Below the Flip: The Nasdaq 100’s Worst Day Since the Pandemic
Nasdaq 100 fund (QQQ), hourly candles, Nov 2 to 6, with daily closes. Wednesday climbed, Thursday collapsed, Friday based at the lows.
Wednesday afternoon, the market was celebrating. The midterm elections were over, the result was clear, and the S&P 500 had just gained 1.58% in a day. The Dow was up 3.03%. It felt like the start of something.
Thursday, it all came back, and more. The S&P 500 fell 4.36%. The Nasdaq 100 fell 6.36%, its worst day since the pandemic. The index of chip stocks fell 12.25%. The fear gauge, the VIX, jumped from 16.61 to 28.18 in one session, one of the biggest one-day jumps in its history.
Friday morning, the jobs report came in hot: 165,000 new jobs in October, against about 65,000 expected. Stocks bounced. But the bounce bought back only a piece of Thursday. The S&P 500 fund rose 0.32% on Friday and still ended the week down 2.7%.
So this week has a simple shape. A rally built in a day. A selloff that erased it in a day. And a bounce that has not yet proved it is more than a bounce. In the middle of it, two companies reported earnings, five published lines from this desk got graded by Friday's close, and the grades are in this issue, in the same plain words they were published in.
The scoreboard comes first. Then the week that caused it.
One Week, One Reversal
Weekly change, Oct 30 close to Nov 6 close.
The week's scoreboard: the S&P 500 fund (SPY) closed at 735.36, down 2.7% on the week. The Nasdaq 100 fund (QQQ) closed at 656.10, down 5.0%. The Dow fund (DIA) closed at 512.23, down 0.9%.
The S&P 500 index itself closed Friday at 7,376.86, up 0.31% on the day. The Nasdaq Composite closed at 24,579.42, up 1.09%. The Dow closed at 51,285.73, down 0.46%. Growth bounced on Friday. Value did not. That split is the week's last word, for now.
The 10-year Treasury yield ended at 4.86%. U.S. crude (WTI) ended at $90.53 a barrel, nearly flat on Friday after a round trip that took it from $96.73 on Tuesday down to $88.57 on Wednesday. The VIX, Wall Street's fear gauge, ended Friday at 25.55, down from Thursday's 28.18 close but still far above Wednesday's 16.61.
Wednesday: The Relief Rally
Wednesday was the exhale. The elections on Tuesday, November 3 ended in a Democratic sweep of Congress, a result this desk reported that night from independent checks, not from any single account. On Wednesday the market treated the result as clarity, and clarity got bought.
The S&P 500 rose 1.58% to 7,688.62. The Dow rose 3.03% to 53,356.12. The Nasdaq Composite rose 1.44% to 25,736.51.
Under the surface it was a split tape, and the split mattered later. The quality names carried the day: Amazon rose 6.12% to $266.03, Alphabet rose 3.18% to $288.93, and Meta rose 1.44% to $630.00. The AI core faded at the same time: Nvidia fell 3.17% to $200.13, SpaceX fell 3.81% to $135.92, and Tesla fell 3.34% to $385.19.
Oil told the same relief story in its own market. U.S. crude fell 8.44% on Wednesday to $88.57, down from $96.73 on Tuesday, as the election result cooled the war premium that had pushed Brent to $116.72 back on October 23.
So Wednesday's rally was real, but it was narrow where it counted. The index went up on the strength of a few big, profitable names, while the sector the whole year has been built on, AI hardware, was already slipping. Thursday showed what that narrowness was worth.
Thursday: The Meltdown
Thursday Nov 5, daily % change. The Nasdaq 100 had its worst day since the pandemic.
Thursday, November 5 was the week's decisive day, and it was not close.
The S&P 500 fell 4.36% to 7,353.73. The Nasdaq Composite fell 5.52% to 24,315.00. The Dow fell 3.44% to 51,523.06, giving back Wednesday's gain and more. The Nasdaq 100 fell 6.36% to 26,629.81, its worst day since the pandemic, worse than April 4, 2025. The semiconductor index, the SOX, fell 12.25%.
The VIX rose from 16.61 to 28.18, a jump of 69.7% in one day. The VIX measures how much fear is priced into options on the S&P 500. A jump that size has happened only a handful of times since 1990.
