This week’s edge: the uptrend held its ground without extending it. SPY and QQQ kept a clean Trend-Hold, Trend-Holds across the universe moved to 30 of 60 and Breakdowns rose from 6 to 7, but the leaders did the resting while damaged names did the moving. A flat index week with churn underneath is where chasing costs the most: keep taking the defined entries, and let the rest come to you.
Welcome to IWP’s weekly trade plan update.
What this is. Every Sunday we sort the 60 stocks and ETFs we cover into trend regimes and publish the three numbers that decide each trade: entry, invalidation, target. You have them before Monday opens, so the decision is made in advance and in writing rather than in the moment. This is a risk discipline first and a stock-picking service second.
What to expect. When a beaten-down market snaps back hard we will lag the names that gapped off the bottom, because the rules wait for a reclaim. In a bad tape that wait is the whole point. You do not get to skip the drawdown and catch the first bounce with one rule, and anyone selling you a framework that does both is selling hindsight.
How to check us. Every level is scored afterwards from the entry as published, win or lose, in the scorecard at the end. Last week lost money and the full record is down there with the workings.
If you already know the framework, skip to This Week’s Playbook. If a level does not sit right with you, leave a comment: we read every one, and they shape what gets covered.
Market Conditions
The broad tape steadied this week. The S&P 500 (SPY) closed at 776.34, Trend-Hold and roughly flat on the week, while the Nasdaq-100 (QQQ) at 731.07 is Trend-Hold and up 1.1% on the week.
Beneath the surface, regime breadth improved on balance: Breakdowns rose from 6 to 7, Repairs fell from 7 to 5, and Trend-Holds rose from 27 to 30. Regime upgrades outnumbered downgrades 13 to 9, though the movement was underneath the surface rather than in the indexes.
The biggest moves went to NBIS +48%, OSCR +17%, CRWV +16%, SMSN.L +16% on the upside, against AVGO -8%, LULU -7%, AMAT -6%, BIDU -6% on the downside. Fresh damage showed up in LULU, NVO and PALL, dropping to Breakdown.
The cleanest signal was a full reclaim of Trend-Hold in AMD, CRWV, FTI and LRCX, among others. The index trend is intact but it did not extend this week, and the churn underneath cut both ways. That is a rotation inside an uptrend rather than a new leg of it.
What Changed From Last Week
Reclaimed Trend-Hold: AMD, CRWV, FTI, LRCX, NBIS, NOC, OSCR, SMSN.L. The strongest signal of the week. Several got there in a single week, so the weekly chart still has to hold it.
Lifted out of Breakdown into Transitional: WMT. An early bounce that still has to prove itself.
Up a step from Repair into Transitional: COST, NFLX, ORCL. Basing turned into actual recovery attempts, one notch short of a trend.
First repair off the lows: XRH0.L. A damaged name showing the first sign of basing.
Cooled out of Trend-Hold into Transitional: AMAT, AVGO, BRK.B, LLY. Leaders that lost their trend and now need to re-prove it.
Lost the trend, into Repair: ETHA, GOOG. Treat these as damaged until reclaimed, and note GOOG fell two regimes in one week rather than one.
Broke down: LULU, NVO, PALL. Fresh damage, the framework moves these to the avoid list.
How Our Trade Plans Work
Each name is classified into a regime (Trend-Hold, Transitional, Repair or Breakdown) from the 1D EMA stack, cross-checked against the 1W chart, and every level traces back to a specific indicator. T1 is the first profit-take, T2 the structural objective, T3 the stretch target. Regime sets how much risk a name is allowed and when: Trend-Hold earns full risk but only on a pullback to support or a confirmed breakout; Transitional gets half or nothing; Repair gets a starter only after a reclaim; Breakdown gets none until a reclaim confirms.
Two stops, two jobs. The trade stop is the tactical level where a single trade is wrong and you cut it. The regime invalidation is the deeper level where the classification flips and the reason to own the name is gone. One manages risk, the other manages conviction.
Size by risk, not by dollars. Stop distances in this issue run from under 1% to over 40%, so the same dollar amount in two names can mean risking sixty times as much on one as the other. Decide what a single losing trade may cost you, say half a percent of the account, and divide it by the distance from entry to stop. A 4% stop carries eight times the position of a 32% stop for identical risk. The wide-stop names are not off limits; they are simply small.
This update ranks 60 names. You are not meant to trade all of them, or even most of them. Most weeks a handful sit at a level worth acting on and the rest are there so you can check our work.
The Week Ahead
These names in the universe report during the plan week:
Tuesday: BIDU | Wednesday: TGT | Thursday: BABA, WMT
Earnings are binary and the framework does not trade into them. If one of these sits at a defined entry, either take it at reduced size or wait for the print and re-read the structure afterwards. A level that was valid on Friday is not wrong after a gap, it is simply no longer the level.
Those matter more than the rest of the list, because you have a live instruction on them this week: BABA is tagged “Wait / half size”, TGT is tagged “Buy dips” and WMT is tagged “Wait / half size”. Take the print as the risk event it is, size for it, or stand aside until it is out.
Just beyond the plan week: NVDA on Wednesday August 26. Worth knowing now if you are sizing a position you intend to hold through it.
This Week’s Playbook
Start here. Detailed setups for the top names follow; the watchlist covers the rest.
Closest to a defined entry: DG, AMZN, SPY, TSM, PINS, QQQ, plus 2 more tagged Near entry below. Price is sitting on the 1D EMA20, so the trigger is near and you are not chasing.
Best leaders to buy only on weakness: MSFT, PANW, LMT, TGT, SHOP, RBRK, plus 6 more tagged Buy dips below. Clean trends with room to run, but wait for the pullback.
Most dangerous chase setups: none this week. Nothing in the universe is overbought enough to warn you off, which tells you the leaders have been resting rather than running.
Avoid until a reclaim confirms: BIDU, LULU, META, NKE, NVO, PALL, XRPI. No long exposure; not every dip is a setup, and cash is the position.
Where the payoff justifies the stop. A wide stop is not a bad setup, it is a small one, but some names are not paying enough to be worth any size at all.
Tight and paying: RDW (5% stop for 19% to T1), PINS (2% stop for 7% to T1), XOVR (4% stop for 9% to T1), NOC (2% stop for 4% to T1)
- Wide but paying, so size small: PLTR (9% stop for 15% to T1)
- Not paying for the risk, quarter size or skip: ORCL (23% stop for 2% to T1), INTC (19% stop for 3% to T1), AIXA.DE (23% stop for 3% to T1), WMT (7% stop for 1% to T1)
Top 5 Actionable Setups
The highest-conviction names sitting closest to a defined entry, with full detail, levels, and both stops for each. The next tier follows in the Also Actionable table, and the rest of the universe in the full watchlist below it.
Dollar General Corp. (DG), Last close: 123.28
Setup: Dollar General Corp. held its Trend-Hold, down 3% on the week. 1D Trend-Hold inside a Transitional 1W; 1D EMA20 at 123.05 and EMA50 at 120.53 are the structural supports. Daily RSI 51.9, MACD bearish stabilizing; constructive but unhurried, let price come to the levels.
Market view: deep-discount retail, a read on low-end consumer health; trailing the broad tape this week.
