Markets Closed, Nothing Solved, and the Nasdaq Just Posted Its Worst Streak Since 2022 – Market Breakdown #179
Five straight losing weeks for the Nasdaq. The Pentagon blacklisted Alibaba then pretended it didn't. Bitcoin slid to $68,800. The Supreme Court might kill the tariffs Friday.
📊 THE MARKET BREAKDOWN
Satirical daily market intelligence for traders who think in systems, not headlines.
Issue #179 | February 16, 2026
🔥 Headlines & Hysteria (powered by Forked Feed)
Forked Feed says: On Friday afternoon, the Pentagon published an updated list of companies it claims are aiding the Chinese military. On the list: Alibaba, the Amazon of China. Baidu, the Google of China. BYD, the world’s largest EV maker. WuXi AppTec, a biotech giant. RoboSense, an AI robotics firm. TP-Link, whose routers are in half the American homes that are supposedly worried about Chinese espionage. The list hit the Federal Register, roiled the stocks of every company on it, caused analysts to start writing urgent notes about US-China decoupling, and then was withdrawn without explanation. The Pentagon requested it be “unpublished.” When asked about it, the Department of Defense said it had “nothing to announce at this time.” Alibaba dropped 3% in Hong Kong. BYD and Baidu both fell. Alibaba’s spokesperson said the company is “not a Chinese military company nor part of any military-civil fusion strategy,” which is a sentence no e-commerce company should ever have to say. Baidu “categorically rejected” the inclusion. The 1260H list now features over 130 entities, and being on it doesn’t technically impose sanctions but does bar Pentagon contracts and functions as a giant neon warning sign to US investors that future restrictions are coming. The timing is exquisite: the list appeared and vanished four days before Trump’s expected meeting with Xi Jinping is being planned for April. So either this was a deliberate negotiating flex that someone got cold feet about, or the United States government accidentally published a classified document on the internet and then pretended it was a clerical error. Both possibilities are equally reassuring. Notable absence from the list: DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup that crashed the global market a year ago. Apparently building a model that rivals GPT-4 for $6 million doesn’t count as aiding the military, but selling people clothes online does.
Forked Feed says: The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.1% last week, marking its fifth consecutive weekly decline and the longest losing streak since May 2022. For context, that last streak happened when the Fed was panic-hiking rates, crypto was collapsing, and everyone was pretending that their SPAC investments were going to recover. This time, the Fed is cutting rates, inflation just came in at 2.4%, and the economy is adding jobs. The Nasdaq is falling because of vibes. Specifically, the vibe that artificial intelligence is going to eliminate the software industry, crash the trucking sector via karaoke company white papers, reduce office demand enough to tank commercial real estate, and generally render every stock with a P/E above 30 uninvestable. The S&P 500 lost 1.4% for the week, its fourth losing week in the last five. The Dow gave back 1.2%. The equal-weight S&P 500 is up more than 6% this year while the market-cap-weighted version has barely moved, which means the market is actually fine if you ignore the twenty largest companies in it. Morgan Stanley’s Daniel Skelly called them “AI disruption vigilantes” and said they’re finding “new targets” every week. At this rate, by March they’ll be selling off dental stocks because someone fine-tuned a model to read X-rays. The VIX posted its fifth consecutive weekly gain, its longest streak since March 2020. The last time the VIX went up five weeks straight, the world was shutting down because of a pandemic. This time it’s shutting down because of a PDF about freight logistics. Progress.
Forked Feed says: The Supreme Court has added this Friday, February 20, as a non-argument opinion session, and the financial world is treating it like the release date for the next season of a show where nine people in robes decide whether the president can tax imported goods without asking Congress. The case concerns Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs imposed under IEEPA, which lower courts have already declared unlawful. Oral arguments in November revealed that both liberal and conservative justices were skeptical. Kalshi prediction markets put the odds of the court ruling against the tariffs at 68%. Treasury Secretary Bessent says he expects a “mishmash” ruling but insists the administration can keep collecting tariffs at roughly the same level regardless of the outcome, which is a creative interpretation of what “losing at the Supreme Court” means. Tariff collections have surged 304% year-over-year to $124 billion fiscal year-to-date, and there’s genuine worry in the White House that a loss could force the government to refund hundreds of billions of dollars. Over 1,000 refund-related cases are already filed with the Court of International Trade. Trump himself said reimbursement would “take many years to figure out” and would be “almost impossible,” which is simultaneously an argument against the tariffs being struck down and an implicit admission that the money has already been spent. The court may not rule on tariffs this Friday, because justices release opinions when they feel like it and not when markets need them to. But the fact that February 20 is the first scheduled opinion day in weeks has turned it into the most anticipated Friday since the last time a CPI report came in hot.
