Democrats take Congress, futures recover from lows, three names on afternoon watch

Overnight the midterm results handed Democrats both chambers and futures sold off hard before recovering: at 07:37 UTC the S&P 500 future trades at 7581 (-0.20%, overnight low 7490), the Nasdaq 100 future at 28232 (-0.26%, low 27616, about -2.8% at the worst). VIX closed at 20.83, the dollar index is down 0.46% at 101.42 and the 10-year yield sits at 4.93%. On cash closes computed by us: S&P 500 7568.92 with MA20 7705.78 and ATR14 85.3, so 1.6 ATR below the average; Nasdaq 100 28180 is 2.4 ATR below; Dow 51787 only 0.5 ATR below. Per method, the 08:30 slot opens no ideas: the pre-market is too thin. All 15 instruments were screened anyway and logged: 10 fail the band on late entry (CAT 3.3 ATR under, LLY 2.9 and WMT 2.5 above, among others), 3 are noise (US 30, JPM, XOM). Only TSLA (1.0 ATR above MA20), AAPL (1.4 below) and MSFT (0.7 below) sit inside the band and go on the afternoon watchlist. Macro today: ADP 13:15 UTC, ISM services 15:00 UTC, blackout 11:00-15:30 UTC. Note: this is the eleventh consecutive review without an idea, the alert is live and the dominant blocker remains late entry; part of the count comes from morning slots that cannot publish by design, which we flag as a calibration point.