Tuesday Market Update

The market is doing exactly what it should be doing after a strong late-November move.

Grinding.
Rotating.
Frustrating anyone who’s either over-levered or glued to the five-minute chart.

This is not distribution.
This is digestion.

The market is bleeding out excess optimism without breaking structure — which is usually how the next move gets set up.

When defensives don’t work during a pullback, that’s usually not the start of something ugly.

It’s usually the opposite.

This pullback didn’t catch us off guard.

We planned for it.

In the Saturday Alpha Notes, I explicitly mapped out this scenario — including the dip-buy zone where the market is now trading.

That level was not reactive.
It was pre-defined.

Today, price traded directly into that zone.

This is exactly how healthy markets behave after strong advances:
they pull back into support, not through it.

Downside levels to respect remain the same:

That second level matters. A clean break below ~6700 would change the conversation.

Until then, this is still consolidation — not breakdown.

Risk/reward improves as price moves deeper into areas that were identified before the volatility showed up.

If you missed it, you can revisit the original chart and thesis here:
👉 Saturday Alpha Notes — SPX Dip Buy Zone

The pressure is coming from the names that matter most:

When the heaviest weights stall, the index looks sick — even if the underlying structure is fine.

At the same time:

That’s rotation, not risk-off.

If this were a real top, defensives would be screaming higher.

They’re not.

Tech has been the problem — and that’s exactly why it’s becoming interesting.

The decline is starting to look overdone when viewed through timing and cycle lenses rather than pure momentum.

This does not mean straight-line upside tomorrow.

It means downside velocity is slowing.

NVDA matters — not because of hype, but because of weight.

The current setup suggests:

That does not mean a smooth 2025.

A tradable bounce can exist inside a choppier year.

Despite the noise:

As long as those hold, playing for a push back toward highs is logical.

Leaders rotate.
Trends don’t die quietly.

There are still only 15 total transactions in this portfolio since inception.

That’s intentional.

The market exists to move money from impatient hands to patient ones with a plan.

Today, I added 75 shares of $CIFR, as shown in the transaction log.

No reaction trade.
No short-term thesis change.

This is a continuation of a longer-duration position built with the expectation that volatility is the cost of admission.

I’m underwriting years — not weeks.