Forked Feed says: Bitcoin ended the week down 2.6% and briefly bounced to $71,000 on Saturday before fading back to $68,800 on Monday, its fourth straight weekly loss. The largest cryptocurrency is down 45% from its October all-time high of $126,210 and has been stuck between $65,000 and $72,000 for most of February. Crypto markets are bleeding on a day when US equity markets are closed, with 85 of the top 100 tokens in the red. Privacy coins like Monero and Zcash are down 10% and 8% respectively. ETH slid to $1,996. Broader ETF flows are ugly: IBIT has seen $2.8 billion in net outflows over the past three months. Mike McGlone at Bloomberg Intelligence warned BTC could fall to $10,000 as US recession risk builds, which is the kind of forecast that makes other bears look like optimists. Meanwhile, Strategy, the company formerly known as MicroStrategy, published that it can “withstand a drawdown in BTC price to $8,000” without risking insolvency. This is objectively true in the way that a person standing on the 50th floor of a building can technically survive a fall to the first floor if there’s a very specific arrangement of mattresses. The fact that they felt the need to publish this is more interesting than the math behind it. Galaxy CEO Mike Novogratz said last week that crypto’s “era of speculation” may be ending, and returns going forward will be more like a long-term investment. He noted that “retail people don’t get into crypto because they want to make 11% annualized.” Correct. They get into crypto because someone on Twitter told them it was going to $500,000 by Christmas. Adjusting those expectations to “11% annualized” is going to be a difficult conversation.
Forked Feed says: Welcome to the most event-dense four-day trading week of the year. Tuesday: markets reopen after the long weekend. Empire State Manufacturing Index drops at 8:30 AM, and Palo Alto Networks reports after the bell, which matters because cybersecurity is one of the few software subsectors that hasn’t been declared dead by AI yet. Wednesday: the January FOMC meeting minutes land, and everyone will be scanning for any hint that the Fed is worried about the AI disruption trade affecting financial conditions. Also earnings from DoorDash and Etsy. Thursday: weekly jobless claims, Philadelphia Fed index, and pending home sales. Earnings from Walmart, which is the economy’s actual pulse check. Also Deere, Live Nation, and Newmont. Friday: the grand finale. Q4 GDP revision, December PCE (the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge), S&P Global PMIs, Michigan consumer sentiment, and new home sales. Oh, and the Supreme Court might rule on whether Trump’s tariffs are constitutional. All in one day. The market has been losing for five weeks, the AI panic is unresolved, software is in a bear market, mega-cap tech is bleeding, and now it has to process FOMC minutes, PCE, GDP, PMIs, and potentially the most consequential Supreme Court ruling on trade policy in decades. If this were a Netflix show, the writers would be told they’re cramming too much into one episode. The market cannot handle this many plot lines. Something is going to break. Probably your portfolio.
🔎 Today’s Focus: The Holiday Intermission
Markets are dark. The NYSE is closed. CNBC is running filler programming. And somewhere, a portfolio manager is sitting at a Presidents’ Day barbecue trying not to check futures on their phone.
The S&P 500 enters the week at 6,836, down 1.4% from last week, down four of the last five weeks, and stuck in the same 6,700-to-7,000 range it’s been in since mid-January. The Nasdaq is in worse shape: five straight down weeks, its longest losing streak since 2022, off 2.1% last week alone. The Dow is back below 50,000 at 49,501 after briefly touching that milestone the week before. Every major index is flashing exhaustion.
But the picture has two faces. The equal-weight S&P 500 is up 6% on the year. The Russell 2000 gained 1.2% on Friday alone. Deere has surged more than 30%. Crocs reported blowout earnings. McDonald’s is near highs. The market isn’t broadly sick. It’s bifurcated: if your business model involves making physical things for physical humans, you’re having a great year. If your business model involves software, cloud services, or anything that an AI model might theoretically replicate, you’re in a bear market.
Friday’s CPI at 2.4% should have been the reset button. Instead it was the pause button. The macro fundamentals are constructive: inflation is cooling, the 10-year yield dropped 15 basis points to the lowest since December, the CME FedWatch shows 94% odds of a June rate cut, and earnings growth for the S&P 500 is running at 13%. The economy is doing what the textbook says it should do. The market is doing what a market does when it’s in the middle of an existential rethink about which companies deserve to exist in five years.
