Today was the Nasdaq's worst day in a year and a half, and one of Praedor's best. It sold short at 9:35 and reached its profit target 23 minutes later, 513.5 points lower. Praedor (live, MNQ): • Short 27,974.75 at 9:35:00, target 27,461.25 at 9:57:43 (+513.50 points | +$1,027.00 micro | +$10,270.00 standard) Micro is the MNQ contract at $2 a point. Standard is the NQ contract at $20 a point. The market: Yesterday we said today would test Wednesday's rally for follow-through. It failed that test in the first minutes, and the selling never really stopped. The Nasdaq Composite fell 5.52 percent and closed in correction territory. The Nasdaq 100 fell about 6.5 percent. The S&P 500 lost 4.36 percent, and the Dow dropped 1,833 points, or 3.44 percent. Small companies fell as hard as large ones, so there was almost nowhere to hide. Chips led the way down. The semiconductor index fell about 12 percent. AMD lost about 17 percent, Micron more than 12 percent, and Nvidia about 9 percent. Tesla fell about 11 percent. The VIX jumped about 70 percent, to near 28, its biggest one-day jump in more than two years. Investors moved into Treasury bonds, and yields fell. The warning signs came overnight. After Wednesday's close, Qualcomm's phone chip sales missed estimates, and Arm's outlook was only in line. In Asia, South Korea's market fell more than 5 percent as memory chip makers were sold on fears that the new Congress will slow the data center buildout. By our open, the selling had reached our index. Today's word is crowded trade. A crowded trade is a position that a very large number of investors hold at the same time. AI stocks have been one of the most crowded trades of 2026. When a crowded trade turns, everyone tries to leave through the same small door, and prices fall faster than the news alone would explain. One strategist called today "shooting the generals," meaning selling the leaders that carried the market this year to lock in gains. Individual investors sold too, at their fastest pace since March 2020.

WHERE WE START Wednesday was a wide, two-sided session. The Nasdaq 100 traveled from a low of 28,276 to a high of 28,830 and finished at 28,437, a gain of 257 points, or about nine tenths of one percent. Tuesday's close was 28,180. December NQ futures carry roughly a 130 point premium to the cash index, so that same high printed near 28,965 in NQ, and the contract settled at 28,567. The shape of that session matters more than the gain. The index closed in the lower third of its own range. Buyers held control through the morning and handed most of it back before the bell. Overnight, NQ fell about one and two tenths percent from the settlement, down to roughly 28,225. That dip carried price below Wednesday's cash low. European hours bought it back. Near half past eight Eastern, NQ sat around 28,420, lower by about half a percent, which placed it in the upper half of the overnight range and directly on the 28,440 pivot. The map for today. Overhead: 28,500, then 28,575, then a heavy band running 28,800 to 28,965, the top of which is Wednesday's high in futures terms. That band was support until the recent breakdown, and support that gives way tends to act as resistance afterward. Underneath: 28,250 first, then 28,180, 28,075, and 27,950. That last number is the 200-day moving average. A moving average is the average closing price over a set number of days, and the 200-day is the one large institutions treat as the boundary between an uptrend and a downtrend. The Nasdaq 100 climbed back above it only this week, after a correction of about ten percent. The reclaim is days old, not months old. WHAT IS ACTUALLY MOVING THE TAPE Semiconductors. That is the short answer. Wednesday's broad rally was political. Democrats won both the House and the Senate, which removed an unknown, drained the premium out of the options market, and lifted the Dow about three percent. Underneath that headline, though, chips were already falling. The semiconductor index dropped 3.13 percent on the day, with Nvidia down 3.17 percent and Micron down 7.00 percent. After the close, Qualcomm guided below expectations and Arm guided only in line. Asian memory shares were then sold heavily overnight, and the Kospi lost about five percent.

The election results arrived overnight, the market changed its mind before sunrise, and Praedor caught a clean piece of the rally that followed. Praedor (live, MNQ): • Long 28,646.25 at 9:40:00, trailing stop 28,775.25 at 10:25:26 (+129.00 points | +$258.00 micro | +$2,580.00 standard) Micro is the MNQ contract at $2 a point. Standard is the NQ contract at $20 a point. The market: Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate. The results came in after Tuesday's close, so the first reaction happened overnight. NQ futures fell more than 2 percent, to about 27,600, on worries about tighter rules for AI companies and data centers. Then buyers took it all back before the open. The regular session kept going. By mid-afternoon, the Dow was up about 1,500 points, more than 3 percent, on track for its best day after a midterm election in 44 years. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were each up about 2 percent. Apple jumped about 6 percent to a record, and its value passed $5 trillion. Microsoft also gained about 6 percent to a record. Chip stocks lagged, with Nvidia and Micron lower. Oil fell about 8 percent, to near $88, and energy stocks dropped more than 5 percent. Cheaper oil means less pressure on inflation. The data was steady. Private employers added 86,000 jobs in October, above forecast, and the ISM services survey slipped to 54.5, just under forecast, with prices easing. Why did stocks rally on a result they first sold? Two reasons. The first is gridlock. Gridlock is when the White House and Congress are controlled by different parties, so few big new laws can pass. Many investors see that as fewer policy surprises, and markets like fewer surprises. The second is today's word, volatility crush. Before a big event, traders pay extra for options that protect them, because nobody knows the result. Once the result is known, that extra price disappears quickly. On Monday, we noted the VIX rising on a green day as traders bought protection. Today the VIX fell about 18 percent, to near 17. As that protection was sold, the dealers on the other side bought back their own hedges, and that added buying to the rally.

