Friday closed higher on hopes of an Iran deal and on another round of AI product enthusiasm. The S&P 500 gained 0.51%, the Nasdaq 100 0.42% and the Dow 0.93%, while the Russell 2000 finished flat at 0.07% after Thursday’s lowest close since the start of August. Reuters reported on Thursday that Tehran is pushing for a return to the June memorandum with nuclear talks to follow, Iran confirmed it, and Washington’s answer is still open, so Brent eased on Friday but stayed above $100. Microsoft’s relaunched Copilot took the AI spotlight from Meta’s Muse and Meta shares saw profit taking. Tech, travel, managed care, payments and capital goods led, while exchanges, cable, consumer staples, energy, utilities and REITs lagged, with new 52-week lows in the cable and staples groups. Capital goods orders for August came in healthy and the final Michigan reading improved slightly. On Thursday’s data the Treasury market sat at the highs of this move, the ten-year at 5.18%, the two-year at 4.87% and the twenty-year at 5.53%, and the long-bond ETF closed Friday at its lowest level since August. Next week brings OpenAI’s developer day on Tuesday and the Jabil and Micron reports on Wednesday.
Two round trips sit on the board this weekend. Corn’s reading stood at the model’s bullish maximum on June 26 near 413, and the price ran 32% to Monday’s high of 543. The reading now posts the bearish maximum of -100 with a bull exit, buying pressure gives way and the upswing appears broken. That is the ceiling half that first printed on September 12. The Russell 2000 carried a ceiling reading of -80 on August 15, printed on a close of 3,068 that turned out to be the summer high, and the warning sharpened to -73 on four cycles on August 29. Seven weeks and 7.5% lower, the index joins the floor side with a reading of +87. The chip index has risen 13% since the September 16 scan read its decline as overstretched, and its reading has normalized out of the zone.
Today’s thread runs through the floor side, which reads overstretched three times over. The Russell 2000, the Shanghai Composite and the euro futures all stand at +87 with bear exhaustion, the bears are in an overshoot and the downward move is overstretched, which is the stage the industrials and the chips carried on September 16 before price answered higher. At the ceiling corn holds the bearish maximum with its exit on six cycles, and the ten-year yield’s reading is back at -87 with bull exhaustion, the buyers have overreached with no counter-move yet, after the week’s spike in rates.
Our daily analysis filters roughly 45 markets through a cycle consensus engine. Each asset receives a Consensus Score from -100 to +100, the model’s summary reading for a possible turn, where positive values mark potential cyclical bottoms (a time window where a decline could end) and negative values potential cyclical tops (a window where a rise could stall or reverse). Readings beyond ±60 enter the critical zone, a critical reading at which the cycle model raises the alarm for a possible turn. Let’s take a closer look.
