WEEK DELIVERED

───────────────────────────────────────────

→ Meta, Wednesday after the close: revenue beat, but the lower end of its capex forecast rose to $135–145 billion. The stock fell sharply Thursday and took the Nasdaq down 2.6% with it.

→ Tesla, Wednesday after the close: shares fell after the results.

→ AI financing: Morgan Stanley cut its CoreWeave target, citing financing uncertainty — the same thread that broke semiconductors two weeks ago.

→ S&P Global flash PMI (October), Friday: composite 57.6, down from 58.4. New orders at 58.2, the strongest since March 2022. Output prices at 59.8, the highest since August 2022.

→ University of Michigan sentiment (final October), Friday: 48.0. One-year inflation expectations 4.7%.

→ Oil: WTI near $105 after a 4% jump Thursday. Brent above $110. The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed to commercial traffic.

→ US 10-year: from about 5.08% to 5.00%. Gold fell about 4% to near $4,000.

→ Indices: S&P 500 down about 0.3% on the week. Thursday was the damage: S&P −1.2%, Nasdaq −2.6%.

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MACRO FLAGS — WEEK AHEAD

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→ Tuesday 27 October: Durable goods (September)

→ Wednesday 28 October: FOMC decision. A hold at 3.75–4.00% is expected after September’s hike. The market will watch for a tightening bias toward December and for dissents from the members who wanted a hike in July.

→ Thursday 29 October: Q3 GDP, advance estimate. Consensus around 3.0%; the Atlanta Fed’s model shows 3.5%.

→ Thursday 29 October: PCE (September). Headline expected +0.5% m/m, 3.6% y/y. Core +0.3% m/m, 3.1% y/y.

→ Same week: the Bank of Canada, ECB and Bank of Japan also decide.

Calendar note: Wednesday is an FOMC session, which makes it a no-new-order day, and Tuesday evening is not an arming evening. In a BEARISH regime that changes nothing — no orders are armed on any evening. If the regime is restored next Sunday, the calendar for the week of 2 November is checked fresh.

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VERDICT RATIONALE

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BEARISH holds because nothing in last week’s restoration test moved. SPY needed a close above its 20 SMA. It got closer, then fell back. QQQ needed the same and finished further away than it started.

Breadth improved more this week than in any week since the regime turned. That improvement is real, and it is recorded on the dashboard. It does not move the verdict. Breadth is recorded, never a gate. A market where 58% of large caps are above their 50-day average but the index is below its own 20-day is a market where the money left the stocks that carry the index. That’s not a recovery. It’s a reallocation.

Condition 2 is the one to watch. MMTW at 49.84 is 0.16 from clearing. A close above 50 would make it the first condition to clear since mid-October. It would not, on its own, restore NEUTRAL.

What restores NEUTRAL: a SPY close above its 20 SMA at 770.15, together with QQQ back in Stage 2, which requires a close above its 20 SMA at 735.24. SPY is 1.3% away. QQQ is 4.4% away.

What would make it worse: SPY losing its 200 SMA at 727.01, 4.3% below Friday’s close.

The four conditions, as they stand:

→ SPY closed below its 20 SMA — FIRED, 759.97 vs 770.15

→ Broad short-term breadth under 50 — FIRED, MMTW at 49.84

→ US 10-year above 4.75% decisively — FIRED, 4.999%, falling for a second week

→ A Middle East supply headline moving oil sharply higher — FIRED, Brent above $110 after the heaviest month of shipping attacks since the war began

═══════════════════════════════════════════

WHY THERE IS NO WATCHLIST THIS WEEK

═══════════════════════════════════════════

Paid subscribers will not receive a Watchlist or a Trade Plan this Sunday. This is the second week in a row, for the same reason.

A BEARISH verdict means no new entries. The scan keeps running in the background. The names holding their structure through this are the ones that will lead the list when the regime turns, and this week’s breadth surge says there are more of them than a week ago.

It’s tempting to read a week like this as the turn. Breadth jumped, yields fell, small caps reclaimed their short averages. But the index — the thing the conditions are written around — closed lower. The system doesn’t predict the turn. It waits for the close that proves it.

Cash is a position. For one more week, it’s the only one the system allows.

───────────────────────────────────────────

Trade Tight · Think in R · Focus on Process

— Radu

KISS Trading

───────────────────────────────────────────

⚠️ Educational only. Not financial advice. Always DYOR.

═══════════════════════════════════════════

WEEKLY REGIME VERDICT

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BEARISH

Posture: no new entries — cash and existing positions only

Changed on Wednesday 14 October, and confirmed by Friday’s close. SPY closed below its 20 SMA, the last of the four conditions still standing. All four are now firing, and Stage 2 is broken on SPY, QQQ and IWN.

Last Sunday, Technology was the only sector leading on both windows. By Friday it was the weakest group on the board. The leaders didn’t drift lower with the market. They left first, and capital moved into staples, energy, health care and utilities on the way out.

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WHAT THE STRUCTURE SAYS

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SPY closed at 763.25, down 2.0% on the week. It sits below the 8 EMA at 771.34, the 20 SMA at 771.18 and the 50 SMA at 768.50, with only the 200 SMA at 725.01 still underneath. The squeezed stack flagged two weeks running finally gave way.

QQQ fell 5.5% in a week, the Nasdaq’s worst since June. At 709.80 it is below its 50 SMA at 726.77, and its 8 EMA has crossed under the 20. That’s the first index-level break in the short-term engine since the summer.

IWN is at 208.75, fifty cents above its 200 SMA, and below every other average. Small-cap value has now lagged for seven straight weeks.

Key levels for the week:

→ SPY: 771.18 (20 SMA) is the level that matters, 1.0% above Friday’s close · support at the 200 SMA, 725.01

→ QQQ: 742.52 (20 SMA) is 4.6% away · support at the 200 SMA, 674.91

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WHAT BREADTH SAYS

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At first glance, S&P 500 breadth improved. S5FI rose from 34.93 to 45.12 and S5TH from 47.70 to 51.88, while the index fell 2%. That combination only happens one way: money leaving a handful of large leaders and spreading across the rest of the index. Defensive stocks climbed back above their averages while tech fell through its own.

The broad market didn’t join in. MMTH slipped to 41.51 and MMFI to 28.28. MMTW recovered to 40.12, still ten points short of 50.

That opens the concentration gap to +10.37 on the 200-day row and +16.84 on the 50-day. Double digits on both horizons is the first time this report has recorded it. It means large-cap index members and the broad market are moving on different stories: the first is rotating, the second is still contracting.

New highs outnumbered new lows on Friday, 1.20x, for the first time in weeks. The new highs came from energy, staples and utilities. That’s not a market turning up. It’s a market hiding.

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WHAT MACRO SAYS

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The inflation data ran hot across the board. CPI on Wednesday: headline 3.7% annual against 3.6% expected, core 2.6% against 2.5%. PPI on Thursday: +1.3% in a month against 0.5% expected. Gasoline was the common driver in both.

The 10-year touched 5.33% on the CPI print, then fell to 5.081% by Friday as money moved into safety. Down 16 basis points on the week. On the macro panel that’s direction over level, and direction finally turned. It doesn’t touch condition 3, which is about level, and 5.08% is still a third of a point above 4.75%.

VIX closed at 19.98, up 21% on Friday alone, after touching 22.31 intraday. For four weeks it sat below all of its averages and we called that an absence of hedging. This week the hedging arrived.

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WHAT ROTATION SAYS

──────────────────────

─────────────────────

Three sectors are confirmed on both windows, and none of them is growth. Staples lead the window at +9.04% against the index. Energy follows at +8.47% with the steepest acceleration on the board, +364 a week. Health Care is back, confirmed at +6.50%.

Five more are emerging, led by Utilities at +6.52%. Real Estate, Financials, Materials and Discretionary are all ahead of the index tactically while still behind structurally.

Technology flipped to fading. XLK is still above SPY structurally at 1.0227, but it lost 7.77% against the index in ten sessions. A week ago its slope was +106, the strongest on the board. Now it is −198, the weakest. QQQ is fading alongside it. The trigger was AI financing: debt worries around a major AI infrastructure lender spread into semiconductors, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell for eight straight sessions.

In a BEARISH regime the board isn’t a search order. Nothing is being armed. It’s a record of where capital went when it stopped wanting risk.

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MACRO — WHAT LAST WEEK DELIVERED

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→ CPI (September), Wednesday: +0.6% monthly, 3.7% annual vs 3.6% expected. Core +0.3% monthly, 2.6% annual vs 2.5%. Gasoline +9.1% in a month; energy +20.4% on the year.

→ PPI (September), Thursday: +1.3% monthly vs 0.5% expected, 6.3% annual. Core +0.5% monthly.

→ Retail sales (September), Thursday: +0.8% vs 0.3% expected — but the control group rose only 0.1% against 0.3%. Shoppers paid more for fuel and less for everything else.

→ Fed: Chair Warsh gave no signal on the late-October meeting. October hike odds rose to roughly 37% after CPI and fell back to about 17% by Friday. December hike odds near 89%.

→ Oil: Brent closed Friday near $109.86, its highest close since May, after renewed tanker attacks around the Strait of Hormuz. WTI above $101.

→ Indices: S&P 500 −2.0% on the week. Nasdaq Composite −4.5%. Dow +0.7%.

