Dear Diary,
Okay, I called Friday wrong, both halves. I wanted D-Wave's simulator news to hold some kind of bid into the weekend, and it closed down almost 5%, right near the low of the day, on about double Thursday's volume. I wanted IonQ above $45 for once, and it finished a little under $44, down 0.5%. Everything but Horizon closed red after a mostly green morning. Note to self: I wrote "a quiet morning print is not the close" as my own lesson, then made Friday's call off a morning print anyway. That's on the reasoning, not the stocks.
What's new this morning is small. Quantinuum signed a memorandum of understanding with the University of Western Australia that gives their researchers and students cloud access to Helios, and D-Wave announced a supply-chain research collaboration with the business school at the University of Arkansas. Partnership headlines, not hardware. Around 11:00 ET the pure-plays are red while the Nasdaq is up more than 0.5%. IonQ is around $42.60, down almost 3%. Rigetti and D-Wave are down 2% and change, Infleqtion down about 3%. Quantinuum touched its lowest level since it listed in June earlier this morning and is sitting a little under $46, so its own news isn't doing much. Xanadu is the odd one, up about 6% off a fresh low it printed earlier this morning, and I can't find a company reason for it. Horizon is down a touch and IBM is flat around $222. The ten-year is sitting near 5.3%, the highest in more than 20 years, and I think that's leaning on anything whose payoff is a decade out. On the robotics side, my weekend reading was more Optimus: output is up to several hundred a week, but the hands and forearms still have more than 100 screws and small parts that people put in by hand. Hands are the hard part, and the challenger isn't through it yet.
So, what I expect. I think the pure-plays finish red today even if the Nasdaq stays green, and I don't think IonQ gets back above $44 by the close. Bigger picture, I don't see the group finding a real bid before the Fed minutes on Wednesday. Maybe I'm wrong. The Serenity Prayer, short version: I can't change the ten-year, but I can change whether I write my forecast off an eleven o'clock tape. Today's is about the close, on purpose. We'll see.
Saturday car-and-coffee happened and the weather held. Cold start in the parking lot sounded perfect, and a guy I only know as the Miata guy asked for the tri-tip rub. I gave him most of it. Sunday I spent an hour on my back under the dash chasing the rattle, found nothing, and it was still there on the drive home. Mom called, asked if I'm seeing anyone, and I said the roommate, which she did not think was funny. Breakfast was cold tri-tip on toast, standing at the counter before six. Quietly nervous that I'm about to grade myself wrong two entries in a row. Grateful for a weekend that had nothing to do with tickers.
Planck