A Weekly Market Intelligence Dispatch · By Anthony Spinella

Charted Territory

No GPS. No guesses. Just price.

The signal is out there. You just have to know where to look.

Section I

Current Conditions

Macro overview — what the water looks like today

This was the week the Fed actually delivered — its first rate hike in three years — and the market spent all five sessions repositioning around it. Monday and Tuesday were pure pre-Fed positioning: stocks fell both days as the 10-year Treasury yield touched 5% Monday — its first time there since 2023 — then pushed further to 5.041% Tuesday, a level 2023 never actually reached, making it the highest since July 2007.

Wednesday was the main event. The Fed raised the funds rate 25 basis points to 3.75-4.00%, voting 12-0 — a notable shift from the 9-3 split that defined earlier meetings this year, meaning inflation concern is no longer confined to a handful of hawkish dissenters. The Summary of Economic Projections that came with it was arguably more important than the hike itself. The median 2026 year-end rate projection rose to 4.1% from 3.8% in June, and the 2027 median rose to 4.1% from 3.6% — previously the committee expected easing next year; now it expects none. Of 18 officials submitting projections, 16 penciled in at least one more hike before year-end. The Fed also raised its own 2026 PCE inflation forecast to 3.7% (core 3.4%), and this was the first dot plot to include 2029 projections. Warsh, consistent with June, declined to submit a personal dot. Markets read it as a "duration shock" — the hike was priced in, but how long rates stay restrictive was the real repricing. The S&P dropped as much as 78 points intraday to around 7,500 before bouncing to close at 7,551.81 (−0.45%), while the Dow fell more than 800 points intraday before finishing around 51,462 (−1.2%).

Thursday reversed hard. Breadth was genuinely good — 63% of stocks advancing — with the Nasdaq-100 and Mag Seven leading and semiconductors (SMH) up nearly 3%, while the Russell 2000 lagged, closing at its lows with a modest 0.6% gain. Yields stabilizing rather than breaking decisively above 5%, plus oil falling more than 3% on a surprise inventory build, gave risk assets room to run. The takeaway from the day: investors chose to look past a higher-for-longer rate path and return to the AI growth story instead.

Friday closed out a genuinely split week. The Dow slipped 0.18% to 51,682.64, the S&P edged up 0.17% to 7,650.50, and the Nasdaq added another 0.39% to 26,522.55, as the 10-year climbed back above 5% (last near 5.006%) after Thursday's brief dip below it. For the week: the Dow fell 1.7% — its third straight losing week and worst performance since March — the S&P was roughly flat at −0.1%, and the Nasdaq was the only major average positive, up 0.7%. The dollar was the other clear mover, climbing back above the 100 level for the first time in seven weeks, up roughly 1% on the week, as the market priced in the higher-for-longer path.

Net for the week: a historic, unanimous rate hike, a hawkish dot plot signaling more to come, and a market that — after an initial hawkish flinch — chose to shrug it off in tech while small caps and the Dow bore the brunt of the higher-rate reality.

Section II

The Depth Gauge

Market internals & breadth — how deep does the move really go?

This is now five straight weeks of breadth deterioration, and this week the damage broadened rather than concentrated. NYSE net advances swung to −905 from +583 — the worst single reading we've logged all series — and it happened during the exact week the S&P finished roughly flat, meaning far more stocks declined than advanced even as the index barely moved. The percentage of names above their 50-day fell under 30%, to 28.80% from 39.20%, and the 200-day reading dropped to 52.00% from 59.00% — barely half the index now holding a long-term uptrend, down from 74% just five weeks ago. New 52-week highs versus lows went decisively negative, at −4.40%, meaning new lows are now clearly outpacing new highs.

The one number that didn't move at all is arguably the most telling: the put/call ratio held flat at 0.58, exactly where it sat last week and the week before. After a historic Fed hike, a hawkish dot plot, and the worst breadth reading of the series, options positioning still shows no real spike in hedging activity. That's a genuine disconnect — the internals are flashing some of the weakest readings we've tracked, yet the options market isn't pricing in commensurate concern.

