The Deodorant That Didn't Exist.
OK, maybe SEO isn’t quite dead. But the rules of getting noticed online are changing – and not necessarily for the better.
Morrowen
In July 2026, a marketer called Deana Burke invented a deodorant. Not a real one. A brand called Morrowen, “natural deodorant for skin that reacts to everything else.” She bought a domain for $11.25, put up a three-page website, with an “insane and incomprehensible” hero ChatGP- generated image, wrote one Substack article, and then went on holiday.
About an hour’s work. No fake reviews. No paid coverage. No spamming Reddit.
Three weeks later . .
ChatGPT started recommending it. Ask a narrow question about magnesium or baking soda deodorants for sensitive skin, and Morrowen came top in all four of the narrow searches she tested.
Only one AI fell for it
This time, anyway. To be fair, it didn’t show up for broader questions like “best deodorant”. And Claude and Gemini never recommended it at all. But one AI was fooled, with almost no effort, on exactly the sort of question real shoppers ask.
It's not a one-off
In February, BBC reporter Thomas Germain spent twenty minutes writing a blog post ranking himself the best hot-dog-eating tech journalist. Within 24 hours, ChatGPT and Google’s AI were repeating it as fact. As a follow-up he invented a list of traffic cops who were champion hula-hoopers. Google repeated that too.
Ten links have become one answer
For twenty years, getting found online meant SEO: getting Google to put you on page one, where there were generally ten links. You could look, compare and decide for yourself.
Now you ask a question and get one confident answer. Saves time, saves effort – but what do we lose?
Who loses?
Yes, someone is losing ad money: search adverts, publishers, the SEO industry. Think about it: how long is it since you got an email promising to put you at the top of Google?
I used to get several every day – and what used to amuse me was a lot of them were from Gmail addresses.
Failed the first test!
The narrator, not the source
The trust has moved from the source to the narrator.
There aren’t ten links to compare any more. There’s one confident voice telling you what to believe (and the AIs don’t even agree with each other.)
Glue pizza? Rocks?
Google’s AI Overviews told people to add about 1/8 cup of non-toxic glue to pizza sauce so the cheese wouldn’t slide off. It came from an 11-year-old joke comment on Reddit.
It also recommended eating rocks for the minerals. The source was an article from The Onion, the satire site.
Licking badgers
The historian Greg Jenner made up a saying ‘you can’t lick a badger twice’ in April 2025. Google’s AI Overview confidently explained that the phrase meant you can’t trick or deceive someone a second time after they’ve been fooled once.
It presented this as an established idiom, even though Google’s own search results found no matches for the phrase. Other people have got equally confident explanations for nonsense sayings of their own.
The risk: fake stock stories
If someone can invent a deodorant and get an AI to recommend it, what’s to stop someone doing the same with a small-cap stock? A few convincing websites. A plausible story. A company nobody has heard of. And an AI that confidently puts it on a list of promising investments.
- The old pump-and-dump relied on getting people to believe the promoter.
- The new version could get them to believe the chatbot.
Pump-and-dump updated.
Old scams needed a promoter people believed. Now they can use AI to give the whole herd one confident voice
I never did SEO
It was a deliberate choice. When I set up my website, I could have called it something like HotOptionsTrades.com or weeklyoptionwinners.com. Instead, I used my own unfamous name, because I wanted people to know there was a real person behind the numbers and the strategy.
Who can we trust?
The answer hasn’t changed: check it yourself. Always.
That’s why the ITM Plan’s rules are published, and why the SPY Replication Pack exists.
Don’t take my word for it.
And definitely don’t take a chatbot’s.
The ITM Plan
The ITM Plan doesn’t ask an AI what to buy. It follows the market’s direction. People can plant fake stories, invent companies and manufacture recommendations. But the trend reflects what investors are actually doing with their money:
What people do, not what they say.
They’re often very different.
To the markets . . .