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MACRO FLAGS — WEEK AHEAD

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→ Tuesday 20 October, after the close: Netflix earnings

→ Wednesday 21 October, after the close: Tesla and Meta earnings

→ Tuesday–Wednesday 27–28 October: FOMC decision, the week after next

Calendar note: no CPI, FOMC decision or payrolls this week. In a BEARISH regime that changes nothing — no orders are armed on any evening. If the regime is restored next Sunday, FOMC Wednesday 28 October becomes a no-new-order session, and Tuesday 27 October is not an arming evening.

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VERDICT RATIONALE

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BEARISH holds because the test that grants NEUTRAL is failing on every index. SPY is below its 20 SMA. QQQ is below its 50. IWN is resting on its 200. The four conditions all fire, and none of them is close to clearing except the first.

Two readings improved. Yields fell 16 basis points, and new highs outnumbered new lows. Neither is a gate. Breadth is recorded, never a gate; macro sets context, not the verdict. Both improvements also came from the same source: money running to safety. Falling yields and defensive new highs are what fear looks like in a strong economy.

What restores NEUTRAL: a SPY close back above its 20 SMA at 771.18, together with QQQ back in Stage 2, which requires a close above its 20 SMA at 742.52. SPY is 1.0% away. QQQ is 4.6% away. One green session will not do it for both.

What would make it worse: SPY losing the 200 SMA at 725.01. That’s not one of the four conditions. It would mean the long-term trend itself had turned, and the cash posture would stay in place for longer than a week or two.

The four conditions, as they stand:

→ SPY closed below its 20 SMA — FIRED, 763.25 vs 771.18

→ Broad short-term breadth under 50 — FIRED, MMTW at 40.12

→ US 10-year above 4.75% decisively — FIRED, 5.081%, though falling

→ A Middle East supply headline moving oil sharply higher — FIRED, Brent at its highest close since May on renewed Hormuz attacks

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WHY THERE IS NO WATCHLIST THIS WEEK

═══════════════════════════════════════════

Paid subscribers will not receive a Watchlist or a Trade Plan this Sunday. That isn’t a missed week. It’s the system working as designed.

A BEARISH verdict means no new entries. Publishing triggers for setups the rules forbid you to take would turn the watchlist into a wish list. The scan still runs, and the names that hold their structure through this will be the first ones on the list when the regime turns back.

Last week showed why the rule exists. Two of the names on Sunday’s list filled on Monday. Both failed the volume gate at 15:45 and were sold at 15:55 for a combined −0.56R. One of them rallied afterwards, and the CPI calendar rule kept us out of the rebound. It cost us that trade. Two days later the market broke, and the same rules kept us out of everything else.

Cash is a position. This week it’s the only one the system allows.

───────────────────────────────────────────

Trade Tight · Think in R · Focus on Process

— Radu

KISS Trading

───────────────────────────────────────────

⚠️ Educational only. Not financial advice. Always DYOR.

═══════════════════════════════════════════

THE PICK

═══════════════════════════════════════════

W — Wayfair Inc.

Specialty Stores │ NYSE

Sector: Consumer Discretionary (XLY, emerging)

Pattern: SETUP B — Pure BOS

Setup Quality: B+

Why this one over the rest of the watchlist:

→ The driest base in the scan. Volume under the rim is 39% of

average, Vol Buzz -61%.…

Read more

═══════════════════════════════════════════

THE FUNNEL

═══════════════════════════════════════════

Screened this week: 200+

Scanned in full: 15

Passed all six filters: 7

Published: 5

Rejection rate: 53%

Regime: NEUTRAL — half capital, cleanest setups only

Eight rejections, and every one of them came from the same

place. Not one of…

Read more

KISS Regime Report — Week of 12 October 2026 — NEUTRAL

One verdict. The reasoning behind it. Your posture for the week ahead.

═══════════════════════════════════════════

WEEKLY REGIME VERDICT

═══════════════════════════════════════════

NEUTRAL

Posture: 30–50% capital — cleanest setups only

Held for a third week. SPY stayed above its 20 SMA and both indices still confirm Stage 2. Three of four conditions are still firing.

Last week breadth hit the floor. This week it bounced off it, hard. S&P 500 short-term breadth gained ten points and the index set a new record on Tuesday. But the bounce came from the large caps. The broad market barely moved, small caps fell, and the 10-year touched a 24-year high in the middle of it.

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WHAT THE STRUCTURE SAYS

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SPY closed at 778.57, up 1.2% on the week, above the 8 EMA at 773.83, the 20 SMA at 767.98, the 50 SMA at 767.57 and the 200 at 722.93. The 8 EMA has pulled almost six points clear of the 20, which is the first real spacing the stack has shown in a month. The 20 and 50 are still only 0.41 apart. That part of the squeeze hasn’t released.

QQQ closed at 751.27, just above its 8 EMA at 749.70, with the 20 at 737.54 and the 50 at 724.52. It gained only 0.2% on the week, so SPY outran it for the first time in several weeks. Structure is intact. Momentum paused.

IWN is still broken. At 210.87 it sits below the 8 EMA, the 20 SMA at 213.52 and the 50 SMA at 219.76, with the 20 under the 50. The Russell 2000 lost 0.9% in a week the S&P gained 1.2%. Small-cap value has now lagged for six straight weeks.

Key levels for the week:

→ SPY support: 773.83 (8 EMA), then 767.98 (20 SMA) · resistance: Tuesday’s record high

→ QQQ support: 749.70 (8 EMA), then 737.54 (20 SMA) · resistance: the early-October record high

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WHAT BREADTH SAYS

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S5FI closed at 34.93, up from 24.65. That’s ten points in a week and a close back above its own average for the first time since August. S5TH rose to 47.70, also back above its average. The washed-out reading from last week lasted exactly one report.

The broad market tells a different story. MMTW rose to 38.67, above its own average, but still eleven points short of 50. MMFI gained one point to 28.93. MMTH was flat at 43.34. Both are still below their averages.

The concentration gap shows why. A week ago S&P 500 breadth was weaker than broad-market breadth on both horizons. This week it flipped to +4.36 on the 200-day and +6.00 on the 50-day. Index members recovered their averages; the stocks outside the index mostly didn’t.

New highs versus new lows improved from 0.34x to 0.58x. Still below one. New lows still outnumber new highs almost two to one.

A bounce in the index’s own members is how a turn starts. It isn’t proof of one. The proof is the same as last week: MMTW above 50 and holding, or new highs outnumbering new lows. Neither happened.

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT MACRO SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

The 10-year touched 5.36% on Wednesday, its highest level since 2002, then closed the week at 5.242%, about three basis points lower than a week ago. The weekly number looks calm. The path wasn’t. Yields rose with oil midweek and eased with it on Friday.

The inflation signal kept building. ISM Services prices paid jumped to 74.0, the highest since July 2022, one week after the manufacturing prices index hit 77.9. Both surveys now say the same thing: costs are rising across goods and services, and fuel is the common thread.

VIX closed at 14.85, below all four of its own averages. Fourth week in a row with the same reading. Low volatility here means no one is paying for protection, not that there’s nothing to protect against.

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT ROTATION SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

Three groups are confirmed on both windows. Energy leads tactically at +3.64% against the index, and its weekly slope turned positive (+2) after two weeks of steep deceleration. Last week Energy was confirmed on paper while fading in motion. This week it’s confirmed in both. The oil headlines explain why.

Technology stays confirmed with the strongest structure on the board, 1.0713, and the strongest acceleration, +106 a week. But its tactical lead shrank to +1.02%. QQQ is confirmed alongside it at +0.84%.

Three groups are emerging, and they’re an odd set. Utilities led the whole window at +4.34% — from the weakest structural position on the board, 0.8532. Discretionary gained +2.37% and Staples +0.24%. Two of those three are defensive. That’s money buying safety and yield-like income while the index makes records, not a broadening into cyclicals.

Seven sectors are behind on both windows. Health Care slipped further, now 0.9985 structurally and −1.42% tactically. Metals & Mining dropped below 1.000 for the first time in weeks, and its −152 slope is the worst on the board. Financials, Real Estate, Industrials, Materials and Comm. Services complete the list.

Search order is search order, not permission. In Energy, expect most names to fail the ceiling test: a sector up almost 5% in ten sessions on headline-driven oil rarely leaves a tight base. In Utilities, the sector context is new and unproven, so any setup there needs to clear all six filters on its own.

───────────────────────────────────────────

MACRO — WHAT LAST WEEK DELIVERED

───────────────────────────────────────────

→ ISM Services (September), Monday: 54.9 vs 55.0 expected, 27th straight month of expansion. Prices paid 74.0, highest since July 2022. Employment back above 50 at 50.1.

→ FOMC Minutes (September meeting), Wednesday: the hike to 3.75%–4.00% was unanimous. Most participants judged another increase likely appropriate by year-end.

→ Rate odds: October hike odds near 17%; December hike odds around 84%.

→ Oil: tanker attacks around the Strait of Hormuz reached a weekly high since the war began, and a Gulf storm shut in some US output. Brent topped $104 on Thursday and stayed above $100 into the weekend.

→ Treasuries: 10-year intraday high of 5.36% on Wednesday, highest since 2002. Closed Friday at 5.242%.

→ Indices: S&P 500 record close Tuesday; +1.2% on the week. Nasdaq +0.6%. Russell 2000 −0.9%.

───────────────────────────────────────────

MACRO FLAGS — WEEK AHEAD

───────────────────────────────────────────

→ Monday 12 October: Columbus Day. Stocks open, bond market closed — thin Treasury liquidity, oil headlines can move more than usual.

→ Wednesday 14 October, 8:30 ET: September CPI. Headline expected +0.6% monthly, 3.6% annual. Core expected +0.2% monthly, 2.5% annual.