What set it off, per the desk's record of the day: a repricing of the AI data center buildout after the election sweep raised questions about how fast that buildout can proceed, with selling that started in Asia and in chip names and spread. Underneath it sat a mechanical problem. Investors had borrowed record amounts to hold this market in October, and the leverage was concentrated in the one sector that fell hardest. When leveraged holders sell, they do not sell a little of everything. They sell what they own, all at once, and the move feeds itself.
The selling concentrated where the leverage sat. Tesla fell 10.66%. IonQ fell to $26.43. Nvidia closed at $181.60. Dealer gamma, the hedging pressure from options dealers explained in the gamma section below, stayed short all session in the AI core, which means dealer hedging added fuel to the drop instead of cushioning it.
Two companies also reported earnings on Thursday, into the worst tape of the year. Their stories are next, because both of them answered the question this market keeps asking, and the market graded the answers very differently from the prices.
The Prints: Cummins and IonQ
A quick note on how this desk covers earnings, because it is a standing rule. Every print gets three things: the filed report that confirms the headline numbers, the company's own guidance for what comes next, given exactly as the company gave it, and the color from the earnings call that bears on the story. Both prints below have all three.
Cummins reported before the open on Thursday. Cummins builds engines and, through its Power Systems unit, the generators that back up data centers. That unit is why this desk follows the name: it is the industrial side of the AI spending story.
Cummins Q3 2026 reported results, official release and filed 10-Q.
The numbers were strong. Revenue was $9,438 million, up 13%. Earnings were $8.25 a share, including a $0.54 tax benefit. Operating profit before interest, taxes, and accounting charges, called EBITDA, was a record $1.8 billion, at 18.9% of sales. Power Systems revenue rose 15%, and management called data center demand exceptionally strong on the call. The filed quarterly report confirms the release. Guidance, exactly as given: the full-year revenue guide was narrowed to about 10% growth, with the EBITDA margin guide held at about 18.2%.
And the price gate failed anyway. This desk's earlier deep dive had drawn a staged buying zone at $497 to $516. Cummins closed Thursday at $448.58 on the official series and Friday at $450.44. None of that moved the price line: the closes never reached the zone the earlier research required, and a good print does not override a price line.
The desk's new Cummins research, published Thursday night, resets the read: WATCH, with a staged zone at $429 to $456 and invalidation on a weekly close below $428.74. Friday's close was that new zone's first test. The grade is in the Published Lines section below.
IonQ reported after Thursday's close. IonQ builds quantum computers, machines that solve a narrow set of problems in a completely different way from normal computers. It is a small, early business, and its stock moves like one.
IonQ Q3 2026, filed Form 10-Q and earnings call.
The print was the opposite of the tape around it. Revenue was $173.831 million, up 336% from a year ago, far above the roughly $145 million the desk carried into the print. The filed quarterly report breaks that revenue into $90.3 million from its Platform business and $83.5 million of external revenue from SkyWater, the chip maker it acquired. Guidance, exactly as given: IonQ raised its full-year revenue guide to $505 million to $515 million, from the $450 million to $460 million it had carried. That is a raise of about $55 million at the middle, on a company this size.
The call color filled in the story. Its newest machine, the Superion 256, is sold out for 2027, and the 2028 order book is filling. The company signed about $290 million of new Platform contracts, about $180 million of it for quantum computing. Nvidia's new research center gets the first on-premise Superion 256. The company also flagged about $40 million of one-time integration costs and a new path to profitability program for 2027. One correction the filing settles: its Elisity acquisition closed on November 3, and contributed no revenue this quarter.
The stock had closed Thursday at $26.43, below its $30 line, into the print. What it did on Friday is the cleanest verdict in this issue, and it is graded below with the rest.
Friday: Hot Jobs, Partial Bounce
Friday Nov 6, daily % change, Nasdaq official closes.
Friday's test was the October jobs report, at 8:30 AM ET. It came in hot.
Employers added 165,000 jobs in October, against 65,000 expected in the Reuters poll. The unemployment rate fell to 4.1%, from 4.2%. Pay rose 0.4% in the month and 3.1% over the year. September was revised up to 60,000 jobs, from the 29,000 first reported. Every one of those figures is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics release itself, checked again for this issue.
