Pre-market tape: leaders, laggards and most-active set early tone

Pre-market screens showed a split tape: selective strength in semiconductors and specialty retail contrasted by weakness in profit-takers across recent winners. Traders are filtering for gap-and-go candidates with elevated pre-open volume and catalysts such as earnings beats, guidance raises, or regulatory headlines. Losers skew toward guidance cuts and secondary offerings. With indices near highs, the quality-tilt remains in focus; risk managers prefer names clearing prior supply with confirmation in early one-minute volume spikes and advancing/declining tick ratios. Liquidity pockets in ETFs may drive early index slippage.