This week’s edge: regime breadth deteriorated as Breakdowns rose to 24 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.
Every Sunday we sort the 59 stocks and ETFs we cover into four trend regimes and publish three numbers for each: the price at which the name may be bought, the first level to take something off, and the level where we step aside. They are written before Monday opens, because a price set in advance is worth more than a decision made while a position is already moving.
What this letter is for. The names we cover are large and liquid and spread across technology, semiconductors, energy, defence, healthcare, retail, metals and European listings, and the work here is not to tell you which of them is a good company. It is to say at what price each one may be bought or traded, and at what price we step aside. Good names bought at the wrong price still lose money, and that gap is the whole reason this exists.
Where our own record supports a claim, we print the number rather than assert it. Names we tagged avoid that never reclaimed fell 2.6% across 150 cases, against essentially flat for the rest of the universe. Where the evidence is thin, we say so in the same breath.
We buy strength that has proved itself rather than weakness that might. When a beaten-down tape snaps back hard we will be late to the names that gapped off the bottom, and we take that trade deliberately: the patience that costs us the first bounce is the same patience that keeps us out of the names that carry on falling.
If a level looks wrong to you, say so in the comments. 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 769.64, Trend-Hold and roughly flat on the week, while the Nasdaq-100 (QQQ) at 749.58 is Trend-Hold and roughly flat on the week.
Beneath the surface, regime breadth deteriorated: Breakdowns rose from 20 to 24, Repairs fell from 8 to 2, and Trend-Holds rose from 24 to 25. Regime upgrades and downgrades were balanced at 6 apiece, a mixed tape beneath the indexes.
The selling concentrated in PALL -8%, LULU -7%, XRPI -7%, NOC -6% on the downside, while AIXA.DE +14%, IFX.DE +14%, AMAT +11%, LRCX +10% held up against the tape.
Fresh damage showed up in ASTS, DG, RDW and UNH, among others, dropping to Breakdown. Trend-Hold was reclaimed in AIXA.DE, IFX.DE, OSCR and XOM. 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: AIXA.DE, IFX.DE, OSCR, XOM. These reclaimed in a week when breadth did not improve, with the benchmarks still in trend. Read that as narrowing leadership rather than a bullish tell. The weekly chart still has to hold what the daily just reclaimed.
Up a step from Repair into Transitional: AMZN, CRWV. Basing turned into actual recovery attempts, one notch short of a trend.
Cooled out of Trend-Hold into Transitional: LLY. It lost its trend and now has to re-prove it.
Broke down: ASTS, DG, RDW, UNH, WMT. Fresh damage, the framework moves these to the avoid list. DG and RDW 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, with the 1W regime printed beside it in every setup, 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, and the tighter one governs. The trade stop is the tactical level where we step aside and let the position go. The regime invalidation is the deeper level where the classification flips and the reason to own the name is gone. Both are printed in every table now, trade stop first. For most setups the invalidation was the only number we showed, and it sat a median of 9% away while the typical trade never travelled more than 3.2% against us: only one trade in seven ever reached it. A stop that far out is a thesis level, not risk control, and printing it alone was our mistake.
How long a trade lasts, and when to take something. Every level here is a one-week level: take it during the plan week, and if neither the first target nor a stop has been reached, mark it at Friday close and re-read the structure next issue. Take a partial at T1 when it comes: 51% of 479 filled setups reached it at some point in the week, and taking it there rather than holding to Friday lifts the share that finish green from 41% to 62%. Be clear what that does and does not do. The average filled setup returns -0.6% held to Friday and -0.6% taking T1, so this improves how often you are right and what the middle trade returns, not whether the book makes money.
Size by risk, not by dollars. Stop distances in this issue run from 1.3% to 17%, so the same dollar amount in two names can mean risking 13 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 1.3% stop carries 13 times the position of a 17% stop for identical risk. The wide-stop names are not off limits; they are simply small.
This update ranks 59 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
No name in the universe reports during the plan week, so the levels carry without an earnings gap to work around.
Just beyond the plan week: UNH on Tuesday October 13, TSM on Thursday October 15. Worth knowing now if you are sizing a position you intend to hold through it.
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.
Within each group the names are ordered by how close the entry sits to Friday close, nearest first, which is what the Trigger odds column in the tables below reports. That shows where a decision is likely to be needed, not where the reward is. Of the 464 triggers we have published, the ones we would have called likely were reached 76 percent of the time, even odds 44 percent, and unlikely 15 percent, with roughly half never touched at all. Reaching a level is not the same as profiting from it: of the 181 near ones that filled, the average came back about one percent negative, with about four times in ten closing green. Read the top of each list as the levels most likely to demand a decision, and size them off the stop underneath.
Where that leaves your exposure. Of the 59 names we can trade, 4 are set up to be bought into weakness, with a dip band already defined (AAPL, OSCR, QQQ, SPY). The other 55, 93 percent of the book, need a level that has not arrived: 27 need a trigger to fire, 26 need a reclaim first, and 2 have no usable room between entry and stop. That is not a forecast, it is what the rules produce when most of the universe sits below its own trend, and it means the default position this week is cash. Cash is an allocation here rather than the absence of one: it is the only holding that costs nothing while you wait, and it is what lets you take a level when it finally prints. The S&P still carries its Trend-Hold. The Nasdaq-100 still carries its Trend-Hold. Those are the numbers that would put risk back on the table. Until one of them prints, do not manufacture a trade out of a name you like at a price the plan never gave you.
Trend-Hold, full risk, but only at a level. On a pullback to support: OSCR, AAPL, SPY, QQQ. Only on strength, above the trigger in the table: AIXA.DE, RBRK, IFX.DE, SHOP, XOVR, PANW, ASML, LRCX, and 13 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. Only on strength, above the trigger in the table: AMZN, COPX, TGT, BRK.B, LLY, CRWV. GOOG, XRPI sits in the skip list below.
Repair, a starter only after a reclaim. Basing, not yet trending; nothing until price takes back the trigger printed beside it: COST, FTI.
Breakdown, no exposure until a reclaim confirms. Not every dip is a setup, and cash is the position: AVGO, ORCL, PINS, RDW, ASTS, UNH, DG, ADBE, and 16 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.
- Not paying for the risk, quarter size or skip: AMAT (21% stop for 2% to T1), META (19% stop for 2% to T1), COPX (5% stop for 1% to T1), LRCX (23% stop for 3% to T1)
- No usable room between entry and stop, skip entirely: XRPI (1.0 ATR to its 7.31 trade stop), GOOG (1.0 ATR to its 325.63 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
Five names taken only from the Trend-Hold group, after dropping anything overbought above RSI 73, anything whose EMA stack is inverted, and anything without at least one average daily range between its entry and its stop. Preference goes first to names sitting within 3 percent of their 20-day EMA, then to the strongest trends by ADX with momentum confirming, and a name too closely correlated with one already chosen is swapped out for the next candidate. Full detail, levels and both stops for each. Every rule above is mechanical, so you can reproduce this list yourself from the levels we publish. The next tier follows in the Also Actionable table, and the rest of the universe in the full watchlist below it.
