Stock Market This Week: Midterm Market Madness
It’s the weekend so relax, put your feet up, and watch a recap of our PreMarket Prep guests who joined us on the show this week with opinions, trade ideas and market commentary.
We have another full slate of guests joining us next week from Monday, so don’t forget to tune into PreMarket Prep live every morning from 8 am ET on YouTube.
Retail Earnings Season Preview
Beginning the week, before the market selloff after the Midterms was retail expert Ryan Craver, Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer, at Podean. He joined the PreMarket Prep team to break down the retail landscape heading into earnings season and the holidays.
Ryan tells us which stocks he’d take profits on, which best-of-breed names he’d keep buying, and why he’s “hoarding” Amazon at its cheapest valuation in company history.
He also covers whether the consumer is tapped out, how tariff refunds and buy now, pay later (Klarna, Affirm) could fuel a strong Q4, what brands will drive the holiday season, and a rapid-fire ticker round on Nike, Lululemon, Deckers, Estée Lauder, Crocs, and Meta.
What’s Christian Watching?
On Tuesday Christian Fromhertz, Founder and CEO of the Tribeca Trade Group joined the PreMarket Prep team with his weekly segment, “What’s Christian Watching?”
Stocks covered in this segment: $SMH $RSP $FFTY $XLB $INTC $MAGS
Seasonality, Oil, XLY Breakout Watch
Later on Tuesday’s show and right ahead of the Midterms, Scott Brown, CMT, of Brown Technical Insights breaks down what the charts are saying about the stock market.
He covered why November has historically been the best month of midterm years, why interest rates are driving both tech and the equal-weight S&P 500 (in opposite directions), and the key technical levels in the 10-year Treasury yield and TLT.
Democrats Sweep Congress
Joining us the day after the Midterms was STN Chief Economist Blu Putnam (founder of Bayesian Edge and former Chief Economist of CME Group), who breaks down the market fallout from the 2026 midterms: the odds of a December government shutdown, why the lame-duck session is Trump’s last window, how a Democratic Congress could squeeze funding for the Iran war, and what it means for oil.
Blu also explains why Fed Chair Kevin Warsh is now playing for his legacy — and why that means a December rate hike, more hikes after that, and “higher for longer” mortgage rates.
Crowded Trades Unwinding
Semiconductors sank while nearly everything else rallied after the midterms. On Thursday morning, Frank Cappelleri of CappThesis joined Pre-Market Prep to break down the charts that matter right now.
Frank covers crowded trades unwinding in NVDA, AMD, Micron, SanDisk vs. Texas Instruments and talks about what needs to happen for tech leadership to return.
It Doesn’t Have to Make Sense
Also joining the PreMarket Prep team on Thursday was J.R. Romero, leader of T3 Live’s Momentum Express Virtual Trading Floor. With Walmart at 46x earnings, Costco at 50x, and NVIDIA at 15x, does any of it make sense? According to J.R., it doesn’t have to.
In this T3 Thursday segment J.R. breaks down how he’s trading one of the strangest markets in years: the S&P 500 stuck sideways while consumer staples rip and chip stocks sink below their 200-day moving averages.
He explains his top-down morning routine (gamma exposure, the 10-year yield, crude oil and junk bond spreads), why he called the S&P 7,650 breakdown a Wyckoff “spring,” and why falling rates have Rocket, NAIL and TAN on the move.
Semiconductor Capitulation Selloff
On Friday we had another double dose of guests on PreMarket Prep. First up was options expert CC Lagator of Options AI who joined Joel and Dennis to break down one of the most violent semiconductor sell-offs in years.
Nasdaq-100 volatility (VXN) just hit roughly a 5-year high and nearly touched 40. QQQ and SMH sliced through their 200-day moving averages while Apple and Microsoft sit near all-time highs. CC explains the forced selling from dealers who were short gamma, why memory names like Micron, SanDisk and Western Digital trade like commodities, and the exact QQQ levels he’s watching for an oversold bounce (660 and the 680 200-day).
CC also shares how he trades a volatility spike like this: selling put spreads instead of buying overpriced options.
Risk Management & Options Strategy
Our final guest of the week was Tony Pawlak, owner of Real Life Trading. After the market’s sharp sell-off, Tony explains how he saw it coming, why he was selling bear call spreads before the drop, and his exact game plan for SPY from here.
Tony explains why he trades the right shoulder of a possible head-and-shoulders pattern in the 750–760 zone, how he hedges with end-of-year calls while buying puts, and why he uses ETF options instead of shorting individual stocks.
Then it’s ticker time: Tony breaks down key levels on Tesla (TSLA), MercadoLibre (MELI), Meta (META), Seagate (STX) and Marvell (MRVL), including where he’d get aggressive and where he’d wait for the bulls to prove themselves.