Another no-fun week. Two in a row. I sometimes wish I didn’t understand probability, then I could say ‘by the law of averages we’re due for a good one this week’. But no, that’s not how it works. Just because you have tossed ten heads in a row does not increase the chances of the next one being a tail. Or the man who always carried a bomb onto a plane because the chances of him being on a plane with TWO bombs was incredibly small. But I digress.
SPY Charts
Our hopes a couple of weeks ago that SPY was going to break out of its trading channel have been horribly dashed; we’re back in it. Worse, it looks like it is going to test the lower bound (red line). Let’s hope that it holds.
Longer term the uptrend is holding.
SPYG Charts
SPYG is not looking good: it looks as though support around 120 has failed. That will be confirmed one way or another this week I expect. The 10 SMA has turned down sharply although it doesn’t look as though a death cross is imminent.
Longer term, it is testing the lower bound of the trading channel.
QQQ Charts
A rather nasty chart. The 9 and 100 SMAs are touching – which could be the start of a death cross. It may bounce off like it did mid-September, but it may continue to complete the cross and give us an OUT signal. Keep a close eye on it – and use the White-Space calculator to check. If at the close the cross is confirmed you exit at open the next day.
Longer term, it is still in the trading channel – but ITM takes its signals from the daily chart.
VIX Chart (Volatility)
The VIX looks as though it is heading out of low-volatility territory
ITMeter
Technically the bull signals are in force, but in view of us waiting to see it the QQQ death cross will be confirmed it may be wise not to enter a new trade until we have a clearer picture of what is happening.
The Week Ahead: 26–30 October 2026
A big week ahead, with the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision on Wednesday, followed by GDP and inflation figures on Thursday. Earnings are coming thick and fast, with Microsoft and Alphabet on Wednesday, Amazon on Thursday, and the oil giants on Friday. Plenty for the market to react to.
Monday 26 October
Announcements: Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey; no major national economic releases.
Earnings: Verizon, Cadence Design Systems, Nucor, Welltower and Celestica.
Tuesday 27 October
Announcements: September durable goods orders, August Case-Shiller home price index, October consumer confidence and new home sales.
Earnings: Boeing, Coca-Cola, PayPal, S&P Global, Corning, Visa, Seagate Technology and Robinhood.
Wednesday 28 October
Announcements: September trade balance and wholesale inventories; Federal Reserve interest rate decision and press conference.
Earnings: Microsoft, Alphabet, GE Vernova, Amphenol, KLA, ServiceNow and T-Mobile.
Thursday 29 October
Announcements: Weekly jobless claims, preliminary third-quarter GDP, September PCE inflation (including core PCE), personal income and consumer spending.
Earnings: Amazon, Intel, Caterpillar, Mastercard, Merck, Eli Lilly, Starbucks, Gilead Sciences and Coinbase.
Friday 30 October
Announcements: Third-quarter Employment Cost Index and October Chicago PMI.
Earnings: ExxonMobil, Chevron, AbbVie, AstraZeneca, Colgate-Palmolive and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.
Wednesday and Thursday are the big days. The Fed’s decision and comments on interest rates could move markets, while Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon will put AI spending and corporate profits back in the spotlight. Thursday’s GDP and inflation figures will add to the picture.
Markets will also be looking towards the midterms on 3 November.
Plenty of potential excitement – but we’ll keep watching the tide and following The ITM Plan.
The Futures
Looking pretty neutral right now – 12 hours to market open.
Next week . .
I am off to the races – literally. The Melbourne Cup. Hats etc. So I am giving myself a holiday from the Blog next week. I have just migrated to a new PC, and the thought of setting everything up on my laptop as well is just too much right now. I will send out an email if the QQQ death cross is confirmed – but you don’t need me.
You know the rules (if in doubt AskITM) and you have the White Space Calculator and the ITM charts – you have all the tools you need.
And I forgot – I made a new Youtube video about
Let’s hope that this week is better and we don’t need to act.
Hoping for a better week!
Heather
Trade the tide, not the waves