This week forces a resolution, or at least an attempt at one. The FOMC minutes will show whether Fed officials are even thinking about the AI disruption trade. PCE data on Friday will either confirm or contradict the cool CPI print. The Supreme Court may or may not blow up the entire tariff regime. Walmart’s earnings will tell us whether consumers are actually fine or just pretending. And beneath all of that, the AI narrative is unresolved: software is 31% below its highs, mega-cap tech is bleeding, and nobody knows whether last week’s bounces in Salesforce and ServiceNow were the beginning of a bottom or a dead cat bounce in a structural decline.
Forked Feed says: The market took a holiday because the government told it to, but it would have taken one anyway. The last five weeks have been exhausting. The Nasdaq is in its longest losing streak since the Fed was hiking into a crypto collapse. The VIX is on its longest winning streak since a global pandemic. Software has lost a trillion dollars in market cap. A karaoke company crashed the trucking sector. Apple lost $200 billion because Siri can’t tell the difference between a contextual reminder and an existential crisis. The equal-weight S&P is up 6% because the average stock is fine, but nobody owns the average stock, they own the twenty megacaps that are down double digits. Presidents’ Day is supposed to honor the people who led this country. Right now, the market could use some leadership too. Instead it gets FOMC minutes, PCE, GDP revisions, a possible Supreme Court tariff bomb, and a four-day week to process all of it. Abraham Lincoln held the Union together during a civil war. This market can’t hold together during a cool CPI print.
⚡ The Setup
SPY 681.75 | BTC 68,799 | US10Y 4.033 | DXY 97.13
SPY is unchanged at 681.75 because equity markets are closed. The last real print was Friday’s flatline close, putting the S&P at 6,836. The key levels for Tuesday’s reopen are unchanged from Friday: 6,780 support (the January 21 low), 6,700 as the “correction starts here” level, and 6,900 as the ceiling that has rejected every rally in 2026. S&P futures were flat to slightly positive Monday evening, with Dow futures up 0.2% and Nasdaq futures down 0.2%, which is a perfectly inconclusive signal. The positioning setup is interesting: institutional desks trimmed risk before the long weekend, and thin holiday futures trading isn’t reliable. The real story begins Tuesday at 9:30 AM.
BTC slipped to $68,799, continuing to fade after Saturday’s brief bounce near $71,000. Bitcoin is in its fourth consecutive weekly loss and is down 45% from the October all-time high. The crypto market is a sea of red today, with 85 of the top 100 tokens declining while equity markets are closed and crypto absorbs all the ambient anxiety. The $65,000 level remains the line between “consolidation” and “something worse.” A break below it would confirm the bear market everyone is whispering about. The asymmetric weekend risk is real: crypto is trading while equities sleep, and any headline that drops in the next 12 hours gets priced in crypto first.
The 10-year yield drifted to 4.033%, slightly below Friday’s 4.050%, continuing the relentless bid for safety. This is the lowest reading since late November and represents a 15 basis point weekly decline, the largest drop among developed economy bonds. The bond market is pricing in rate cuts and cooling inflation more aggressively than equities are pricing in growth. The yield spread between ACGB and UST bonds has widened above 65 basis points, a level not sustained in over a decade, suggesting global fixed income flows are rotating toward US Treasuries. If 10-year yields break below 4.00% this week on the FOMC minutes or PCE data, it could finally force equity investors to acknowledge that the macro environment is better than the stock market suggests.
DXY ticked up to 97.13 from 96.88, a minor bounce that reflects thin holiday trading rather than any fundamental shift. The dollar remains range-bound between 96.50 and 97.50 and is broadly weaker in 2026 on rate cut expectations. European markets gained modestly today (Stoxx 600 up 0.1%), partially buoyed by the soft US CPI data from Friday. Asian trading was muted with China closed for Lunar New Year. The next real DXY catalyst is the FOMC minutes on Wednesday and PCE on Friday, both of which could push the dollar sharply in either direction depending on the implications for the rate path.
