This week’s edge: regime breadth deteriorated as Breakdowns rose to 14 and leadership thinned. 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 indexes held their ground this week while the list underneath them thinned. The S&P 500 (SPY) closed at 770.19, Trend-Hold and roughly flat on the week, while the Nasdaq-100 (QQQ) at 718.96 is Trend-Hold and roughly flat on the week.
Beneath the surface, regime breadth deteriorated: Breakdowns rose from 10 to 14, Repairs fell from 12 to 7, and Trend-Holds held at 19. Regime downgrades outnumbered upgrades 13 to 12, a close count, but the damage landed at the bad end: the Breakdown bucket grew by 4.
The selling concentrated in LULU -17%, PINS -12%, PANW -10%, ADBE -9% on the downside, while DG +8%, NBIS +8%, ASTS +7%, INTC +7% held up against the tape.
Fresh damage showed up in AIXA.DE, AVGO, ITA and LMT, among others, dropping to Breakdown. Trend-Hold was reclaimed in DG, NBIS, OSCR and RBRK, 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: DG, NBIS, OSCR, RBRK, TSM. In a week of net downgrades this short list is what is holding the index up, which is what narrowing leadership looks like from the inside rather than a bullish tell. The weekly chart still has to hold what the daily just reclaimed.
Lifted out of Breakdown into Transitional: CRWV. An early bounce that still has to prove itself.
Up a step from Repair into Transitional: INTC, LRCX, META, SOFI. Basing turned into actual recovery attempts, one notch short of a trend.
First repair off the lows: BIDU, NVO. Damaged names showing the first sign of basing.
Cooled out of Trend-Hold into Transitional: ADBE, AMZN, PALL, PANW, SHOP. Leaders that lost their trend and now need to re-prove it.
Lost the trend, into Repair: INTU, NFLX. Downgraded a full step, treat these as damaged until reclaimed.
Broke down: AIXA.DE, AVGO, ITA, LMT, LULU, PINS. 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 1.7% to 40%, so the same dollar amount in two names can mean risking 24 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 1.7% stop carries 24 times the position of a 40% 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
US markets are closed Monday September 7, so this is a 4-day week. Fewer sessions means less time for a trigger to fill and less time for a thesis to prove itself, so treat every level below as having a shorter fuse than usual.
These names in the universe report during the plan week:
Thursday: Adobe & Oracle
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: ADBE is tagged “Wait for breakout”. Take the print as the risk event it is, size for it, or stand aside until it is out.
Read the trigger, not just the date. ADBE triggers at 273.04, 2.5% (0.6 ATR) above Friday’s close, with 2 sessions to fire before the print. A published trigger does not wait for the calendar: it can fill you days before the report and leave you holding the binary the rule above tells you to avoid. That is not hypothetical. LULU reclaimed its trigger on the Monday of last week and reported on the Thursday: the print gapped it 19.4% lower, straight through a stop that works on closes, for a 16.8% loss on a level we published. If you want the setup without the coin flip, wait for the print and re-read the structure on Friday.
This Week’s Playbook
Same four regimes as above, in the order they earn risk. Regime decides how much a name is allowed; the level beside it decides when. Detailed setups for the top names follow, and the watchlist carries every level.
Trend-Hold, full risk, but only at a level. On a pullback to support: AAPL, BRK.B, GLD, QQQ, SPY. Only on strength, above the trigger in the table: DG, ETHA, FTI, NBIS, NVDA, OSCR, PLTR, RBRK, and 4 more carrying the same instruction in the table below.
Transitional, half size or nothing. The trend is not confirmed, so a position here is a probe rather than a holding: ADBE, AMD, AMZN, ASML, CRWV, FFIV, INTC, LLY, and 12 more carrying the same instruction in the table below.
Repair, a starter only after a reclaim. Basing, not yet trending; nothing until price takes back the trigger printed beside it: AMAT, BIDU, GOOG, IFX.DE, INTU, NFLX, NVO.
Breakdown, no exposure until a reclaim confirms. Not every dip is a setup, and cash is the position: AIXA.DE, ASTS, AVGO, BABA, COST, ITA, LMT, LULU, and 5 more carrying the same instruction in the table below.
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: GLD (2% stop for 4% to T1)
- Wide but paying, so size small: INTC (21% stop for 32% to T1)
- Not paying for the risk, quarter size or skip: SLV (11% stop for 1% to T1), META (13% stop for 1% to T1), XRPI (35% stop for 3% to T1), SOFI (13% stop for 1% to T1)
- No usable room between entry and stop, skip entirely: COPX (1.0 ATR to its 87.42 trade stop), MSFT (1.0 ATR to its 483.56 trade stop), XOM (1.0 ATR to its 154.45 invalidation). Measured to whichever stop is nearer, which for some of these is the trade stop rather than the invalidation printed in the table. Entering there puts you at the exit before the trade has moved.
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.
