Welcome back to Hitting the Bid Weekly!

The S&P 500 (via SPY) was just about unchanged this past week, down only 0.2%, but volatility returned with a vengeance. We saw an aggressive shakeout on Thursday followed by a massive squeeze on Friday. The Dow finally touched 50,000, but the real story was the divergence beneath the surface. IWM outperformed as small caps found a bid, up 1.8%, while the tech-heavy QQQ struggled to find its footing, down 1.9%.

Thursday was a rough session. SPY dropped 1.2% while QQQ slid nearly 2% as the “AI CapEx” trade soured. Amazon and Alphabet’s massive infrastructure spending spooked investors, shifting the narrative from AI growth to margin compression. Higher unemployment claims combined with lower job openings added fuel to the fire, sparking concerns that the labor market may finally be cooling and that rate cuts could come for the wrong reason.

Friday flipped the script. SPY rallied 2% for its best day since May, and QQQ jumped 2.2% as chip giants like Nvidia (NVDA) and Broadcom (AVGO) staged a sharp recovery. Even with the bounce, QQQ finished the week in the red. Meanwhile, IWM continues to lead on a relative basis, up over 7% year to date as capital rotates away from bloated megacaps.

The trend is shifting. Follow the flow, not the hype.

Other key market moves this past week:

Not an exhaustive list — just a few I’m watching closely for potential market impact.

With all the AI chatter, I keep a watchlist that lets me quickly see how different names are performing relative to one another. After falling nearly 30% off its highs, Microsoft (MSFT) is back on my radar.

The last time I looked at Microsoft in November, I was positioned for a short-term reversal higher. That move played out with a 2.5% rally, but it was short-lived and followed by a deeper pullback. Now, with last year’s April 30 gap filled and price closing back above its 5-day EMA on Monday, this may be a spot worth revisiting.

Looking at the options chain, equidistant calls are priced richer than puts, which suggests the market is assigning more risk to the upside. With IV rank elevated near 30, I favor premium-selling strategies here. A short put spread is a bullish position that benefits from higher prices, volatility contracting, and time decay.

The next major upside level sits near the January 21 swing low around $439, with a larger gap not until $478 that could act as resistance. There is also a small price imbalance from February 2 to 3 near $422 that I am watching closely. Tech has lagged recently, so if that continues and market volatility spikes again, I will be quick to cut this trade.

The Winter Olympics are back, and I don’t anticipate a single day where I won’t have them on in some capacity. There’s something about watching people operate at the absolute edge of what is possible that pulls me in every time.

One storyline I found myself watching especially closely was Lindsey Vonn’s.

She was competing in the downhill skiing event, which, if you have not watched it, is crazy when you think about it. These athletes fly down a mountain at over 70 miles per hour for roughly a mile and a half, navigating turns that feel more like suggestions than boundaries. It’s wild to watch, and even wilder to imagine doing it yourself.

Vonn is 41 years old and still competing at one of the highest levels in the world. That alone is impressive. I’m getting to close to 40, and I’m fairly confident I would struggle to ski down the small hill behind my childhood home without getting hurt.

What made her story even more remarkable was what happened just a week before the Olympics. She crashed during a World Cup race and tore her ACL. When she announced she still planned to compete, it sounded almost absurd. How does someone ski that fast and that aggressively with an injury like that?

But she showed up anyway. She trained. And by all accounts, she looked strong during practice runs.

Then on Sunday, just 13 seconds into her Olympic run, she crashed again. She was airlifted off the mountain and later revealed she had fractured her leg.

Despite the outcome, her decision to compete stuck with me. It reminded me of a quote from James Clear (author of Atomic Habits) that I read recently: “Compete externally and you compare. Compete internally and you improve.” That distinction feels central to her story.

And it matters far beyond sports.

Professionally, it’s easy to measure yourself against peers, coworkers, or the loudest success stories on social media. Who got promoted faster. Who made more money. Who seems further along. That comparison can spark motivation, but it rarely sustains it. More often, it distracts, frustrates, or quietly erodes confidence.

Personally, the same dynamic shows up in fitness, parenting, productivity, and finances. We consume everyone else’s highlight reels and turn them into benchmarks, even though the contexts are completely different and the reality is often far messier.

In trading, the screen is a mirror. If you spend your day comparing your P&L to someone else’s screenshot, you have already lost your edge. You are chasing someone else’s shadow. The market doesn’t care about your neighbor’s gains. It only responds to your discipline.

What Vonn’s story highlighted for me is the power of internal competition. She was not racing someone else’s timeline or trying to prove anything externally. She was testing her own limits and measuring success against her own standard.

That approach feels like the highest probability path to real progress. Competing with yesterday’s version of yourself. Setting personal records that actually matter to you. Improving quietly, consistently, and sustainably.

That is a race you can keep showing up for. And winning it feels a lot sweeter.

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Hitting the Bid content is for informational and entertainment purposes only. The information contained is not, nor is it intended to be, trading or investment advice or a recommendation of any security, futures contract, digital asset or alike. I may hold a position in the trading vehicles discussed. Trading and investing contains risk. All investors should evaluate their own risk tolerance, financial situation, and investment duration before entering any trade or investment.