🧩 Market Archetype: The Loaded Spring
Five straight losing weeks for the Nasdaq. Four of five for the S&P. A five-week winning streak for the VIX. Software in a 31% drawdown. Gold above $5,000. Bitcoin below $69,000. Rate cuts priced in. Inflation cooling. Earnings growth at 13%. The macro data says buy. The price action says sell. Something has to give, and this week has every catalyst imaginable loaded into four trading days. This is a Loaded Spring. The tension between improving fundamentals and deteriorating sentiment has been building for five weeks, compressed further by a three-day weekend with no equity trading to release pressure. Loaded Springs resolve in one direction with force: either the FOMC minutes and PCE data provide the fundamental anchor that pulls equities higher and breaks the losing streaks, or the Supreme Court tariff ruling, combined with another week of AI disruption headlines, snaps the spring downward and the pullback becomes a correction. The market has been coiling. This week, it uncoils.
💧 Flow Pulse
The holiday gives us a chance to zoom out on flows rather than chase daily moves. The dominant rotation of 2026 is now unmistakable: out of market-cap-weighted mega-cap tech, into everything else. The equal-weight S&P 500 (RSP) is up more than 6% year-to-date while the cap-weighted index has barely moved. The Russell 2000 gained 1.2% on Friday alone. Industrials like Deere are surging, up 30% in 2026. Consumer staples are outperforming. Utilities are quietly having their best start to a year in a decade. Value is crushing growth.
The AI infrastructure versus AI disruption split is still the sharpest divide in the market. Applied Materials added 14% on Friday and is up 27% year-to-date. Chip equipment is the clear winner. On the other side, the IGV software ETF is down 31% from highs. Palantir is off 27% year-to-date. ServiceNow hit $98.94 last week after trading above $900 fourteen months ago. The software bear market is real, deep, and unresolved, and last Friday’s tactical bounce didn’t change the structural picture.
Fixed income is drawing enormous flows. The 10-year yield’s 15 basis point weekly decline to 4.033% was the largest move among developed economy bond markets. Gold settled the week at $5,042 (currently at $4,966 after some Monday pullback) but the trend remains firmly higher. Silver is volatile but holding above $76. The precious metals trade is backed by central bank buying, with the PBoC extending gold purchases for a 15th consecutive month, and retail flows into gold ETFs.
Crypto continues to bleed. Bitcoin ETFs have seen $2.8 billion in net outflows over three months. Retail is rotating out. Hedge funds are trimming. The narrative has shifted from “digital gold in a crypto-friendly administration” to “down 45% from highs and looking for a floor.” The one bright spot: large whale addresses have been quietly accumulating, suggesting smart money disagrees with the panic.
Forked Feed says: The rotation is brutal but clear. If you make chips, you’re up. If you make trucks, you’re up. If you make clogs, you’re up 13% in a day. If you make software, you’re in a bear market. If you’re a mega-cap tech company spending $150 billion on AI, the market has decided you’re both the future and somehow also overvalued. Money is flowing into Treasuries, gold, equal-weight indices, industrials, consumer staples, and a shiny yellow metal that central banks have been buying like it’s going out of style, except it’s the opposite of going out of style, it’s going into style so hard that it hit $5,000 and still has JPMorgan calling for $6,300 by year-end. The market isn’t broken. It’s rearranging the furniture. Unfortunately, the furniture it’s throwing out is the Magnificent Seven, and those pieces weigh about $15 trillion.
🔮 Forked Forecast
Bull Case (25%): Tuesday’s reopen is orderly, with S&P futures’ modest gains holding through the opening bell. The FOMC minutes on Wednesday reveal a Fed that’s ready to cut sooner than expected, emboldened by the cool CPI. PCE on Friday confirms the disinflation trend. The Supreme Court either doesn’t rule on tariffs (preserving the status quo) or issues a narrow ruling that markets interpret as manageable. Walmart earnings confirm consumer resilience. Software extends Friday’s bounce as BTIG’s “extreme oversold” call gains traction. SPY reclaims 688 and the S&P pushes toward 6,900. Bitcoin holds $68K and retests $71K. The five-week Nasdaq losing streak ends. The Loaded Spring snaps upward.
Base Case (50%): Markets chop through a volatile four-day week without resolving the bigger questions. The FOMC minutes are a non-event. PCE comes in roughly in line. The Supreme Court doesn’t rule on tariffs Friday, extending the uncertainty. Walmart beats modestly. Software drifts sideways. Mega-cap tech remains under pressure but doesn’t collapse further. The S&P trades 6,780-6,880 (SPY 678-688). Bitcoin holds the $65-70K range. Gold stays near $5,000. The VIX stays elevated around 20-22. Everything is tense, nothing resolves, and the market enters the last week of February still trapped in the same range it’s been in all month.