→ Thursday 15 October, 8:30 ET: PPI, retail sales, jobless claims and Philly Fed, all at once.

→ Thursday 15 October, late evening ET: Fed Chair Warsh speaks.

→ Tuesday–Wednesday 27–28 October: FOMC decision, less than a week before the 3 November midterms.

Calendar note: CPI on Wednesday makes it a no-new-order session. Any armed buy stop is cancelled by Tuesday’s close, and Tuesday evening is not an arming evening. The clean arming evenings are Sunday and Monday (for Monday and Tuesday sessions), then Wednesday and Thursday evening (for Thursday and Friday). Third-quarter earnings season is under way — check every candidate’s report date against the hold rule before arming.

───────────────────────────────────────────

VERDICT RATIONALE

───────────────────────────────────────────

NEUTRAL holds, and it holds for the same reason it was granted: SPY is above its 20 SMA and both indices confirm Stage 2. Nothing in that test changed this week, except that the margin got wider.

What improved: S&P 500 breadth came off washed-out levels in one week, the index set a record, and SPY’s short-term average finally separated from the pack.

What didn’t: the broad market barely participated, small caps fell, new lows still outnumber new highs, and the 10-year made a 24-year high in the middle of the rally. The sectors that gained most were Energy and Utilities. That isn’t the leadership of a market about to broaden.

None of those readings is one of the four conditions, so none of them moves the verdict. Breadth is recorded, never a gate. Rotation is context, never a filter.

What upgrades this to BULLISH CAUTION: MMTW above 50 and holding — it’s at 38.67, still eleven points short — or new highs outnumbering new lows, now 0.58x.

What takes it back to BEARISH: a SPY close below its 20 SMA at 767.98, 1.36% below Friday’s close. Twice the cushion of a week ago.

The four conditions, as they stand:

→ SPY closed below its 20 SMA — CLEARED, 778.57 vs 767.98

→ Broad short-term breadth under 50 — FIRED, MMTW at 38.67

→ US 10-year above 4.75% decisively — FIRED, 5.242%, after a 24-year high at 5.36% midweek

→ A Middle East supply headline moving oil sharply higher — FIRED, Brent back above $104 on renewed Hormuz tanker attacks

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KISS Trading

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═══════════════════════════════════════════

THE PICK

═══════════════════════════════════════════

ANET — Arista Networks, Inc.

Computer Peripherals │ NYSE

Sector: Technology (XLK, RS 89)

Pattern: SETUP B — Pure BOS

Setup Quality: A-

Why this one over the rest of the watchlist:

→ 3.5% off its 52-week high. The next closest name on the

list is 6.9% away, and the…

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═══════════════════════════════════════════

THE FUNNEL

═══════════════════════════════════════════

Screened this week: 200+

Reached chart review: 14

Passed all six filters: 4

Rejection rate at chart review: 71% (10 of 14)

Regime: NEUTRAL — half capital, cleanest setups only

Ten rejections, and not one of them was a broken chart. The

leaders held their s…

Read more

═══════════════════════════════════════════

WEEKLY REGIME VERDICT

═══════════════════════════════════════════

NEUTRAL

Posture: 30–50% capital — cleanest setups only

Held from last week. SPY stayed above its 20 SMA and both indices still confirm Stage 2. Three of four conditions are still firing.

The verdict didn’t move. What moved was the floor underneath it: S&P 500 short-term breadth fell into washed-out territory for the first time since this report began, and the 10-year went to a new high on the same day the jobs report missed by two-thirds.

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT THE STRUCTURE SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

SPY closed at 769.64, above the 8 EMA at 766.25, the 20 SMA at 764.83, the 50 SMA at 763.70 and the 200 at 720.47. The order is correct. The spacing isn’t. Three of those averages now sit within 2.6 points of each other, and price is 0.62% above the 20 SMA. That’s a stack squeezed flat, holding its shape by very little.

QQQ is the opposite picture. It closed at 749.58, nine points clear of its 8 EMA and twenty-two clear of the 20 SMA. The Nasdaq 100 made a record close on Friday. Over the week, QQQ gained 0.7% while SPY lost 0.2%.

IWN is still broken. At 212.34 it sits on its 8 EMA, below the 20 SMA at 215.98 and the 50 SMA at 220.83, with the 20 under the 50. Small-cap value has now lagged for five straight weeks.

Key levels for the week:

→ SPY support: 764.83 (20 SMA), then 763.70 (50 SMA) · resistance: 772.65, Friday’s high

→ QQQ support: 740.46 (8 EMA), then 727.78 (20 SMA) · resistance: none, at record highs

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT BREADTH SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

S5FI closed at 24.65. Below 25 is the washed-out line on this report’s scale, and this is the first time it has been crossed since these reports started. Fewer than one in four S&P 500 stocks hold their 50-day average while the index sits half a percent from its own.

The long-horizon readings kept sliding. S5TH is at 42.54, two and a half points above the 40 line. MMTH is at 43.23. Both are lower than a week ago.

Friday was different. MMTW jumped 17% in one session to 30.70, which puts it back above its own average for the first time in weeks. MMFI rose 11%, and new highs versus new lows went from 0.09x to 0.34x. That’s a real bounce off the lows. It isn’t yet a turn: every one of those readings is still in contraction, and new lows still outnumber new highs three to one.

The concentration gap flipped negative on the 200-day horizon too, −0.69 on top of −3.23 on the 50-day. S&P 500 breadth is now weaker than broad-market breadth on both measures. Large-cap index members have been falling faster than the market around them, while a small group at the very top keeps the index up.

Washed out is a level, not a signal. It tells you selling has gone far. It doesn’t tell you it’s over. The readings that would say that are MMTW back above 50 and new highs outnumbering new lows, and neither is close.

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT MACRO SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

The 10-year closed at 5.275%, another nineteen-year high and up about eleven basis points on the week. The detail that matters is Friday. Payrolls came in at 29,000 against roughly 90,000 expected, unemployment rose to 4.2%, and October hike odds collapsed from about two in three to roughly one in six. The 10-year dipped toward 5.17% on the release, then reversed and finished the day higher.

A weak jobs report usually pulls long yields down. This one didn’t, and the reason is in Thursday’s ISM: factory prices paid jumped nearly seven points to 77.9. The bond market isn’t pricing the Fed anymore. It’s pricing inflation that doesn’t need the Fed’s help.

VIX closed at 15.30, below all four of its own averages. Same reading, same interpretation as the last three weeks: an absence of hedging, not a presence of safety.

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT ROTATION SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

Technology is the market. XLK is ahead of SPY structurally at 1.0975, ahead tactically by 2.16%, and accelerating at +199 a week — the strongest slope on the board by a wide margin. QQQ is confirmed alongside it.

Health Care dropped out. A week ago XLV was confirmed on structure; this week it slipped to 0.9976 and lost 2.06% against the index over the window. It’s now behind on both windows. That matters for anyone who has been looking at health-care breakouts: the sector context underneath them is gone.

Energy is confirmed on paper. Structural RS at 1.0555, tactically ahead by 0.19% — but its weekly slope is −174, the third-worst deceleration on the board. That’s a sector still ahead of SPY on the numbers while losing ground every week. Confirmed by the rule, fading in motion.

Nine sectors are behind on both windows. Financials (−4.70%), Real Estate (−4.57%) and Comm. Services (−4.25%) lead the losses; the rate-sensitive groups keep reacting to a 5.3% ten-year exactly as you’d expect.

Two names lead and one is hanging on. That isn’t rotation. It’s the same concentration the breadth panel shows, seen from the sector side.

Search order is search order, not permission. Expect most Tech names to fail the ceiling test: a sector up 2% against the index in ten sessions, on top of the run before it, rarely leaves a tight base.

───────────────────────────────────────────

MACRO — WHAT LAST WEEK DELIVERED

───────────────────────────────────────────

→ PCE (August), Wednesday: headline +0.3% monthly and 3.4% annual, below the 0.4% expected. Core +0.2% monthly, 3.0% annual — lighter than forecast. Real spending +0.6%.

→ ISM Manufacturing (September), Thursday: 54.5 vs 55.0 expected. Prices paid 77.9 vs 72.3 expected, up 6.8 points. New orders 55.3, employment 52.7.

→ Nonfarm Payrolls (September), Friday: +29,000 vs about +90,000 expected. Unemployment 4.2%. Hourly earnings +0.1% monthly, 3.0% annual. July and August revised down by a combined 60,000.

→ Oil: Brent around $102, WTI around $91, both roughly flat on the week. G7 announced a release of up to 100 million barrels from reserves over four months. Middle East exports are recovering toward pre-war levels; US–Iran negotiations continue, alongside reports of additional US military deployments to the region.

Fed funds: 3.75%–4.00%. October hike odds fell from about 66% to roughly 15% after payrolls. Chicago Fed President Goolsbee said inflation remains the more pressing part of the mandate.

───────────────────────────────────────────

MACRO FLAGS — WEEK AHEAD

───────────────────────────────────────────

→ Sunday 4 October: OPEC+ meeting, output targets expected unchanged

→ Monday 5 October, 10:00 ET: ISM Services (September). Watch the prices index, not the headline.

→ Wednesday 7 October, 14:00 ET: FOMC Minutes from the September hike

→ Wednesday 14 October: September CPI — the week after next

Calendar note: no CPI, FOMC decision or payrolls this week, so every arming evening is clean. Looking one week ahead, CPI on Wednesday 14 October makes that a no-new-order session; the last clean arming evening before it is Monday 12 October. Third-quarter earnings season starts in mid-October, so check every candidate’s report date against the hold rule before arming.