Net it out: the percentage of the index above its 200-day has now fallen from 74% to 52% in five weeks — a genuinely serious erosion in market structure, even though the S&P itself is barely off its highs. That's the internal risk sitting underneath the constructive price and macro story laid out elsewhere in this issue — worth watching closely, even if it's not yet enough on its own to change the bias.

Section III

Dead Reckoning

Technical analysis — navigating by price action alone

Since the S&P's intraday record of 7,816 on August 13th, we've seen a decline of 3.95% into this past Wednesday's intraday low of 7,507 — a clean test of the 100-day moving average, which sat at 7,510 that same day. Textbook: price found the medium-term trend line almost to the point.

The catalyst for the month's decline was a massive run-up in yields. The 10-year rose roughly 38 basis points over that span, from about 4.625% to this week's high near 5.015%. That move was itself driven by a parallel spike in oil, as tensions with Iran re-escalated and pressured both inflation expectations and equities together. WTI ran roughly 34% from that same starting point, topping just shy of $107 this past Tuesday, before reversing about 11% to $95.50 on real de-escalation news: Saudi Arabia began repairing its East-West pipeline — shut down after drone strikes tied to the Iran war had pulled roughly 7 million barrels per day off the market — with a partial restart expected within days and full capacity within six weeks. Saudi Arabia also began routing additional crude to Asian refiners via ship-to-ship transfers near Oman's Sohar port, letting tankers bypass the Strait of Hormuz entirely. That's a genuine supply-side fix, not just a ceasefire headline, and it's why oil gave back so much so fast.

Section IV

Tide Watch

Sentiment & flows — is the tide coming in or going out?

This week produced the most extreme sentiment reading of the entire series. AAII bears jumped 14 full percentage points to 53.3% — a genuine outlier, not just an elevated reading — while bulls fell 9.2 points to 28.8%. The bull-bear spread collapsed to −24.5%, by far the steepest we've logged. Fear & Greed confirmed it, sliding to roughly 28 (Fear), dipping as low as 26 during Wednesday's FOMC session. Retail investors, in other words, watched the Fed's first hike in three years and the hawkish dot plot and got genuinely scared — not just cautious.

By the contrarian framework we've leaned on all series, this is exactly the kind of extreme that tends to mark a low rather than confirm one. The crowd doesn't get to 53% bearish on a week where the S&P finished basically flat unless fear is running ahead of what price is actually doing.

The futures data adds a fascinating wrinkle: commercials flipped from a meaningful net short to net long for the first time in a long stretch — the hedgers turning outright bullish the same week retail sentiment cratered. That's about as clean a divergence between "smart money" and the crowd as we've seen all series. Large speculators, on the other hand, pushed their net short past −100,000 for the first time this series, while small speculators trimmed their long meaningfully. So the picture is mixed on the professional side — commercials bullish, large specs increasingly bearish — but the retail extreme paired with commercials flipping long is the signal worth weighing most heavily here.

Net it out: this is the single most fearful reading we've tracked, and it arrived the same week commercials turned net long for the first time in months. If the contrarian framework holds, this is the kind of setup that's preceded strength before, not confirmed weakness.

Section V

The Heading

Trade ideas & outlook — here's where we're pointed

This week, we ultimately resolved lower in the S&P 500 — just barely — after the market found technical support at a clean bounce off the 100-day moving average at 7,510, then rallied through the final two days of the week to gain roughly 2%, before running into resistance at the now-flatlining 20-day at 7,660.

So where does that leave us? Zoom out, and the picture is more constructive than the week's red close suggests. The market absorbed a genuine repricing in interest rates — the Fed's first hike since 2023 — a run-up in the 10-year Treasury yield to its highest level since 2007, and a sharp spike in oil prices, and still only fell 3.95% from its record high. Based purely on that evidence, the market is strong, even with real risks underneath. There are plenty of those risks I could list, but the biggest ones are exactly what's already weighed on the last month's performance — they're not new information, they're priced.

