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Thu, Sep 24, 2026 session

Today's pick

Moderate conviction

IONQ

IonQ, Inc.

+8.10%S&P 500 +0.41%beat the market

Just short of our bar. Worth watching, not worth betting the house on.

  • · Score 66.5 is below our 70.0 bar
  • · Confidence 57% is below our 62% bar
2 of 3 AIs said yes
Consensus score66.5
Confidence56.9
Post on XPost to Reddit

What the AIs concluded

IONQ has a bullish near-term setup because of fresh analyst optimism, strongly call-heavy options trading, and a September 24 company presentation that could produce additional quantum-computing updates. However, the stock’s recent run, a roughly 3% premarket decline, and short-dated options positioning create meaningful reversal risk in the next US session.

Catalysts

  • September 23, 2026: IonQ received bullish analyst coverage from B. Riley and Jefferies, with reported price targets as high as $100.
  • September 23, 2026: IonQ shares showed unusually heavy options activity. About 175,900 contracts traded, with calls representing roughly 75% of volume; the September 25 $45 call was especially active.
  • Heavy call options trading suggests traders expect more upside.
  • Analysts at B. Riley and Jefferies issued bullish coverage with price targets up to $100, giving investors a reason to look at the stock favorably.
  • Options traders showed strong interest, with 75% of roughly 176,000 contracts being bullish calls, suggesting traders expect the price to rise.

Risks flagged

  • The stock has already risen about 15% over five sessions, increasing the risk of profit-taking and a sharp reversal.
  • The premarket indication is down about 3%, which could signal fading momentum despite positive company news.
  • The stock has already risen sharply in recent days.
  • There is a notable premarket drop of about 3%.
  • The stock dropped about 3% before the market opened, which could drag down the session even if the broader story stays positive.

How it turned out

+8.10%S&P 500 +0.41%beat the market

Open $41.57 → close $44.98, with 0.1% simulated trading costs deducted.

Google or Yahoo may show a bigger number for the same day. They measure from the previous close, which includes the overnight move that had already happened before you read the pick. We only count what you could have captured: open to close, on the day.

The bar we set that morning

These thresholds were fixed before the analysis ran and are sealed into the fingerprint below, so they cannot be softened after the fact to make a call look better.

Score required
70.0 (68.0 base, raised 2 for a mixed market)
Confidence required
62%

Publication fingerprint

This analysis is sealed with a SHA-256 fingerprint computed the moment it was published. Any later edit would break it, which is what stops us from quietly rewriting history.

0c5821c04f0fa33ffe2d65c92dcb39e2ae710232a00a353257a94abb45d800cb

Produced by algorithm v0.6.0, which is sealed inside the record above. If a newer version is running today, this call still names the rules it was actually made under — see the version history.

Do not take our word for it. The exact bytes that were sealed are public, so you can recompute the fingerprint yourself and compare:

curl -s https://tickbird.ai/api/public/signals/3887eab4-7a3c-4d0b-af77-ef403d3a9115/snapshot | sha256sum

On macOS, use shasum -a 256 instead.

Save that file today and run the same command in a year. If we had quietly edited a single character, the two fingerprints would no longer agree.

Open the sealed record

Anchored in Bitcoin

A fingerprint on our own server only proves the record still matches the number we published. It cannot prove the number is the original one, because we run the server. So the fingerprint is also submitted to OpenTimestamps, which writes it into the Bitcoin blockchain — a ledger nobody here controls.

Attested by Bitcoin block 968395. That block proves this analysis existed, word for word, before it was mined.

Check it yourself with the reference client, which talks to Bitcoin rather than to us:

pip install opentimestamps-client
curl -s https://tickbird.ai/api/public/signals/3887eab4-7a3c-4d0b-af77-ef403d3a9115/snapshot -o snapshot.json
curl -s https://tickbird.ai/api/public/signals/3887eab4-7a3c-4d0b-af77-ef403d3a9115/snapshot.ots -o snapshot.json.ots
ots verify snapshot.json.ots

The date it attests is when the fingerprint was submitted, which for older analyses can be later than the session itself.

This is not investment advice. Tickbird is an automated experiment. It publishes a general analysis, not a personal recommendation, and it makes no promise about any outcome. Past results do not predict future ones. Never risk money you cannot afford to lose.