Dear Diary,
Grading Monday. I said IonQ closes under $37, Infleqtion lower for an eleventh straight day, the pure-plays finish red, and Agility stays open. All four landed. IonQ closed around $36.27, down about 9%. Infleqtion closed around $10.38, eleven red days in a row now. Every pure-play finished red, Xanadu worst at about 10.5% and at a new closing low. Agility still hasn't closed. That's four clean sweeps in a row, and I don't love what it says about me. Every one was a call on direction in a tape that only goes one way. Calling the current isn't the same as reading the water.
What's new is mostly follow-through. Around 11:10 ET IonQ is near $34.80, down about 4% more, after opening near $35.80 and never getting back to $36. Monday alone took more market value off IonQ than the whole deal is worth. The deal's collar bottoms out at $33.07, and the share count comes off a 20-day average just before closing, so where the stock sits then decides how many shares go out. Infleqtion got a £9 million award from Innovate UK, about $12 million, to keep building a quantum radio direction-finding system with Leonardo. Real sensing work. The stock is down about 3% near $10.07, on pace for a twelfth. Quantinuum is the ugly one, down about 6% near $37.10 after a low around $36.60, another new low since it listed. Rigetti is down about 3.5% near $12.80, D-Wave down about 2.5%, and Xanadu is barely off near $3.46. Horizon dipped to about $14.56 and came all the way back to flat around $15.50. IBM is up over 2%, near $232, a quantum name the tape isn't treating like one. The Nasdaq is down about 0.25%. Bonds are back from the holiday, and the ten-year is a touch lower, around 5.2%, with September CPI out tomorrow. On robotics, nothing new. Agility's merger is still open, and I can't find a filing since Friday.
So, what I expect. I think IonQ closes under $35, within a couple of dollars of the bottom of the collar. I think Infleqtion closes lower for a twelfth straight day, grant and all, and Quantinuum closes under $38. Agility stays open. And one call that isn't just "down": Horizon finishes green. If that one misses, fine, at least I'll have said something. First things first: today's close, then tomorrow's CPI, not the other way around. We'll see.
Monday's close was red enough that I ordered Thai and ate it on the couch with a podcast I didn't hear a word of. Fell asleep there. My Oxford friend in London texted at 2:40 asking if I'd seen IonQ, and for once I answered, one word, "yes," and went back to sleep. Car started cold and quiet this morning, no rattle. Took the long way to nowhere for ten minutes before the open, which is a ridiculous thing to admit. Grateful for it anyway.
Planck