From here — and here's the big if — if rates have peaked, and my contrarian read is that by hiking now, the Fed is signaling it's willing to tame inflation directly, which should stoke confidence rather than undermine it, then equities should be able to resume higher into year-end, seasonally the strongest stretch of the calendar. The data backs this up: the S&P has finished higher in 26 of the past 30 fourth quarters, averaging roughly a 5% gain over the period. There's clear evidence the AI buildout continues regardless of the rate path, and I want to be positioned in the companies set to benefit most directly — the energy providers and data center infrastructure names — and, from more of a mispricing angle than the raw AI-narrative trade, the discounted, recovering software names

A Note on Approach. I want to take a more zoomed-out lens this week, and moving forward you'll likely see more of that from me. I'll continue playing intraweek patterns — most of my own trading happens on that timeframe — but I recognize most readers have a longer horizon, and I want this section to be more directly actionable for that audience.

On the Radar & Game Plan

For the longer-term plan, I'm keeping core exposure in broad market indexes — VOO, SPY, QQQ, IWM, ACWI. On the more active, tactical side, I'm looking to add to discounted AI-adjacent names positioned to benefit from the catalysts we've discussed. These aren't names I'd marry at current levels — there's still real inflation risk in this market, and a lot of AI-related names have already run significantly — but plenty of attractive setups remain.

Today, I want to talk specifically about BE, which I've now covered over the last two issues, and how I'm managing the position near-term. I originally flagged this name two issues ago at $250. I entered intraweek at an average price of $230, added more at $250, and my average now sits around $240 after using this week's weakness to increase the position further.

Price has pulled back this past week, and using the 3-month, shorter-term chart to assess key levels, I'm watching the 100-period SMA to hold near $251 — if tested, I'd add to the position there. If that level fails, I'll look to the rising 200-period SMA at $231 as the next support, which is coincidentally right around my original entry. Both levels are highlighted on the chart below and both are actionable.

Section VI

Off the Chart

Life beyond the screens — dispatches from the road & the water

📍  Colorado Springs - CO

Hope this week's issue reaches everyone well. A quick note on the newsletter moving forward, since I'm sure most of you saw the change emails come out over the last week.

First — thank you. To everyone who's already subscribed to the premium version, your support means more than you know. This project started as something I wrote for myself on Sunday mornings, and having people back it enough to pay for it is not something I take for granted.

For those who haven't yet, here's how things are changing, one last time: premium will be 25% off for the first 100 people, confirming your spot on the weekly emailing list, enrolling you in Rapid Take, and giving you an edge on every market call and read I'm looking at.

This issue, and this week, will be the last time anyone who hasn't subscribed via the link in the announcement emails (attached below) will see a full issue land in their inbox. Premium subscribers will continue getting the full weekly issue, plus intraweek price callouts, event briefings, and trades. For those who don't move to premium, you won't receive the weekly email — just a reminder that the issue from two weeks prior has been posted to my website, charted-territory.com.

Now, onto the travels. We spent the last week and a half in Charleston, SC after our stretch on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Charleston was full of catching up with friends, time at Folly Beach, and enjoying our last week in the Southeast before heading west. We drove out through Nashville this past Tuesday for a pit stop, catching up with more friends from CofC who live there now — great time, and a shoutout to D1 Fitness for a brutal workout while we were there. From there, we drove two days straight through Missouri and Kansas until we reached Colorado Springs, where we're currently stationed at my uncle's house to regroup before flying home for a wedding at the end of the month.

The drive itself was quite eventful — we drove through a dust storm in Kansas that I genuinely thought might turn into a tornado, followed shortly after by hail on the ground once we got through it. A huge climate shift coming from the humidity of the South. We spent the weekend here in Colorado Springs enjoying the crisp mountain air, and drove up Pikes Peak this Sunday, where the attached photo is from. This week, we're continuing to explore Colorado, getting the van ready for the next, cooler leg of the trip — which will involve setting up a heater — and enjoying having a home base for the next week or so.

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Charted Territory

By Anthony Spinella · Market Intelligence Dispatch

This newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.

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