Tape is trying to stabilize after last week's damage, but nobody's convinced it's over.
Friday closed ugly — S&P -1%, Nasdaq -1.4%, SOX down roughly 10% on the week on AI-capex jitters after Moonshot's Kimi K3 model spooked the EDA/chip complex. Monday premarket has SPY and QQQ bouncing off that weakness, futures modestly higher as semis attempt a relief rally and Brent pulls back off its brush with $90 after Iran signaled mediated talks would continue even as the US struck again overnight and the troop death toll hit 17. Ten-year sits at 4.55%, two-year 4.18%, and Fed swaps price an 87.7% chance of a July hold — rates aren't the story right now, oil and AI capex are.
With live GEX offline, treat dealer positioning as indicative: SPY flip sits near 745, right around Friday's close, with a round-number call wall at 750 capping the bounce until proven otherwise. QQQ support lines up near last week's 686-690 low — lose that and the semis-led unwind resumes. Vol isn't cheap; mid-to-high teens VIX reflects real two-way risk, not complacency, into a week that opens Big Tech earnings (Tesla, Alphabet) alongside Intel, IBM, ServiceNow and an ECB decision.
The risk: this is a short-covering bounce inside a broken semis trend, not a reversal — a fresh Iran/Hormuz escalation that sends Brent back through $90, or hyperscaler capex caution from Alphabet, flips this from relief rally to retest of last week's lows fast.