Midday Wave #98: Breadth Cracks, Quality Holds: Navigating a Midday Flush – Friday 8/28/2026

Welcome to Wave Rider Midday Wave, your mid-session market intelligence. Let's dive in. I mean, morning breath was expanding by midday. It's cratered. What just happened to this tape? You know what? This one flipped fast. Okay, so give me the regime read. How different is this from the open? Night and day. The 40 SMA breath is down to 44.99% from 52.61% yesterday. But the real store. The 20 SMA? The 20 SMA. It collapsed to 12%. That was 46% earlier this morning. Wait, 46 to 12 in one session? In one session. And the bull bear 4% count flipped hard. Yesterday, it was 259 bulls, 112 bears. Right now, 36 bulls, 152 bears. Oh wow. So it's decisively net negative expansion. Is this broader? Is it narrow deteriorate? Here's the thing. The 20 SMA is decaying way faster than the 40. And that tells you it's an intraday washout, not a multi-day breakdown. Short term panic, structure intact. Exactly. And honestly, we're flying a little blind here. SPY, QQQ, IWM data is dark. So breath internals are the only readable signal. The scoreboard's blank, but the crowd's rushing the exits. That's a good way to put it. Right. OK, so with breath caving like that, who's actually holding up? This is the part that's interesting. The insurance names. AJG's at $267.21 up 2.7% Aon $356.20 up 1.9%. Yeah. On heavy volume? No, that's the tell. Light are vol on both. So it's controlled by not chasing. Right, right. Quality over breath. Yeah. Dash holding $236.14 up 1.8%. CME at $284.83 up 1.4%. Even V at $382.41 up a modest 0.7%. And none of those are fading? None of them. That's the divergence. They're steady while breath caves underneath them. Honestly. So what about new movers? Anything fresh since the morning list? Look, W-D-A-Y-E, that's the standout. $193.57. And the earnings, EPS quarter over quarter, up 246.94%. Wow. Sales up 14.29% are vol 1.75. So real interest, clean beat. That's a signal cutting through the static. Totally. HQ's popping too. $29.62 on an analyst price target raise, R-Vall 2.95. And N-A-B-L expanded its buy back. Yeah, totally. Okay, but there's risk on the other side, right? There is. R-I-V ends at $16.80 on a CFO resignation. And F-I-N-V $4.02 down 5.64% on weak adjusted EPS, R-Vall 3.67. So basically mixed to negative overall? Mixed to negative, yeah. But here's what keeps this from being a route. Mm-hmm. Go on. The institutional demand. G-S is sitting at a weekly demand zone $1476, strength reading 5.8. MCK's at demand 2. And ARGX is pushing near 52 week highs. Oh, wow. So big money isn't retreating. Big money is defending. That's all for today's episode of Wave Rider Mid Wave. Your mid-session market intelligence. See you next time.