October was a volatile month. High-yield credit sold off into a correction, the Nasdaq 100 slid almost 10% from its early-October record, gold fell below $4,000 an ounce, and Alphabet posted its worst trading day since going public in 2004.
On Episode 137 of the Tall Oaks Podcast, Branden DuCharme, CFP®, CMT®, walks through the charts behind those moves. The thread running through all of it: the time frame you look at can change the story you see. Here are the highlights. (Recorded November 1, 2026. Market levels are as of recording.)
Start with your time frame
Before looking at a single chart, Branden makes a point he raises often with other advisors and professional allocators: line up the chart you’re studying with the time horizon of the decision you’re making.
A long-term investor and someone deciding when to take a distribution or rebalance this month are asking different questions. Short-term swings can feel enormous, and shorter time frames always come with more noise. Zooming out to the right horizon helps keep a scary week from driving a long-term decision.
High-yield credit: three charts, three stories
Branden uses the iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG) on a total-return basis, meaning price plus income distributions, with a 15-period exponential moving average to smooth out the trend.
Monthly chart (long term): Going back to 2013, even rough stretches like the 2015 credit selloff, COVID and 2022 look more manageable. October 2026 shows up as a sharp red bar, but it landed right on that long-term moving average and appears to have found support there. Branden calls it a correction. The thing to watch is the direction of that average: if it starts rolling over and price breaks below it, the picture changes.
Weekly chart (intermediate term): Messier. Credit broke below the average several weeks ago, rallied, and has been meeting resistance on the underside of it. That’s not a great look over the next several weeks.
Daily chart (short term): The noisiest of the three. Credit sold off through much of October, broke back above its average near month-end, then found support on the topside during a couple of tough final sessions.
The takeaway: short term looks somewhat constructive, intermediate term needs time to sort itself out, and over the long term Branden’s view remains that the bull market is intact. Same asset, three different reads, depending on your horizon.
Interest rates: are bonds still the ballast?
The 10-year Treasury yield pushed above 5% in October. Last month Branden flagged that the move looked extended and was likely to pull back from overhead resistance, and it has. He isn’t ready to call a lasting trend change yet. On a weekly chart, he’d want to see something closer to a 4% 10-year before he’d consider the bond picture decisively favorable.
Here’s the nuance. Duration, the sensitivity of a bond’s price to rate changes, is what has historically made Treasuries a cushion in a stock downturn: when rates fall, longer bonds rise in price. That cushion tends to show up most when a recession or growth shock hits and policymakers don’t step in. Branden’s view is that a scenario with no response from Congress or the Fed is not very likely.
So rather than leaning only on the negative stock-bond correlation investors relied on from the 1980s through 2021, he suggests it may be worth thinking about portfolio defense a little more broadly. There are times to own bonds and times not to, and your financial plan should drive that decision.
Gold: in the “penalty box”
Branden is candid that gold is a call he’s been wrong on recently. After a historic run, gold lost support near $4,200 and then broke below $4,000, with spot gold closing around $3,876 on October 30.
“It’s one thing to be wrong, it’s another to stay wrong,” he says. With a series of lower highs and lower lows, he now considers gold in a confirmed downtrend. If the selling continues and this isn’t just a shakeout, the next level he’s watching is around $3,400, roughly another 10–12% lower from where it closed in October.
He remains optimistic on gold’s long-term fundamentals, tied to persistent deficit spending and monetary expansion. That’s a long-term relationship, not a monthly or quarterly one. For long-term holders, his suggestions are to get position sizing right, be careful about how aggressively you buy the dip before there’s a confirmed change in trend, and keep watching whether the fundamentals themselves have changed.
The dollar is strengthening
It’s no coincidence that gold weakened as the U.S. dollar firmed up; a stronger dollar is generally a headwind for gold. Branden sees the dollar making higher highs and higher lows with momentum turning favorable, and he thinks it has room to keep rising before it gets strong enough to cause broader global problems.
If the dollar does weaken, he’d watch for gold to start putting in a bottom. And if interest rates break down in a flight to safety, that would likely weigh on the dollar too. His broader point: cross-asset correlations are shifting, and he expects them to be a meaningful driver of markets in 2027.
Idiosyncratic risk: the Google example
To make this one concrete, Branden pulled up Alphabet’s chart from just before its October 28 earnings report. The stock had gone mostly sideways all year, put in a double bottom off the July lows, and looked oversold. And it’s Google. It’s not going out of business.
Then the report landed. Earnings per share and free cash flow both came in well below expectations, with free cash flow turning negative (about –$9.1 billion for the quarter) as AI-related capital spending climbed. On October 29, Alphabet’s Class A shares fell about 12.6%, the stock’s worst day since its 2004 IPO, erasing roughly $480 billion in market value. That’s larger than the annual GDP of most countries.
There was little warning on the chart. This was a fundamental surprise that caught most of the market offside, and shareholders couldn’t react until the next morning’s open. Branden’s framing: that’s not a bug of owning individual stocks; it’s a feature. The company is not the stock, and the stock is not always the company. A durable business can still see its share price move sharply in either direction.
Mind your concentration
Branden isn’t saying the AI trade is over; he doesn’t think it is. You can still hold some concentration, and you can still overweight technology. But much of the broad stock market has been pulled into the AI trade one way or another, and if that trade ever unwinds, most stocks are likely to feel it.
That makes this a good moment to ask a few questions about your own portfolio:
What diversifiers do you hold that aren’t stocks?
How might those holdings behave in a sharp risk-off environment?
Are there out-of-favor areas that deserve a look?
Most importantly: what is your portfolio supposed to be doing for you, based on your goals and your financial plan?
The bottom line
October was a reminder that a volatile month looks very different depending on how far you zoom out. Match your charts to your time horizon, be honest about what’s working and what isn’t, and keep your portfolio decisions tied to your plan.
Want help reviewing how your portfolio is positioned? Schedule a conversation with the DuCharme Wealth Management team.
Frequently asked questions
What happened to Alphabet (Google) stock in October 2026? After reporting third-quarter results on October 28, 2026, that missed expectations on earnings per share and free cash flow, Alphabet’s Class A shares fell about 12.6% on October 29, the stock’s worst day since its 2004 IPO.
Why did gold fall below $4,000? Reporting at the time pointed to rising interest-rate expectations, a firmer U.S. dollar and forced selling during the tech selloff. Technically, Branden sees gold in a confirmed downtrend after it lost support near $4,200 and then $4,000.
Are bonds still a good hedge against stocks? It depends on the scenario. Treasuries have historically helped most when rates fall during a downturn. Branden believes a scenario with no policy response is less likely and suggests thinking about portfolio defense more broadly. Your financial plan should guide the decision.
Why does time frame matter when reading charts? The same asset can look healthy on a monthly chart and shaky on a daily one. Matching the chart to the horizon of your decision helps keep short-term noise from driving long-term choices
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