WHERE WE START The Nasdaq 100 closed Tuesday at 28,180, up about 0.7 percent. Then the overnight session did a full round trip. NQ futures fell as much as 2.2 to 2.4 percent once the election results landed, with the low near 27,600. Buyers took all of it back. Price now sits near 28,300, roughly flat to slightly higher against Tuesday's settlement. That leaves an overnight range of about 900 points, from roughly 27,600 up to roughly 28,500. Price is in the top third of that range, just under the overnight high. The prior session also traded a wide band, approximately 28,100 to 28,890. Treat those two outer numbers as approximate, because our sources did not agree closely enough to state them exactly. The wider picture still matters. The Nasdaq 100 went into the vote about 9 percent below its October 6 record high. WHAT IS ACTUALLY MOVING THE TAPE Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate in the midterm elections. The results arrived after Tuesday's cash close, which is why the move happened overnight instead of during the session. The concern on the tape is tighter scrutiny of AI and big technology spending, including the data center buildout, with Texas named specifically after its governor's race. Money moved toward safety as that was priced in. The 10-year Treasury yield is near 4.90 percent, down about 5 basis points, and the 30-year is near 5.30 percent, down about 3 basis points. A basis point is one hundredth of one percent. HOW WIDE THE DAY SHOULD BE VIX closed Tuesday at 20.83. VIX is the options market's estimate of how much the S&P 500 will move over the next 30 days, stated as a yearly percent. To turn a yearly number into a single day, we divide by the square root of 252, which is the number of trading days in a year. That gives about 1.31 percent for one session. Applied to NQ near 28,300, one standard deviation is about 371 points. On a standard NQ contract at $20 per point, that is about $7,427. On a micro MNQ contract at $2 per point, that is about $743. Half a standard deviation is about 186 points, which is about $3,713 on NQ and about $371 on MNQ.

WHERE WE START The Nasdaq 100 closed Monday at 27,989.82, down 1.39 percent. The shape of that session matters more than the number. The index opened more than one percent higher, then gave back over 750 points from its intraday peak and closed near the low of the day, at 27,967.44 to 28,753.39 on the session. Sellers had the last word. That close put the index into a correction, which means a drop of ten percent or more from a recent peak. The record close was 31,224.47 on October 6. We are now about 10.4 percent below it. The ten percent line sits at 28,102 on the cash index, and Monday finished roughly 112 points under it. NQ December futures are trading near 28,250 this morning, up roughly 120 points from Monday's settle near 28,130. Different wires are quoting that move anywhere from flat to plus 0.4 percent, so treat the exact figure as approximate. Futures carry a premium of about 140 points over the cash index right now, so 28,250 on NQ is about 28,110 in cash terms. In other words, this morning's bounce has carried price right back to the correction line and no further. One honest note. We could not verify a clean overnight high and low from a second source this morning, so we are leaving that range out rather than printing a number we cannot stand behind. The levels above are confirmed. The 200-day moving average is the level to respect today (approximately 27,940). A moving average is simply the average closing price over the last 200 sessions, and traders watch it as a line between a healthy market and a damaged one. On the cash Nasdaq 100 it sits near 27,940, which on NQ December futures is near 28,080. Monday's close of 27,989.82 was only about 50 points above it, and Monday's low of 27,967.44 came within 30 points of touching it. We should be clear about how we got that number, because no major source publishes the Nasdaq 100 200-day average directly. We derived it two separate ways and they agree. The QQQ fund, which tracks the index, closed Monday at $681.09 against a published 200-day average of $679.82, which scales to about 27,938 on the index. A separate futures analysis put the NQ 200-day at 28,079, which backs out to about 27,941 on the cash index once the futures premium is removed. Two independent paths, three points apart. Treat 27,940 cash and 28,080 futures as accurate to within a handful of points rather than exact.