Oil Relented. Yields Didn't.
Oil Eased; The 10-Year Stayed Above 5%
Oil gave stocks some relief on Friday. Brent crude dipped below $98 a barrel, and the S&P 500 ended its three-day losing streak. For the full week, the Nasdaq gained 2.1%, the S&P 500 rose 1.2%, and the Dow added 0.3%. The Russell 2000 lost 0.8%.
Bond yields told a tougher story. The 10-year Treasury yield finished Friday at 5.17%, up from 5.01% a week earlier. Lower oil helped at week's end, but the higher yield still raises the financing hurdle for capital-intensive projects.
Technology Led A Split Market
Chip stocks helped power Monday's rally, and the Nasdaq's weekly gain showed how much demand for technology can matter even when borrowing costs rise. The small-cap decline showed that the strength wasn't evenly distributed. We'll keep watching oil and yields alongside company results and the prices available in the options market.
How We Traded It
Monday's alert paired a managed-care margin recovery with a bioprocessing supplier. The bioprocessing calendar filled; the managed-care order expired unfilled.
Tuesday brought a repriced managed-care order and an AI-powered software turnaround. The managed-care structure filled; the software order expired unfilled.
Wednesday's ideas were an embodied-AI trade and a payroll-software trade. The software diagonal filled; the embodied-AI order expired unfilled.
Thursday, we revisited the embodied-AI trade and added ideas in AI-powered software and life-sciences tools. All three structures filled at their published limits.
Friday's two ideas paired supply-chain software with gene editing. Neither filled at the morning limits. We published higher limits after repricing them intraday, and both structures filled below those revised limits.
Across the five days, eight of our eleven day-order attempts filled. The three unfilled orders expired; we revisited all three ideas later in the week and filled them.
This Week's Exits
Four of the five completed trades in Friday's Exits post were winners. Rocket Lab's October call spread was the lone completed loser, closing at a 23% loss on original maximum risk. Ouster's four-leg hybrid led them, returning 224% on original maximum risk when we completed the exit. Eight other cards record partial exits from positions that remain open; their final results haven't entered the year-to-date tally yet.
The full exit record and options commentary are here:
The Hurdle For Next Week
This week's gains held despite a rise in the 10-year yield. Another oil surge could renew inflation pressure, while a further yield rise would make long-duration growth harder to finance. We'll keep looking for names with strong potential returns and options structures whose prices justify the risk.
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