The Journal

In 2024 I checked whether the full moon moves the Nasdaq. Two years and 500 more trading days later, I ran it again. What happened to the numbers is the most important lesson I can teach you about edges.

Mardi Gras — Fat Tuesday — is about excess before the fast. I wondered if the market throws its own party. Turns out the name fits better than I expected: Fat Tuesday runs fat. And it leans one direction.

Libra is the sign of the scales — balance, equilibrium, indecision. So I asked the obvious question: is the Nasdaq more 'balanced' when the Sun is in Libra? The answer fit the symbolism better than I expected — and Mercury retrograde tipped the scales.

Mercury retrograde gets blamed for miscommunication, tech glitches, and bad decisions. Does it show up in the Nasdaq? I tagged every retrograde day across years of data. The answer is refreshingly boring.

I said the full moon was noise. Then I split it by week of the month, thought I'd found something, and did the boring necessary thing — tested it against the calendar. Part of it evaporated. One piece survived.

The 8 ball reads historical tendencies to preview each month. For over a year it's been wrong — and not randomly. It keeps saying 'quiet' while the market runs hot. When your model misses the same way every time, that's not failure. That's a signal.

February ran 54% wide and finally picked sides — dead-even bulls and bears, ending on an 804-point drop. The 8 ball says March is historically one of the widest months of all.

Do traders buy the love or sell it? I pulled every February 14th on the Nasdaq. It's a tiny sample and I'll say so loudly — but it's a fun one, and there's a cute little tell in the direction.

January 2025 ran 73% hot and ended on a 1,010-point monster. The 8 ball says February usually runs warm too — but nothing like that.

November delivered its bullish reputation — up-leaning, 70% chop, and an election-week spike. The 8 ball says December is historically the quietest month of all.

October ran 26% wide and dead-even between bulls and bears — a true two-sided month. The 8 ball says November is historically quiet and up-leaning, but there's an election in the way.

Options-expiration days don't bring fireworks — they bring a vice. I measured every OpEx and triple-witching day against the Nasdaq's normal range. This is the strongest calendar effect I've found so far.

September ran wide again (+24%) despite its reputation as chop city — and it opened on a 772-point beast. The 8 ball says October is usually near-normal with an up-lean.

August didn't cool off — it exploded 73% wider than normal, on the back of one of the wildest days of the year. The 8 ball says September is usually chop city.

By mid-2021 the market finally calmed down — you could almost believe it was over. Then 2022 arrived with inflation, a Fed pivot, and a war. Part 3: the quiet that fooled everyone, and the hangover that followed.

The crash was fast — March 2020 and done. What followed was stranger: over a year of elevated ranges, a melt-up, and the tape refusing to go back to normal. Part 2: the recovery and the long new normal.

A look back at what the Micro Nasdaq actually did as the pandemic hit — from the sleepy calm of late 2019 to a March 2020 that ran 394% wider than normal. Part 1: the calm before, and the storm itself.

July ran hot — 35% wider than normal, and it closed on a monster. Then the 8 ball says August usually cools off. We'll see.

A short note on the monthly report you'll see here from now on — one half clear hindsight, one half honest uncertainty, split down the middle by a shake of the 8 ball.

Everyone says the full moon makes markets crazy. So I pulled seven years of Nasdaq data and checked every phase. The answer surprised me — and it's a lesson in why you test instead of assume.

A quant who trades from outside the box. Real market structure meets the mystic — tested, not assumed. Here's how I think, and what you'll find here.