NQ Week Ahead (Sep 21–25, 2026): Flash PMI, Costco, Xi in Washington and a 10-Year at 5%

There is no tier-1 release on the US calendar this week. No CPI, no payrolls, no Fed decision. The number I'm watching most closely doesn't come from the economic calendar at all: it's the 10-year Treasury yield, which finished Friday within a few basis points of 5% after the Fed's first hike since 2023. Everything scheduled between Monday and Friday, from Wednesday's flash PMIs to Thursday's jobless claims and Friday's durable goods, matters to NQ mainly through what it does to that yield.

The second thing on my chart is where NQ closed. The E-mini Nasdaq-100 (NQ 12-26, the December contract since the roll) sold off into Wednesday's FOMC press conference, printed its low at 29,053, and then spent Thursday and Friday climbing back through the whole of the prior week's value area to close just under 29,850, at the previous week's value area high (PWVAH). A new lower low on the week, followed by a close near the highs, is the fourth failed breakdown in a row. Last week's post said the calendar would hand NQ a reason to leave its range. It did, downward, for about a day.

What last week settled, and what it didn't

The Fed raised the target range to 3.75%–4.00% on Wednesday, September 16, in a 12–0 vote. The dot plot's median for the end of 2026 is 4.1%, and 16 of the 18 participants who submitted a projection have at least one more hike penciled in this year. Chair Warsh's line was "inflation is too high and has been for too long", and the market treated the press conference as the hawkish part: the S&P 500 fell about 1% to a six-week low near 7,500 and the 10-year went back to 5% after trading under 4.95% earlier in the day.

Then the data refused to cooperate with the bear case. Initial jobless claims came in at 196,000 on Thursday against roughly 208,000 expected (a holiday-shortened week, so treat the print with some suspicion), continuing claims fell to 1.73 million, and the Nasdaq Composite closed 1.7% higher on the day as the 10-year eased. Friday added the Bank of Japan's hike to 1.25% on a 7–2 vote, a yen that weakened anyway, quarterly expiration, and a quiet close: Nasdaq Composite +0.39% to 26,522.55, up on the week while the S&P 500 and the Dow finished the week lower. Brent is still around $100, WTI around $96, and the 10-year is at 5% give or take five basis points. All of those numbers are at the time of writing.

So the market absorbed a hike, $100 oil and a 5% 10-year without losing its bid. What it has not done is accept above the value it has been building since mid-August. That is the open question for this week.

Levels I've marked

The levels below come from the volume profile I build each morning in TradingView and carry to NinjaTrader by hand. If POC, VAH and VAL are new to you, the key levels post explains how they're drawn and why they matter more than round numbers. Put walls and the gamma flip are covered in the gamma exposure post.

Above Friday's close:

Below Friday's close:

Between 29,735 and 30,110 the market is in balance and I trade it as balance: reactions at the edges, nothing in the middle. What changes the plan is acceptance, meaning a close and a retest outside that range, not the first touch.

The calendar

The full week, with the tier ranking and a countdown, is on the calendar page. These are the entries I have on the chart, in ET and CEST (six hours apart until the clocks change):

Wednesday's PMI is the one I'd rank highest. A reading above 50 means expansion, but the market already knows growth is holding up; what it doesn't know is whether input prices are re-accelerating with oil at $100. Firm activity plus a rising prices-paid component is the combination that pushes the 10-year through 5%, and that is the combination that hurts NQ most.

Xi in Washington

Thursday's state visit is the first by a Chinese president to the White House in eleven years, and the stated agenda includes AI. Xi is traveling with a large business delegation. For the Nasdaq-100 the channel is narrow and direct: anything on chip export controls, rare earths or tariffs moves Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom and the rest of the semiconductor complex, which is where last week's leadership came from. Unlike a data release, there is no timestamp. Headlines can print at 9:31 AM ET or at 3:55 PM ET, so Thursday's RTH session gets treated as event risk from the open.

Costco, then nothing until Micron

Costco reports after the close on Thursday. It is one of the larger weights in the index, but it moves a few percent on earnings in a normal quarter, and the read-through to the rest of the Nasdaq-100 is small. Its effect is on the Friday open. Micron, the semiconductor print that can move NQ on its own, reports on Wednesday, September 30, and belongs to next week's post.

The yen, briefly

The Bank of Japan's hike to 1.25% should have strengthened the yen. It didn't, because the vote was split and Governor Ueda gave no guidance on the next move, so USD/JPY pushed back above 157. That keeps the carry trade (borrow at 1.25% in Japan, hold dollar assets yielding near 5%) profitable, and the carry trade is one of the pipes that feeds leveraged buying of Nasdaq-100 names.

What would hurt is a fast reversal; the level itself matters less. August 2024 showed what a yen rally over a few sessions does to NQ. I keep USD/JPY on a second monitor during the London hours; a sharp drop in the pair while NQ is selling would change how I treat any long, even at a level I like.

How I'm trading it

My window is the European session, roughly 9:00 AM to 3:30 PM CEST, so most of this calendar lands after I'm done. Monday has thin Asian volume behind it and Goolsbee at 12:30 CEST inside my hours, which is a reason for smaller size on the first reaction at 29,735 or 29,850. Wednesday's PMI at 3:45 PM CEST comes fifteen minutes after my window closes, and I'll be flat into it regardless. Thursday and Friday both have an 8:30 AM ET print, and I'm flat by 2:25 PM CEST on both days; the full reasoning is in the news events post.

The trade I'm looking for is the same as last week: a key level reversal at one of the marked edges, with the stop where the setup puts it. What I'm not doing is guessing the direction of the eventual expansion. Four failed breakdowns say sellers can't get acceptance below value; a month of rejections at 30,060–30,110 says buyers can't get acceptance above it. One of those changes this week or it doesn't, and the chart will say which before I need to.