The Friday Wrap — October 30, 2026: three red weeks, and Alphabet's -12.6%

Friday did the damage

SPY closed the week at 755.72, down 0.56% and its third red week in a row. Almost all of that was one session. Friday alone cost SPY 1.77% and QQQ 3.47%, and QQQ ended the week at 690.49, down 1.97%. IWM fell 1.65% on Friday and still finished the week up 1.30% at 279.33. It was the only one of the three to end green.

The month tells the same story at a larger size. October is complete, and the index you owned decided your result. QQQ lost 6.66% for the month, SPY lost 0.91% and IWM gained 0.52%. That is 7.18 points between the best and the worst. Zoom out and the year is intact. QQQ is still up 12.40% year to date, SPY is up 10.82% and IWM leads at +13.47%. September ran the other way: QQQ gained 3.21% while IWM lost 5.46%. Leadership has swapped twice in two months, and the index averaged it into a small loss both times.

The Fed held, and two members wanted to hike

The committee left the target range at 3.75%-4.00% on October 28. The vote was 10-2. Governor Lisa Cook and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack dissented, each preferring a quarter-point increase. The September 16 meeting had raised rates by 25 basis points to this range on a 12-0 vote, so the committee went from unanimous to split inside six weeks, and both dissents ran toward tighter policy. One summary we read said three members dissented; the others said two, and we are using two.

Admiral Markets headlined its recap as markets pricing a December hike. We do not carry futures odds, so we cannot give you a probability, and we have not checked the claim against a futures feed. The next meeting is December 9. The coverage tied the hawkish tilt to energy costs from the war with Iran spreading into other goods and services. Most of these outlets are aggregators, and we have not read the statement text itself, so treat the vote count as reported rather than verified against the Fed's own page.

Thursday split the megacaps

The broker feed shows Thursday treated the megacaps very differently. Alphabet gapped down at the open, 11.7% below Wednesday's close of 324.89, and finished at 283.82. That is -12.64% for the session, on 139.7 million shares against 63.1 million the day before. Amazon fell 4.25%, from 254.60 to 243.79, on 85.2 million shares.

The others barely moved. Meta rose 1.97% to 624.52. Apple rose 1.48% to 348.91. Microsoft slipped 0.16% to 530.14, though its range ran from 519.56 to 541.29, which is a much wider session than the close suggests. Nvidia fell 0.80% to 213.66. We did not retrieve a sourced explanation for the Alphabet or Amazon moves, or confirm which of these names reported this week, so we are not offering a cause. What the numbers show is that two of the five took the damage on Thursday and the other three held.

Friday then took the Nasdaq lower, a day after the split and not on the day of it. Whether one caused the other is not something our bars can say.

Crude and the Iran backdrop

Our oil proxy sat still on the week and ran hard on the month. USO, which holds WTI futures and is not the spot price, is down 0.41% for the week, up 15.91% for October, and 36.18% above its 200-day. XLE, the energy sector fund, closed Thursday at 68.71 on the broker feed.

The most recent sourced crude print we found is dated October 20. Brent was about $108.40 that day, off a five-month high, as traders bet on U.S.-Iran diplomacy even as tanker attacks in the Strait of Hormuz escalated. The same report gave a July-to-October Brent range of $79.36 to $109.86. That is a week old, so it describes where the market was, not where it ended the week.

The weekly frame

SPY is below both its 10-week average at 766.40 and its 8-week EMA at 763.48, by 1.39% and 1.02%. Together with three red weeks, that matches our historical-analog filter. We have run it on the ~129-week window, and it has fired 14 times before. One week later, the median SPY change was +0.21%, with 8 of 14 up and a range of -3.07% to +5.67%. Four weeks later, the median was +2.59%, with 8 of 13 up and a range from -12.27% to +12.59%. That is a small sample over about two and a half years, and a spread that wide says the filter is describing a condition, not a forecast.

Weekly MACD is still above zero at 13.06 but under its signal line at 16.65. Price has broken down faster than momentum has rolled over.

QQQ is the weaker frame. It sits 4.39% under its 10-week average and 3.52% under its 8-week EMA, with weekly RSI at 46.8. IWM is the odd one out. Its 10-week average is 283.27, 1.39% above Friday's close, but the weekly bar was green.