───────────────────────────────────────────

VERDICT RATIONALE

───────────────────────────────────────────

NEUTRAL holds, and it holds for the same reason it was granted: SPY is above its 20 SMA and both indices confirm Stage 2. Nothing in that test changed this week.

What changed sits around it. Breadth reached washed-out levels. The 10-year made a new high on news that should have lowered it. Health Care left the leadership group. None of those is one of the four conditions, so none of them moves the verdict. That’s deliberate. Breadth is recorded, never a gate; rotation is context, never a filter. A regime call that shifts every time a secondary reading looks bad isn’t a rule, it’s a mood.

What it does change is the practical posture. NEUTRAL permits selective entries. In a market this narrow, “selective” means very few, and the ones that qualify will mostly come from one sector.

What upgrades this to BULLISH CAUTION: MMTW back above 50 and holding, or new highs outnumbering new lows. Friday was the first step in that direction. One session isn’t a trend.

What takes it back to BEARISH: a SPY close below its 20 SMA at 764.83 — 0.62% below Friday’s close, the closest the trigger has been since the upgrade.

The four conditions, as they stand:

→ SPY closed below its 20 SMA — CLEARED, 769.64 vs 764.83

→ Broad short-term breadth under 50 — FIRED, MMTW at 30.70

→ US 10-year above 4.75% decisively — FIRED, 5.275%, a new nineteen-year high

→ A Middle East supply headline moving oil sharply higher — FIRED, Brent near $102 with Hormuz unresolved, though exports are recovering and the G7 reserve release is the second de-escalating input in two weeks

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WATCHLIST + TRADE PLAN (PAID)

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Paid subscribers receive immediately below:

→ The Weekly Watchlist — every name scanned, every name

rejected, and the exact number that killed each one

→ Entry triggers, Retest Shield levels, and R-targets

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Everything is decided before Monday opens. You execute.

The system does the thinking.

Upgrade at kisstrading.uk to access the full system.

───────────────────────────────────────────

Trade Tight · Think in R · Focus on Process

— Radu

KISS Trading

───────────────────────────────────────────

⚠️ Educational only. Not financial advice. Always DYOR.

═══════════════════════════════════════════

THE PICK

═══════════════════════════════════════════

NTAP — NetApp, Inc.

Computer Peripherals │ NASDAQ

Sector: Technology (XLK, RS 88)

Pattern: SETUP B — PURE BOS

Setup Quality: A

Why this one over the rest of the watchlist:

→ Volume into the level at 56% of average, buzz -44% — the

deepest contraction of the thirte…

Read more

═══════════════════════════════════════════

THE FUNNEL

═══════════════════════════════════════════

Scanned this week: 87

Reached chart review: 13

Passed all six filters: 8

Published below: 5

Rejection rate: 38%

Regime: NEUTRAL — 30-50% capital, cleanest only

The watchlist returns after three weeks off. It returns thin,

and the rea…

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═══════════════════════════════════════════

WEEKLY REGIME VERDICT

═══════════════════════════════════════════

NEUTRAL

Posture: 30–50% capital — cleanest setups only

Upgraded from BEARISH. SPY closed back above its 20 SMA, and both indices now confirm Stage 2.

Last week’s report named the exact trigger for this upgrade: a SPY daily close above its 20 SMA with QQQ holding Stage 2. It happened. So the verdict moves, and it moves without a debate — the same way it moved down two weeks ago.

What follows is the uncomfortable part, because almost nothing else improved.

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT THE STRUCTURE SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

SPY closed at 771.35, above the 8 EMA at 767.63, the 20 SMA at 765.35, the 50 at 761.57 and the 200 at 718.45. The stack is ordered and rising. A week ago price was under the 20 and the lines were stacked flat on top of each other.

QQQ is stronger still, at 744.50 against a 20 SMA at 720.87. It gained 3.2% on the week while SPY gained 1.3%. That’s the whole market in two numbers.

IWN didn’t come along. At 213.49 it’s below the 8 EMA at 215.22, the 20 SMA at 218.80 and the 50 at 221.90, and it fell about 1% on a week when both large-cap indices rose. Small-cap value has now lagged for four straight weeks.

Key levels for the week:

→ SPY support: 765.35 (20 SMA), then 761.57 (50 SMA) · resistance: 772.28, Friday’s high

→ QQQ support: 734.75 (8 EMA), then 720.87 (20 SMA) · resistance: none, at new highs

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT BREADTH SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

Four of five readings fell in a week when the S&P 500 rose. That’s the sentence to sit with.

S5TH is at 46.52, down from 49.50. MMTH at 45.78, down from 47.95. S5FI at 26.44, MMFI at 30.23, both lower again. Only MMTW improved, to 29.44 from 26.82, and it’s still deep in contraction. Roughly seven in ten stocks are below their own 20-day average while the index sits near its highs.

New highs versus new lows is the reading that should stop you. It fell to 0.09x from 0.20x. That’s eleven stocks making new lows for every one making a new high, in a rising market. This system has never recorded a number that low.

The concentration gap keeps compressing — 200-day at +0.74, 50-day at −3.79 — but for the wrong reason again. It isn’t that the broad market is catching up. It’s that the S&P 500’s own members are falling toward everyone else while a handful of large names carry the index.

Breadth is recorded here, never a gate. It doesn’t veto the verdict and it doesn’t size a position. What it does is tell you what the scan will find: in a market with eleven new lows per new high, most charts that look like a base are a stock that stopped falling, not a stock being accumulated.

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT MACRO SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

The 10-year closed at 5.167%, with an intraday high of 5.228%. That’s up about 17 basis points on the week and the highest level in roughly nineteen years. October hike odds sit at 66% on CME FedWatch. The bond market has moved from pricing one hike to pricing a sequence.

So far equities have absorbed it. The climb has been orderly rather than violent, and an orderly rise in yields is something a market can digest. A gap higher is not.

VIX closed at 14.88, below all four of its own averages, in a week when the 10-year hit a nineteen-year high and most stocks fell. Same reading as last week and the same interpretation: not safety, just an absence of hedging.

Oil finally broke. WTI fell about 9% on the week to roughly $92, while Brent held near $104 and finished close to flat. That gap between the two is the Hormuz premium, still sitting on the seaborne barrel.

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT ROTATION SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

The big change is Energy. Last week XLE was the strongest structural leader on the board and accelerating at +144 a week. This week it’s still ahead structurally at 1.1062, but it lost 5.59% against the index over the window and its slope has flipped to −115. That’s a leader coming apart in real time, and it’s the oil move showing up in the tape.

Metals & Mining is doing the same thing, at −348 a week, the worst deceleration on the board for a second week running.

Technology is now the market. XLK is ahead structurally at 1.0326, ahead tactically by 4.78%, and accelerating at +145. QQQ joins it as confirmed. Health Care stays confirmed on structure at 1.0401, but its tactical edge is +0.03% — that’s a tie, not a lead, and its slope has flattened to +5.

Eight sectors are behind the index on both windows. Utilities is the worst at −7.25% tactically, Financials at −5.57%, Real Estate at −5.35%. Those are the rate-sensitive groups and they’re reacting exactly as you’d expect to a 5.17% ten-year.

Read the whole board and it says one thing: this is not a market that rotated, it’s a market that narrowed. Capital didn’t move from one sector to another. It concentrated into one.

The search order at the bottom of that board is an order to search in, not permission. Expect to look at Tech first and find most names extended past the dynamic ceiling. A sector up nearly 5% against the index in ten sessions rarely leaves a tight base underneath it.

───────────────────────────────────────────

MACRO — WHAT LAST WEEK DELIVERED

───────────────────────────────────────────

→ Xi state visit to Washington, Wednesday to Friday. The 11-month trade truce was extended through 10 January 2027. Also agreed: a Board of Trade and Investment, Boeing aircraft orders and US agricultural purchases.

→ US–Iran talks in New York, exploring a phased path out of the war — Tehran reopening the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for Washington lifting its economic blockade. Hormuz flows ran at 33.7 million barrels in the week of 20 September.

→ Oil, all week: WTI down about 9% to roughly $92. Brent near $104, roughly flat, as Houthi strikes on Saudi infrastructure continued.

→ Rates: 10-year at 5.167%, intraday 5.228%. October hike odds at 66%.

Fed funds: 3.75%–4.00%. Fed speakers spent the week pointing at strong data, which is now a problem for bonds rather than a comfort: good data means more hikes.

───────────────────────────────────────────

THE SUMMIT — WHAT IT ACTUALLY CHANGED

───────────────────────────────────────────

Worth a section of its own, because it’s the kind of event that gets over-traded in both directions.

What was delivered is real but narrow: a truce extension to 10 January, purchase commitments, and a framework to keep talking. Rare earths were on the agenda. Taiwan was on the agenda, with a $14 billion US arms package still on hold. So was a notification mechanism for AI incidents affecting national security.

What that does for a swing trader is remove a cliff, not create a trend. There was a tariff deadline sitting in the calendar and it has moved to January. Removing a known date doesn’t start an uptrend; it takes one source of gap risk off the board for three months.

The honest read on the price action: Tech was already leading before the summit, and the week’s gains were concentrated in the same chip and AI names that have been leading since the Fed hiked. Attributing that move to the summit is a story told backwards. If you want a summit trade, the cleanest expression would be rare-earth and industrial names on an actual export agreement — and there isn’t one yet, only an agenda item.

