Morning Minutes
8/5/26
Good morning, traders.
The S&P 500 has posted two huge days of expansion and pushed to fresh all-time highs. With that, I am expecting balancing today in the markets. Be especially careful if you are day trading, these are the days most people lose money. After a move like this, direction becomes less predictable, so we’ll continue using Fibonacci extensions and key technical levels to identify potential resistance areas as the market digests recent gains.
If you look at sector performance pre-market, both defensive and risk-on sectors are trading higher. To me, that’s a sign of a market searching for balance rather than making a strong directional bet. Investors are still putting money to work, but they’re also rotating into areas that typically hold up better if volatility returns. That’s another reason I’m expecting a more balanced session rather than a straight continuation higher.
On the economic side, ADP Employment Change came in at 44K vs. 65K expected, adding another data point ahead of Friday’s jobs report.
We also still have several large earnings reports on deck, including Disney ($DIS), Uber ($UBER), Shopify ($SHOP), CVS ($CVS), Eli Lilly ($LLY), AppLovin ($APP), DoorDash ($DASH), MercadoLibre ($MELI), and Occidental Petroleum ($OXY), so there are plenty of potential catalysts left this week.
From the portfolio side, the only position we closed yesterday was a portion of our $INTC calls for a solid profit. We’ll look to trim a few more positions today where it makes sense and should be getting a few more positions into a risk-free runner stage, allowing those positions to continue working for us.
As always, don’t feel the need to force trades after a large directional move. Let the market come to you.