📊 Momentum Holds at 5.35—But Today Changes Everything
The score sits at 5.35 (Momentum: 60% QQQ / 40% TQQQ), unchanged from where it settled Monday morning at 5:52 AM ET. It briefly dipped to 5.31 at 5:24 AM Monday—a 28-minute wobble—before snapping back. That's the story of the past two weeks: the score oscillates between 5.30 and 5.35, testing the Constructive/Momentum boundary but always resolving higher.
QQQ closed Tuesday at $611.47, still below the 70-day EMA at $617.31. We're $5.84 away from reclaiming the trend line—wider than Sunday's $2.63 gap. The EMA is declining as QQQ struggles below it, which means the window to reclaim it is narrowing.
No EMA override applies here since the score is already bullish. But the divergence is worth noting: the score says leverage up, while the price trend says QQQ is still below its moving average. One of them has to be right.
Final Recommendation: 60% QQQ / 40% TQQQ
In about 7 hours, the delayed January jobs report drops. That's the catalyst that resolves this standoff.
🤖 The AI Wrecking Ball Swings to Wall Street
Sunday we said the SaaSpocalypse was a rotation, not a collapse. Well, the rotation is widening.
Tuesday, fintech startup Altruist launched an AI-powered tax planning tool inside its Hazel platform—analyze a client's 1040, pay stubs, and account statements, then spit out a personalized tax strategy in minutes. The kind of work that costs $500/hour from a wealth advisor.
The damage was immediate:
- LPL Financial: -8.31%
- Charles Schwab: -7.42%
- Raymond James: -8.75%
- S&P Global: -17% (compounded by an EPS miss and weak 2026 guidance)
The playbook is now painfully clear: AI startup launches a product that automates a chunk of an industry's revenue, and the entire sector gets repriced in hours. Last week it was Anthropic's Claude Cowork wiping nearly $1 trillion from software stocks. This week it's financial advisory. The question isn't which industry is next—it's which one isn't.
And yet, the companies making and deploying the AI keep winning. Nvidia ticked higher. The AI infrastructure trade is alive and well. It's everyone else who needs to worry.
📉 The Consumer Is Tapping Out
December retail sales came in flat. Zero percent. Wall Street expected +0.4%. During the holiday shopping season. Let that sink in.
The details are worse than the headline:
- Wage growth: Employment Cost Index rose 0.7% in Q4 2025—slowest since Q2 2021
- Furniture stores: -0.9%
- Clothing retailers: -0.7%
- The K-shaped consumer: Affluent households keep spending. Everyone else is pulling back.
Meanwhile, gold blew past $5,500/oz—the ultimate fear trade—while Bitcoin continues its death spiral, struggling around $69,000, down 44% from its peak. When gold surges and crypto crashes, it tells you exactly where institutional money is hiding.
The bond market noticed. Treasuries rallied on the weak retail data as traders priced in higher odds of the Fed cutting sooner. The Fed Funds rate sits at 3.50-3.75%, and the March meeting just got a lot more interesting.
💼 Jobs Report Day: The Data Vacuum Ends at 8:30 AM
This is it. After a week-long delay from the government shutdown, the January jobs report drops at 8:30 AM ET today.
Here's what the market expects:
- Nonfarm payrolls: ~55K (consensus), down from December's already-weak 50K
- Unemployment rate: Expected to hold around 4.4%
- The wild card: Annual benchmark revisions going back to March 2025 could erase most of the job gains for that entire period
The benchmark revision is the sleeper risk. If the BLS substantially revises down the past year of employment data, the labor market's "resilience" narrative crumbles. We could learn the economy was weaker than anyone thought for the last 12 months.
The game theory:
- Strong report (>80K, revisions intact): Rally. Economic resilience confirmed. QQQ makes a run at the EMA 70.
- In-line (~55K, modest revisions): Muted reaction. Status quo holds.
- Ugly (<30K or brutal revisions): Rate cut hopes surge but recession fears spike. Volatility explosion.
Friday's CPI (also delayed to Feb 13) is the second shoe. But today is the first—and the bigger one.
🎵 Tuesday's Earnings: Spotify's Moonshot vs. SPGI's Crater
Tuesday's earnings perfectly captured the market's split personality:
- Spotify: +15%. Crushed earnings ($4.73 vs $2.79 expected), added a record 38M users, gross margin hit 33.1%. New co-CEO declared 2026 the "Year of Raising Ambition." Best day since 2019.
- S&P Global: -17%. EPS missed ($4.30 vs $4.33), but the real damage was 2026 guidance ($19.40-$19.65 vs $19.96 consensus). Bond issuance cooling plus AI disruption fears hammered a data titan.
- Ford (after hours): Missed by 28% ($0.13 vs $0.18 expected). Record revenue at $187.3B, but net loss of $8.2B—largest since 2008—on $15.5B in EV-related charges. Stock rose 1.3% on improved 2026 guidance. Because sure, why not.
The Dow squeaked out another record close at 50,188 (+0.1%)—its third straight—while the Nasdaq dropped 0.6% and the S&P slipped 0.3%. This Dow-up-Nasdaq-down divergence is becoming a pattern. Old economy wins, tech gets the bills.
🎯 My Take: The Score Bets on Resilience. Today We Find Out.
Let me be blunt: the score at 5.35 is a bold call going into a jobs report that could reveal the labor market has been weaker than anyone thought for the past year.
But that's exactly what the model is designed to do—trade the data it has, not the data it's afraid of. Right now, the economic indicators feeding the score—credit spreads, liquidity conditions, Fed positioning—still support a bullish stance with leverage. The SaaS carnage and the financial sector selloff are sector-level disruptions, not systemic risk.
What gives me pause is the growing list of cracks: retail sales flat, wage growth at a 4-year low, QQQ below its EMA 70, and Bitcoin in freefall while gold screams higher. These aren't the signals of an economy firing on all cylinders. They're the signals of an economy holding together—barely—with the help of rate cut expectations and AI euphoria in the right names.
The Dow at 50,188 while the Nasdaq bleeds 0.6% tells the story: money is flowing out of growth and into value. If the jobs report confirms economic weakness, the rotation accelerates. If it shows strength, QQQ gets its shot at the EMA. The score says Momentum. In a few hours, we'll know if it earned it or if it overstepped.
⚠️ Bottom Line: The Most Important 8:30 AM of the Year (So Far)
Score: 5.35 (Momentum: 60% QQQ / 40% TQQQ). QQQ below EMA 70 at $611.47 vs $617.31—no override needed since the score is already bullish.
The delayed January jobs report hits at 8:30 AM ET. Between the actual payrolls number and the annual benchmark revisions, this is the most consequential data release of 2026 so far. The market has been trading in a data vacuum since the shutdown. That vacuum ends today.
Key levels to watch:
- QQQ $617.31: EMA 70 reclaim. A strong jobs report could push us there.
- QQQ $605: Last week's low. If the report is ugly, this is first support.
- Dow 50,000: Psychological level. Three straight record closes—can it hold a fourth?
The model says stay leveraged long. In a few hours, we'll know if that's conviction or hubris. I'll be watching at 8:30.