The part to watch is January. A truce with an expiry date is a scheduled event, and this system already has a rule for scheduled events: no new orders into them.

───────────────────────────────────────────

MACRO FLAGS — WEEK AHEAD

───────────────────────────────────────────

→ Tuesday 29 September, 10:00 ET: JOLTS (August)

→ Wednesday 30 September, 08:30 ET: PCE (August) and Q2 GDP third estimate. Quarter-end.

→ Thursday 1 October, 08:30 ET: jobless claims. 10:00 ET: ISM Manufacturing

→ Friday 2 October, 08:30 ET: September employment report

Calendar note: payrolls Friday makes that a no-new-order session, so the last clean arming evening this week is Wednesday, for Thursday’s open — not Thursday. PCE on Wednesday isn’t on the blocked list, but it lands the same morning as quarter-end rebalancing, so treat Wednesday’s volume readings with some suspicion at 15:45.

───────────────────────────────────────────

VERDICT RATIONALE

───────────────────────────────────────────

NEUTRAL, and it’s worth explaining why the upgrade is automatic when the evidence underneath it got worse.

The conditions were published in advance and one of them cleared. SPY is back above its 20 SMA, both indices confirm Stage 2, and the trigger for this upgrade was printed in last week’s report before it happened. Refusing to honour it because breadth looks awful would be the same error as ignoring a downgrade because the tape felt fine — just pointed in the friendlier direction. A rule you only follow when you agree with it isn’t a rule.

What NEUTRAL means in practice is narrow, not enthusiastic. Capital deployment is 30–50%, cleanest setups only. Three of four conditions are still firing. Breadth is the weakest this report has recorded. Expect the scan to reject most of what it looks at, and expect the rejections to cluster in the ceiling test, because the only sector leading has already run.

What upgrades this to BULLISH CAUTION: MMTW back above 50 and holding, or new highs outnumbering new lows again. Either would mean participation is broadening rather than concentrating. Neither is close.

What takes it back to BEARISH: a SPY close below its 20 SMA at 765.35, which is 0.76% below Friday’s close.

The four conditions, as they stand:

→ SPY closed below its 20 SMA — CLEARED, 771.35 vs 765.35

→ Broad short-term breadth under 50 — FIRED, MMTW at 29.44

→ US 10-year above 4.75% decisively — FIRED, 5.167%, a nineteen-year high

→ A Middle East supply headline moving oil sharply higher — FIRED, Brent near $104 with Hormuz unresolved, though the New York talks are the first genuine de-escalation path since this condition was written

═══════════════════════════════════════════

WATCHLIST + TRADE PLAN (PAID)

═══════════════════════════════════════════

Both return this week, for the first time in three weeks.

Paid subscribers receive immediately below:

→ The Weekly Watchlist — every name scanned, every name

rejected, and the exact number that killed each one

→ Entry triggers, Retest Shield levels, and R-targets

→ The Trade Plan of the Week — fully sized, ready to execute

Everything is decided before Monday opens. You execute.

The system does the thinking.

Upgrade at kisstrading.uk to access the full system.

───────────────────────────────────────────

Trade Tight · Think in R · Focus on Process

— Radu

KISS Trading

───────────────────────────────────────────

⚠️ Educational only. Not financial advice. Always DYOR.

═══════════════════════════════════════════

WEEKLY REGIME VERDICT

═══════════════════════════════════════════

BEARISH

Posture: no new entries. Cash and existing positions only.

Held from last week. All four invalidation conditions are still firing, and SPY is still below its 20 SMA.

On paper, this was a quiet week. The S&P 500 finished down about 0.1%, Nasdaq was up 0.7%, and QQQ repaired its structure. Underneath, the market got clearly worse. Everything below is about that gap.

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT THE STRUCTURE SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

SPY closed at 761.69, below its 20 SMA at 764.30. It sits just above the 8 EMA at 761.12 and the 50 SMA at 759.73, so all three lines are within about half a percent of price. That’s a stack squeezed flat, not an ordered one. Stage 2 is still unmet.

QQQ is the one real change. It closed at 721.45, above the 8 EMA at 713.65, the 20 SMA at 713.24, the 50 at 709.95 and the 200 at 662.60. The stack is back in order and Stage 2 is restored. A week ago it was broken.

That doesn’t change the verdict. Chapter 2 asks for both indices, not either one. One index repairing while the other stays broken is divergence, not confirmation.

IWN is still the weakest of the three. At 215.58 it’s below the 8 EMA at 218.00, the 20 SMA at 221.30 and the 50 SMA at 222.55, and the 20 has crossed under the 50. Only the 200-day at 205.55 is holding it up.

Key levels for the week:

→ SPY support: 759.73 (50 SMA), then Wednesday’s post-Fed low · resistance: 764.30 (20 SMA)

→ QQQ support: 713.24 (20 SMA) / 709.95 (50 SMA) · resistance: the June highs near 740

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT BREADTH SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

Every reading fell again. This week two important lines broke.

S5TH dropped to 49.50 from 56.46. For the first time in this report’s history, fewer than half of S&P 500 stocks are above their 200-day average. MMTH did the same, down to 47.95 from 51.68. Neither market is in a long-term bear, but both have lost their long-term majority.

The short end is close to washed out. S5FI fell to 27.83 from 38.76, less than three points above the 25 line. MMTW is at 26.82, MMFI at 34.02. Roughly three in four stocks are below their 20-day and 50-day averages.

New highs versus new lows fell to 0.20x from 0.65x. That’s five new lows for every new high.

The concentration gap is the reading to pay attention to. On the 50-day it’s now −6.19, from −0.89. The S&P 500 has weaker intermediate breadth than the broad market. Put that next to an S&P 500 that finished the week flat and the answer is plain: a handful of large names, mostly chipmakers, held the index up while most of its members fell. Friday said it outright. Most S&P 500 stocks went down and the index still closed green.

An index that holds up while its members fall is not a strong index. It’s a narrow one.

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT MACRO SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

The 10-year closed the week at 5.000%, with an intraday high at 5.008%. It traded above 5% for the first time since 2007 and closed there on Friday. The trend hasn’t paused. It’s been climbing since March.

VIX closed at 14.82 and sits below all four of its own averages. It jumped toward 18.5 around the Fed decision, then fell back once the hike was delivered. With breadth this weak, a VIX under 15 isn’t a sign of safety. It means nobody is paying for protection.

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT ROTATION SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

The board improved compared with last week, but the improvement sits in the same narrow group that’s holding up the index.

Three sectors are confirmed on both windows: Energy, Technology and Health Care. Technology is the real mover. It’s ahead of SPY structurally at 1.0240 and tactically at +1.79% over the window, with the second-strongest weekly acceleration on the board at +96. That’s the chip rally showing up in the tape. QQQ and Comm. Services moved into the emerging tier, behind structurally but leading now.

Energy is still the strongest structural leader (RS 1.1786, trend strength 34.3, the highest on the board), but its tactical lead has shrunk to just +0.16%. Oil fell three days in a row and ended the week roughly flat. Leadership is still there, but it has stopped extending.

Health Care is confirmed but has a flag: its weekly slope is −55. It’s ahead of SPY, and the gap is narrowing.

Metals & Mining is the collapse of the week. It lost 9.40% in absolute terms, 8.53% against SPY. It’s still barely above 1.0 structurally, but decelerating at −293 a week, by far the worst on the board. It’s a textbook fading leader.

Seven sectors are behind on both windows: Financials, Utilities, Staples, Real Estate, Industrials, Discretionary and Materials. Utilities lost 5.41% in the window. So the defensives didn’t absorb the selling either. This isn’t a rotation into safety. It’s a rotation into a few names.

The search order at the bottom of that board is only an order to search in. It’s not permission, and this week not even the order applies. The regime closes the door before any sector gets a vote.

───────────────────────────────────────────

MACRO — WHAT LAST WEEK DELIVERED

───────────────────────────────────────────

→ FOMC, Wednesday: +25bp to 3.75%–4.00%, a unanimous 12-0 vote, the first hike since July 2023. The dot plot’s year-end median is 4.00%–4.25%, which implies one more hike in 2026. Markets are pricing about 50% for October.

→ Retail sales (August), Wednesday: +1.2% vs +0.7% expected. Control group +1.4% vs +0.4%. July revised to −0.5%.

→ Jobless claims, Thursday: 196,000 vs roughly 207,000 expected. Continuing claims at 1.73 million, the lowest since early 2024.

→ Oil: Brent settled Friday at $103.87, down almost 1% on the week. WTI at $100.30, flat. Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline was shut after a drone strike, and Aramco is working to restore half its capacity.

→ Friday: quarterly options expiry, about $7 trillion in notional.

Fed funds: 3.75%–4.00%. Strong spending and low claims give the Fed no reason to stop. The hiking cycle has started and the data isn’t pushing back.

Geopolitics: the Iran–Gulf meeting on the Strait of Hormuz, scheduled for Monday in Oman, was postponed indefinitely the evening before. Hormuz traffic is still heavily restricted.

───────────────────────────────────────────

MACRO FLAGS — WEEK AHEAD

───────────────────────────────────────────

→ Wednesday 23 September, 09:45 ET: S&P Global flash PMIs (September)

→ Thursday 24 September, 08:30 ET: initial jobless claims

→ Friday 25 September, 08:30 ET: durable goods orders (August). 10:00 ET: University of Michigan final sentiment and inflation expectations

→ All week: Fed speakers after the hike. Watch the tone on October.

