Breadth Brief

Price Action: QQQ added 0.46% on Friday to close at 744.50, up 3.30% on the week. A decent gain, but who's doing the lifting matters more than the number itself.

Absolute Breadth: The two planes are in entirely different regimes. EW remains in Bear Liquidation at 23.3%, fewer than one in four QQQ names in a confirmed uptrend. MCW sits in Bull Consolidation at 47.6%, a reading carried almost entirely by the heavyweights. The Soldiers are pinned down while the Generals march forward alone.

Distortion Context: This is a Mega-Cap Illusion, and the spread is wide: 24.3%, increasing all week and the gap isn't closing. A handful of symbols are carrying the index that more than three in four QQQ stocks can't validate.

Weekly Context: The weekly timeframe tells a different story from the daily. Both EW (28.5%) and MCW (46.2%) sit in Bull Consolidation, and the daily's Bear Liquidation reading hasn't broken through here yet. The weekly Mega-Cap Illusion spread widened to 17.7% from last week's 15.9%, so the concentration is deepening.

Price Action: SPY closed at 771.35, up 0.54% on Friday and 1.27% on the week. The price is grinding higher. Across 500 stocks, the internal picture is far more damaged than that price advance suggests.

Absolute Breadth: Both planes of SPY sit in Bear Liquidation today, EW at 9.5% and MCW at 30.8%. Only one in ten S&P 500 stocks holds a confirmed uptrend on the daily timeframe. When the cap-weighted plane breaks down too, the damage isn't sitting in a handful of sectors. It's broad enough to pull the heavyweights down with it.

Distortion Context: The Mega-Cap Illusion spread is 21.3%. Unlike QQQ, this divergence is playing out entirely within Bear Liquidation, both planes broken, the mega-caps just less so. Across 500 names, a gap this wide isn't a concentration quirk. It's a statement about how few corners of the market are actually participating in this week's price gain.

Weekly Context: This is the notable one. The weekly EW plane just flipped into Bear Liquidation at 28.1%, down from last week's Bull Consolidation at 32.2%, while weekly MCW held Bull Consolidation at 21.8%. Last week the average stock was leading the mega-caps in the same regime. This week it broke down while the heavyweights didn't.