A hot jobs report cuts two ways, and Friday traded both. The good side: the economy is not rolling over, which supports the earnings the market just spent a week doubting. The hard side: a strong job market gives the Federal Reserve room to raise rates, and futures pricing for a December rate hike jumped to about 77% after the release, from roughly two-thirds the day before.
The bounce followed the good side, and it was led by the names that had fallen hardest. IonQ rose 23.16% to $32.55, closing at its high for the day. SpaceX rose 8.62% on the desk tape to $134.27. Rigetti rose 19.29% to $11.75. AMD rose 11.04% to $449.04. The indexes did much less: the S&P 500 fund rose 0.32%, the Nasdaq 100 fund rose 1.40%, and the Dow fund fell 0.40%.
That gap is the honest summary of Friday. The most beaten-down names bounced hardest, which is what beaten-down names do after a rout. The broad market barely moved. A bounce led by the biggest losers, on a hot jobs print that also raised the odds of a rate hike, is a start. It is not a verdict. The verdict comes from closes, and the closes that matter most land next week, with inflation data on Tuesday.
Oil, Rates, and the Price of Money
WTI daily closes, desk verified. The war premium came off Wednesday and held.
Oil had its own round trip this week, and it matters because oil feeds inflation, and inflation decides what the Fed does next.
Two weeks ago, at the shock peak, Brent, the global benchmark, was $116.72. By Tuesday, U.S. crude (WTI) was $96.73. On Wednesday it fell to $88.57 as the election cooled the war premium. Then it steadied: $90.48 on Thursday and $90.53 on Friday. The energy shock that dominated Issue #004 has not reignited, and it has not fully gone away either. It is sitting near $90, waiting on the same headlines as everyone else.
One headline sits directly behind that $90 handle. Washington is deciding whether to resume strikes on Iran. U.S. officials warned Gulf allies in late October to prepare for possible renewed strikes and for Iranian retaliation, per the Associated Press. Small U.S. strikes hit Qeshm Island, in the Strait of Hormuz, again on Friday, and Qatar opened an 11th-hour mediation push the same day, per the Wall Street Journal. No decision had been announced as this issue closed. A strike decision moves crude first, and everything priced off crude second.
The 10-year Treasury yield ended Friday at 4.86%, close to where it sat all week: 4.89% on Wednesday and 4.84% on Thursday. Bond yields are the market's price for money over the long run. A yield near 4.9% means every data center these companies finance costs real money to build, which is the same cash question the market has asked all season.
The Fed is the other half of that price. It held rates at 3.75% to 4.00% on October 28, with two voters preferring a hike. Friday's jobs report moved the December meeting, on December 8 and 9, toward the hike side: about a 77% chance of a quarter-point hike after the print, per CME FedWatch pricing reported Friday. Tuesday's inflation report is the last big input before that argument settles for the month.
One gauge from last issue carries forward. The desk watches CoreWeave's borrowing cost as its credit gauge for the smaller data center builders: its 2031 bonds yielded a record 15.76% two weeks ago, and a fall back under about 12% would say the shakeout fear is easing. The latest reading says the fear has not eased: on November 4 and 5, CoreWeave's 9% notes due 2031 changed hands near 80 cents on the dollar, a yield of about 15.6%, still close to the record and nowhere near 12%. CoreWeave's stock, for what a stock can say, fell 15.4% on the week to $46.40, with a 6.28% bounce on Friday.
What the Flow Said
Unusual Whales flagged flow, Friday Nov 6, about 3:10 PM ET snapshot.
Friday's options tape, from the desk's settled record at about 3:10 PM ET, showed money coming back to both sides at once.
Nvidia drew about $1,630 million of flagged options premium on the day, split about 45.7% bullish and 40.1% bearish. Tesla drew about $1,130 million, split about 50.3% bullish and 43.3% bearish. SpaceX drew about $431 million, leaning bullish at 45.8% against 36.7%. IonQ's tape leaned bullish too, about 52.2% against 40.8%, on a much smaller $19 million. Amazon was the only core name whose tape leaned bearish, about 44.5% bearish against 42.9% bullish.