Calendar note: no CPI, FOMC or NFP this week, so the calendar doesn’t block any evening. It doesn’t matter, because the regime does. Looking ahead, next week has PCE on Wednesday 30 September and NFP on Friday 2 October. If the regime reopens, the last clean arming evening before payrolls is Wednesday the 30th.

───────────────────────────────────────────

VERDICT RATIONALE

───────────────────────────────────────────

BEARISH holds. This is exactly the kind of week where it would be easy to talk yourself out of it.

QQQ repaired its Stage 2. Nasdaq finished up. The S&P 500 bounced off 7,500 on Wednesday and recovered. If you only look at the index charts, it’s tempting to call the worst over.

The rule doesn’t look at one chart. SPY is still below its 20 SMA, so Stage 2 is still unmet on the index that counts first. None of the four conditions has cleared. And breadth is worse than it was when the verdict was issued: S5TH and MMTH both lost 50, and new lows outnumber new highs five to one. The one improvement came from a narrow group of large names. The rest of the market, the pool this system actually trades in, deteriorated.

What would upgrade this back to NEUTRAL: a SPY daily close above its 20 SMA at 764.30, with QQQ holding its Stage 2. That’s 0.34% away, close enough to happen on any single session. A close is what counts, not an intraday touch.

What would make it deeper: a SPY close below its 50 SMA at 759.73, 0.26% under Friday’s close. That would put the index below three of its four averages and move the conversation from no new entries to protecting what’s already open.

The four conditions, as they stand:

→ SPY closed below its 20 SMA — FIRED, 761.69 vs 764.30

→ Broad short-term breadth under 50 — FIRED, MMTW at 26.82

→ US 10-year above 4.75% decisively — FIRED, 5.000%, the highest close since 2007

→ A Middle East supply headline moving oil sharply higher — FIRED, Saudi pipeline shut, Brent above $100, Hormuz talks postponed

═══════════════════════════════════════════

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE WATCHLIST

═══════════════════════════════════════════

No Watchlist and no Trade Plan again this week.

The reason is the same as last week: when the regime says no new entries, a list of setups to arm is a list you’re not allowed to act on. Publishing it anyway would be process theatre.

It’s worth saying how the two weeks differ. Last week, everything was breaking together. This week, one index recovered and most stocks kept falling. That second picture is the more dangerous one, because it looks like permission. In a narrow market, a breakout on a name outside the leading group fills on a session with no one behind it, and the LVTD gate closes it at 15:55. That’s the cost a regime filter exists to avoid.

The Watchlist comes back on the Sunday after SPY closes above its 20 SMA. Not before.

───────────────────────────────────────────

Trade Tight · Think in R · Focus on Process

— Radu

KISS Trading

───────────────────────────────────────────

⚠️ Educational only. Not financial advice. Always DYOR.

═══════════════════════════════════════════

WEEKLY REGIME VERDICT

═══════════════════════════════════════════

BEARISH

Posture: no new entries — cash and existing positions only

Downgraded from NEUTRAL. All four invalidation conditions have now fired, and Stage 2 is broken on both SPY and QQQ.

This is the first BEARISH call this system has produced. Everything below explains why, and why the response is mechanical rather than a judgement call.

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT THE STRUCTURE SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

A week ago, SPY holding its 20 SMA was the last condition still standing. It is not standing now.

SPY closed at 764.29 against a 20 SMA at 766.88 — below it, and below the 8 EMA at 764.55 as well. QQQ did the same thing: 714.88 against a 20 SMA at 715.67. Both indices are still above their 50 and 200 day averages, so this is not a trend reversal. But Chapter 2’s test is price above the 20, above the 50, above the 200, and neither index passes it now.

That is the whole ballgame for entries. The system does not deploy capital when SPY and QQQ fail to confirm. Not a smaller size, not the cleanest setup only — no new entries.

IWN is further gone. At 219.69 it sits below its 8 EMA at 221.37, below the 50 SMA at 222.85, and below the 20 SMA at 223.43. Small caps broke first and broke hardest, which is the usual order.

One thing worth being clear about: Friday was a green session. SPY closed up 0.85%, QQQ up 0.87%. The rally did not reclaim anything. A bounce that leaves you below the 20 SMA is a bounce inside a broken structure, not a repair of it.

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT BREADTH SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

Every single reading fell, and three of the five are now in contraction territory.

MMTW dropped to 29.94 from 45.63. Seven out of ten broad-market stocks are below their own 20-day average. That is not a pullback in leadership, that is most of the market going down together. S5FI fell to 38.76 from 46.71, breaking the 40 line — fewer than four in ten S&P names hold their 50-day. MMFI at 39.65 did the same thing from 50.31.

The longer-horizon readings held up better. S5TH at 56.46 and MMTH at 51.68 are both down but still above 50, which is what separates this from a structural bear market. The damage is in the near term, and it is broad.

Two things sit underneath those headline numbers.

The concentration gap kept narrowing — 200-day gap at +4.78 from +6.31, the 50-day gap now essentially closed at −0.89 from −3.60. Normally that reads as healthy. It does not read that way here. The gap is closing because large caps are falling toward the broad market, not because the broad market is catching up. Convergence in a decline is not the same signal as convergence in an advance.

New highs versus new lows fell to 0.65x from 2.18x. Below 1.0 means more stocks are making new lows than new highs. That reading has not been below 1.0 at any point in the readings this system has published.

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT MACRO SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

The 10-year closed at 4.969%, with an intraday print of 4.992%. A week ago it was 4.784%. That is nearly nineteen basis points in five sessions, and it puts the yield within a third of a basis point of 5%.

August CPI landed Friday and it is the reason. Headline rose 0.4% month over month and held at 3.4% annually, both as expected. Core came in at 0.3% against a 0.2% forecast — only nine of seventy-three economists surveyed by Bloomberg had that number. Gasoline surged 3.9% and accounted for more than a third of the monthly increase, feeding straight through from the oil move.

Rate-hike odds for the 16 September FOMC went from roughly 48% in mid-August to 85.6% by Friday. The market has moved from a coin flip to treating a hike as the base case in one month.

VIX is the odd reading. It closed at 15.85, down 11.2% on the day, after closing near 17.85 on Thursday. So volatility spiked as the 10-year went through 4.9%, then collapsed on Friday’s relief rally. A VIX under 16 with breadth at these levels is not a sign of safety — it is a sign that protection is cheap because nobody has bought it yet.

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT ROTATION SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

Two sectors are confirmed on both windows. Nine are losing ground on both. There is no emerging tier at all this week — not one sector that is behind structurally but gaining tactically.

Energy is the only genuine leader, and it is a big one: RS 1.1540 against SPY, accelerating at +109 a week, trend strength the highest on the board. Brent gained 8.7% on the week and WTI 9.4%, peaking near $108 and $104 before easing Friday on news that Iran and Gulf states will meet in Oman about the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia shut its East-West pipeline as a precaution. That is the sector and the story in one line.

Comm. Services is the second confirmed name, barely — RS 1.0115, tactical +0.16%. It is ahead by a rounding error rather than by conviction.

Technology is the interesting failure. Its weekly slope is +82, the second-strongest acceleration on the board, but its structural RS sits at 0.9884 and it lost 0.23% against SPY over the last ten sessions. A week ago Tech was the sharpest emerging signal in the scan, up 4.40% tactically. That reversed completely in five sessions. Whatever was carrying it was not broad.

Health Care is the worst deceleration at −159 a week, with Materials, Discretionary and Industrials all worse than −129. Those four plus Real Estate and Staples are behind SPY on both measures and falling away from it.

A board with nine laggards and no emerging tier is not telling you where to look. It is telling you there is nowhere to look.

───────────────────────────────────────────

MACRO — WHAT LAST WEEK DELIVERED

───────────────────────────────────────────

→ CPI, Friday: headline +0.4% monthly and 3.4% annual, both in line. Core +0.3% against +0.2% expected, annual core 2.4% — the smallest since spring 2021, but the monthly print is what moved rates. Gasoline +3.9%, over a third of the total increase. Housing +0.3%, the most in three months.

→ Oil, all week: Brent +8.7%, WTI +9.4%. Brent peaked near $108 Thursday, WTI above $104, before Friday’s pullback on the Oman talks. Saudi Arabia shut the East-West pipeline; Houthi forces reportedly advanced to Perim Island.

→ Rates: 10-year at 4.969%, intraday 4.992%.

Fed funds: 3.50%–3.75%. CME FedWatch now prices an 85.6% chance of a 25bp hike on 16 September.

───────────────────────────────────────────

MACRO FLAGS — WEEK AHEAD

───────────────────────────────────────────

→ Tuesday 15 – Wednesday 16 September: FOMC. Decision Wednesday 14:00 ET, press conference 14:30 ET. NO NEW BUY STOPS Wednesday — cancel by Tuesday’s close under the calendar rule.

→ Friday 18 September: monthly options expiration.

→ Monday 14 September: Gulf Cooperation Council diplomats meet their Iranian counterpart in Oman on the Strait of Hormuz.

The whole week is bracketed. Even if the regime permitted entries, Wednesday is blocked by the calendar rule and Friday is opex. And the Oman meeting Monday is the single headline most likely to move the oil condition in either direction.

What the Fed says on Wednesday matters more than what it does. An 85.6% priced hike is not a surprise. Whether Warsh frames it as one-and-done or as the start of a sequence is what repricies the 10-year, and the 10-year is what has been driving equities for three weeks.

───────────────────────────────────────────

VERDICT RATIONALE

───────────────────────────────────────────

The downgrade is mechanical, not discretionary.