The daily tape and breadth

SPY's Friday range ran from 750.36 to 761.46, and it closed in the lower half of that range, under all three short averages: the 10-day at 766.50, the 20-day at 770.47 and the 50-day at 767.49. The 200-day at 728.85 is 3.69% below. The 60-day range is 749.60 to 781.62, so Friday closed 0.82% above the bottom of it. Daily RSI is 40.2 and the stochastic is at 18.9. Those mean SPY is stretched to the downside in the short run, which is a description of position, not a signal.

QQQ closed 3.22% under its 10-day and 5.18% under its 20-day, with its 200-day at 679.52 only 1.61% below. Its Friday low of 683.45 is also the bottom of its 60-day range. The 20/50 spread has narrowed to +0.44% from +0.79%, which means the 20-day is close to crossing under the 50-day.

IWM is different again. It is 0.69% above its 20-day and 0.22% above its 200-day, but 1.74% under its 50-day. The small caps held the middle of their structure while the Nasdaq broke. That divergence is the most honest paragraph of the week: the index that fell hardest and the one that held were separated by 3.3 points on the week and 7.2 on the month.

Cross-asset proxies

These are ETF proxies, not the underlying indexes. Gold, through GLD, fell 3.47% on Friday, 2.95% on the week and 6.58% on the month, and sits 13.84% under its 200-day. Gold and QQQ fell the same amount on the same day, which is not what a flight to safety looks like. Treasuries bid: TLT gained 0.61% on the week and 5.22% on the month, and IEF gained 0.78% and 2.74%. The dollar proxy UUP was up 0.14% on the week and 0.80% on the month. VIXY, a futures fund and not spot VIX, rose 10.5% on Friday and 2.73% on the week.

Open interest

The OCC data is as of October 28, so it is not Friday's book. For the expiry on October 30, the largest put open interest was at 735 with 80,070 contracts, then 750 with 67,148 and 745 with 64,012. The largest call strike was 800 with 47,544, then 780 with 27,904. Friday's low of 750.36 landed within 36 cents of the 750 put strike.

The November 2 expiry is much thinner. Its largest put strike is also 750 with 8,899 contracts, and its largest call is 770 with 2,139. This is open interest only. We do not carry gamma.

Next week

From the research, the ISM manufacturing report is listed for Monday, November 2 and JOLTS for Tuesday, November 3. The December 9 FOMC meeting is the next policy decision. We could not confirm the date of the jobs report from the sources we found, so check the BLS calendar rather than ours. From our local cache, which covers 13 semiconductor names and was last fetched September 18, AMD is scheduled for November 3. Our audited local econ list ended October 2, and dates move.

What we don't carry

No dark-pool prints, no closing-auction imbalance, no spot VIX and no true gamma exposure. The levels come from SIP bars and OCC open interest.

What this sets up

The through-line is that the week looked calm until Friday, and the damage was concentrated in the index that had already been weakest. Alphabet and Amazon sold off on Thursday, the other megacaps held, and QQQ gave up 3.47% the next day while small caps stayed above their 200-day.

Next week begins with the ISM report and AMD's earnings, with the jobs report to be confirmed. SPY's 60-day low is 749.60, 0.82% under Friday's close, and the 750 strike carries the largest put open interest in both expiries. If that gives, 735 is the next strike with size and the 200-day at 728.85 is below it. If SPY recovers its 10-week average at 766.40, the 50-day at 767.49 and the 20-day at 770.47 are the levels above. For QQQ, 683.45 is the floor to watch and its 200-day at 679.52 is just beneath it. Which of those happens is not ours to say. Where they sit is.

The Coil board

The account is in day mode as of Friday. The SPX book is risk-off and in cash, since SPY is above its 200-day but 1.5% under its 50-day with no live index setup. The QQQ book is index-only, with a live setup but no sector open beneath it. Our macro read is risk-off and defensive. Crypto is selective, with the BTC 200-day gate open but no sleeve above its own 50-day, and 32 of 81 panel names above their own 200-day.

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This letter is impersonal research produced by an automated system. It is not investment advice, it is not a recommendation, and it does not account for your circumstances.

Sources — prices, ranges, moving averages and weekly statistics from our own SIP bars; open interest from OCC data as of 2026-10-28; single-stock sessions from the broker feed. Macro and news from Admiral Markets, political.org, XTB, Investing.com's investinglive, KuCoin News and third-party economic calendars.