NQ Week Ahead (Nov 9–13, 2026): CPI, CoreWeave and Cisco After a 2,600-Point Week

Thursday took 2,098 points out of NQ (E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures, December contract) from high to low, on the Nasdaq-100's worst day since March 2020. Friday made one more low at 26,366.50 and then rebounded 1,058 points, even as a strong jobs report raised the odds of a December rate hike, to settle at 27,085.25. That's 14.3% under the October 6 record and 1,448.75 points below the previous Friday.

This week has October CPI on Tuesday, a bond market that closes for Veterans Day on Wednesday while stocks and CME futures keep trading, three Treasury auctions around that holiday, CoreWeave on Tuesday evening, Cisco and Applied Materials on Thursday evening, and PPI on Friday.

Last week's plan against the tape

The plan in last Sunday's Week Ahead was "lower, unless something changes." Here's how each part of it held up.

Direction right, size wrong. The deepest level on last week's map was the bottom of the one-standard-deviation range priced by Nasdaq-100 options, and NQ finished its selling more than 1,000 points under it. A one-standard-deviation range should contain the week about two times in three, so it fails about one week in three, and a miss can be as large as last week's 1,024 points. The expected move post shows how that range is built and how often price leaves it.

Thursday, then Friday

Election night went the other way first. Wednesday's session, which on Globex opens at 6:00 PM ET on Tuesday as the polls close, traded down to 27,615.75, then rallied 1,353 points to 28,969 on a day when the Dow had its best session since April 2025. It settled at 28,566.75.

On Thursday the question became what the results mean for data-center construction. Voters rejected or restricted data-center projects in every local ballot measure but one, Texas's governor-elect has promised a statewide moratorium on new data-center approvals after taking office in January, and UBS estimated that pauses could touch about 30% of the data-center capacity additions planned for 2028. Overnight, Qualcomm had reported handset-chip revenue down 26% from a year earlier at $5.14 billion, below estimates. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell about 12% and the Nasdaq-100 6.4%, both their worst days since March 2020, and Nvidia lost 9.3%. NQ settled at 26,752, down 1,814.75, after trading to 26,570 in the hour after the stock market closed, just under that session's 7% limit level. Why no limit stopped it is in the November 5 crash post.

Friday's 8:30 AM ET release beat every number:

Fed funds futures moved to about an 80% chance of a quarter-point hike on December 9, up from about 67% on Thursday, and the 2-year Treasury yield rose 5 basis points to 4.51%. New York Fed President John Williams said in Frankfurt that morning that inflation is "absolutely too high." NQ still finished the day up 333.25, with chip stocks leading, so Friday's bounce happened with rates moving against it.

Levels for November 9–13

Rounded to 5 points, distances from Friday's 27,085.25 settlement. The VXN, Cboe's volatility index for the Nasdaq-100, closed Friday at 34.02 after 38.26 on Thursday. That prices a one-standard-deviation week of about 1,300 points either way: 25,785 to 28,385. The percent lines are measured from the October 6 record of 31,616.50.

The profile terms, briefly: the point of control (POC) is the price where the most contracts traded, the value area is the range that holds about 70% of the volume, a high-volume node is a price where volume piled up, and the put wall is the strike with the largest put open interest in Nasdaq-100 options, converted to NQ.

Friday settled between the two lines that set my bias this week, 165 points under 27,250 and 35 points above 27,050, just under its own value area. Above 27,250 sit Friday's high and the two broken floors, the July 29 low and the election-night low. Below 27,050 comes 26,900, then a band that holds three things at once: Thursday's settlement, the put wall and the 15% line. Under it, Thursday's low lines up with the low of the 2026 value area.

How I'm reading the week

The trend since the record is still down: each rally high has been lower than the one before (30,225, 30,178, then 28,969), and Friday was the first weekly close under the 10% line. But volatility is extreme, with the VXN at 34 on Friday after 38 on Thursday. My base case for the week is a market that consolidates and slowly rebounds as it adjusts to the new reality and volatility comes down.

The first thing I'm watching is the reopen after the weekend, Sunday at 6:00 PM ET (midnight in Central Europe), and how Asia trades it: whether NQ gaps away from Friday's 27,085.25 settlement at all, and in which direction. After that, two lines set my bias. A break above 27,250 turns it long. A break below 27,050, the level Friday broke higher from on the way to its high, turns it short. On the short side the next important level is 26,900, and losing it would mean more momentum to the downside, with the band from 26,875 down to Thursday's low next on the map.

Size is the other half of the plan. At a VXN of 34, the one-standard-deviation day is about 580 points, and a full high-to-low day runs about 1.6 times that, roughly 930 points or $1,860 per MNQ contract. Thursday's range was 2,098.50 points, $4,197 per MNQ. Those are the numbers I hold against a trailing drawdown before choosing size. I'm flat before the 8:30 AM ET releases, which means 14:30 CET on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

What's scheduled, in ET and CET

Both sides of the Atlantic are on standard time, six hours apart. Globex reopens on Sunday at 6:00 PM ET, midnight in Central Europe. The economic calendar has the full list; these are the events I've marked for NQ.

The CPI forecasts already assume relief. In an early forecast on October 19, TD Securities projected 0.30% on the headline and 0.21% on core, after 0.65% and 0.33% in September, when annual inflation reached 3.7% and core 2.6%. With the market pricing about 80% for a December hike, a 0.3% core print leaves little room for those odds to fall, and a 0.1% would give them some. PPI on Friday then shows whether September's jump in producer prices carried into October.

The Treasury sells $125 billion of 3-, 10- and 30-year debt this week, each auction at 1:00 PM ET (19:00 CET). A weak auction, one that clears at a higher yield than traders expected, lifts long-term yields, and long-duration tech reprices first. On Wednesday SIFMA, the bond dealers' association, recommends a full close for cash bonds, while the NYSE, Nasdaq and CME keep normal hours, so that day rates trade only through Treasury futures.

The AI trade gets four reads this week. CoreWeave reports on Tuesday evening, three months after guiding third-quarter interest expense to $860–940 million, up from $640 million, and raising its 2026 capital spending plan to $35–39 billion; its 5-year credit default swaps hit a record during Thursday's selloff. Nebius follows on Thursday morning, then Applied Materials on chip-equipment orders and Cisco on networking demand after Thursday's close, which for anyone trading from Europe puts the reaction into Friday's morning session, the same day as PPI. Fed speakers keep coming too: Goolsbee and Bowman on Monday, Waller on Tuesday morning before CPI, Daly on Thursday and Friday.

Oil: 13%, not 17%

Brent's January contract settled at $98.32 on Friday, down 13.3% from $113.43 a week earlier. The 16–17% weekly drop in many headlines is measured from the expired December contract's $117.64, the roll I flagged last Sunday. WTI fell 12.8% to $90.83. Prices edged up on Friday after new attacks on tankers, and Bob McNally of Rapidan Energy Group puts the chance of renewed US-Iran fighting at 80%. The drop also arrives too late for Tuesday: October CPI measures October prices, and front-month Brent gained 13.6% during October.