Dear Trader,
Licia Leslie has a rule that drives some traders nuts: She won’t touch a stock before an earnings report.
She calls that gambling, so she waits for the numbers, watches where the stock opens and trades what it does from there.
Tesla and Meta both report Wednesday night, which gives her plenty to chew on this week.
Mark’s bringing her on State of the Market today, and they’ll walk through all three stories below. Ask her about the NYSE story. Options on a short list of big names now trade starting at 7:30 a.m. ET, and that matters a lot to somebody who’d rather trade the morning after a report than the night before.
Then at 4:15 p.m. ET, Licia kicks off a three-day open house. Today she’s mapping price targets on Tesla and Meta before the reports hit.
By Thursday, she’s working off where both stocks opened and looking for a trade with everyone in the room. Save your seat here.
This link adds State of the Market to your calendar.
The Daily News Breakdown
SIGN: Trump says he’d sit down with Putin and Xi as long as the whole meeting sticks to nuclear weapons. Putin reportedly pitched the three-way summit in an Oct. 9 phone call as a way to settle Ukraine, likely on the sidelines of the APEC meeting in Shenzhen on Nov. 18 and 19. Trump took the invite and swapped out the agenda, which is a bold move for a guest, telling reporters Russia has “been fine on Ukraine.”
Beijing hasn’t agreed to anything, and the Kremlin only calls it a possibility. Ukraine, which wouldn’t get a seat, already said no. Trump has wanted the three of them in one room since a 2018 post about halting a runaway arms race, so I wouldn’t expect him to let this one go.
SNEAKER: The NYSE just stretched options trading hours on its NYSE American exchange, and the new sessions went live Monday. The early window runs 7:30 to 9:25 a.m. ET, with a late session from 4:00 to 4:15 p.m. Eligible names include the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), the iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM), the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) and options on Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon and Oracle.
Cboe launched its own extended session in July, so we’ve officially got an exchange arms race. Day-one volume came in light, and NYSE says stocks get longer hours in December. If you’ve ever watched a position crater on an earnings report and sat on your hands until 9:30, you just picked up a two-hour head start.
SIREN: Goldman Sachs says the housing market won’t get any better in 2027, and it’s pinning the blame on mortgage rates that climbed back up. Analyst Ronnie Walker expects 3.9 million existing home sales next year. That’s 26% below 2019 and a hair under his 4 million forecast for this year.
More than 95% of people with a mortgage pay less than today’s rate, and 65% sit at least two points under it. Nobody wants to swap a cheap loan for an expensive one, so they stay put. Younger buyers get it worst: Pew found inflation-adjusted home values rose 30% from 2019 to 2024, while incomes for households under 40 rose just 9%.