Bear Case (25%): The crypto selloff deepens overnight and into Tuesday, with Bitcoin testing $65,000 before equities even open. The FOMC minutes reveal hawkish dissent or concerns about financial stability that spook rate cut expectations. The Supreme Court rules against the tariffs on Friday, creating immediate chaos around refund obligations, trade policy uncertainty, and the administration’s workaround plans. The S&P breaks the 6,780 January low and tests 6,700 (SPY 670). The VIX spikes above 25. The Nasdaq extends its losing streak to six weeks. The AI disruption contagion finds a new victim sector. A packed week with too many catalysts overwhelms a market that is already running on fumes, and the correction that has been building for five weeks finally arrives.
Triggers to Watch:
Tuesday’s open: the first 30 minutes set the tone for the entire holiday-shortened week
FOMC minutes (Wednesday 2 PM ET): any hawkish surprise resets the rate cut narrative
Palo Alto Networks earnings (Tuesday after-hours): the test case for whether cybersecurity software is exempt from the SaaSpocalypse
Supreme Court opinion day (Friday): the tariff ruling is a binary event with global implications
PCE data (Friday 8:30 AM): the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge either confirms the cool CPI or contradicts it
Bitcoin $65,000: the crypto floor that separates “consolidation” from “bear market”
S&P 6,780: the January 21 low that separates “pullback” from “correction”
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💬 Final Thought
The market is closed but the problems aren’t.
Five weeks of selling. Five straight down weeks for the Nasdaq. A trillion dollars gone from software. Gold above $5,000. Bitcoin below $69,000. The VIX on a run that hasn’t been seen since the world was locked in its house. And the best inflation print in nine months couldn’t generate a rally.
Now the market gets four days to process FOMC minutes, PCE data, a GDP revision, PMIs, consumer sentiment, Walmart earnings, and potentially the most consequential Supreme Court ruling on trade policy since the 1970s. Also the Pentagon may or may not have just designated the Amazon of China as a military company and then tried to pretend it didn’t. And crypto is selling off while equity traders eat leftover Valentine’s Day chocolate on a government holiday.
The fundamentals are constructive. Inflation at 2.4%. The 10-year at 4.03%. Rate cuts priced for June. Earnings growth at 13%. The equal-weight S&P up 6%. The economy is not broken. The market is having an identity crisis. It spent three years pricing in an AI-powered future and is now terrified that the AI-powered future might actually arrive and destroy the companies it was supposed to enrich.
This week forces the conversation. Either the data and the calendar provide enough clarity to break the five-week losing streaks, or they add enough new uncertainty to push the pullback into correction territory. There is no middle ground when you stack this many catalysts into four trading days on a market that’s been coiling for over a month.
Presidents’ Day honors the leaders who steered the country through uncertainty. Right now, the only thing steering this market is a karaoke company’s logistics white paper and the hope that nine justices in Washington decide to issue an opinion before lunch on Friday.
George Washington crossed the Delaware in the dead of winter. This market can’t cross 7,000 in the mildest inflation environment since 2025.
That's all for issue #179. Markets are closed for Presidents' Day but the Nasdaq just posted its fifth straight losing week, the longest since 2022. The Pentagon briefly added Alibaba, Baidu, and BYD to a Chinese military companies list then yanked it without explanation. Bitcoin slid to $68,800 on its fourth consecutive weekly loss while Strategy assured everyone it can survive BTC at $8,000, which is reassuring in the way that a pilot announcing "we have plenty of fuel" mid-flight is reassuring. The Supreme Court scheduled Friday as its next opinion day and may or may not rule on whether Trump's tariffs are constitutional. Gold is holding near $5,000. The 10-year dropped to 4.03%. CPI came in at 2.4% and the market shrugged. This week brings FOMC minutes, PCE data, GDP revisions, Walmart earnings, and potentially the most consequential trade ruling in decades, all crammed into four trading days on a market that hasn't had a green week since January. The equal-weight S&P is up 6% because the average stock is fine. The cap-weighted S&P is flat because the biggest stocks are not. And somewhere between those two numbers is the truth about whether this market is having a healthy rotation or a nervous breakdown.
-- Forked Feed
Forked Feed is a satirical financial newsletter and should not be construed as investment advice. We're just here to point out the absurdity. Past performance of our snark does not guarantee future sarcasm.
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