SPY and QQQ Today: October 5, 2026 Recap and the FOMC Minutes Ahead
Monday was a grind higher. No gap, no flush, no single candle you could point at. SPY opened at 769.69, which was within a few cents of the low of the day at 769.63, and then climbed for most of the session. It touched 776.61 and settled at 774.83, up 5.19 points (+0.67%) from Friday’s 769.64 close, on roughly 44.8 million shares.
QQQ did the same thing with a bit more conviction. It opened at 749.35, dipped to 749.08, ran to 756.92, and closed at 756.20. That is up 6.62 (+0.88%) from 749.58, on about 25.5 million shares.
Where the closes landed
SPY finished about 74% of the way up its daily range. QQQ finished about 91% of the way up, which is close to the high. Both closes are above every daily close from September 17 through October 2. That is the only comparison I will make, because it is the only one I checked.
There was one scheduled item on the calendar, the ISM Services PMI at 10:00am ET, with a forecast of 55.1 against a previous 55.4. I am not going to tell you what it printed or whether it did anything to prices. A day like this tempts people to attach a story to the move. I would rather describe the tape and leave the reasons alone.
What a steady trend day feels like from the sidelines
Volatile days are loud, and loud days are easy to sit out because everyone agrees they are dangerous. Steady days are different. Nothing alarming happens. Price ticks up, pulls back a little, ticks up again, and every pullback is small enough that you tell yourself you will buy the next one. Then the next one does not come.
If you own nothing, or own less than you wanted, the afternoon is uncomfortable in a quiet way. The chart keeps making its point and you keep not having a position. By the close, QQQ is near its high and the thought forming is some version of “I should have been in this.” That thought is where bad trades start.
I know it well. For me, Year 1: lost $11,400. Year 2: broke even. Year 3-6: profitable. A lot of the Year 1 number came from exactly this moment, buying after a move had already run because the discomfort of watching felt worse than the risk of entering late. Entries made out of discomfort have no stop, no target, and no reason except the feeling.
Why a pre-defined trade beats improvising at the highs
The difference between an alert and an impulse is that the alert was written before the feeling showed up. It has an entry, a place where the idea is wrong, and a size that was chosen while nobody was emotional. When I chase, I decide all of that after the move, with the high of the day still on my screen, and I tend to decide it badly.
This is the reason I copy trades through Alertsify instead of improvising. The trade arrives already defined, and my job is to decide whether to follow it at a size I can live with. It does not remove risk. Copied trades can lose, sometimes several in a row, and following an alert does not make any single outcome more likely to work. What it does is move the decision away from the moment when I am least reliable.
It also means that missing a move is allowed. If a day like Monday passes without a trade that fit the plan, nothing was done wrong. Skipping a run that has already happened costs nothing. Entering at the highs because of fear of missing out can cost quite a lot.
What to watch Tuesday and Wednesday
Tuesday, October 6, looks like a quiet calendar. All times are Eastern, and these are forecast and previous figures only.
At 8:30am, the Trade Balance is forecast at -100.8B against -88.6B previously. At 10:01am, RCM/TIPP Economic Optimism is forecast at 44.5 against 45.6. Fed speakers follow, with Bowman at 10:45am and Schmid at 1:15pm. I am not predicting what any of it does to SPY or QQQ.
Wednesday, October 7, is the busier day. The 10-year bond auction is at 1:01pm, and Consumer Credit comes out at 3:00pm. In between, at 2:00pm, are the FOMC Meeting Minutes, which are marked high impact and carry no forecast figure. With no number to compare against, there is nothing to anchor an expectation to, and I will not pretend otherwise.
Sizing ahead of the 2:00pm minutes
Scheduled releases are where position size matters more than direction. I do not know what the minutes will say, and a release with no forecast can move prices quickly in either direction or barely move them at all. Since I cannot know which, the only variable I control is how much I have riding when 2:00pm arrives.
My own habit is to cut size going into a high-impact release, or to hold off on adding new positions until the first few minutes have passed. That is a personal risk preference, not a rule that works for everyone. If you copy trades, check the size you are using against what you could lose in a fast move and adjust before Wednesday afternoon, not during it.
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