Nasdaq Until the Election: Pause or Continue? Technical Levels Before the Fed Decision

Tunç Şatıroğlu opens with an InvestingPro promo noting the final hours of a 55% discount plus an extra 15% coupon, then turns to the day's focus: the Fed is widely expected to hike 25 basis points. While CME FedWatch, investment banks and the consensus point to a hike, he argues it is unnecessary and may not even happen.

He frames the chair's job as difficult because the decision is not one vote but twelve. He claims some governors act politically, contrasting the 50-basis-point cut before the election under Biden with the stance after Trump took office, saying a hike right before an election would cement the political label.

His macro case rests on money supply. Growth in money supply is running below recent yearly averages, so he sees no monetary surge behind inflation. The main driver, he says, is higher oil prices, and that kind of inflation cannot be cut directly with the rate tool.

He devotes a section to communication. He defends Warsh's reluctance to give forward guidance and describes critics with the Open Mouth Committee analogy. He portrays the old financial press as wanting the Fed to talk so headlines can be written, and reads the communication failure charge as coming from that demand.

On oil, he draws a geopolitical frame. He cites headlines from the US Department of Energy and Saudi pipeline news to assess whether the supply shock will last. If oil retreats, he argues, inflation pressure could ease even without a hike, which is why postponing tightening would have reduced the charge of politicization.

Moving to technicals, he explains the Rank S/R Zones indicator. Supports and resistances, he says, are better read as zones, not thin lines. He points to the S&P 500's daily resistance at 7,786 and the 4-hour zone between 7,584 and 7,574, noting wicks below the line that snap back in minutes as liquidity hunts.

His discipline rule is clear: do not sell immediately on a breakdown by a single candle; wait at least an hour of persistence. Algorithms, he notes, can tag the same speech as hawkish or dovish and trade opposite sides, so the price can swing twice between the statement and Warsh's press conference, which is why he suggests waiting for the next day's reaction.

He reads the Nasdaq's 28,848 zone with the same logic. He recalls previously citing 28,900 and shows the dip just below before recovery, describing three 15-minute candles below and a fourth pushing back above as a typical false breakdown. Only an hour-long close below 28,800 would confirm selling, he adds.

He surveys the ETF basket one by one. He watches SMH bouncing from 540 and the DRAM ETF holding 54.25-54.26 as buy candidates if strength confirms after the Fed, says he does not recommend IGV after rejection at resistance, notes the 101.13-101.4 zone he draws by eye for CIBR as resistance to watch, and says the NASA space ETF has not flipped to buy.

In the final stretch he widens the frame: SpaceX and Rocket Lab's lead in launch and recovery, China's criticism of weaponizing space, and Starship's plan for a controlled splashdown next week before full recovery in the following flight. While calling Democratic calls to pause AI development regressive, he argues defense and space lobbies could keep a brake off in that domain. A post-election Democratic majority in Congress, he says, would be a separate pricing layer for both tech and defense names.