Dow cratered 822 points Monday as IBM had its worst day in 25 years – Anthropic wrote a blog post about COBOL and erased $31 billion. Welcome to the AI disruption era
Five Popper trades yesterday, zero losses, bearish joy ride to profits-ville. SPX 90% win rate over 30 days. BREAKOUT status. Woop woop
Despite the carnage, daily charts show no new ground. SPX below 6,750 triggers the whole messy zone breakdown. Correction window is open and we’re dressed for it
Bitcoin dead cat bouncing its way back to $63K whilst real gold surges past $5,170. Store of value? Store of pain more like. PopPop

Futures popped ‘n dropped -55, and now we’re sitting 20 in the red. A little racey but nobody’s panicking yet
Trump rewrote the entire trade framework in 48 hours – SCOTUS killed it Friday, he replaced it by Saturday at 15% maximum. Takes effect tomorrow at midnight
Charts are a mess, the market’s doing a fiddler’s elbow, and the only directional edge is theta decay. Premium Poppers are keeping us sane
Feb/Mar correction window just opened. I’m looking for 10% in 10 days instead of last year’s muted 5%. Be the bear. PopPop.

GDP and core PCE at 8:30 AM today – shutdown delays forced simultaneous release – hot inflation validates Fed hawks
Iran strikes possible “as early as Saturday” per CBS – two carrier groups positioned – oil at six-month high $66.58
SPX gamma flip widened BACK to 37 points after nearly converging to 8 yesterday – the crossover didn’t happen
Blue Owl permanently restricts redemptions, sells $1.4B in loans – El-Erian: “canary in the coal mine, similar to August 2007?”

Fed minutes revealed “several” officials suggested rate hikes could return – March cut hopes dead at 93% hold probability
SPX gamma flip at 6,889 with price at 6,881 – just 8 points from crossing into positive gamma territory
VIX printing new higher low steepening the gradient incline – channel structure tightening
RUT flipped bearish below 2,648.39 targeting 2,603.99 – the “OJ Pattern” officially named after slow-motion bull-bear car chase
Oil surged 4% on collapsed Russia-Ukraine talks and Iran-Russia naval drills near Hormuz

SPX TnT flipped bullish above 6,803.43 targeting 6,995.84 – first bullish signal in two weeks
VIX channel rejection nailed yesterday’s swing turn – dropped from 21.76 to 19.46 – defined pattern suggests more brewing
Still in negative gamma at 6,929 flip but gap narrowing from 132 to 86 points – put/call walls at 7,000
FOMC minutes at 2 PM today, Walmart Thursday, PCE Friday – three catalysts in three days

AI disruption spreads beyond software into wealth management, real estate, logistics – Jefferies calls it the “SaaSpocalypse”
SPX back below rising channel at 6,836 – GEX gamma flip at 6,968 means we’re in negative gamma – dealers amplifying downside
VIX at 21.76 at upper boundary of defined range – inflection point – push lower would translate to index rally
RUT pattern mutated from H&S to expanding triangle to diamond – boundaries keep evolving – target range lows still marked

∙ Friday the 13th confirmed as official stock market holiday after the NYSE trading bell screamed back
∙ VIX achieved sentience overnight and is now demanding a corner office, healthcare, and vengeance
∙ Every software stock that died this week came back as a zombie and bit Salesforce
∙ Phil is “away” which is suspicious because that’s exactly what characters say before they get murdered in the sequel

NFP blew out at 130K vs 55K – unemployment fell to 4.3% – rate cuts pushed to July, March collapsed to 8%
AI trade bifurcation: hardware soars (Vertiv +21%, Micron +10%) whilst software burns (Salesforce -4%, Intuit -5%, Atlassian -6%)
SPX in a pinch point on the 30-min – bear tease didn’t follow through past 50% retracement – still leaning bear
Bitcoin broke the 200-week EMA at $68K – first time this rally – CPI Friday carries enormous weight

Delayed NFP drops at 8:30 AM – headline secondary, benchmark revisions could erase 600K-900K jobs and rewrite two years of data
SPX flat after sloppy exhaustion bar – MACD-v flipped back to bear – staying bearish with V-entries at upper range
RUT TnT flipped bearish below 2,689 – MACD-v exhausted – easy peasy in line with bias
VIX creeping higher with HH/HL pattern – is this the slow burning clue we’re all missing?

Dow 50K was a non-event – real story is $285B software massacre from Anthropic’s Cowork launch and “software is dead” going mainstream
SPX Bollinger Bands pinching into confirmed range with MACD-v exhaustion – leaning bear breakdown from here
RUT ran hard to bullish extreme with V-Entry developing – waiting for MACD-v to signal the bull move is done
Poppers pop 4 from 5 net positive whilst markets nonce around – process over outcome, place the next trade