Qualcomm surged over ten percent on May 5, closing at $186.56 after announcing a new twenty-billion-dollar buyback and a major AI partnership win. The day's range was $164.79 to $187.22. Investors who had punished the stock on weak guidance just days earlier came back hard. By the close, QCOM was trading at levels not seen since April.
The trade was a call entered at $169.39 at 9:50am and held the entire session. Exit at $186.49. Seventeen dollars and ten cents. That part is straightforward. The story is in how the move was built.
Every time a trade makes a new high, it opens a new leg. The system tracks how far it went and how much it gave back before making the next one. A clean trade has legs that barely retrace — price hits a new high, pauses, then hits another. A messy trade gives back 40, 50, 60 percent before recovering.
QCOM built seventeen legs across six hours. Fourteen of them had zero retracement. Price made a new high and never looked back before making the next one. The first five legs were a straight staircase — nothing going the wrong direction between steps.
The only real test came late in the session. After the move had already run past a thousand F-points, price pulled back 310 — the deepest retrace of the day. That is the moment most traders second-guess the hold. It recovered, printed a new high on leg seventeen, and the session ended with the position still working.
Average retracement across all seventeen legs: four percent. Six hours, a stock that gapped hard at the open, and it gave back almost nothing between new highs the entire day.
Some days the market hands you a clean one. May 5 was it.