And not one large single trade passed the desk's confirmation checks. Every big candidate failed for a plain reason: it was part of a multi-leg structure, it chased a price that had already moved, or the money on the other side of the same name was just as large. On this desk, an unconfirmed print is not a signal, however big it looks.
The lesson is the one this letter keeps teaching. Flow tells you where money is willing to stand. On Friday it stood on both sides of the bounce, in size, with no clean direction. That matches the price action exactly: a real bounce, and no verdict in it yet.
The Gamma Picture
The levels that matter into next week.
Gamma is this letter's home turf, so here is the short version. Market makers, the firms on the other side of most options trades, hedge by buying and selling the stock itself. Think of them as the market's shock absorbers. In positive gamma, their hedging leans against the move: they sell into rallies and buy into dips, so prices calm down. In negative gamma, the shock absorbers become amplifiers: they sell into drops and buy into rallies, and moves run through levels instead of stopping at them.
Friday closed in amplifier mode at the index level. Dealer gamma on the S&P 500 fund was short by about $14,922 million per 1% move on the closing read, and it deepened through the session. The fund's call wall and put wall both sit at 740, and the fund closed at 735.36, just under that line. Walls are the strikes where the largest piles of options sit. In a short-gamma book, a wall overhead is sticky until price breaks and holds above it.
Name by name, from the desk's afternoon gamma snapshot:
Nvidia: call wall $200, put wall $190. It closed at $186.64, below both, in a short-gamma book. The $200 wall is overhead until it is reclaimed and held.
SpaceX: call wall and put wall both at $135. It closed at $134.27, just under the complex, in a short-gamma book. Friday's high was $135.32, so the wall was tested and, on a closing basis, not taken.
IonQ: call wall $40, put wall $30. It closed at $32.55, above its put wall, with a near-flat book. The $30 wall is support while price holds above it.
Tesla: call wall and put wall both at $360. It closed at $358.22, just under the complex, in a positive-gamma book, which is why it tends to pin near that strike.
Meta: put wall $610, call wall $700. It closed at $610.15, right on its put wall, in a positive-gamma book.
Alphabet: call wall $285, put wall $280. It closed at $284.78, between the two walls and just under the call wall.
Amazon: call wall and put wall both at $260, with the gamma flip at $265. It closed at $259.30, just under the complex, in the desk's largest positive-gamma book.
These are levels to watch, never price targets.
The Published Lines: Friday's Closes
Nasdaq daily closes; levels from the published AMD deep dive.
A line is only worth something if you report it the same way when it fails. This week, Friday's close graded five published setups at once, plus the rest of the published list. Two words run this section. A staged entry means buying in planned pieces inside a zone. An invalidation is the line that proves the setup wrong. Friday's close is the weekly close, so every weekly test below is final for the week.
AMD: the published setup is BUY, staged $440 to $466, with invalidation on a weekly close below $413. AMD closed Friday at $449.04, inside the zone. Thursday's close, $404.40 on the official series, sat below the $413 line in the middle of the week, but the test is the weekly close, and the weekly close landed inside the zone with the invalidation untouched. The zone is live and occupied.
Palantir: the published setup is BUY, staged $155 to $168, with invalidation on a weekly close below $150. Palantir closed Friday at $160.38, inside the zone. Thursday's close of $154.99 tested the zone's bottom edge and held above the $150 line. The setup is intact, in the lower half of its zone.
Cummins, the old line: the earlier research required a staged zone at $497 to $516. Cummins closed Friday at $450.44, far below it. On the published terms, that gate failed: the zone was never reached. We print that plainly, in the same words we would use if it had worked.
Cummins, the new line: the research published Thursday night is WATCH, staged $429 to $456, with invalidation on a weekly close below $428.74. Friday's close at $450.44 sits inside the new zone, $21.70 above the invalidation. The first test of the new zone passed, on its first day. A WATCH means the desk is watching the zone work, not that it has acted.
IonQ: the line the desk set before the print was $30. Above it on a Friday close, the post-print review clears. Below it, the name stayed under review. IonQ closed Friday at $32.55, up 23.16% on the day, at its high. The $30 line cleared with room. The company's raised guide and filed numbers are in the Prints section above, and the desk's full IonQ research, rebuilt on those filed numbers, is published in the research library.
