Welcome back to Hitting the Bid Weekly!

Stocks hit new highs midweek before Powell’s remarks cooled rate-cut optimism.

“Flat” voters notch a win this week, with the S&P 500 (via SPY) down 0.3% compared to last week despite hitting a new all-time high of $689.70 on Wednesday. Zooming into the charts, bulls and bears pushed equities up and down all week, creating wide price ranges. Earnings were a mixed bag: Alphabet and Amazon rallied post-earnings, while Microsoft and Meta sold off sharply. Semiconductors tried to carry the market higher but couldn’t buck the broader trend.

Much of the selling pressure came Wednesday during Fed Chair Powell’s press conference. The Fed board voted to reduce the fed funds rate by 0.25%, but Powell’s remarks were cautious. He noted that in the near term, “risks to inflation are tilted to the upside and risks to employment to the downside.” With that, the board signaled a more neutral stance and cooled expectations for another cut at December’s meeting. The probability of a cut remains around 72%, down from over 90% before the meeting. There’s still plenty of trading ahead before December, and equities have mostly trended higher this year. Does that change going into the end of the year or do we just continue to grind higher?

Other key market moves this past week:

*Data release may be delayed due to federal government shutdown

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

A sharp selloff despite strong earnings may set up a short-term bounce.

Several mega-caps reported earnings last week, but one stood out for the wrong reasons: Meta Platforms (META). Despite beating estimates on both revenue and earnings per share, the stock tumbled about 11% the following day. That’s a big move for a company with a market cap near $1.8 trillion. Selling pressure continued into this week, with shares down another $30 by Monday’s close.

After rallying from $480 in April to an all-time high around $796 in August, Meta traded mostly between $700 and $800 through the second half of the year. Looking back over the past 12 months, it almost feels like the stock has gone nowhere. Still, the move from roughly $750 pre-earnings to around $630 now may be overdone, which is why I’m watching for a short-term bullish reversal. Implied volatility rank remains elevated at about 27. With the stock in the $600 range, selling a put spread could be a good way to keep position size small while playing for an up-move. The trade benefits primarily from direction, but decreasing volatility and the passage of time can also work in your favor.

Whether it’s baseball, markets, or mastering a skill, success comes from showing up, one disciplined step at a time.

Over the weekend, I enjoyed watching a pretty thrilling World Series as the Dodgers clawed back in game 7 to repeat as champions. It reminded me that baseball, like markets and life, rewards patience and consistency far more than flash or luck. A 162-game season is a grind, and no single at-bat defines a player, just like no single trade defines a portfolio. What separates champions from everyone else is their ability to keep showing up, review their performance, make small adjustments, and trust that a solid process leads to good outcomes over time.

Some say the Dodgers bought their championship, and as a Cubs fan, I get that frustration. But I’m thinking more about the individual stats. Consider the numbers:

By the end, the grind is the story. A starting player steps into the batter’s box over 600 times, facing more than 2,000 pitches, most of which end in failure. Even a great hitter succeeds only 35% of the time. Starting pitchers throw roughly 3,000 pitches across 30-plus games, each one a decision in location, speed, and type. Relievers appear in up to 60 games, often on back-to-back days with almost no room for error. Add in 140 games, endless travel, and constant adjustments (new opponents, new stadiums, each day away from family), and you start to see how baseball becomes a mental marathon as they play almost every day. The players who thrive aren’t chasing perfection; they trust their process, make small tweaks, and keep showing up through the slumps.

Trading and investing work the same way. You can’t force results. Sometimes you’ll strike out three times in a row or hold a stock that goes nowhere for months. But if your process is sound and your risk is managed, those small wins, the singles and walks, start to add up. Over time, they create the setup for that big breakout swing.

The same principle applies to personal growth. Whether you’re learning a skill, building a business, or navigating a tough season, progress rarely looks linear. The people who win over the long term aren’t the ones who avoid mistakes. They’re the ones who stay in the game, make adjustments, and let discipline compound.

Learning piano is an example that captures it perfectly. At first, your hands don’t cooperate, your rhythm feels off, and every song sounds like noise. You watch others glide across the keys and wonder how they make it look so easy. But over time, small, invisible progress starts to stack. One day you play a simple melody without stopping. Weeks later, your left hand keeps time while your right carries the tune. Months later, your fingers move with quiet confidence. Nothing magical happened. You just kept showing up. Practice made progress.

That’s the long game. Whether you’re trading, building something of your own, or learning an instrument, mastery isn’t about one big leap. It’s about thousands of small, deliberate steps. You can’t skip the missed notes or frustration. You learn from them and move forward. One day you’ll sit down at the piano, start to play, and realize the grind didn’t just teach you music. It taught you patience, focus, and the value of persistence.

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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.