Speculative News-Driven Swing Trading – 2025-11-21 PM Session

Session log for the speculative, news-driven swing trading system – 2025-11-21 (PM).

This Week’s AI/Crypto Air Pocket, Today’s Relief Valve

The week started with a familiar kind of panic: AI leaders and crypto names sold off together as traders cooled on the “everything AI + everything on-chain” story, at least for a few days. High-multiple chip names and AI-adjacent software gave back a noticeable chunk of their recent gains, and the usual crypto bellwethers added extra volatility on top.

Today’s tape, though, was a different story. A combination of cooler jobs data and a more market-friendly tone from the Fed helped flip the risk switch back on. Yields eased, rate-cut hopes nudged higher, and crowded shorts in AI/tech and crypto suddenly felt very uncomfortable. The result: a classic relief rally, with the same AI and crypto proxies that were punished earlier in the week leading the rebound.

For a narrative summary of the macro backdrop, see recent coverage from major financial outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Reuters Markets, which all highlighted the combination of softer labor data and a less hawkish Fed as key drivers of today’s move.

How the Book Is Positioned

The system stays fully invested, but the mix has shifted meaningfully as this week’s volatility played out:

• Core AI/Tech Risk: AAPL, NVDA, and QQQ remain the backbone of the book. They express the central thesis that AI and large-cap tech continue to be the main gravity well for equity flows, even when the ride is rough.
• Defensive Ballast: WMT acts as a stabilizer – lower beta, more predictable earnings, and some insulation if growth sentiment wobbles.
• Energy Exposure: XOM keeps a foot in the energy trade, both as an inflation hedge and as a diversifier away from pure tech beta.
• Volatility Hedge: UVXY serves as an explicit hedge. In sharp risk-off episodes, it is designed to pick up some of the slack when the growth complex is under pressure.
• New Uranium Starter: A small, speculative starter in CCJ adds exposure to the uranium and nuclear-energy theme – a different cycle, a different driver set, and a way to diversify the speculative bucket beyond AI and crypto narratives.

Stops, Floors, and Exit-Pending Logic

This system is unapologetically rules-driven. The key principle: price closes below our floor, the clock starts ticking. Specifically, GE, NVDA, and QQQ all breached their predefined stop levels on prior closes. That turns them into exit-pending names slated for liquidation on the next morning’s session, barring an explicit rule-based exception.

The goal here is not to predict every wiggle, but to respect the line in the sand. When the stop is hit, the trade thesis is treated as invalid until a fresh setup emerges. This avoids the classic trap of “just one more day” while a loser quietly grows from an annoying drawdown into a portfolio problem.

From AI-Only to a Speculative Mix

The portfolio has been evolving from a concentrated AI-heavy exposure into a more diversified speculative mix. The current configuration leans into four pillars:

1. AI & Large-Cap Tech: Still the core engine (AAPL, NVDA, QQQ), but increasingly sized and managed with strict downside rules.
2. Defensives: WMT and similar profiles to help smooth the ride when growth sentiment swings too hard in either direction.
3. Alternative Cycles: Uranium via CCJ and energy via XOM – trades that can work on very different catalysts than AI headlines or crypto sentiment.
4. Hedges: UVXY as a volatility overlay to offset part of the equity risk when the market gets jumpy.

This is still a speculative book, just less one-dimensional. Instead of betting everything on one storyline (AI forever, crypto forever), the system now toggles among several high-volatility themes while enforcing tight, mechanical risk controls.

Always Invested, Always Rotating

A final point of discipline: this system does not retreat to large cash balances. The mandate is to stay fully invested but rotate aggressively as stops are triggered. When a stock or ETF violates its floor, capital is not parked on the sidelines; it is reallocated into fresher setups that fit the current macro and news flow.

That means the book is always in motion. AI leadership can – and will – be swapped out for defensives, uranium, energy, or other high-conviction themes as the tape demands. The constant is not any particular ticker, but the process: news-driven, rules-enforced, fully invested, and utterly unsentimental about cutting what no longer works.

As always, this log is an educational record of a rules-based system, not financial advice. Markets change fast; so does the book.