Rigetti: the line is $11.11, and it matters because Rigetti reports on Tuesday and the desk has tracked the name against that level into the print. Rigetti closed Friday at $11.75, up 19.29%, above the line. It goes into its print above the level that had it under review. Tuesday's close, after the report, is the next grade.
Apple: the published setup is BUY, staged $320 to $334, with invalidation on a weekly close below $309. Apple closed Friday at $342.37, above the zone and far above the line. Nothing in this week's tape threatened the published terms. The zone waits below, untested on a close.
Alphabet: the published setup is BUY, staged $270 to $295, with invalidation on a weekly close below $267.47. Alphabet closed Friday at $284.78, inside the zone, after a week that started with it pressing $295.60 on Wednesday. The zone is occupied and the line below is untouched.
Microsoft: the published setup is BUY, staged $500 to $520, with invalidation on a weekly close below $480. Microsoft closed Friday at $530.61, above the zone. It was the week's relative shelter in mega-cap tech, up 1.7% on the week while the Nasdaq 100 fund fell 5.0%. The zone below waits, untested.
Amazon: the published setup is BUY, staged $215 to $232, with invalidation on a weekly close below $198.79. Amazon closed Friday at $259.30, above the zone, and it was the week's strongest mega-cap, up 7.9% on the week. The zone is far below and untested on a close.
All of the desk's deep dives are in the research library at zerogammaresearch.com/library, with the full work behind every zone and invalidation above.
Rapid Fire
Weekly change, Oct 30 close to Nov 6 close, Nasdaq.
Every number below is the week's move: Friday October 30 close to Friday November 6 close, on the Nasdaq series.
IonQ rose 8.4% to $32.55, the watchlist's best week, on a print that raised its full-year guide.
Amazon rose 7.9% to $259.30. The cash-positive mega-cap was the week's shelter, again.
Rigetti rose 4.4% to $11.75, back above its $11.11 line four days before its report.
Alphabet rose 1.8% to $284.78 and Microsoft rose 1.7% to $530.61. Both closed inside or above their published zones.
Apple fell 0.7% to $342.37 and Meta fell 0.8% to $610.15. Meta closed right on its $610 put wall.
The Dow fund fell 0.9%, the S&P 500 fund fell 2.7%, and the Nasdaq 100 fund fell 5.0%. One Thursday did all of that.
Cummins fell 9.9% to $450.44. Its old price gate failed. Its new zone caught the close on its first test.
Tesla fell 10.4% to $358.22, closing just under its $360 gamma complex.
AMD fell 11.0% to $449.04 on the week, and still closed inside its published buying zone. Both halves of that sentence are the story.
Palantir fell 12.9% to $160.38, inside its zone, $10.38 above the line that would prove it wrong.
CoreWeave fell 15.4% to $46.40, the week's worst core name, even with Friday's bounce.
Next Week: Inflation First, Then Nvidia
The calendar, Nov 9 to 18, 2026. Dates checked against primary sources.
Monday, November 9: Hims and Hers reports after the close, against the $880 million to $900 million full-year revenue guide the desk has on its checkpoint card. It is a discovery-watch name for this desk, not a published setup. The stock and bond markets are both open.
Tuesday, November 10: the week's biggest day, twice over. The October consumer price index, the CPI, lands at 8:30 AM ET. It is the first inflation report carrying October's oil prices, and it is the last big data print before the Fed's December meeting. Rigetti also reports after the close on Tuesday, into the $11.11 line graded above.
Wednesday, November 11: Veterans Day. The stock market is open and the bond market is closed, which can make rate moves jumpy in thin trading.
Tuesday, November 17: Nvidia reports after the close, confirmed by the company's own announcement on October 28. After a week that repriced the entire AI buildout, Nvidia is the buildout's report card. Everything in next week's tape is, in part, positioning for this print.
Wednesday, November 18: the minutes of the Fed's October meeting. They will show how close the argument for a December hike already was inside the room, two voters having wanted one in October.
Before any of that, the weekend carries its own event: the Iran decision covered in the oil section above. Gulf officials are mediating, Iranian officials may be in Doha as early as Saturday, and a strike decision, or a deal headline, would reprice crude before Monday's open and hang over Tuesday's inflation print.
