OVERVIEW
Time To Stay Calm: Protect Your Capital

🟥 Risk-Off: After a month of strong gains, equities are finally feeling the weight of overhead resistance and headline noise. Both IWM and MDY faded off key EMAs, while QQQ saw a second day of relative volume selling — driven in part by NVDA’s reversal.

📉 What’s Happening?: It’s not a crash — but the character of the market is changing. Breakouts are failing more frequently, relative strength is narrowing, and intraday reversals are becoming more common. Breadth is weakening under the surface.

🔑 Key Takeaway: This is a digestion phase, not doom — but it’s also not the time to be aggressive. Focus on protecting capital, tightening risk, and letting charts develop. Wait for strength to reassert before pressing new trades. Patience & cash is a position.

MARKET ANALYSIS
What Happened Yesterday?

📰 Headlines Swirl, Market Holds: U.S. stocks remain firm into month-end, with both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq on pace for their best month since Nov 2023. Despite all the tariff noise and legal back-and-forth, price tells a clearer story: buyers are still in control.

⚖️ Tariffs Still a Wildcard: President Trump’s sweeping EU levies remain legally contested. A court froze the ruling that had initially voided them — and while Treasury Sec. Bessent says talks are “close” with several partners, China discussions appear stalled.

💡 Traders’ Edge: Don’t chase headlines. Whether it’s a 15% emergency tariff via an obscure trade provision or “large deals” on deck, none of it matters until the market reacts. Focus on what’s happening — not what could happen.

📊 Eyes on PCE: Today’s core PCE data (expected +0.1% MoM) is the real market mover. It’s the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge and could influence rate path expectations — especially if it surprises to the upside.

🔑 Key Takeaway: The newsfeed is noisy. Your job is to trade the reaction, not the speculation. Zoom out, track price and volume, and let the tape lead. Everything else? Entertainment.

Nasdaq

🧠 Don’t Overreact: Yesterday’s fade in the QQQ looked worse than it was. Most of the weakness was driven by NVDA fading its gap-up open — which naturally weighed on the broader index. But zoom in, and the action wasn’t that concerning.

📍 Key Levels Intact: QQQ is still holding above both its rising 10-EMA and the Point of Control (POC). Yes, we saw a slight uptick in relative volume on the pullback — but we also paused cleanly into support.

⚠️ Expect Choppiness: New long entries here will likely carry a higher failure rate. The market’s still strong overall, but this is the digestion phase — not the breakout phase. Be selective, and only take A+ setups with clean levels.

S&P 400 Midcap

🪓 Key Levels Held: After what looked like a potential breakdown, MDY respected a cluster of key supports — including the Point of Control (POC), and the rising 10-, 20-, and 200-day EMAs. Yesterday’s session formed a hammer candle as buyers stepped in.

📉 Volume Matters: While the price action was constructive, the relative volume on the bounce was very low — meaning there wasn’t a ton of conviction behind the move. Ideally, we want to see heavier volume confirm reversal strength.

👀 Today = Key Test: If MDY holds above its POC and short-term EMAs again today, this likely confirms a healthy consolidation. But if we roll over from here, yesterday’s bounce may have just been a pause before deeper downside.

Russell 2000

📊 Higher Volume Bounce: Despite early weakness, IWM held its Point of Control (POC) and bounced cleanly off the rising 10-EMA — and it did so on higher relative volume. That’s a key tell: demand is still present.

🧩 Pattern Recognition: Across all major index ETFs (IWM, MDY, QQQ), we’re seeing a similar theme — price pulling back into demand zones, but no sign of capitulation. This isn’t a panic-driven selloff… yet.

🚧 The Big Picture: The real test for both IWM and MDY is whether they can consolidate without breaking lower. They’re still sitting below major 6-month resistance levels, so any breakdown from here would confirm a continuation of their long-term downtrends. So far, that hasn’t happened.

🧠 Mindset Check: Don’t Jump to Conclusions

Markets pull back — that’s normal. It doesn’t always mean something is “wrong.”

The key is to follow the chart, not the emotion. What matters isn’t the red candle — it’s how price behaves around known levels. If we hold the 10 or 20 EMA… if the POC acts as a cushion… that tells us something.

→ Wait for the close. The open means nothing.
→ Watch how price behaves at demand, not just that it gets there.
→ Let the chart do the talking.

Right now, we’re not in a breakdown — we’re in a digestion phase. That can change. But if you’re making decisions based on fear, not price — you’ll always be one step behind.

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FOCUSED STOCK
AEVA: Aeva Technologies

📈 From $3 to $18: AEVA exploded 550% in just two months after its March 2025 earnings catalyst, transitioning cleanly from a Stage 1 base to a powerful Stage 2 uptrend. Volume surged, price lifted, and momentum never looked back.

🧩 VCP to Breakout: After the initial run, AEVA formed a tight volatility contraction pattern (VCP) along its rising 20-EMA — textbook accumulation behavior. When it cleared $8, the move was fast and decisive.

🔁 New Setup Brewing: Now, we’re seeing another contraction form. AEVA continues to hold above its rising 10-EMA with higher lows, showing strength as the broader tech space cools off.

🛡️ Quiet Outperformance: During yesterday’s NVDA-led fade, AEVA barely budged — that’s exactly the kind of relative strength we want to see.

🔍 Watchlist-Worthy: The setup here remains one of the cleanest in the semis. If this current base resolves higher, AEVA could be gearing up for its next leg.

FOCUSED GROUP
CIBR: Cybersecurity

🔂 Rotation Begins: CIBR has been one of the strongest sectors in the market but is now showing early signs of consolidation near prior all-time highs as momentum starts to cool.

🕯️ Why the Close Matters: Yesterday saw a retracement below the rising 10-EMA intraday — but that weakness was bought aggressively, forming a red hammer candle by the close. Classic sign of dip demand.

👀 What to Watch: CIBR may still pull back further, but buyers are defending key support zones well. As long as this behavior continues, we treat it as a healthy pause — not weakness.