The Friday Wrap — November 13, 2026: a green week, Nvidia's CEO out, a ground stop after close

Prices as of 2:12 PM Pacific today, Friday, all official closes. Coil Engine figures for today and this week stay preliminary until tonight's settle.

SPY finished the week at +2.59%, its first green week after four red ones, and Friday handed some of it back because the selling sat in the chips. Nvidia is the story underneath: its chief executive resigned on Thursday and the stock's week change was −12.75%. After the bell came a second national-scale infrastructure failure in two days, a nationwide FAA ground stop a day after Microsoft's mail outage, and none of Friday's closes price it. Our own book caught almost none of the bounce.

Two days, two national-scale infrastructure failures

After the close, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the FAA had issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports following a communication issue that affected all of its Air Route Traffic Control Centers, and that FAA technicians were investigating. His post gives no cause past a communication issue and no flight count, and we add neither. When we last checked, at 2:12 PM Pacific, the FAA's public status feed listed ground delay programs and closures at individual airports and no ground stop, so we cannot say whether it was still in force. Read the FAA's status page before you rely on any of this.

Thursday brought the other one. Microsoft's official 365 status account reported Exchange Online access problems across the Americas on Thursday morning, then servers unexpectedly unavailable and deployments paused, and on Friday morning it reported broad recovery and stability. Friday's closes below come before the ground stop, so they carry the Microsoft episode and none of the airspace news.

What we would watch on Monday if the problem is not contained is the airlines and the travel trade first, since a closed airspace stops their product, and the confidence trade in big-cap tech second, since two outages in two days put concentration risk on the table. If the stop is lifted and flights are moving, none of that has to reach the tape. We have no view on cause and make no call on it.

A green week with a hole in the middle

SPY closed at 754.37 on the week (+2.59%), against 679.89 for QQQ (+3.63%) and 277.54 for IWM (+1.41%). Friday gave a good chunk of it back, with SPY at −0.36% on the day and QQQ at −1.20%, so the selling sat in the chips and the largest tech weights while the rest of the tape held.

November is almost flat for SPY and still 1.54% down for QQQ, 1.36 points apart. The quarter is where QQQ hurts, at 8.09% down, and the year is the reminder that all three are still well ahead. A week this good barely moved the monthly column, which says how deep the hole was a week ago.

Nvidia lost its chief executive

The week belonged to one stock. Nvidia said in a filing dated Thursday that Jensen Huang had resigned as president, chief executive and a member of the board, effective immediately. Colette Kress, the finance chief, is interim chief executive, Harvey C. Jones is the board's first chair, and the board is searching for a permanent chief executive among internal and external candidates. The filing gives no reason, and we give none.

Nvidia closed last Friday at 186.64 and finished this one at 162.85, a week change of −12.75%. Thursday was the violent session, with the stock −4.34% on the day of the announcement, and Friday added −2.01%. SMH, the semiconductor fund, moved −2.99% on Friday and +4.91% on the week, so the sector bounced around a stock that did not.

Earnings played no part in the week. Nvidia's own report is due Tuesday, November 17, just after the close, as the company said in the same filing.

The Fed's last word leaned toward a hike

The FOMC left the target range at 3-3/4 to 4 percent on October 28, by a 10 to 2 vote. Both dissenters preferred a quarter-point increase. The statement says economic activity is expanding at a strong pace and inflation remains elevated.

The cross-asset proxies agree with the direction. UUP, the dollar proxy, rose +1.27% on the week. TLT moved −3.10% and IEF −1.98%, so duration lost on the week. GLD, gold's proxy, moved −4.58% and sits −12.97% from its 200-day. The market's own pricing of a hike is futures odds that we do not carry, so we leave the number out.

Crude fell again

USO, which holds WTI futures and is not the spot price, moved −1.91% on the week and −13.77% for November, and it is still 14.04% above its 200-day. A fund that rolls contracts can lag the futures it holds, so read it as the direction and not the exact move. We report the situation and nothing past it, since no primary source we could read explains the week's swings.

What the tape did to the structure

SPY is still under its weekly averages, at 761.41 for the 10-week and 756.58 for the 8-week. Weekly MACD is negative, so price has repaired faster than momentum. Daily, it closed above its 10-day (751.55) and its 200-day (731.92), and below the 20-day (759.02) and 50-day (764.43), closing −1.32% from the 50-day. Friday's candle opened high, ran to 760.12, dropped to 745.20 and closed with a long lower tail, a tail that holds 61% of the range.

QQQ is the weaker chart. It closed under its 200-day at 682.24 and −5.37% from its 50-day, with its 60-day low at 647.05. IWM is the quiet one, just under its own 200-day at 279.41 and with a hammer-shaped Friday.

SPY open interest, from the OCC as of November 11, a lagging file, showed the heaviest puts in the November 16 expiry at 763 (20,118 contracts) and the heaviest calls at 770 (6,922).