Two weeks ago one condition had fired. Last week three had, and the report said plainly that the distance to the next downgrade had shrunk to almost nothing — SPY was holding its 20 SMA by roughly a tenth of a percent. This week it closed below it. That is the fourth condition, and it arrived alongside Stage 2 breaking on both indices.

There is no interpretation required here, and that is the point of writing the conditions down in advance. When they were set, the purpose was to remove the argument that always shows up at exactly this moment — the one that says the selloff is overdone, the bounce Friday was strong, the 200-day is still far below. All of that may be true. None of it changes what the four conditions say.

What this does not mean: it does not mean a crash is coming, and it does not mean selling everything. Both indices are still above their 50 and 200-day averages. Existing positions keep their Retest Shields and are managed exactly as planned. The change is narrow and specific: no new entries until the structure repairs.

What would upgrade this back to NEUTRAL: SPY reclaiming and holding its 20 SMA at 766.88, which is 0.34% away. That is the first thing to watch, and it is close enough to happen on any single session.

What would take it lower: SPY losing the 50 SMA at 758.62, roughly 0.75% below Friday’s close. That would put the index below three of its four averages and change the conversation from no-new-entries to protecting what is open.

The four conditions, as they stand:

→ SPY closed below its 20 SMA at 766.88 — FIRED, closed 764.29

→ Broad short-term breadth under 50 — FIRED, MMTW at 29.94

→ US 10-year above 4.75% decisively — FIRED, 4.969% with an intraday 4.992%

→ A Middle East supply headline moving oil sharply higher — FIRED, Brent +8.7% on the week

═══════════════════════════════════════════

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE WATCHLIST

═══════════════════════════════════════════

There is no watchlist this week, and no Trade Plan.

That is not a gap in the publishing schedule. It is the system working. When the regime says no new entries, producing a list of setups to arm would be publishing something you are not permitted to act on — which is how process discipline quietly becomes process theatre.

For the record, last week’s five names are all dead independently of the regime: CRWD and DLO closed below their 8 EMAs with MACD reversing, MD failed on volume dry-up at 99% of average, OSCR broke the dynamic ceiling, and PARR was left with two cents of headroom after its ratchet. Every one of them failed on its own numbers before the regime call was made.

Next Sunday the scan runs as normal. If SPY reclaims 766.88 and holds it, the watchlist comes back with it.

───────────────────────────────────────────

Trade Tight · Think in R · Focus on Process

— Radu

KISS Trading

───────────────────────────────────────────

⚠️ Educational only. Not financial advice. Always DYOR.

═══════════════════════════════════════════

THE TRADE

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Read more

═══════════════════════════════════════════

THE FUNNEL

═══════════════════════════════════════════

Scanned this week: 177

Reached chart review: 17

Passed all six filters: 10

Published below: 5

Rejection rate: 41%

Regime: NEUTRAL — 30-50% capital, cleanest only

Seven names failed, on five different causes. No single

filter dominated…

Read more

═══════════════════════════════════════════

WEEKLY REGIME VERDICT

═══════════════════════════════════════════

NEUTRAL

Posture: 30–50% capital — cleanest setups only

Held from last week. The downgrade fired seven days ago on breadth, and nothing repaired it — two more conditions joined it instead.

Everything below explains that board. No number is repeated twice — if it is on the dashboard, this text tells you what it means instead.

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT THE STRUCTURE SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

All three indices still read Stage 2 — price above the 20, 50 and 200 on SPY, QQQ and IWN. That is the only thing keeping this NEUTRAL rather than something worse, and it clears Chapter 2’s requirement that both SPY and QQQ confirm before capital deploys.

But the stack has a crack in it. On both SPY and QQQ the 8 EMA has slipped below the 20 SMA. Nothing structural has broken — the longer averages are still climbing underneath — but the short-term engine has stalled. That is the difference between a market that is consolidating and one that is still advancing.

Key levels for the week:

→ SPY support: 769 (20 SMA — Friday’s low was 769.00) · resistance: none, at highs

→ QQQ support: 715 (8 EMA) / 711 (50 SMA) · resistance: 722

Small caps diverged Friday: IWN closed +0.40% while SPY fell 0.39% on the payrolls print. Worth watching, not worth trading on its own.

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT BREADTH SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

MMTW ticked up to 45.63 from 42.41 — direction is right, level still is not. It needs to reclaim 50 and hold it, not bounce off the floor for one session. That condition remains fired.

S5FI is the week’s real damage: down to 46.71 from 52.88, the sharpest single move on the board, and now below the 50 line alongside its broad-market equivalent. MMTH and MMFI are essentially flat.

One genuine improvement: the concentration gap narrowed hard. Large-cap breadth was running 10.87 points ahead of the broad market last week; that is 6.31 now, and on the 50-day horizon it flipped negative — broad breadth is marginally ahead of the S&P. The market got less top-heavy in a week where it also got weaker. New highs versus lows improved to 2.18x from 1.75x, still well short of the 4.91x reading three weeks ago, but moving the right way.

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT MACRO SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

VIX at 14.52, essentially unchanged, in a week that delivered a payrolls beat, a yield spike and an oil shock at the same time. That is not calm — that is a market that has not hedged. A low VIX is the absence of protection being bought, not the presence of safety.

US10Y is the tile that matters. Close at 4.784%, an intraday print of 4.810%, decisively through the 4.75% line this system has watched for a month. And for the first time, it came with the equity confirmation the condition requires: yields jumped and stocks fell in the same session. That clause was written precisely to separate growth repricing from risk repricing, and this week it stopped protecting the verdict.

───────────────────────────────────────────

WHAT ROTATION SAYS

───────────────────────────────────────────

Two sectors are confirmed on both windows: Energy and Financials. Energy is the obvious one, tracking the same Iran conflict that fired condition four. Financials confirming alongside it carries more weight — that sector does not move on a single headline, and its structural and tactical readings agree.

The one to watch is Technology. It sits behind SPY structurally, yet posted the single largest tactical move on the board over the last ten sessions. That is not a gentle rotation; it is a sharp reversal from a lagging sector. Before reading it as leadership building, check whether the move is broad or whether one or two mega-caps are carrying the entire print.

Health Care is the clean divergence in the other direction. Second-strongest structural reading on the board, but fading tactically — leadership that peaked and is cooling, not leadership that is forming. The laggards are Materials, Discretionary, Real Estate, Staples and Industrials, and Industrials is the worst of them on both measures. That grouping lines up exactly with the yield move; those are the duration-sensitive names that get hurt when the 10-year rips.

The search order at the bottom of that board is search order. It is not permission. Energy has already run — its weekly trend strength is the highest on the board, which means you should expect to look there first and find very little that clears the dynamic ceiling. A sector this extended fails the 1.5× ADR% test on most names inside it.

───────────────────────────────────────────

MACRO — WHAT LAST WEEK DELIVERED

───────────────────────────────────────────

→ Nonfarm Payrolls, Friday: +162,000 vs +55,000 expected — nearly triple consensus. Unemployment held at 4.1%, wage growth unchanged at 3.1% year-over-year.

→ Oil, all week: Brent up 6–7% and WTI up close to 9%, the strongest weekly gain since July, as US-Iran strikes resumed after roughly a month’s pause and Israel threatened Iranian infrastructure directly. Hormuz tanker traffic ran far below its ten-day average through the week.

→ Rates, Friday: the 10-year closed at 4.784%, the 2-year at its highest since January 2025.

Fed funds: 3.50%–3.75%. The payrolls beat pushed September hike odds to roughly 58%, up about nine points in a day. The 17 September meeting is now genuinely two-sided.

Geopolitics: US-Iran hostilities resumed for the first time in about a month. This is the line item driving both the oil move and condition four.

───────────────────────────────────────────

MACRO FLAGS — WEEK AHEAD

───────────────────────────────────────────

→ Monday 7 September: Labor Day — US markets closed

→ Thursday 10 September, 8:30 ET: PPI and Core PPI, August

→ Friday 11 September, 8:30 ET: CPI, August — the pivotal print. Consensus looks for +0.4% headline (3.4% annual) and +0.2% core, which would slow the annual core rate to 2.3%. This release decides whether 17 September is a hold or a hike.

Calendar note: markets are closed Monday, so the first arming evening this week is Monday night for Tuesday’s open — the loop shifts by one day. No monthly opex this week; that is 18 September. The evening to treat carefully is Thursday, arming into Friday’s CPI. A gap through the trigger on an inflation surprise is exactly what the Gap Rule exists to handle.

───────────────────────────────────────────

VERDICT RATIONALE

───────────────────────────────────────────

NEUTRAL holds, but what sits underneath it changed materially. Last week one of four conditions had fired. This week three have: breadth, unchanged and still below 50; the 10-year, newly through 4.75% with the equity confirmation clause finally satisfied; and the Middle East supply headline, fired unambiguously for the first time since the checklist was written.

The only condition still standing is SPY holding its 20 SMA, and it is standing by roughly a tenth of a percent. Structure is the only thing separating this from a Bearish call, and it is intact by the same razor-thin margin. That is worth saying plainly rather than dressing up: the verdict did not change, but the distance to the next downgrade shrank to almost nothing.

What upgrades this: MMTW reclaiming 50 and holding it more than a single session, a de-escalation headline that lets oil give back its weekly gain, or a soft CPI Friday that pulls the 10-year back under 4.75%. Any one of those starts unwinding a condition. Nothing this week did.

