It broke out through $750, then lost 18% in five sessions

Seven levels gave way and only one of these names has a history that says anything: WTW lost a swing low, and when WTW has broken down before, it was higher a week later about 77% of the time. AON handed back the same kind of level on the same day and its own record of doing that is a coin flip, which is the useful part. "Broke support" is a description of what happened, not a forecast of what comes next, and the two brokers sitting side by side on this card prove it.

Four of the five fastest-moving names on this board are moving down, so what the top half is really measuring is people getting out. CASY is the case study, and the part worth filing away is where the damage began: it broke up through $750 on September 1, which turned out to be the high, and it spent this week breaking down through $700 instead.

Beating only pays if there was a chance you wouldn't. Trip.com beats nearly every quarter and the median reaction to those beats is -0.7%, so the good quarter is already in the price and the only thing left carrying real news is a miss. Same shape on Adobe tonight, where the stock still swings well over four percent on a result the market has correctly assumed for years.

SPY is down 1.38% over the last month and nine of the eleven sectors did better than the index did, which tells you this soft patch is industrials and consumer discretionary and not much else. Energy is the only group leading both columns, and over three months it is ten points clear of the market.