The book: Friday, and eight new names

Coil Engine, Friday Nov 13: +0.73%. S&P 500 (SPY): −0.36%. Nasdaq-100 (QQQ): −1.20%. Today's figure is preliminary until tonight's settle.

Since July 8, 2026, through Nov 12: Coil Engine −12.34%, SPY +1.57%, QQQ −3.27%. Engine-only, time-weighted return, net of deposits. Two down sessions held flat and one hand-placed trade removed: see /results.

We sold two names on Friday, FCFS at −0.60% and CAMT at −0.83%, and both closed red.

We carry ADM, ARKG, DDOG, DELL, GLW, NVDA, SKHY and STX, and the rest is cash. All eight were bought today and none has been sold yet.

The week: a green market and a flat book

For the week, net of deposits, the account moved +0.09% against +2.59% for SPY and +3.63% for QQQ, and that figure is preliminary until tonight's settle.

We caught almost none of a +2.59% week. The record shows 41 positions closed, 13 green and 28 red. With both indexes under their 55-day averages the engine was not built to chase a bounce, and in a week this strong that cost us. We say so plainly.

The second decision was the exits. KMB closed twice at a loss, at −2.86% on Wednesday and −1.14% on Thursday. ZBRA closed at −2.50%, BNTX at −2.61% and FCFS at −2.98%, and FCFS, the week's worst, closed again at −0.60% on Friday. We count those as misses on entry.

The third decision paid. Five positions closed at a gain on Monday, and BG at +4.08% was the best close of the week, alongside MEDP at +3.56% and IBB at +2.87%.

QQQ is shown for intraday (during market hours) only; its overnight and total figures are not computed yet.

41 sessions from Sep 10, 2026 to Nov 12, 2026 have an intraday (during market hours) reading; 38 of them also have an overnight reading, and the table uses those 38. Sep 17, Sep 24 and Sep 30 are left out of the table because the session before each was cut short, so their overnight move can't be measured. 6 other sessions were cut short and are left out: Sep 9, Sep 11, Sep 15, Sep 16, Sep 23, Sep 29.

These figures are the change in Coil's trading account value, net of deposits, compounded over the same 38 trading sessions, Sep 10, 2026 to Nov 12, 2026. Intraday, during market hours, runs from the engine's first reading at or after 6:30 AM Pacific to its last reading at or before 1:01 PM Pacific; overnight is the time in between; total is the two together. Cash held in the account counts toward the return. SPY and QQQ are shown as total return, dividends included, over the same sessions. Sessions whose first reading came after 6:48 AM or whose last came before 12:45 PM are left out.

SPY on Sep 18 and QQQ on Sep 21 include a dividend adjustment.

The call, graded

The call was: "We think SMH closes below Monday's close of 487.41 on Friday, November 13." It held. SMH's regular-session close on Friday was 486.75, below the 487.41 line, and the tell, a close at or above it, did not occur.

It was not a gimme. SMH started Friday well above the line, and it took a −2.99% session as the chip selling picked up again to get under it. Credit it for what it was.

What this sets up

The through-line is a tape that bounced hard on an index level and then met two things it cannot control, an Nvidia without its chief executive and a Fed whose last decision drew two votes to hike. Both reach next week, since Nvidia reports Tuesday, November 17, just after the close. The jobs report is December 4, the FOMC meets December 8-9, and CPI is December 10, all from the agency schedules. Dates move.

For SPY, the 20-day at 759.02 and Friday's high of 760.12 sit just above, and the 10-day at 751.55 and Friday's low of 745.20 sit just below. If SPY clears 761.41, it is back through the weekly 10-week line. If 745.20 gives, 732.71, the 60-day low, is the next level with a history. For QQQ the 200-day at 682.24 is the line it closed beneath, and 647.05 is the floor. For IWM, 279.41 is the 200-day. Which of those happens is not ours to say. Where they sit is.

What our engine sees

The board is in day mode as of Friday, and the read is risk off. The gate reads cash on both indexes, SPY because it sits under its 55-day and QQQ because it sits under its 200-day, and it opens nothing new beneath either. Money already sits in staples, health care, consumer discretionary, utilities and the dividend payers. It has left technology and the broader metals complex, and the one place it is arriving is the established gold miners. The book sits against the gate, since we hold eight names while the gate says cash. Crypto is closed, with BTC under its 200-day gate and 19 of 81 panel names above their own.

The gate, the sector map and the list of names at an entry are the reads an AI agent gets when it connects to Coil as an agent tool, and the same ones it can buy singly with x402. The free tools need no key: coil.trade/connect.

Keep reading

A week like this one is easy to misread from the headline index alone, and the way to read what lies under it is laid out in plain terms at coil.trade/learn, next to each close note and the Friday Wrap.

Our full record is at coil.trade/results.

Not advice.