The Week in 60 Seconds

The 10-year Treasury stopped whispering and started yelling. It tagged 5.20% — a nineteen-year high — mortgage rates printed 7.45%, and every rate-sensitive chart on the TSX remembered gravity. Then the punchline: chip stocks did not care. Qualcomm jumped 13.6% on the week, Intel 13.3%, AMD 12.7%, with Lam Research and Applied Materials right behind, while the S&P spent Thursday going nowhere. That is not a mixed tape. That is a rotation with the volume still attached.

Google made the AI-power story concrete by funding nuclear expansions in Georgia. Copper's projected 4.5-million-ton deficit after 2025 stayed the unglamorous setup under the AI headlines. Gas hit $4.48 a gallon, diesel is up 76% year over year, and Canadian transport felt it. Options flow went three-to-one bullish midweek, then yields ripped their largest one-day jump since April 2025. Our PNG.V earnings-surprise pick — carried for about a month — is still down 5.59%. The week rewarded people who followed leadership, not people who waited for the index to give permission.

The NASDAQ Race Update

Monday's NASDAQ close was 26,523. By the weekend recap it sat at 27,069, year-to-date 16.50%. Call it about two percent on the week — and the NASDAQ pulled ahead of our practice book. PNG.V is still underwater, and we did not own the chip cluster that did the scoring. The play to close the gap is not buying whatever hurt. It is treating Thursday's tape as the scouting report: when semis break out together and the broader market stalls, that cluster is the race. Get there, or watch the index keep lapping you.

Practice Investment Scoreboard

One simulated position is still open. The rest of the week was a lab — filters, peer comps, and a rotation we observed rather than chased.

Closed-trade win rate: 0-for-0 (no exits). Open P&L: PNG.V -5.59%. We did not donate capital to low-volume headlines. We also did not bank the chip rip. Both of those are results.

Strategy of the Week

Sector rotation with a volume filter.

1. What it is. A daily check for a cluster of stocks in the same industry making relative highs on above-average volume even when the S&P or TSX is flat.
2. When to use it. Weeks like this — yields jumping, Fed-speak in both directions, indices chopping — when capital has to hide somewhere and that somewhere is visible on one scan.
3. How to set it up.
   - Wealthsimple: Watchlist QQQ (or QQC.TO), one semiconductor ETF or name, XIU, XFN, and ZWT for a Canadian tech sleeve. Open the 6-month chart on each. Note which sit above the 50-day moving average and printed a volume pop versus the last month. If chips are elevated and XFN is rolling over, that is the rotation. - Questrade: In IQ Edge, add columns for 1-month % change, 20-day average volume, and last volume. Sort. Enter only if last volume clears the 20-day average — the filter from ▶ Episode 179 · 2026-09-23. - IBKR: TWS Market Scanner → stocks, industry semiconductors (or utilities for the AI-power tack). Filter relative volume > 1. Save it. Run after the open and again after 3:30 p.m. ET.

If you do nothing else Monday, run that watchlist before you touch a single name.

What to Watch Next Week

• Bank of Canada senior deputy governor speaks — Thursday, October 1. Next clean window into the hold-for-longer path. A restrictive tone with the 10-year already at 5.20% means more pressure on TSX rate-sensitives and another bid for cash-flow compounders over duration-heavy growth.
• The 10-year around 5.20%, Canadian mortgages near 7.45%. A further yield pop compresses unprofitable-tech multiples and hits REITs, homebuilders, and leveraged transports. A reversal is the first green light for this week's runovers.
• Tech and financial earnings. Run the Costco-vs-Walmart drill from ▶ Episode 181 · 2026-09-25: same-day peer filings, growth rates side by side, volume versus the 20-day. Beats that fail the peer test are sector tailwinds in disguise.
• Intermeeting Fed communication. Rate-move timing has been shifting away from FOMC days toward data drops in between. Silence between meetings is not a quiet tape.
• AI power and copper. Google's Georgia nuclear funding and the 4.5-million-ton copper deficit are not day-trades. Watch utilities, grid names, and copper producers with real free cash flow — the unglamorous twin of the chip trade.

This Week's Listener Challenge

Fifteen minutes. No order required.

Open your TFSA. Search QQQ or Canadian-listed QQC. Check two things: is the 50-day moving average above the 200-day, and did the last strong up-day print volume above the 20-day average? Add XIU and XFN to the same watchlist and ask which of the three actually led this week. Write one sentence: 'Leadership this week was __; laggard was __.' That is the rotation lesson from ▶ Episode 180 · 2026-09-24 plus the volume filter. If you cannot answer it in fifteen minutes, you are not ready to size a new name on Monday.

Canadian Corner

Two account-structure points, neither sexy, which is why they pay.

The Google compounding story — revenue from $10.6 billion in 2006 to $445.9 billion — is a TFSA story if you stop picking platforms and earmark a fixed slice of new contribution room each year to a broad technology ETF, keeping that sleeve under 10% of the portfolio. Pair it with a moving-average filter on the ETF itself so you are not averaging into a breakdown. That was the whole point of ▶ Episode 177 · 2026-09-21.

Second, that Nasdaq covered-call ETF yielding 17.58% looks like candy in a TFSA. Pause. US-listed ETFs can leak 15% withholding on distributions inside a TFSA, and you do not get that back. An RRSP is usually the cleaner wrapper for US-listed income products because of the tax treaty. If you want the idea in Canadian dollars, look at CAD-listed covered-call or AI sleeves (CI Global Artificial Intelligence ETF was on this week's radar) and read the distribution treatment before you click buy. Meanwhile 7.45% mortgages are a live FHSA input: the Bank of Canada is on hold, and October 1 is the next speech. CAD weakness makes fresh US chip exposure more expensive to add and more valuable if you already hold it. On the TSX cash-return tape, Air Canada's $800-million buyback, Dynacor's October dividend, and International Petroleum's repurchases are the Canadian cluster — none of them are chip stocks, and that is the point of a rotation week.

The Bottom Line

When the index stalls and one sector still prints on volume, that is not a sideways market — it is a map.

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