NQ Week Ahead (Sep 28–Oct 2, 2026): PCE, Micron, Payrolls and a Breakout Under Test

The first test arrived before anything on the calendar. On Saturday, Trump turned down Iran's offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days and restart nuclear talks if the US lifted its naval blockade of Iranian ports and its sanctions on Iranian oil; in a phone interview with Axios on Sunday, he said he expects more talks this week. WTI crude was up about 4% on Monday morning, near $96, and the 10-year Treasury yield went back to about 5.25%, its highest since 2007. Around 10:40 AM ET / 16:40 CEST the E-mini Nasdaq-100 (NQ 12-26, the December contract) was trading around 30,500, about 390 points under Friday's settlement.

That puts price below 30,775, last week's point of control (the price where the most contracts changed hands), and 130 points above Thursday's low at 30,370, the higher low the breakout was built on. Minutes later NQ dipped to 30,357, just under it, and bounced. So the week opens on the question last week seemed to settle: did NQ leave its range, or only visit the top of it?

How the range broke

Last week's post put the top of the options-implied weekly range at 30,400–30,485 and said NQ would need help from yields to get there. The help came on Monday, September 21, when the 10-year slipped to about 4.96%, WTI fell about 4.5% and chip stocks carried the Nasdaq Composite 2.26% higher to a record close. AMD gained 10% and passed $1 trillion in market value; Intel added 12% and Arm 17%. NQ cleared the whole band that day and printed the week's high near 31,095 early Wednesday, in the overnight session before the flash PMI.

The rest of the week ran the same channel in reverse. Wednesday's S&P Global flash PMI, the early read of its purchasing managers' survey, showed the fastest US output growth in more than five years, a composite reading of 58.4 against 56.0 in August, with input costs rising at the fastest pace since October 2022. Friday's University of Michigan survey put year-ahead inflation expectations at 4.6%, and the 10-year finished the week at 5.18%. NQ pulled back to 30,370 early Thursday, still 260 points above the top of the old range, then climbed again and settled Friday at 30,889.25, more than 900 points up on the week. It absorbed a 22-basis-point rise in the 10-year from Monday's close without handing the breakout back. That is the part Monday is now testing.

The map for the week

Everything below is on NQ 12-26. The point of control and value area high come from last week's volume profile. The put wall and the expected move come from options data over the weekend, and both shift as positions change, so I re-check those two each morning. The gamma levels post explains what a put wall is and how to put one on the chart, and the gamma exposure post covers why price tends to slow near one.

The calendar, in ET and CEST

Both clocks are still on summer time, so ET and CEST stay six hours apart all week. Everything should arrive on schedule. The stopgap signed on September 2 funds the government through December 11, so there's no repeat of last October, when the shutdown held the September jobs report back until November 20. The full list, Fed speakers included, is on the calendar page; these are the releases I've marked. If PCE and payrolls are new to you as trading events, start with the release ranking post, which puts payrolls in the top tier and PCE one tier below.

Two prints and an October meeting

The Fed raised its target range to 3.75%–4.00% on September 16, its first hike since 2023. By the end of last week, fed funds futures priced roughly a two-in-three chance of another at the October 27–28 meeting, according to CME FedWatch, and by Monday morning about 70%. Wednesday's PCE and Friday's payrolls move that number more than anything else on this calendar, and the 10-year tends to move with it.

Core PCE (personal consumption expenditures prices excluding food and energy, the Fed's preferred inflation gauge) rose 3.3% in the year to July. The consensus for August is 0.3% on the month, which annualizes to about 3.7%, and 3.4% on the year. An in-line print would mean core inflation still moving away from the 2% target.

Payrolls are noisier than the August headline suggests. The 162,000 came after revised gains of 31,000 in June and 21,000 in July, so the three-month average is about 71,000. Bloomberg's survey has September at roughly 90,000 and the consensus on the calendar page is 98,000, with unemployment at 4.1% in both, and average hourly earnings rose 3.1% over the year to August. Friday's report also revises July and August; last month the two revised months added 55,000 jobs between them.

Micron after Wednesday's close

Micron is the print last week's post pushed into this one. In June it guided fiscal Q4 to $50.0 billion of revenue, plus or minus $1.0 billion, at a gross margin of about 86%, after a $41.5 billion quarter. With the quarter already guided, the reaction is more likely to come from the fiscal Q1 guide and whatever management says about memory pricing than from the reported numbers.

Last week's rally was a semiconductor rally, so this is the first hard number on the trade that carried NQ out of its range. NQ trades the reaction on Globex, CME's electronic market, through the evening and the night, which makes Thursday's European morning the first session that has to live with it. The overnight session post covers how that range sets up the next day.

My window this week

I trade the European session, roughly 9:00 to 15:30 CEST, and I'm flat before any 8:30 AM ET release (14:30 CEST). That cuts Wednesday, Thursday and Friday short. Tuesday is the clean one, with JOLTS and consumer confidence at 16:00 CEST, after I've stopped. On Wednesday I'm out before ADP at 14:15 CEST, since PCE follows fifteen minutes later. Thursday and Friday end at 14:25 CEST for claims and payrolls, and Thursday is also my first session after Micron, so the overnight range carries more weight than usual that morning. The news events post has the reasoning for sitting out the release minute instead of trading it.

The setup I'm looking for doesn't change with the calendar. It's a reaction at one of the levels in the table, with confirmation and invalidation decided before the entry, the way the reversal post lays out. Two prices would change how I read the week. A close and a retest above 31,015 would say NQ is leaving last week's value behind; the same below 30,370 would say the breakout is being undone. Between the two, I trade it as a range.