VIX Expiration & OpEx Week: February 16 Stock Market Preview
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Tomorrow is Friday the 13th, but rumor has it that the bad luck is now front running the 13th and striking on the 12th instead. This scientifically explains the decline Thursday.
Joking aside, indices saw a large intraday drop, and the formerly resilient Dow (represented by the ETF DIA on our dashboard) even participated today, seeing its largest 1-day decline since November.
Looking at SPX, today’s close was merely 4.5 points below the weekly 15 EMA, which you can see has stopped all weekly declines since the 2025 lows.
With CPI in the morning, anything can happen, but the weekly candle currently sitting at a level that is 6 points off of the weekly low doesn’t look inspiring at the moment.
The middle weekly Keltner at 6766.59 is the next area I’ll watch below (6750-6766 to include the sizable GEX cluster) if we lose 6800, otherwise, closing back above 6900 leaves open the possibility of retesting the HMA at 6963.93 again. 6780 is currently the largest GEX cluster expiring Friday, but we’ll want to check for any changes that might occur after CPI in the morning.
SPX net GEX plunged deeper into negative territory at the close, but SPX isn’t at an extreme reading (a potential contrarian signal) until it reaches -2.5B, based on GEX readings over the past 52 weeks.
QQQ reached the 600 strike, the largest GEX cluster that we highlighted several times this week. The upper and lower Dealer Cluster zones represent the largest negative and positive GEX clusters respectively, so we’ve entered the lower area where it’s possible that dealers might become buyers.
The lower Keltner channel at 580 has my attention if we continue lower, but for now, holding 600 leaves open a possibility of another test of the 610 area, as little GEX as we see above that zone.
Today’s drop looks like a continuation of a downtrend established (in hindsight) near the end of January, so we’ll respect the trend until some key areas are recaptured to the upside, as well as noting any significant shifts in GEX.
QQQ saw a similar sharp drop in net GEX, reaching the lowest GEX reading so far in 2026, though QQQ needs to exceed -3B to be in an extreme negative zone, so we aren’t necessarily in GEX bottoming territory, though other factors may contribute toward a low prior to reaching a GEX extreme. In other words, reaching an extreme GEX reading is NOT a requirement for a reversal, though reaching such a level may add to confidence that a bounce may be near.
The pesky uptrend in the VIX since December marches on, holding where it needed to in order to spike, and 25 may now be in play, if the VIX doesn’t stop at a lower high.
We can now monitor 18 as a key VIX area that may signal a change in trend, with a loss of 17 on a daily basis challenging the appearance of the uptrend on the chart.
Any retest of 18-19 that holds may be cautionary, since those levels don’t threaten the underlying uptrend yet.
We’ll share some of our observations in Discord following the CPI report, so we hope you’ll join us in the discussion!
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