This week’s edge: the uptrend lost ground. Trend-Holds fell from 30 to 20 of 60, and downgrades outnumbered upgrades 21 to 9. This is the tape the rules are built for: trim or avoid the broken names until they reclaim, do not chase the falling leaders, and keep engagement to names still holding a defined level.
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 we publish is marked afterwards, win or lose, in the scorecard at the end of each issue, along with the running record against the S&P. Nothing gets quietly dropped.
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 softened this week. The S&P 500 (SPY) closed at 765.72, Trend-Hold and down 1.4% on the week, while the Nasdaq-100 (QQQ) at 713.44 is Transitional and down 2.4% on the week. Beneath the surface, regime breadth deteriorated: Breakdowns rose from 7 to 8, Repairs rose from 5 to 9, and Trend-Holds fell from 30 to 20. Regime downgrades outnumbered upgrades 21 to 9, a clear risk-off tilt.
The selling concentrated in NBIS -21%, CRWV -17%, INTC -12%, RDW -11% on the downside, while XRPI +37%, ETHA +29%, COPX +10%, SLV +7% held up against the tape.
Fresh damage showed up in BABA, COST, CRWV and NOC, among others, dropping to Breakdown. The cleanest signal was a full reclaim of Trend-Hold in ADBE, ETHA, LLY and SLV. This reads as a defensive rotation rather than a systemic stress event, but it changes what a defined entry looks like.
With trends rolling over, most pullback prices now sit too close to the level that says the idea is wrong, so the triggers that survive are mostly on strength rather than on weakness.
What Changed From Last Week
Reclaimed Trend-Hold: ADBE, ETHA, LLY, SLV. The exception in a week of downgrades, and worth more for it. The weekly chart still has to hold what the daily just reclaimed.
Lifted out of Breakdown into Transitional: PALL, XRPI. Early bounces that still need to prove themselves.
Up a step from Repair into Transitional: XRH0.L. Basing turned into an actual recovery attempt.
First repair off the lows: LULU, NVO. Damaged names showing the first sign of basing.
Cooled out of Trend-Hold into Transitional: AMD, AMZN, ASML, ITA, LMT, LRCX, NBIS, NVDA, PANW, PINS, QQQ, RTX. Leaders that lost their trend and now need to re-prove it.
Lost the trend, into Repair: AIXA.DE, AVGO, INTC, ORCL. Downgraded a full step, treat these as damaged until reclaimed.
Broke down: BABA, COST, CRWV, NOC, WMT. Fresh damage, the framework moves these to the avoid list. CRWV and NOC went from Trend-Hold to Breakdown in a single week, which is a three-regime fall and the sharpest kind of break the framework registers.
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 2% to 35%, so the same dollar amount in two names can mean risking 19 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 2% stop carries 19 times the position of a 35% 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:
Wednesday: NVDA
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.
That one matters more than the rest of the list, because you have a live instruction on it this week: NVDA is tagged “Wait for breakout”. Take the print as the risk event it is, size for it, or stand aside until it is out.
This Week’s Playbook
Start here. Detailed setups for the top names follow; the watchlist covers the rest.
Closest to a defined entry: TSM, SPY, DG, RDW, XOVR, MSFT. SPY can be taken on a dip. The rest have no pullback that clears their stop, so their only trigger is on strength above Friday’s close.
Best leaders to buy only on weakness: PLTR, RBRK, XOM, OSCR, LLY. Clean trends with room to run, but wait for the pullback.
Most dangerous chase setups: ETHA, TGT. Overbought leaders; the trend is real but the entry is not, wait for a reset.
Avoid until a reclaim confirms: BABA, BIDU, COST, CRWV, META, NKE, NOC, WMT. 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.
Not paying for the risk, quarter size or skip: AMAT (16% stop for 1% to T1), XRH0.L (12% stop for 1% to T1), NFLX (14% stop for 1% to T1), AMD (13% stop for 1% to T1)
- No usable room between entry and stop, skip entirely: NBIS (0.4 ATR), ADBE (0.5 ATR), ASML (0.8 ATR), LRCX (0.9 ATR), GLD (1.0 ATR). A fill at the bottom of these bands is already at the exit.
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.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSM), Last close: 418.95
Setup: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. held its Trend-Hold, little changed on the week. Full Trend-Hold on both the daily and weekly, the cleanest structure in the framework, with first support at the 1D EMA20 (418.06). Daily RSI 50.4, MACD bullish fading; the trend is intact but uncommitted, favor a defined pullback.
Market view: the foundry anchoring the AI supply chain, the most resilient chip structure; tracking the broad tape this week.
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