What invalidates this verdict:

→ SPY closes below its 20 SMA at 769.05 — the last one standing

→ Broad short-term breadth under 50 — FIRED, MMTW at 45.63

→ US 10-year above 4.75% decisively, with equity confirmation — FIRED, 4.784% close, equities red the same session

→ A Middle East supply headline moving oil sharply higher — FIRED, Brent +6–7% on resumed US-Iran strikes

═══════════════════════════════════════════

WATCHLIST + TRADE PLAN (PAID)

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Paid subscribers receive immediately below:

→ The Weekly Watchlist — every name scanned, every name rejected, and the exact number that killed each one

→ Entry triggers, Retest Shield levels, and R-targets

→ The Trade Plan of the Week — fully sized, ready to execute

Everything is decided before Monday opens. You execute. The system does the thinking.

Upgrade at kisstrading.uk to access the full system.

───────────────────────────────────────────

Trade Tight · Think in R · Focus on Process

— Radu

KISS Trading

───────────────────────────────────────────

⚠️ Educational only. Not financial advice. Always DYOR.

═══════════════════════════════════════════

THE PICK

═══════════════════════════════════════════

RPD — Rapid7, Inc.

IT Services │ NASDAQ

Sector: Technology (XLK, RS 0.967 — LAGGARD both windows)

Pattern: SETUP B — Pure BOS

Setup Quality: B+

Why this one over the rest of the watchlist:

→ 3.52 points of ceiling headroom — the most on the list,

worth three to fo…

Read more

═══════════════════════════════════════════

THE FUNNEL

═══════════════════════════════════════════

Scanned this week: 135+

Reached chart review: 17

Passed all six filters: 6

Rejection rate: 96%

Regime: NEUTRAL — 30-50% capital, cleanest setups only

Six names qualified. The regime permits three. That gap is

the whole story of this week, and the…

Read more

═══════════════════════════════════════════

WEEKLY REGIME VERDICT

═══════════════════════════════════════════

NEUTRAL

Posture: 30-50% capital — cleanest setups only

Downgraded from Bullish Caution. Invalidation condition two

fired on Friday’s close.

Everything below explains that board. No number is repeated

twice — if it is on the dashboard, this text tells you what

it means instead.

───────────────────────────────────────────

THE CONDITION THAT FIRED

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For three consecutive weeks this report published the same

four conditions with the same numbers. The second one read:

broad short-term breadth under 50.

On Friday it closed at 42.41. Not marginally under. Seven and

a half points under, after a single session that took nearly

ten percent off the reading.

That is the entire mechanism working as designed. The

condition was written down before it fired, published where

anyone could read it, and repeated unchanged through three

weeks in which the tape looked fine. It was not adjusted when

breadth was strong and it was not renegotiated when it broke.

The archive is the point — anyone can call a regime after the

fact, and the only thing separating a regime call from an

opinion is that the trigger existed in public beforehand.

Two separate paths reach the same verdict this week, which is

the strongest form of confirmation this framework produces.

The first is the fired condition. The second is Chapter 2’s

own rule: when SPY and QQQ disagree on the regime, the

overall read is Neutral until both confirm. QQQ closed below

its 20-day average. They disagree.

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WHAT THE STRUCTURE SAYS

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SPY holds its Stage 2 test by thirteen hundredths of a point.

That is not a margin worth defending in prose. Treat it as a

coin balanced on its edge rather than as evidence of strength.

QQQ produced the week’s genuine irony. The condition this

report named as the upgrade trigger for three straight weeks

— the 20-day average closing back above the 50-day — finally

happened. And in the same week, price fell below the 20-day.

The obstacle was cleared and a new one appeared behind it.

That is worth sitting with, because it is what a topping

process looks like from the inside: each individual problem

resolves, and the aggregate does not improve.

IWN lost its Stage 2 stack outright, having held it every

week since this report began.

Key levels for the week:

→ SPY support: 753.96 · resistance: 775.30

→ QQQ support: 712.06 · resistance: 724.13

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WHAT BREADTH SAYS

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All six measures fell on Friday. All six now sit below their

own moving averages. That uniformity is the finding — not the

level of any single bar, but the fact that no horizon was

spared. Long-term participation, intermediate, short-term and

new-high leadership all deteriorated in the same session.

The short-term bar took the worst of it and is the one that

crossed a published line. But the leadership measure is the

one that should unsettle you most: new highs led new lows by

nearly five to one a week ago, and now lead by less than two.

That is not a market rotating. That is a market where the

number of stocks making progress has collapsed.

The concentration gap widened on both horizons after

narrowing last week. A week ago this report noted that

intermediate participation in the broad market had caught up

with large caps, and called it the week’s genuine improvement.

It reversed. Say that plainly rather than quietly dropping it

— a framework that only reports its confirmations is not a

framework.

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WHAT MACRO SAYS

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Warsh delivered his first Jackson Hole keynote as Chair on

Friday and told the room the Fed has work to do if inflation

does not return to target. Odds of a September rate increase

went from roughly a third to roughly three-fifths in the space

of a speech. The two-year yield rose eleven basis points.

Read the sequence carefully, because it is the week in

miniature. Core PCE on Wednesday held steady year-on-year,

which was widely taken as buying the Fed time. Nvidia beat on

Wednesday night and technology was the only sector to advance

on Thursday. Then Friday repriced everything on nine words

from a Chair the market has no history with.

The ten-year finished at the top of its range, still below the

level named in condition three but closer than it has been.

VIX is under all four of its averages while the bond market

prices a hike into a market whose breadth just broke. That

combination is not calm. It is nobody paying for protection

in the week they most needed it.

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MACRO — WHAT LAST WEEK DELIVERED

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→ Core PCE, Wednesday: 3.3% annual, unchanged from June.

Headline 3.7%. Both well above the 2% target.

→ Q2 GDP second estimate, Wednesday: the advance reading of

1.5% annualised was the starting point, and nothing in the

revision changed the picture of an economy growing slowly.

→ Warsh at Jackson Hole, Friday: the closest a Chair has come

to acknowledging that rates may need to rise. September

hike odds jumped to roughly 57% from 35%.

Nvidia reported Wednesday after the close and beat. Technology

was the only S&P sector to advance on Thursday — a single

company’s result carrying an entire index for one session

while eleven sectors declined.

Geopolitics: fresh Iran sanctions news pressured markets on

Monday alongside US-Canada tariff friction. Energy finished

the ten-session window up just 0.16% despite it, so the supply

premium that drove the last two weeks has stopped expanding.

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MACRO FLAGS — WEEK AHEAD

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→ ISM Manufacturing and JOLTS, Tuesday 10:00 ET

→ ADP employment and the Fed’s Beige Book, Wednesday

→ ISM Services, Thursday 10:00 ET — Waller speaks the same day

→ August jobs report, Friday 08:30 ET — consensus around

+45,000 to +58,000 after July’s outright loss of 23,000

Also: Broadcom, Dell and Palo Alto report through the week.

Next FOMC is 16 September. Next CPI is 11 September.

Calendar note: four clean arming evenings — Sunday, Monday,

Tuesday and Wednesday. Wednesday evening is the last, because

the rule against arming into a Friday payrolls print makes

Thursday evening a skip. That is twice the working week this

list had seven days ago, which matters less than it sounds

given the posture above.

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VERDICT RATIONALE

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The honest version of this week is that the downgrade was

mechanical and required no judgement at all. A number crossed

a line that had been published for three weeks, and a second

independent rule in Chapter 2 reached the same conclusion by a

different route. There was no moment where I looked at the

tape and decided it felt worse. That is the whole design: the

decision was made in advance by someone with no position and

no opinion about Friday.

What that verdict costs is real. Neutral means 30 to 50%

capital and only the cleanest setups, in a week that offers

four arming evenings and a scanner that will still produce

names. The temptation on a week like this is to note that SPY

technically held, that QQQ’s old obstacle finally cleared, and

that a single Fed speech is a thin reason to change posture —

all three of which are true, and none of which are the rule.

What upgrades this: broad short-term breadth closing back

above 50, with QQQ reclaiming its 20-day average. Both, not

either.

What invalidates this verdict:

→ SPY closes below its 50 SMA at 753.96

→ Broad short-term breadth under 25

→ US 10-year decisively above 4.75%, with equity confirmation

→ VIX closes above its 200 SMA at 18.38

Note the change. The first two conditions have moved down a

level, because the verdict moved down a level — the question

is no longer what breaks Bullish Caution but what breaks

Neutral. The third carries forward unchanged. The fourth

replaces the Middle East supply condition, which stopped

being the live risk when energy went flat.

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WHAT ROTATION SAYS

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Three sectors sit above SPY on both windows. Health care leads

on both and has done so for three weeks — the only genuinely

durable leadership on this board.

The week’s clearest signal is a divergence inside energy.

XLE carries by far the strongest structural acceleration of

any sector, and finished eighth of twelve on ten-session

performance. Structural slope measures where capital has been

going. Tactical performance measures where it went last

fortnight. When they separate this widely, the slope is

describing history.

Industrials is the collapse. Down 4.93% absolute over ten

sessions, bottom of the tactical column, and the steepest

negative slope on the board by a wide margin. Aerospace and

defence fell more than 7% in the same window. Something

structural is happening in that complex and it deserves

watching rather than a confident explanation from me.

Technology sits in the laggard quadrant despite Nvidia’s beat.

One company advancing on one session did not lift the sector’s

ten-session standing, which is a useful reminder about the

difference between a headline and a trend.

The search order at the bottom of that board is search order.

It is not permission — and in a Neutral regime that

distinction does more work than usual.

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— Radu

KISS Trading

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