What is not on next week's calendar matters too. There is no Fed meeting next week. The December 8 and 9 meeting is the live one, and Tuesday's CPI is the number it will argue about.
How to Use This Issue
Three self-checks before anything in this letter touches your own portfolio: 1. Find your levels first. Every name in this issue carries a zone and an invalidation. Know yours, in writing, before you act on anyone's research, including ours. This week, one published gate failed exactly where it was drawn, and the names that held did so at lines published in advance. 2. Size for the invalidation, not the story. If the level that proves you wrong is 5% away, assume it gets visited, and size so that visit is survivable. Thursday visited a lot of levels in one day. 3. Check the calendar before the position. A jobs report moved December rate pricing by about ten points in a morning, and an inflation report lands Tuesday. Know what prints, and when, before the week starts. Education only, always. This letter will never tell you what to buy or sell. It shows you the levels, the flow, and the receipts, and the decisions stay yours. |
WE’RE WATCHING
CPI on Tuesday. The October consumer price index lands at 8:30 AM ET on November 10, with September's annual rate at 3.7% as the backdrop. It is the last big print before the December Fed meeting, and December hike pricing already sits near 77% after Friday's jobs report.
Nvidia on November 17. The company's confirmed date is Tuesday, November 17, after the close. The AI buildout was repriced all week without its biggest name reporting. That changes in eleven days.
The S&P 500 fund at 740. Call wall and put wall both sit there, the fund closed at 735.36, and dealer gamma is short. A break and hold above 740 changes the tape's character. A rejection keeps the amplifier on.
Oil near $90. U.S. crude steadied at $90.53 after falling from $96.73 to $88.57 in two days. Whether it drifts down toward the pre-shock range or climbs back is the background variable for Tuesday's inflation print, and this weekend's Iran decision is the one headline that can gap it either way before Monday's open.
AMD inside its zone. The weekly close at $449.04 sits inside the $440 to $466 staged zone, with $413 as the line below. Whether the zone holds on next week's closes is the cleanest live test on the desk.
IonQ above $30. Friday closed at $32.55, at the day's high, on a raised guide. Holding $30 next week turns a one-day reaction into a base. Losing it reopens the whole print.
Rigetti on Tuesday, after the close. It reports the same day as CPI, from a Friday close of $11.75, above its $11.11 line. Two binary events, one day, one small stock.
Cummins in the new zone. The WATCH zone is $429 to $456, the first close inside it was $450.44, and the invalidation is a weekly close below $428.74. The zone has one passing close. It needs more.
| The desk’s posture: patient, with levels over narratives. This week the market built a rally in a day, erased it in a day, and bounced without proving anything yet. Five published lines were graded on Friday and every grade is in this issue in the words the lines were published in. Until a bounce holds for more than a day, entries belong at levels, not at headlines. |
The Receipts
Here is where this week's numbers come from, so you can check us.
Market closes: Nasdaq closing data, re-pulled after Friday's close. Weekly changes are computed from October 30 closes on the same series.
Jobs: the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation release for October 2026, published Friday, November 6. The consensus figure is the Reuters poll. December rate pricing: CME FedWatch, as reported Friday.
Earnings: Cummins and IonQ official releases, their filed quarterly reports, and their earnings calls. Guidance is printed exactly as each company gave it.
Volatility: the VIX Thursday close is the CBOE official close. Index moves for Thursday are the desk's verified close records.
Dates: the CPI date is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics release schedule. The Nvidia date is from the company's own October 28 announcement. The Rigetti date is its confirmed earnings date.
Flow, gamma levels, intraday prices, and published lines: ZeroGamma desk data and the desk's published research.
CoreWeave bond reading: dated bond tape for the 9 percent notes due 2031, November 4 and 5 trades near 80 cents on the dollar, about a 15.6 percent yield.
Iran: the Associated Press reported on October 28 that U.S. officials had warned Gulf allies to prepare for possible renewed strikes on Iran and for retaliation. The Wall Street Journal reported on November 6 on the pending decision, Friday's small U.S. strikes on Qeshm Island, and Qatar's mediation push.
Verify everything. That's the whole point.
ZeroGamma Research
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