November 26, 2025 Live Trading Room Market Recap & Trades - (with AI Briefing notes Friday)
Sell The Rumor of Consumer Cyclical Slowdown; Buy The News
Retail sector surged this week, with Black Friday dead ahead. Also, XRT had fallen back to its 50W/200D Friday, so the move higher could also be explained as a technical bounce. There were a few of these bounces, which helped the market enjoy a solid 4 day bounce.
HOOD & APP turned perfectly around on the short targets I gave for the swing shorts: 106.03 now 128.35 for HOOD & 488.70 now 590 for APP! Congrats if you took those both ways.
SPX overshot to 6829.62 target which was the daily gap down level into Thursday Nov 13th. For Friday, I expect rejection so that we fall back inside 6807 to potentially settle at 6749.53 Friday. That’s the bearish case for the week, but closing > 6700 on the weekly keeps the sideways in play big picture.
VIX did drop down and through my 17.50 area into the ‘16s’ before settling back above 17. I still see 16.75 before rejection.
ES & RTY updated charts as both met price targets. Time for digestion/rejection into Monday most likely.
Chicago PMI crashed lower, with ISM Manufacturing Monday, Dec 1st which matters more.
Beige Book out today supporting a Dec rate cut, with nearly half of the districts noting weaker demand for workers. “That’s a significant downgrade since the previous report, when employment levels were seen as largely stable.” Bloomberg
Jobless Claims with the same ol’ same ol’, showing no change for years now. They say it’s a “no hiring, no firing” labor market, but this pinned jobless claims data is very unbelievable. And yet...
‘October saw 153,074 layoffs, a 183% increase from September and the highest for that month in 22 years. Total layoffs through October hit 1.1 million, 65% higher than the same period last year and the highest since the Great Recession started, excluding pandemic layoffs in 2020.’
via Challenger, Gray & Christmas
DELL raised guidance, saying next quarter (NOV-JAN) sales will be solid and AI server demand is broadening out beyond the giant cloud companies — that’s important if growth is to be sustainable.
WMT opened Monday at monthly trigger breakout level of 105.30 and closed nicely higher. This is approaching Blue Skies, which is bullish not bearish unless/until it breaks back below 105
Which brings me to seeing a lot of set ups in greatly oversold consumer cyclical plays…