Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur, and the Autumnal Equinox! Oh My!

👋Hello and Happy Monday! 🌅 

Here’s what’s on deck this week:

• With the Fed back in cutting mode, the market is about to face a rather unfriendly multi-week stretch.

• The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge drops Friday, alongside fresh GDP numbers, housing data, and September’s consumer sentiment reading earlier in the week.

• Adding more fuel to the fire, a lineup of Fed officials will hit the mic after last week’s first rate cut of the year.

• Micron, Costco, AutoZone, and CarMax headline the corporate earnings calendar.

Let’s get going.▶️▶️

💵What’s the market pricing for the Week?

Markets closed last week at record highs after the Fed trimmed rates for the first time this year, and now investors are hungry for signs of what’s ahead. The spotlight is on whether more cuts could follow, and the upcoming data barrage might help shape that answer.

Friday’s PCE report—the Fed’s go-to inflation measure—will show if tariffs are trickling into consumer prices. Investors will also be glued to speeches from Powell and other Fed officials, parsing every word for signals about the two remaining meetings in 2025.

Beyond inflation, traders are watching the final Q2 GDP revision, new and pending home sales, jobless claims, and consumer sentiment. All of it helps paint a picture of whether the economy is cooling just enough for the Fed to keep easing, or if inflation is still too sticky.

Click here 👈to learn more about our charts.

📊On the corporate side, Micron steps up Tuesday. The chipmaker last reported record sales in June, thanks to AI-driven demand for memory chips, and Wall Street is still leaning bullish after the stock’s recent all-time high.

Thursday brings Costco and CarMax. Costco’s May report showed 8% sales growth as consumers kept swiping, and new retail sales numbers suggest the trend hasn’t slowed. CarMax’s results will act as a reality check on the used-car market.

Also reporting: AutoZone, Cintas, and Accenture—rounding out a busy earnings week.

🤔Which companies are poised to possibly over/underreact to earnings this week?

Based on the stock’s previous post-earnings responses, shares of this week’s biggest reporting company (Costco Wholesale) have NOT shown a tendency to move beyond the implied range following earnings. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Cintas has shown a strong tendency to overshoot it expected post-earnings move (keep reading below the next table for more details).

👇 Below, is a look at this week’s biggest earnings reports, sorted by market cap.

For active traders looking for actionable insights, the highlighted columns on the table above show the implied (expected) post-earnings move for each company, along with the Average 1-Day Realized Volatility Post Earnings Ratio (1D RV).

📈Implied Move: The market’s best guess at how much a stock will swing after earnings.

📊1D RV: A powerful tool that represents the post-earnings price move divided by the expected price move over the past 12 quarters. In other words, it measures how good (or bad) the market is at pricing each company’s earnings.

💵When you see a ratio >1.0, indicates that, historically, the earnings are mispriced and the stock moves MORE than the market anticipates, favoring straddle buyers.

🪝A ratio <1.0 tells the opposite story, meaning the stock historically moves LESS than the market anticipates, which favors straddle sellers.

Happy hunting.

Note: We’ve been working hard on a new premium Substack product that we plan to launch in the next few weeks. In a nutshell, this product will offer Wall Street-level insights designed to help stock and options traders understand both price and time-related risks. During the leadup to this launch, we’re excited to start sharing small segments of this new product each week.

Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur, and the Autumnal Equinox! Oh My!

Mixing faith with finance might sound like a stretch, but there’s a long-standing Wall Street superstition that makes the rounds this time of year: “Sell on Rosh Hashanah, buy on Yom Kippur.”

This year, Rosh Hashanah—the Jewish New Year—kicks off today at sundown, while Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, begins the evening of Wednesday, October 1st, and wraps up on Thursday, October 2nd. According to the lore, U.S. stocks tend to slide during the 10-day stretch between the two holidays, meaning investors should cash out before and jump back in after.

This is supported by data produced by Jeffrey A. Hirsh at https://www.stocktradersalmanac.com/

The roots of the adage tie back to September’s reputation as the market’s weakest month. Historically, investors have used the period around the High Holidays to trim risk and sit out volatility.

But there’s a catch: the Jewish calendar runs on lunar cycles, which means Rosh Hashanah can land anywhere between Sept. 5 and Oct. 5, while Yom Kippur can range from Sept. 14 to Oct. 14. That shifting schedule makes it tough to pin down consistent trading patterns on the Gregorian calendar—the one markets actually run on.

That’s why we’ve decided to take a slightly different route by looking at the one-month (20 trading days) window that follows the start of the autumnal equinox (September 22nd) each year.

For our study, we looked back to 2000 and measured the S&P 500’s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15, and 20-day performance from the market close prior to the autumnal equinox (September 22nd). For example, today (9/22/25) represents day 1 and the percentage return will be measured from Friday’s close.

As our first table shows, the first 3 trading days following that start of the fall season have been very negative on average, with performance through the rest of the month not showing much improvement.

For shorter-term swing traders looking to trade the next days, this negative skew can also be seen on our following performance distribution charts.

With the stock market’s main measure of volatility (the CBOE Volatility Index - VIX) still trading near historically-low levels, the S&P 500’s weekly performance is likely to remain normally distributed until the VIX pushed back above the 20 area.

Click here 👈to learn more about our charts.

Monday

• Fed speaker lineup: Fed Governor Stephen Miran, New York Fed President John Williams, Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack, Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin, St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem

Tuesday

• S&P flash U.S. Purchasing Managers Index (September)

• Fed speakers: Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman, Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic

• Top earnings: Micron, AutoZone

Wednesday

• New home sales (August)

• Fed speakers: San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly

• Top earnings: Cintas, Thor Industries, KB Home

Thursday

• Gross domestic product, second revision (Q2)15

• More data: Existing home sales (August), Initial jobless claims (week ending Sept. 20), Advanced U.S. trade balance (August), Advanced retail inventories (August), Advanced wholesale inventories (August), Durable-goods orders (August)161710

• Fed speakers: Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman, Fed Governor Michael Barr, New York Fed President John Williams, San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly, Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee1181920

• Top earnings: Costco Wholesale, Accenture, Jabil, TD Synnex, CarMax

Friday

• Personal Consumption Expenditures price index (August)

• Additional Data to Watch: Consumer sentiment (September)

• Fed speakers: Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman, Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin