CappNotes

Closing Look - 9/1/26

Frank Cappelleri — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 21:34:17 GMT

Summary

🔴 Stocks kicked off September on the back foot as renewed U.S.-Iran hostilities in the Strait of Hormuz sent oil sharply higher and reignited a global bond selloff that pushed Treasury yields to fresh multi-month highs.

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s hawkish Jackson Hole remarks continued to reverberate, with traders now pricing meaningfully higher odds of a September rate hike than they were a week ago.

Technology and other rate-sensitive growth names led the market lower, while energy stocks were the lone bright spot as crude prices spiked on the Hormuz escalation.

After the close, Dell Technologies (DELL) delivered a blowout AI-server beat-and-raise that sent shares surging in extended trading, even as Palo Alto Networks (PANW) and MongoDB (MDB) both fell despite topping estimates.

Apple (AAPL) also made news as John Ternus formally took over as CEO from Tim Cook, who moves into the Executive Chairman role.

Major Indices & Breadth

🔴 The S&P 500 closed at 7,631.47, down -0.7% (54.67 points), as the bond selloff and Iran tensions offset last month’s gains.
🔴 The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 52,766.88, down -0.8% (419.02 points).
🔴 The Nasdaq Composite closed at 26,099.77, down -1.0% (271.11 points), as rate-sensitive megacap tech names led the decline.
🔴 Breadth was negative across most of the market, with energy the only S&P sector to finish higher as crude surged; small-caps also lagged, tracking the broader risk-off tone.

🟢 Leaders

FRVO +24.9% (see AI)
DUOL +5.0% (see Corporate)
PBR +4.96%
EC +4.83%
CNQ +3.71%
BP +3.46%
EQNR +3.18%
AAPL +2.94% (see Corporate)
XOM +2.15%
CVX +2.00%

🔴 Laggards

CRWD -7.32%
PANW -6.17% (see Earnings)
DELL -4.0% (see Earnings)
TSLA -3.52%
AMD -2.4%
AMZN -1.8% (see Corporate)
NVDA -1.5% (see AI)
MSFT -1.3%

Earnings

🟢 DELL posted record fiscal Q2 revenue of $47.0 billion, up +58% year-over-year, with non-GAAP EPS of $7.04, up +203%; the stock fell -4.0% in the regular session ahead of the print but surged roughly +9% in after-hours trading on the results.
🟢 Dell’s AI-optimized server orders hit a record $60.9 billion, with AI server revenue of $16.4 billion, up +100% year-over-year, and a record backlog of $95 billion.
🟢 Dell raised its fiscal 2027 guidance, lifting full-year revenue guidance to $192.0 billion from $167.0 billion and AI-server revenue guidance to $74.0 billion from $60.0 billion.
🔴 PANW beat fiscal Q4 estimates with revenue of $3.41 billion, up +34% year-over-year, and non-GAAP EPS of $1.02 versus $0.95 a year ago; shares fell -6.17% in the regular session and tumbled as much as -8% in after-hours trading.
🔴 Palo Alto Networks shares fell despite the beat as investors focused on cautious fiscal 2027 guidance and the newly announced Console acquisition (see Corporate).
🔴 MDB reported fiscal Q2 revenue of $771.8 million, up +30% year-over-year, and non-GAAP EPS of $1.90, well above the roughly $1.61 analysts expected, and raised full-year guidance; shares still fell -6.1% to $407.71 in after-hours trading.
🟡 Credo Technology (CRDO) and GitLab (GTLB) were also scheduled to report after today’s close; results were not yet available as of this newsletter’s 5:00 PM ET production time.

AI

🟢 Google signed its largest-ever power agreement with Fervo Energy (FRVO) +24.9%, committing to 396 megawatts from the Cape Station geothermal project in Utah starting in 2028, with an option for another roughly 600 megawatts by 2030 — the latest sign of hyperscalers racing to lock up power for AI data centers.
🟢 MediaTek shares jumped roughly +10%, extending a roughly +200% year-to-date rally, after Nvidia (NVDA) agreed to invest $3.5 billion in the Taiwanese chipmaker via a convertible bond tied to MediaTek’s adoption of Nvidia’s NVLink Fusion platform for custom AI chips.
🔴 NVDA shares fell -1.5% on the day amid the broader tech selloff, even as the MediaTek deal underscored continued AI infrastructure demand.
🟡 MediaTek’s custom AI chip unit is eyeing $2 billion in 2026 revenue in a market it sees reaching $80 billion by 2027.
🟡 Dell’s record $95 billion AI-server backlog and +100% year-over-year AI server revenue growth underscored continued enterprise AI infrastructure demand (see Earnings).

Corporate

🟢 Evercore ISI upgraded Duolingo (DUOL) +5.0% to Outperform, doubling its price target to $210, citing product improvements and user growth.
🟢 AAPL +2.94% as John Ternus formally became CEO effective today, with Tim Cook moving into the newly created Executive Chairman role; Ternus touted the company’s product pipeline and a “phenomenal” September 9 iPhone launch in a memo to staff.
🔴 Amazon (AMZN) -1.8% after the FTC and 22 states sued the company, alleging a hidden “soft reserve price” scheme in its advertising marketplace dating back more than seven years that allegedly overcharged more than 1 million advertisers, including over 500,000 small and midsize businesses.
🔴 Amazon denied wrongdoing, arguing per-click ad costs held roughly flat once adjusted for inflation between 2019 and 2024, and said its relevance-based ranking system saved advertisers more than $8 billion from 2021 to 2025.
🟡 PANW (see Earnings) announced the acquisition of Console, an AI-native platform for agentic enterprise workflows, to expand its Cortex security platform.

Market Structure

🟡 Nothing to report today — no confirmed additions, removals, or trading-rule changes affecting the S&P 500, Dow, or Nasdaq-100.

Macro/Policy

🔴 The ISM Manufacturing PMI for August came in at 54.6%, down from July’s 55.6% but still in expansion territory above the 50 threshold.
🔴 Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s Jackson Hole speech last week continues to reshape rate expectations, with markets recalling his line that “we have work to do” if inflation isn’t moving toward the 2% target “clearly and at sufficient speed.”
🔴 Warsh noted inflation has run above the Fed’s 2% target for 65 consecutive months, a key driver behind the jump in September rate-hike odds since his remarks (see Prediction Markets).
🟡 Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pushed back somewhat, saying core inflation remains “very restrained,” while President Trump separately said “interest rates are too high,” adding political crosscurrents to the Fed debate ahead of the September 16 decision.

Treasury Bonds

🔴 The 2-year Treasury yield rose to 4.39%, up 5 basis points on the day.
🔴 The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.79%, up 4 basis points, its fifth consecutive session of gains.
🔴 The 30-year Treasury yield rose to 5.27%, up 3 basis points; Bloomberg noted the long bond has entered September on its worst stretch since 2006, an outlier move versus typical monthly volatility.
🔴 The 2s10s spread widened to roughly 40 basis points as short- and long-end yields both climbed on hawkish Fed repricing and inflation concerns tied to rising oil prices.

Geopolitics

🔴 Two oil tankers — one Saudi-owned, one South Korean-owned — were struck by projectiles in the Strait of Hormuz overnight Monday, according to the UK Maritime Trade Operations Centre, which reported no casualties or environmental impact.
🔴 The attacks followed a weekend escalation in which U.S. forces struck Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps targets near Larak Island and Iran retaliated against American bases in Jordan; President Trump said he plans to hit Iran “hard” in response.
🟡 Qatar’s foreign ministry called for de-escalation, and Iran’s President Pezeshkian signaled openness to renewed talks if the U.S. moves toward negotiations.

Foreign Markets

🟢 Taiwan’s TAIEX jumped +1.8% on the Nvidia-MediaTek investment (see AI).
🟢 Japan’s TOPIX closed up +0.62%.
🟢 London’s FTSE 100 closed up +0.29%.
🔴 Japan’s Nikkei 225 closed at 66,215.34, down -0.15%.
🔴 China’s Shanghai Composite closed down -0.16%.
🔴 China’s CSI 300 fell -0.30%.
🔴 Paris’s CAC 40 closed down -0.79%.
🔴 Hong Kong’s Hang Seng closed at 25,328.73, down -0.93%.
🔴 Frankfurt’s DAX closed down -1.09%, the region’s worst performer as German bond yields climbed alongside a broader European selloff.
🔴 Japan’s 10-year government bond yield hit 3% for the first time since 1996, an outlier move that added to the global bond-market pressure overnight.

Currencies

🟢 USD/JPY rose to 160.24, up +0.31%, as the dollar strengthened broadly against the yen.
🟢 The DXY dollar index rose to 99.70, up +0.27%, extending its rebound from last month’s three-month low.
🔴 EUR/USD fell to 1.1599, down -0.16%, pressured by weak German retail sales and rising Eurozone inflation expectations ahead of Friday’s HICP release.
🔴 GBP/USD fell to 1.3512, down -0.27%.

Commodities

🟢 WTI crude closed at $90.22, up +5.2%, its first close above $90 in over a month — a significant outlier versus typical daily moves — as the Hormuz tanker strikes raised fears of supply disruption.
🟢 Brent crude closed at $94.65, up +4.6%.
🔴 Natural gas fell to $2.89, down -1.45%.
🔴 Copper fell to $6.46, down -1.99%.
🔴 Gold fell to $4,358, down -2.0%, a fresh two-week low, as rising Fed rate-hike odds pressured the metal.
🔴 Silver fell toward $65.37, down roughly -2.8%, tracking gold lower.

Crypto

🟢 Hyperliquid (HYPE) was the lone standout among majors, rising roughly +4% to near $84.
🟡 Bitcoin (BTC) held just above $78,400, roughly flat over 24 hours in a $77,200–$79,200 range, as hawkish Fed rate-hike odds offset continued spot ETF inflows.
🔴 Ethereum (ETH) slipped to just above $2,440, down roughly -1%.
🔴 Solana (SOL) fell roughly -1% to near $104.
🔴 Dogecoin (DOGE) and Tron (TRX) each fell roughly -2%.

Prediction Markets

🟡 Kalshi traders priced a 57% chance of a 25-basis-point Fed rate hike at the September 16 meeting, versus 42% odds the Fed holds steady and just 2% odds of a larger move.
🟡 That’s notably more cautious than futures-implied odds: the CME FedWatch tool showed roughly 64%–66% odds of a September hike, up sharply from about 35%–40% before Warsh’s Jackson Hole remarks (see Macro/Policy) — a gap worth watching as the meeting approaches.

Volatility

🔴 The VIX closed at 14.92, up +3.40%, as the Iran-driven selloff and bond-market turmoil lifted the fear gauge off recent 2026 lows.
🟡 Even with today’s jump, the VIX remains historically subdued relative to the scale of the geopolitical and rates uncertainty investors are navigating, a divergence strategists have flagged as worth monitoring heading into September, historically a more volatile month.

Tomorrow’s Calendar

7:00 AM ET: MBA Mortgage Applications
8:15 AM ET: ADP Private Payrolls (August)
10:00 AM ET: Durable Goods Orders (July)
10:00 AM ET: Factory Orders (July)
10:30 AM ET: EIA Weekly Petroleum Inventory Data
Earnings before the open: Brown-Forman (BF.B), Cimpress (CXM), Daktronics (DAKT), FuelCell Energy (FCEL), G-III Apparel (GIII), Olly’s Bargain Outlet (OLLI), REX American Resources (REX)
Earnings after the close: Argan (AGX), C3.ai (AI), Broadcom (AVGO), ChargePoint (CHPT), Five Below (FIVE), Barrick Gold (GOLD), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), NetApp (NTAP), Phreesia (PHR), PVH Corp (PVH), Snowflake (SNOW), Tilly’s (TLYS), Chewy (WOOF)

3 Scenarios

🟢 Bullish: Inflation data due before the September 16 FOMC meeting cools and Iran tensions ease diplomatically, letting Treasury yields stabilize and risk appetite return — a scenario that would particularly benefit AI infrastructure and other rate-sensitive growth names that led today’s decline.
🟡 Neutral: Markets grind through an uneasy equilibrium — yields elevated but rangebound, oil holding in the low-to-mid $90s — as investors digest a mixed earnings picture (Dell’s AI strength against Palo Alto Networks’ and MongoDB’s guidance-driven selloffs) without a clear catalyst until the Fed decision.
🔴 Bearish: The Fed hikes in September while Iran-related tanker attacks disrupt Hormuz shipping further, pushing the 10-year yield toward 5% and Brent above $100, compressing equity valuations and hitting the AI-levered names that have rallied hardest in 2026.

Final Take

🔴 Today’s selloff had a familiar shape: rising oil, rising yields, and a hawkish Fed chair all pulling in the same direction against stocks.

What made it more than a one-day wobble is how each piece reinforces the others — higher oil raises inflation expectations, higher inflation expectations raise rate-hike odds, and higher rate-hike odds pressure the long bond, which has now had its worst stretch since 2006.

Dell’s results were a reminder that the AI infrastructure buildout itself remains intact and, if anything, is accelerating, even as the market’s patience for anything short of a flawless print — as Palo Alto Networks and MongoDB both discovered — is wearing thin.

With the Strait of Hormuz situation still unresolved and the September 16 Fed decision now a genuine coin flip by Kalshi’s pricing, expect volatility to stay elevated into the print of August’s jobs data later this week.

Source: CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Associated Press (via WPTF/local10.com “The Closing Bell”), Bloomberg, Trading Economics, The Motley Fool, TheStreet, Benzinga, PBS NewsHour, Investing.com, Business Wire, PR Newswire, StockTitan, CoinDesk, FXStreet, Kalshi, Foreign Policy Journal, UPI, 247wallst.com, Invezz, Investrade.

CappNotes offers a small window into the work we do at CappThesis - a technical analysis newsletter company focused on classical chart patterns, trend, and risk management. Explore the full range of CappThesis services here:

View premium services

No 1% Declines in August

Frank Cappelleri — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 15:15:53 GMT

Good morning. Here’s an excerpt from this morning’s comprehensive September Roadmap piece sent to premium clients pre-market today.

Also, check out my CNBC interview on Morning Call yesterday.

Have a great Tuesday.

August Ends on a Positive Note. Now Comes September.

The SPX gained 2.6% in August, snapping its two-month losing streak. Remarkably, all of that advance—and then some—came during the first two sessions of the month, when the index surged 3.3%.

Since then, the SPX has gone 19 consecutive trading sessions without a 1% move.

As September begins, the key will be whether the SPX can successfully leverage that consolidation pattern…

SPX Monthly

Following August’s advance, the SPX now has four monthly gains versus four monthly losses in 2026.

As we know, three consecutive monthly declines are relatively rare. The last such streak occurred from February through April 2025, and before that, from August through October 2023.

One-Year Returns From September in Midterm Election Years

Per BlueKurtic:

“September does not look so ominous now. If anyone bought the S&P 500 at end of August and held it for the next year, they never experienced a 20%+ bear market.”

The Best Septembers

Ryan Detrick of Carson Group shared a revealing stat this past week:

“The 10 best Septembers ever usually saw green YTD coming into them. Sure, we could fall this September, but a large drop isn’t likely, and odds favor this surprise midterm year rally continuing.”

A Big Pattern Target Was Hit in August: 7,680

Again, the month started with a bang, as those two consecutive large advances finally allowed the SPX to achieve its long-term 7,680-upside target and reach new all-time highs for the first time since early June.

Two Live Bullish Patterns to Start September

Thus, we begin September with the same two active bullish patterns that have been in play for nearly a month.

And two potential bullish formations remain under construction, as well.

1% Moves Since 2022

August’s two 1% gains are significant for a few reasons.

First, both were substantial, with each exceeding 1.5%.

Second, the SPX did not suffer a single 1% decline during the entire month. While this doesn’t happen often, it HAS happened various times over the last few years.

Here are all of the monthly tables we’ve tracked since 2022, with the highlighted months identifying those that produced zero 1% declines.

This matters because, as we often discuss, two key traits of a healthy uptrend are:

1. A low number of 1% absolute moves.

2. More 1% gains than 1% losses.

That type of lower-volatility environment tends to be conducive to cleaner breakouts and, ultimately, higher prices.

Why 2022 Still Stands Out

Not surprisingly, 2022 was the last year in which there wasn’t a single month without at least one 1% decline. As we recall, it was a bear market for most of the year, with the SPX ultimately finishing down 19%.

Even more striking was the sheer number of 1% absolute moves—128 in total, roughly double what we saw in each of the following three years from 2023 through 2025.

All of these characteristics were representative of the extremely challenging trading environment that defined 2022.

View premium services

Closing Look - 8/31/26

Frank Cappelleri — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 21:37:56 GMT

Summary

🔴 Kevin Warsh’s Jackson Hole message that inflation “is not slowing” kept rate-hike expectations elevated, while a US strike on Iranian rocket launchers near the Strait of Hormuz put a fresh risk premium into oil and rattled risk appetite broadly.

Treasury yields pushed to their highest levels in over a year, the dollar and gold traded on opposite sides of a jittery tape, and breadth was negative even as a handful of single-stock stories bucked the trend.

Apple closed the book on the Tim Cook era, and California’s utilities took the day’s hardest hit after a wildfire liability bill fell short of what Wall Street wanted.

Tomorrow’s ISM print and Friday’s jobs report now stand as the week’s next real tests for the rate-hike narrative.

Major Indices & Breadth

🔴 Nasdaq Composite fell 0.12% to 26,370.89, the day’s relative outperformer.
🔴 S&P 500 fell 0.33% to 7,686.38.
🔴 Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.70% to 53,186.32, its worst showing of the three.
🔴 Breadth was negative: decliners outpaced advancers 1,767 to 954 on the NYSE (94 unchanged) and 2,067 to 1,358 on the Nasdaq (194 unchanged).
🔴 Consumer Services, Utilities, and Industrials led sector losses.
🟢 Energy-linked names bucked the trend as the oil rally provided a relative bid (see Commodities).

🟢 Leaders

CRWD +5.77%
TSLA +5.51%
SLB +4.83%

🔴 Laggards

AMZN -2.50%
AON -9.58%
PCG -20.06%
EIX -23.07%

Earnings

🟡 No S&P 500 companies reported earnings today; the calendar was empty ahead of a heavier back-to-school stretch starting this week (see Tomorrow’s Calendar).

AI

🟢 CrowdStrike (CRWD) (see Leaders) opened its sold-out Falcon 2026 conference in Las Vegas, drawing more than 10,000 attendees and unveiling a wave of partnerships — Google Cloud infrastructure integration for the Falcon platform, a Snowflake Marketplace tie-up, expanded Project QuiltWorks integrations with a dozen additional security vendors, and new links with CLEAR and SailPoint.
🟢 The showcase leaned on the industry’s now-familiar theme that the AI arms race is fueling both more cyberattacks and more security spending, extending momentum from the company’s blockbuster fiscal Q2 print.
🟢 Tesla (TSLA) (see Leaders) confirmed its Optimus humanoid robot has entered production at the Fremont facility, using existing assembly lines with early units deployed inside Tesla’s own factories.

Corporate

🟢 TSLA (see Leaders) also announced a dedicated investor event for its Semi electric truck on September 24 and launched a lower-priced, rear-wheel-drive Model 3 in Hong Kong at roughly $26,000, an 8.5% cut to the prior entry price.
🟡 Apple (AAPL) -0.89% — Tim Cook closed out his final day as CEO after 15 years, handing the role to John Ternus effective tomorrow while staying on as executive chairman; Cook told staff “culture triumphs over everything” in his farewell memo.
🔴 Sempra Energy (SRE) -2% fell far less than its peers, cushioned by its heavier Texas and Mexico infrastructure mix.
🔴 PG&E (PCG) (see Laggards) and Edison International (EIX) (see Laggards) sank after California’s Senate Bill 492 advanced without a $6 billion per-incident liability cap, insurer-suit protections, or a Wildfire Fund replenishment mechanism.
🔴 BMO, Wells Fargo, and Mizuho all downgraded the California utilities group, citing uncapped wildfire liability exposure and the risk of credit-rating cuts.

Market Structure

🟡 No S&P 500, Dow, or Nasdaq-100 additions, removals, or market-structure rule changes were announced today.

Macro/Policy

🔴 Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s Jackson Hole speech continued to dominate positioning, with his line that interest rates remain the Fed’s “predominant tool” reinforcing bets on a September move (see Prediction Markets, Treasury Bonds, Currencies).
🟡 The domestic data calendar was quiet Monday itself; Friday’s Chicago PMI and University of Michigan sentiment prints are already in the market, and the next real test comes with Tuesday’s ISM Manufacturing PMI and JOLTS report (see Tomorrow’s Calendar).

Treasury Bonds

🟡 2-year yield ticked up less than a basis point to 4.36%, essentially flat.
🔴 10-year yield rose 4.2 basis points to 4.76%, its highest level since January 2025.
🔴 30-year yield rose 4.4 basis points to 5.25%.
🔴 The 2s10s spread widened to roughly 40 basis points as the curve bear-steepened for a fourth straight session on hawkish Fed positioning.

Geopolitics

🔴 The US struck Iranian rocket launchers near Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend — the first such strike in more than a month — after Iran allegedly moved to position mines in the waterway.
🔴 Iran’s Revolutionary Guard threatened retaliation via drones and additional mine deployments, keeping the roughly 6-8 million barrels of daily oil transit through the strait at risk (see Commodities).

Foreign Markets

🟢 Kospi rose 0.46% to 6,820.02, erasing an intraday slump of more than 3.5% as Samsung and SK hynix rebounded — an outlier round-trip versus its typical daily range.
🟡 Stoxx 600 finished roughly flat near 655, still on track for a fifth straight monthly gain in August.
🔴 Nifty 50 fell 0.39% to 24,080.40, dragged by Adani Enterprises, Adani Ports, and Eternal; IT, Metal, Realty, and Media underperformed while Auto and Private Banks held up better.
🔴 Sensex fell 0.40% to 76,957.27.
🔴 DAX fell 0.5% ahead of Tuesday’s eurozone flash CPI print.
🔴 Nikkei 225 fell 1.37% to 65,497, the region’s laggard.
🟡 FTSE 100 did not trade; London was closed for the UK’s late-summer bank holiday.

Currencies

🔴 EUR/USD rose 0.12% to 1.1600.
🔴 GBP/USD rose 0.08% to 1.3547.
🔴 USD/JPY fell 0.15% to 159.83.
🔴 DXY fell 0.18% to 99.53, pausing after a three-session rally.

Commodities

🟢 Brent crude jumped 5.31% to around $91/barrel — an outlier move several times its typical daily range as the Strait of Hormuz risk premium built (see Geopolitics).
🟢 WTI crude rose 3.49% to around $86/barrel.
🔴 Gold fell roughly 1.0% to about $4,483/oz, slipping below its 200-day moving average near $4,528 as hawkish Fed rhetoric outweighed the geopolitical bid.
🔴 Silver fell 1.4% to $66.80/oz.

Crypto

🔴 Bitcoin fell 0.7% to around $78,000, pressured by both the Fed’s hawkish tone and the Hormuz escalation.
🔴 Ethereum fell 1.6% to around $2,418.
🔴 Marathon Digital (MARA) -10.11%
🔴 CleanSpark (CLSK) -9.96%
🔴 Riot Platforms (RIOT) -9.05%
🔴 Coinbase (COIN) -6.33% — crypto-adjacent equities sold off far harder than the coins themselves.

Prediction Markets

🟡 CME FedWatch odds of a September rate hike sit at 58%, down from a Friday peak near 62%, still short of the 90% threshold markets typically treat as a done deal.

Volatility

🔴 VIX rose 3.40% to 14.92, a modest pickup off a still-historically-subdued base.

Tomorrow’s Calendar

US ISM Manufacturing PMI (August)
JOLTS Job Openings (July)
Eurozone flash CPI (August) and German retail sales (July)
Atlanta Fed GDPNow update (Q3)
Fed Governor Michael Barr speaks; ECB’s Boris Vujcic speaks
Dell Technologies (DELL) and Palo Alto Networks (PANW) report earnings
Massachusetts holds midterm primary elections
Debt auctions in Australia, Japan, and Germany

3 Scenarios

🟢 Bullish: Fed hike odds keep fading from here as Tuesday’s ISM and JOLTS data show cooling without cracking, the Hormuz situation plateaus without further supply disruption, and single-stock strength in AI-security and robotics names (CrowdStrike, Tesla) broadens out into the rest of the tape.
🟡 Neutral: Markets range-trade into Friday’s jobs report, with Warsh’s hawkish rhetoric offsetting soft breadth; oil holds its geopolitical premium without escalating further, keeping the 10-year yield elevated but rangebound near 4.75%.
🔴 Bearish: Iran/Hormuz tensions escalate further — mines, tanker seizures, or a wider strike — sending oil sharply higher and reinforcing the Fed’s hawkish case, pushing the 10-year decisively through 4.75% resistance and triggering a broader risk-off that hits high-multiple tech and crypto-adjacent equities hardest.

Final Take

🟡 Bottom line: today’s pullback looks more like digestion than the start of something bigger, with the S&P 500 giving back a third of a percent to close out a month that was still solidly positive.

That said, the crosscurrents here are real — a Fed chair leaning hawkish into a September decision that’s still closer to a coin flip than a lock, and a Middle East flashpoint that keeps a bid under oil every time it flares.

More importantly, breadth was soft and the moves that mattered were mostly idiosyncratic — Tesla’s robotics push, CrowdStrike’s AI-security conference, a utility-sector gut punch in California — rather than a broad repricing.

The next 48 hours, ISM and JOLTS tomorrow, then Friday’s jobs report, will do more to settle the rate-hike debate than anything said at Jackson Hole, and that keeps this market in a wait-and-see posture heading into September.

Source: Investing.com/Reuters, TradingEconomics, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, CoinDesk, 247WallSt, Business Standard, MacRumors, Saxo Bank Market Quick Take, Newsquawk , StockAnalysis.com

View premium services

Closing Look - 8/28/26

Frank Cappelleri — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 18:15:50 GMT

Summary

The S&P 500, Nasdaq, and Russell 2000 all finished lower, while the Dow was roughly flat, though all four indices still closed out the week with gains.

Nvidia (NVDA) fell despite a blowout quarterly beat, as the broader chip complex failed to extend Thursday’s rally.

PayPal (PYPL) was the session’s biggest single-stock story, tumbling after a reported buyout consortium abandoned its roughly $50 billion takeover pursuit.

Gold logged an outsized drop as the hawkish Fed repricing lifted real yields, and a wave of post-earnings reactions across retail, fintech, and semiconductors kept the tape volatile beneath a quiet headline number.

Major Indices & Breadth

🔴 Dow Jones dipped -0.02% to 53,559.34, essentially flat as gains in a handful of mega-cap and consumer names offset losses across chips and industrials.
🔴 S&P 500 closed at 7,711.48, -0.25%, cooling off after the post-Nvidia rally as Fed Chair Warsh’s hawkish tone weighed into the close — the index still finished the week higher.
🔴 Nasdaq Composite fell -0.52% to 26,402.42, the session’s biggest percentage decliner among the majors as chipmakers gave back some of Thursday’s surge.
🔴 Russell 2000 underperformed, falling -1.30% to 2,975.13 as small-caps proved most sensitive to the rate-hike repricing.
🔴 Breadth was negative, with the Industrials, Utilities, and Technology sectors leading Friday’s declines.

🟢 Leaders

ESTC +20.3%
GAP +14.3%
AFRM +10.2%
AMZN +4.02%
CRM +3.06%

🔴 Laggards

PYPL -12.71%
MRVL -10.28%
CRWD -6.4%
NVDA -4.57%
MMM -2.56%

Earnings

🟢 Elastic (ESTC) surged +20.3% to roughly $100, a new 2026 high, after fiscal Q1 revenue of $478M and EPS of $0.70 beat estimates and the company lifted full-year guidance to $3.29-$3.37 per share.
🟢 Gap (GAP) beat on EPS ($0.57 vs. $0.55 est.) on 10% comparable-sales growth at the flagship Gap brand, and named retail veteran Michael Francis as the new CEO of its struggling Old Navy unit. Shares jumped +14.3% even as Old Navy comps fell -4% and the company trimmed its full-year sales-growth outlook.
🟢 Affirm (AFRM) jumped +10.2% after fiscal Q4 revenue of $1.17B topped the $1.11B estimate, with first-quarter guidance also above expectations.
🔴 NVDA posted fiscal second-quarter revenue of $96.22B, up 106% year-over-year and roughly 5% above estimates, with EPS of $2.22 beating the $2.09 consensus; management guided to 70% revenue growth for fiscal 2028. Shares still fell -4.57% to $217.55, as the print — while blowout — wasn’t enough to reignite Thursday’s broader chip rally.
🔴 CrowdStrike (CRWD) slipped -6.4%, giving back some of its post-earnings surge from earlier in the week on routine profit-taking.
🔴 Marvell (MRVL) beat on both lines, with fiscal Q2 revenue of $2.74B (+37% YoY) and non-GAAP EPS of $0.94 versus $0.93 expected, and raised its FY2027 and FY2028 revenue guidance to $12B and $18B. Shares still fell -10.28% to $216.62 as investors focused on softer gross-margin guidance and a lack of near-term detail on the timing of its Google partnership revenue.

AI

🔴 NVDA‘s blowout quarter reassured investors that AI demand remains intact, but shares still fell -4.57% (see Earnings) as the broader semiconductor complex couldn’t extend Thursday’s rally into Friday, underscoring how sensitive the AI trade remains to any ambiguity in the details.
🔴 MRVL‘s -10.28% post-earnings drop (see Earnings) reflected investor impatience over the pace at which its Google partnership converts to revenue — a dynamic worth watching into Broadcom (AVGO)’s own AI-chip report next week (see Tomorrow’s Calendar).
🟡 NVDA (see Corporate) reportedly agreed to acquire AI model hub Hugging Face for $12.9B, a move toward controlling more of the AI software stack even as “circular financing” concerns among AI infrastructure spenders continue to linger in the background.

Corporate

🟢 Amazon (AMZN) rallied +4.02% (see Leaders) after Evercore lifted its price target to $355, citing strong retail signals.
🟡 NVDA (-4.57%, see Earnings) reportedly agreed to acquire Hugging Face, the open-source AI model repository, for $12.9B.
🔴 PYPL tumbled -12.71% to $53.66 after Bloomberg reported that a buyout consortium led by Stripe and private-equity firm Advent International — which had offered roughly $60.50 a share (about $53B) in mid-July — abandoned its pursuit after the two sides failed to agree on price.

Market Structure

🟡 No S&P 500, Dow, or Nasdaq-100 index changes or market-structure rule changes were announced for today’s session.

Macro/Policy

🔴 Fed Chair Kevin Warsh delivered his first Jackson Hole keynote, saying the central bank “will have work to do” if officials aren’t confident inflation is returning to the 2% target, and that recent CPI and PCE readings — while better than feared — don’t yet show meaningful underlying improvement.
🔴 Fed funds futures repriced sharply hawkish on the remarks: odds of a September rate hike jumped to roughly 57%, up from about 35% heading into the speech.

Treasury Bonds

🔴 2-year yield jumped roughly 12bps on the day to 4.36%, the sharpest short-end move in more than two months, as traders priced in higher hike odds.
🔴 10-year yield rose about 5-6bps to 4.72%.
🔴 30-year yield edged up 2bps to 5.21%.
🔴 The 2s10s spread narrowed to roughly 36bps from 44bps ahead of the speech, as the front end repriced faster than the long end.

Geopolitics

🟡 The Strait of Hormuz blockade tied to the ongoing US-Iran conflict remained in the background — Iran’s foreign trade has reportedly plunged 35% under the US blockade — but wasn’t a primary driver of Friday’s session, with WTI crude little changed on the day (see Commodities).

Foreign Markets

🟢 Europe’s STOXX 600 advanced +0.5%, absorbing the hawkish Warsh commentary with relative calm.
🟢 Japan’s Nikkei 225 climbed +0.41% to 66,405.56, extending its post-Nvidia-earnings tech bid.
🟡 Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was roughly flat, up +0.07% to 25,584.79.
🔴 Mainland China’s Shanghai Composite slipped -0.11% to 3,952.18.

Currencies

🟢 DXY rose +0.5% to 99.65, reclaiming its 200-day moving average near 99.17 and approaching its 100-day average near 99.60 as the hawkish Fed repricing lifted the dollar broadly.
🟢 USD/JPY rose +0.42% to 159.97.
🟢 GBP/USD fell -0.43% to 1.3531, its weakest since August 19.
🟢 EUR/USD fell -0.57% to 1.1583, its weakest since August 19.

Commodities

🟡 WTI crude (October contract) was little changed, down -0.17% to $83.39, with the ongoing Hormuz blockade (see Geopolitics) still underpinning a persistent risk premium.
🔴 Gold plunged -3.41% to $4,504.80 — a notably outsized move relative to its typical daily range — as the hawkish Warsh remarks drove real yields and the dollar higher, pressuring the non-yielding metal off its recent three-month high near $4,700.

Crypto

🔴 Bitcoin (BTC) fell -3.14% to $77,598.69, tracking the broader risk-off tone after Warsh’s hawkish remarks and pulling back from a three-month high near $81,455 earlier in the week.
🟡 Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw roughly $201.9M in outflows on the day, ending a nine-session inflow streak that had brought in about $3.04B; Ethereum and Solana-linked products continued to see inflows.

Prediction Markets

🟡 Fed rate-hike odds for September (see Macro/Policy) repriced sharply on prediction markets and futures alike following the Warsh speech.
🟡 A same-day S&P 500 directional contract on Lines.com resolved NO (down close), with total volume of roughly $79,434 — the contract had opened near 52% implied probability for an up close, reflecting genuine two-way uncertainty ahead of the speech.

Volatility

🟢 VIX closed at 14.46, down -0.34%, staying historically subdued even as the rate-hike repricing intensified — a sign vol markets read the move as a policy-path shift rather than a new shock.
🟡 Front-end vol should stay in focus into next week’s heavier catalyst slate (see Tomorrow’s Calendar).

Tomorrow & Next Week’s Calendar

Monday, 8/31: Quiet on the U.S. data front. Before the bell: Science Applications International (SAIC).
Tuesday, 9/1: ISM Manufacturing PMI (10:00 AM ET), July JOLTS job openings (10:00 AM ET). After the close: Palo Alto Networks (PANW), Dell Technologies (DELL).
Wednesday, 9/2: ADP employment report (8:15 AM ET), Fed Beige Book release. After the close: AVGO, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), NetApp (NTAP), Snowflake (SNOW).
Friday, 9/4: August jobs report — nonfarm payrolls and unemployment rate — the week’s headline release ahead of the Fed’s September 15-16 meeting.

3 Scenarios

🟢 Bullish: AVGO‘s AI-chip print beats and raises Wednesday, the August jobs report comes in soft enough to cool hike bets without spooking growth fears, and equities reclaim this week’s highs into the long weekend.
🟡 Neutral: Earnings stay a stock-by-stock story (per this week’s beat-but-sell-off pattern), the jobs report lands close to expectations, and indices chop in a tight range as the market waits on the September FOMC.
🔴 Bearish: A hot jobs report cements September hike odds near certainty, AVGO disappoints on AI-chip guidance, and the dollar/yield move that hit gold and small-caps Friday extends into a broader risk-off week.

Final Take

Friday’s session was really about one thing: Fed Chair Warsh using his first Jackson Hole speech to tell markets the inflation fight isn’t over.

That single message pushed short-end yields up the most in two months, lifted the dollar, and helped drive an outsized drop in gold — even as it barely dented the major indices, which still closed out a winning week.

Underneath the headline number, the real story was a market punishing any imperfection in earnings: NVDA and MRVL both beat and still fell, while ESTC, GAP, and AFRM all rallied double digits on clean beats.

PYPL‘s collapse after its buyout fell through was the day’s cleanest single-stock casualty, a reminder that deal premium can vanish as fast as it built.

Heading into next week, the market has two clear tells: whether AVGO can deliver an AI print clean enough to avoid the sell-the-news treatment, and whether Friday’s jobs report validates or unwinds the sharp repricing in rate-hike odds.

Source: CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Reuters, Bloomberg, Trading Economics, The Motley Fool, TheStreet, Investrade.

View premium services

5 Best Charts for the week ending 8/28/26

Frank Cappelleri — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 13:03:08 GMT

Happy Saturday,

Here are this week’s five best charts, presented just as they originally appeared in the daily notes. In case you missed it, here is Wednesday’s Bitcoin video, as well.

Monday - Week of 8/24/26

XLV Healthcare – Weekly Overbought
Healthcare was the best-performing sector (for the week ending 8/21) , gaining another 4.3%, making a new all-time high, and extending beyond the monthly breakouts we highlighted earlier this month.

There is one short-term concern: XLV’s weekly RSI has reached overbought territory near 73. As this chart shows going back roughly 10 years, similar readings generally have produced an unfavorable short-term risk-reward setup. Even though XLV has spent most of that period in an uptrend, becoming overbought typically did not lead to immediate upside follow-through.

Thus, after the recent surge, another period of consolidation would not be surprising.

Tuesday, 8/25 - Can Bonds Bounce?

TLT – Key Support
Reversal signals—whether they come from DeMark indicators or elsewhere—often carry more weight when they occur near key technical levels. With TLT recently pulling back toward its fall 2023 low near 82, that clearly is the case here.

There is an obvious concern, with a large descending triangle having developed and TLT flirting with a breakdown. At the same time, long-term support is being tested and, thus far, has held as the DeMark Buy signals have triggered.

If the current bounce can materialize and prove stronger than the prior failed attempts, the next major hurdle would be the descending trendline, which on this log chart currently comes in near 87.

Wednesday, 8/26 - The Final Earnings Piece

NVDA – Multi-Year Pattern Breakouts
If it seems like it’s been a while since we’ve seen a major NVDA breakout, that’s because it has. The stock hasn’t had a major move higher with immediate follow-through since the breakout to new highs in 2025. Since then, it largely has been a lot of back-and-forth action, contributing to the underperformance versus SMH discussed above.

Let’s not forget, though, that we’ve seen this type of action before. This 10-year monthly log chart shows that after extended periods of consolidation and underperformance, breakouts to new highs have led to multiple years of additional upside. That was true well before AI became part of the conversation and, obviously, during the last few years, as well.

Thus, this is a pattern worth keeping in mind well beyond today’s action. The best-case scenario would be a short-term breakout that leads to renewed outperformance versus SMH and eventually helps leverage this much larger formation, too.

Thursday, 8/27 - Software, Semis, Bitcoin

IGV & Bitcoin
With IGV continuing to recover this year and Bitcoin finally showing some life over the past week, we’ll continue to track how the two behave both independently and in unison.

Both topped in the fourth quarter of 2025 and moved into bearish territory during the first part of 2026. Now, both are showing signs of life once again, making their continued relationship an important one to watch as September begins.

Friday, 8/28 - Good Close, Tepid Breadth

RSPT Equal Wgt Technology
Ironically, the RSPT ETF is even closer to breaking out from its own inverse head-and-shoulders pattern than XLK. This formation has an upward-sloping neckline, so it will require a stronger follow-through effort to push above and remain above that line.

RSPT also did a good job of bouncing near its 50-day moving average, a level that both XLK and SMH have struggled with recently.

This highlights an important point. While yesterday’s overall index advance was extremely top-heavy, participation within Technology itself was quite strong.

That is the type of broad participation we would need to see if Technology is ready to take back the leadership baton as we begin the final four months of the year.

View premium services

Closing Look - 8/27/26

Frank Cappelleri — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 22:25:25 GMT

Summary

🟢 Stocks rallied Thursday as blowout earnings from Nvidia (NVDA), Salesforce (CRM), and CrowdStrike (CRWD) reignited the AI and software trade heading into Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's first Jackson Hole address Friday.

Nvidia’s guidance eased fears that AI capital spending was topping out, while Salesforce’s results — boosted by a gain on its Anthropic stake and a fresh partnership announcement — drove the software sector’s best session in months.

Treasury yields crept higher across the curve on sticky inflation data and resilient jobless claims, even as volatility fell sharply and equities pushed broadly higher.

Discount retailers sent a split signal on the consumer: Dollar General (DG) jumped on raised guidance while Dollar Tree (DLTR) slid on soft third-quarter guidance despite a blowout quarterly beat.

Geopolitics stayed a two-way street — a tentative Strait of Hormuz de-escalation between Iran and Oman offset by rising Russia-Ukraine tensions.

Major Indices & Breadth

🟢 Nasdaq Composite closed at 26,541.35, +1.57% — best performer of the day as AI and software earnings lifted the tech-heavy index.
🟢 S&P 500 closed at 7,730.99, +0.72%.
🟢 Russell 2000 closed at 3,014.34, +0.28%.
🟢 Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 53,569.44, +0.20% — the laggard among the majors as several blue-chip names (see Laggards) offset AI-linked strength.
🟡 Breadth was mixed-to-positive: chip and software names carried the tape while a handful of large-cap laggards kept the Dow’s gain modest relative to the Nasdaq.

🟢 Leaders

CRM +22.6%
CRWD +20.5%
NOW +10.0%
NVDA +8.7%
DG +2.6%

🔴 Laggards

DLTR -3.9%
HPQ -2.9%
AMZN -1.5%
JNJ -1.4%
GOOG -1.3%

Earnings

🟢 NVDA reported fiscal Q2 FY27 revenue of $96.2B, +106% YoY and above the $92.1B estimate; non-GAAP EPS of $2.22 beat the $2.09 estimate. Data Center revenue was $89.0B and gross margin held at 75.0%. Guidance for Q3 came in at $108.0B (±2%), well above the $104.2B Street estimate, with management guiding to roughly 70% revenue growth for fiscal 2028 (see AI).
🟢 CRM posted fiscal Q2 FY27 revenue of $11.35B, +11% YoY and above the $11.32B estimate; adjusted EPS of $5.90 far exceeded the $3.27 estimate, helped by a $2.6B gain tied to its Anthropic stake. The company raised FY27 revenue guidance to $46.1-46.4B and disclosed current remaining performance obligations of $33.5B (see Corporate).
🟢 CRWD reported fiscal Q2 FY27 revenue of $1.47B, +26% YoY and above the $1.44B estimate; adjusted EPS of $0.31 beat the $0.29 estimate. Net new ARR hit a record $332.8M (+51% YoY), pushing total ARR to $5.84B, +25% YoY. Full-year guidance was raised to $5.99-6.01B in revenue and $1.25-1.26 in adjusted EPS.
🟢 DG reported fiscal Q2 revenue of $11.3B and EPS of $2.48, +33% YoY and well above the $2.01 estimate; the company raised full-year adjusted EPS guidance to $7.80-$8.00 from $7.20-$7.45 and said it will resume share repurchases in the second half of the fiscal year (see Corporate).
🔴 DLTR beat on both lines — revenue of $4.89B, +7.0% YoY, and adjusted EPS of $2.70 versus a $1.11-1.15 estimate (including a $1.31 tariff-refund benefit) — but shares fell after third-quarter EPS guidance of $0.80-0.95 came in well below the roughly $1.39 analyst consensus, weighed by planned reinvestment of tariff-refund proceeds.
🔴 HP (HPQ) reported fiscal Q3 revenue of $15.68B, +12.5% YoY and above the $14.43B estimate; adjusted EPS of $0.83 beat the $0.66-0.69 estimate, and the company raised full-year adjusted EPS guidance to $3.19-3.29. Shares fell anyway on weak PC shipment trends and margin pressure from rising memory and commodity costs.

AI

🟢 NVDA‘s Q3 guide and 2028 outlook reset the AI-capex conversation from “is spending peaking” to “how much can be supplied” — CEO Jensen Huang said demand “is much greater than” the 70% growth guide, though the company cautioned gross margin will bottom near 71-72% in Q4 on memory scarcity tied to the broader AI buildout (see Earnings).
🟡 NVDA has reportedly agreed to acquire open-source AI hub Hugging Face for $12.9B, which would be its largest deal ever, though a signed agreement has not been confirmed by either party (see Corporate).
🟢 CRM‘s results were lifted by a $2.6B gain tied to its Anthropic investment stake, and the company unveiled a new AI partnership alongside the earnings print (see Earnings, Corporate).

Corporate

🟡 NVDA is reportedly close to a $12.9B acquisition of Hugging Face, the open-source AI model-sharing platform, in what would extend the chipmaker’s reach into AI software and model distribution and mark a return to the cloud-computing business it scaled back roughly a year ago. The deal has not been formally signed and could still fall apart.
🟢 CRM disclosed a $3.6B planned acquisition of customer-service startup Fin, expected to close in fiscal Q3, along with a previously announced $1.6B contract with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (see Earnings, AI).
🟢 DG said it intends to resume share repurchases under its existing buyback program in the second half of fiscal 2026 (see Earnings).

Market Structure

🟡 No index rebalances, constituent changes, or trading-rule changes to report today.

Macro/Policy

🟢 Initial jobless claims fell to 203,000 for the week ended Aug. 22, below the 208,000 estimate and down from an upwardly revised 207,000 — the four-week average held near 205,500, consistent with a low-layoff labor market.
🔴 The claims data followed this week’s July PCE report, which showed core inflation running at 3.3% YoY and headline PCE at 3.7% YoY, both above the Fed’s 2% target and reinforcing bets that the Fed could hike before year-end.
🟡 The Kansas City Fed’s Jackson Hole Symposium runs through Saturday, with Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s keynote address Friday morning the next major catalyst for rate-path expectations (see Tomorrow’s Calendar).

Treasury Bonds

🔴 2Y yield: 4.24%, +2bp
🔴 10Y yield: 4.67%, +2bp
🔴 30Y yield: 5.20%, +2bp
🔴 2s10s spread: +43bp — yields rose across the curve as investors continued to assess the Treasury’s expanded buyback program, which billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller has argued undermines the market’s credibility rather than delivering meaningful debt reform.

Geopolitics

🟡 Iran and Oman reportedly reached a revenue-sharing agreement easing passage through the Strait of Hormuz, a modest de-escalation after weeks of near-total shipping restrictions through the chokepoint (see Commodities).
🔴 Russia-Ukraine tensions rose instead: Russia struck Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with missiles and drones today, and Russian officials say President Vladimir Putin is weighing further escalation; CIA Director John Ratcliffe reportedly traveled to Moscow this week to warn against any Russian move against NATO members.
🟡 The U.S.-Canada tariff dispute also resumed this week, adding another cross-current for markets already digesting the Fed symposium.

Foreign Markets

🟢 Shanghai Composite: +1.1%
🟢 DAX: +0.3%
🟢 TSX: +0.1%
🔴 Nikkei 225: -0.1%
🔴 Hang Seng: -0.3%
🔴 Sensex: -0.7%
🔴 FTSE 100: -0.8%
🔴 ASX 200: -1.9%

Currencies

🟡 DXY: 99.17, +0.01% — essentially flat
🟢 USD/JPY: 159.39, +0.05% — dollar modestly firmer vs. the yen
🟢 EUR/USD: 1.1646, -0.01% — dollar marginally firmer vs. the euro
🟢 GBP/USD: 1.3582, -0.09% — dollar firmer vs. the pound

Commodities

🟢 Brent crude: $89.59, +1.99%
🟢 Silver: $69.26, +1.70%
🟢 WTI crude: $83.54, +1.59%
🟢 Natural gas: $2.90, +1.06%
🟡 Gold: $4,595.90, +0.05% — little changed as the Strait of Hormuz de-escalation (see Geopolitics) offset lingering demand for havens ahead of Friday’s Fed speech
🔴 Copper: $6.59, -0.16%

Crypto

🟢 Bitcoin (BTC): $80,280, +2.02%
🟢 Ethereum (ETH): roughly flat, +0.01%
🟢 Solana (SOL): +6.5% — the standout mover among majors

Prediction Markets

🟡 Polymarket traders put 68% odds on no change at the September FOMC meeting, versus 23% for a hike and 11% for a cut.
🟡 Kalshi’s word markets on Fed Chair Warsh’s Friday Jackson Hole speech show “inflation” at 90%, “AI” at 78%, “productivity” at 75%, and “independent/independence” at 71% (versus just 6% for “Trump”); “rate hike” sits at 23% and “rate cut” under 10%, while “bond market” (16%) and “yield curve” (8%) trade low, suggesting traders expect Warsh to sidestep direct comment on last week’s Treasury buyback intervention (see Macro/Policy, Treasury Bonds).

Volatility

🟢 VIX closed at 14.51, -4.60% — the vol premium collapsed alongside the rally as this week’s cluster of AI and software earnings cleared without incident, leaving Friday’s Warsh speech as the next scheduled catalyst.

Tomorrow’s Calendar

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh delivers his first Jackson Hole keynote address Friday morning at the Kansas City Fed’s Symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with the symposium running through Saturday.

3 Scenarios

🟢 Bullish: Warsh strikes a measured, data-dependent tone without a hawkish surprise; conviction in the AI capex cycle carries through from NVDA’s guide and the Hugging Face deal talk; software strength broadens beyond CRM and CRWD; the S&P 500 pushes toward fresh highs.
🟡 Neutral: Warsh avoids clear forward guidance, as prediction markets expect, leaving September rate odds roughly unchanged; markets churn near current levels digesting the week’s earnings deluge with limited follow-through in either direction.
🔴 Bearish: Warsh leans hawkish given sticky PCE inflation and resilient jobless claims, lifting September hike odds meaningfully; Treasury yields extend higher across the curve; Russia-Ukraine escalation risk resurfaces and spills into oil and volatility, pressuring the AI-led rally.

Final Take

Nvidia’s guide did more than beat a number — it reframed the AI debate from whether capex is peaking to whether supply can keep up, and software delivered its own version of that answer through Salesforce and CrowdStrike.

Yet the setup into Friday is genuinely two-sided.

Sticky inflation and resilient jobless claims give Fed Chair Warsh room to sound hawkish at exactly the moment this week’s rally is leaning on him to stay quiet, and prediction markets themselves aren’t fully convinced he will.

Add a Strait of Hormuz de-escalation that’s being partly offset by rising Russia-Ukraine risk, and Thursday’s gains look more like a AI-and-software-driven rally than a broad, all-clear signal for markets.

Bottom line: Friday’s Jackson Hole speech is the real test — how Treasury yields and the AI trade respond to Warsh’s tone will determine whether this week’s earnings-driven strength has legs into September.

Source: CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg, Reuters, Trading Economics, The Motley Fool.

View premium services

Closing Look for 8/26/26

Frank Cappelleri — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 21:03:00 GMT

Summary

🟡 The S&P 500 slipped -0.02% to 7,675.82, the Nasdaq eased -0.08%, and the Dow shed -0.21%.

After the bell, Nvidia (NVDA) beat on revenue and earnings but slipped in extended trading as investors focused on guidance, while Salesforce (CRM) soared +14% on a blowout beat and raised outlook.

Earlier in the session, Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) rocketed +36.6% on a tariff-refund-boosted beat, while Meta Platforms (META) rose +1.07% after settling a child-safety lawsuit for up to $16.7 billion.

Major Indices & Breadth

🟡 S&P 500 closed at 7,675.82, -0.02%—essentially flat as traders held positions ahead of the after-hours earnings from NVDA, CRM, and CRWD.
🔴 Nasdaq Composite fell -0.08% to 26,130.20, weighed down by pre-earnings caution in mega-cap tech.
🔴 Dow Jones shed -113 points (-0.21%) to 53,464.59, snapping its three-session win streak.
🔴 Russell 2000 slipped -0.09% to 3,007.29, tracking the broader tape.
Breadth was mixed with no clear sector rotation as markets awaited the marquee after-hours catalysts.

Earnings

🟡 Nvidia (NVDA) reported fiscal Q2 2027 results: revenue $96.22B (+106% YoY), beating the $92.17B estimate; adjusted EPS $2.22 vs. $2.10 expected. GAAP net income more than doubled to $53.95B. Gross margin came in at 75.0%. Guidance for fiscal Q3 called for revenue of roughly $108B, above the ~$104.2B analyst consensus. NVDA shares slipped in extended trading, down as much as -1.3% shortly after the release as investors weighed guidance against the print.
🟢 Salesforce (CRM) reported fiscal Q2 2027 results: revenue $11.35B vs. $11.32B estimated (+11% YoY); GAAP net income of $3.53B, or $4.29 per share, boosted by a $2.6B gain tied to its Anthropic stake. Free cash flow jumped +81% to $1.10B. Management raised Q3 guidance to $3.42–$3.44 adjusted EPS on $11.42–$11.50B revenue, both above consensus, and lifted full-year guidance to $16.67–$16.71 EPS on $46.1–$46.4B revenue. CRM shares soared +14% in extended trading. The company also unveiled “Claudeforce,” an Anthropic-powered plugin for sales workflows.
🟡 CrowdStrike (CRWD) is scheduled to report fiscal Q2 2027 results and host its call this evening; as of this writing, results had not yet been released. Wall Street models roughly $1.44B in revenue and $0.29 adjusted EPS (split-adjusted) for the quarter. In Q1, revenue was $1.39B (+26% YoY) with record net-new ARR of $256M (+32% YoY). Shares were trading near $184.76 heading into the print, up roughly +65% year-to-date. A full reaction will be included in the next update.
🟢 Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) reported fiscal Q2 results well above its own guidance: EPS $4.17 vs. a prior outlook of $1.80–$2.00, boosted by roughly $100M in IEEPA tariff refunds; net sales rose +5% to $1.27B, the 15th straight quarter of growth. Management raised full-year EPS guidance to $13.10–$13.60. ANF shares rose +36.6%.
🔴 Zoom Communications (ZM) issued a soft fiscal Q3 outlook, guiding to $1.46–$1.48 EPS versus a $1.50 estimate. ZM shares fell -7%.
🔴 Intuit (INTU) pressured several software names after its own guidance disappointed; INTU shares fell -3.37%, dragging peers ServiceNow and Workday lower in sympathy.
🔴 Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS) missed Q2 profit and revenue estimates and cut its full-year outlook, citing weak footwear demand. DKS shares plunged -30.68%, the S&P 500’s worst performer of the day.

AI

🟡 Nvidia’s (NVDA) print is tonight’s key data point for the AI trade: a clean top- and bottom-line beat plus above-consensus guidance, but the stock still slipped in early after-hours trading (see Earnings)—a continuation of the pattern in which NVDA has fallen the day after six of its last eight reports despite beating estimates each time.
🟢 Salesforce (CRM) leaned into its Anthropic partnership both financially (a $2.6B stake gain) and product-wise (the new “Claudeforce” plugin), reinforcing the enterprise-AI monetization narrative (see Earnings).
🟡 CrowdStrike’s (CRWD) AI Detection and Response (AIDR) business, which had grown its ending ARR more than 250% sequentially heading into tonight’s print, will be a focal point once results land. Ahead of the report, the company disclosed several enterprise deals worth $10M+ this quarter, including multiple $20M+ contracts spanning cloud, SIEM, identity, and XDR, with channel partners running 31% ahead of plan (see Earnings for full pre-report context).

Corporate

🟢 Meta Platforms (META) reached a settlement of up to $16.7B with a coalition of state attorneys general resolving claims that Facebook and Instagram were designed to be addictive to minors, averting a feared liability that Meta’s own legal team had modeled as high as $1.4 trillion. The company expects to record a roughly $10B legal charge in Q3. META shares rose +1.07% after an early pop faded.
🟡 CrowdStrike’s (CRWD) chief technology officer, Elia Zaitsev, is departing after 13 years to launch Cognition, an AI-focused cybersecurity venture fund targeting roughly $170M, with no successor named; the news lands just ahead of tonight’s earnings report (see Earnings).

Market Structure

🟡 No index rebalances, additions/removals, or market-structure rule changes to report today.

Macro/Policy

🔴 July PCE: headline price index +0.2% MoM / +3.7% YoY, above the 3.6% estimate; core PCE +0.2% MoM / +3.3% YoY, in line with expectations.
🟡 Q2 GDP (second estimate): +1.5%, matching the initial reading.
🟢 July durable goods orders: +1.1%, well above the +0.5% estimate.
🟡 Fed Chair Kevin Warsh delivers his first Jackson Hole keynote Friday; he is not expected to give explicit guidance on the September policy decision.

Treasury Bonds

🔴 2Y yield: 4.23%, +4 bps.
🔴 10Y yield: 4.66%, +2 bps.
🟡 30Y yield: 5.18%, +1 bp.
🟡 2s10s spread: +43 bps, little changed—yields ticked up modestly across the curve on the hotter headline PCE print (see Macro/Policy).

Geopolitics

🟢 Iran and Oman signaled progress toward a deal on a temporary joint shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz, easing near-term supply-disruption fears and pressuring oil prices lower (see Commodities).

Foreign Markets

🟢 DAX: 26,285.96, +0.08%.
🟢 CAC 40: 8,462.39, +0.27%.
🟢 Euro Stoxx 50: 6,470.74, +0.23%.
🔴 FTSE 100: 10,878.12, -0.07%.
🟢 Hang Seng: 25,652.97, +0.56%.

Currencies

🟢 DXY: 99.15, +0.24%.
🔴 EUR/USD: 1.1670, -0.07%.
🟢 USD/JPY: 159.16, +0.14%.
🔴 GBP/USD: 1.3636, -0.09%.

Commodities

🔴 Gold: $4,629.65/oz, -0.61%, pulling back from recent highs as the hotter PCE print reduced near-term rate-cut odds.
🔴 WTI crude: $80.13, -2.71%, on easing Strait of Hormuz supply fears (see Geopolitics).

Crypto

🔴 Bitcoin (BTC): $78,835.69, -0.12%, consolidating after last week’s sharp rally above $80,000.

Prediction Markets

🟢 Prediction markets price roughly 98.6% odds of an NVDA earnings beat and roughly 88.7% odds of a CRWD beat heading into tonight’s reports.

Volatility

🟢 VIX: 15.29, -1.04%, near multi-month lows even with three marquee earnings reports landing after the close.
🟡 Options markets priced an implied post-earnings move of roughly 5.4% for NVDA, ~7.5% for CRWD, and ~8% for CRM—all below their respective historical average swings, a sign of some complacency heading into the prints.

Tomorrow’s Calendar

Marvell Technology (MRVL) — reports fiscal Q2 results after the close Thursday.
Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s Jackson Hole keynote is scheduled for Friday, not Thursday, but will be in focus for positioning into the back half of the week.

3 Scenarios

🟢 Bullish: NVDA’s above-consensus guidance gets read constructively once the dust settles, CRM’s beat-and-raise sets a positive tone for enterprise software, and CRWD delivers a clean ARR beat—indices push toward fresh highs Thursday.
🟡 Neutral: NVDA extends its post-earnings “sell the news” pattern while CRM’s strength is offset by continued softness in INTU and ZM—indices trade in a narrow range as investors wait on CRWD’s numbers and Friday’s Jackson Hole speech.
🔴 Bearish: NVDA’s after-hours retreat deepens on renewed AI-capex skepticism, CRWD disappoints on net new ARR the way it has in three of its last four reports, and rate-sensitive small-caps lag as yields tick higher—the S&P 500 tests support near 7,600.

Final Take

Wednesday was a placeholder session ahead of the real event: three of the market’s most closely watched growth names reporting within hours of each other.

Nvidia’s (NVDA) headline numbers were unambiguously strong—a 106% revenue beat and above-consensus guidance—yet the stock still slipped in early after-hours trading, extending a pattern where the bar has simply gotten too high for beats alone to move the stock.

Salesforce (CRM) told a cleaner story, with its 14% after-hours pop reflecting both a straightforward beat-and-raise and tangible proof points from its Anthropic partnership.

Source: CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Reuters, Trading Economics, Kiplinger, 24/7 Wall St., Investing.com.

View premium services

Bitcoin Just Flipped the Script — What Comes Next?

Frank Cappelleri — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 13:03:06 GMT

Today’s video is all about Bitcoin. Many charts, various angles.

Check out the YouTube version here.

Timecodes
0:00 - Intro
0:21 - Failed bearish patterns
3:35 - A successful bullish pattern
4:52 - Bitcoin's pattern journey
7:50 - 50-day moving average
8:29 - Oversold readings
9:55 - RSI above 80
10:47 - Extreme RSI readings
12:51 - Huge moves after 50% drawdown
14:07 - Bitcoin vs. Gold
15:20 - Bitcoin & S&P 500
17:30 - Resistance
18:30 - The next bullish pattern

View premium services

Closing Look - 8/25/26

Frank Cappelleri — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 22:41:05 GMT

Summary

Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS) was the session’s biggest single-stock story, cratering -30% — its worst day in roughly three years — after a Foot Locker-driven earnings miss and a sharply cut full-year guide.

Bitcoin topped $80,000 for the first time since May as a Treasury-buyback-fueled “debasement trade” lifted both crypto and gold.

Consumer confidence slipped to a seven-month low, but investors largely looked past it toward Wednesday’s PCE inflation report, Nvidia’s earnings, and Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s Friday keynote at Jackson Hole.

After the close, two closely watched software names — TurboTax parent Intuit and video-conferencing pioneer Zoom — both topped estimates, though soft forward guidance sent shares lower in after-hours trading.

Major Indices & Breadth

🟢 Nasdaq Composite rose +0.66% to 26,151.30, leading the major averages as semiconductor names rebounded from Monday’s selloff.
🟢 S&P 500 gained +0.32% to close at 7,677.28, its third straight winning session.
🟢 Dow Jones Industrial Average added 160.24 points (+0.30%) to 53,577.40.
🟢 Russell 2000 edged up roughly +0.2% to around 3,001, a modest gain for small-caps versus the broader tape.
🟢 Treasury yields fell across the curve (see Treasury Bonds), supporting risk appetite even as consumer confidence data disappointed (see Macro/Policy).

🟢 Leaders

MRNA +13%
KURA +10.5%
SMCI +8.87%
HOOD +7.19%
CDW +6.67%

🔴 Laggards

DKS -30% (see Earnings)
LBTYB -6.00%
BETA -5.73%
AMBP -5.6% (see Corporate)

Earnings

🔴 DKS reported fiscal Q2 results before the open that missed on both lines: EPS of $3.53 versus a roughly $3.78 estimate, and revenue of $5.59B versus $5.64B expected. Core DKS comparable sales rose +4.9%, but the newly acquired Foot Locker business posted a -3.6% comp decline. Management slashed full-year adjusted EPS guidance to $11.00–$12.00 from a prior $13.50–$14.50, well below the $14.28 consensus. Shares closed -30%, their worst single-day drop in roughly three years (see Laggards).
🔴 Intuit (INTU) beat fiscal Q4 estimates after the close, posting non-GAAP EPS of $4.03 versus $3.58 expected and revenue of $4.354B versus $4.268B expected. However, fiscal 2027 guidance called for revenue growth of just 9–10%, a sharp deceleration from 14% in fiscal 2026, and disappointed investors. INTU closed the regular session -2.98% and fell a further roughly -7% in after-hours trading.
🔴 Zoom Communications (ZM) topped fiscal Q2 estimates, with revenue of $1,277.2M (+4.9% year over year) and enterprise revenue of $787.5M (+7.8% year over year, its fastest pace in three years). Management raised full-year guidance to non-GAAP EPS of $6.08–$6.12 versus a $6.04 estimate. Despite the beat-and-raise, ZM shares fell roughly -3.9% in after-hours trading as the revenue outlook was seen as largely in line.
🟢 Additional notable earnings: Semtech (SMTC) beat Q2 estimates on strong AI data-center networking demand and guided Q3 above consensus; shares rose roughly +5.5% in after-hours trading.

AI

🟢 NVDA closed +2.2%, snapping a seven-session losing streak, ahead of its fiscal Q2 report due after the close Wednesday. Consensus calls for EPS of roughly $2.09 on revenue near $92B, up about 97% year over year; the options market is pricing a post-earnings swing of roughly 5.4% (see Tomorrow’s Calendar).
🟢 Broader chip and memory names extended Monday’s rebound ahead of the print, helping drive the Nasdaq’s outperformance (see Major Indices & Breadth).
🟡 Nvidia is reportedly in talks to invest in AI search startup Perplexity at a valuation above $30B.

Corporate

🟡 Canada announced retaliatory tariffs on roughly $20B of U.S. goods, effective Sept. 8, covering more than 700 products — including steel, aluminum, dairy, and seafood — at rates of 15%–50%. The move responds to the U.S.’s additional 50% tariffs on Canadian autos, alcohol, and dairy.
🟢 Jefferies Financial Group (JEF) gained +5.5% amid a broader financial-sector rally on improving capital-markets activity.
🟢 Service Corporation International (SCI) rose +4.9% after a strong Q2 earnings beat and an expanded share-buyback authorization.
🔴 Ardagh Metal Packaging (AMBP) fell -5.6% after its parent disclosed preparations for a potential sale of the division (see Laggards).

Market Structure

🟡 Nothing to report today; no additions, removals, or rule changes were confirmed for the S&P 500, Dow, or Nasdaq-100 in this session.

Macro/Policy

🔴 The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index fell to 89.4 in August, a seven-month low, down from a downwardly revised 90.2 in July. The decline was led by a 7.8% slide in the expectations index.
🔴 New home sales fell -10.5% in July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 607,000, down from 678,000 in June.
🟢 The S&P Cotality Case-Shiller National Home Price Index posted a +1.5% annual gain in June, up from +1.2% in May.
🟡 Investors are awaiting Wednesday’s PCE inflation report and Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s Friday Jackson Hole keynote for the next major policy signal (see Tomorrow’s Calendar).

Treasury Bonds

🟢 2-Year Treasury yield fell 5 bps to 4.183%.
🟢 10-Year Treasury yield fell 7 bps to 4.629%.
🟢 30-Year Treasury yield fell 6 bps to 5.163%.
🟢 The 2s10s spread widened modestly to roughly +44.6 bps, with yields falling across the curve as oil prices slid and Treasury buyback speculation continued.

Geopolitics

🟡 U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said countries trading with Iran would be given a deadline to wind down those links or face unilateral sanctions, an expansion of economic pressure on Tehran.
🟡 Iran vowed to retaliate against the expanded U.S. sanctions.
🟢 The shift toward economic pressure rather than military escalation helped ease supply-disruption fears, contributing to a sharp drop in oil prices (see Commodities).

Foreign Markets

🟢 DAX gained +0.61% to 26,266.14, a more-than-one-week high.
🟢 Nikkei 225 rose roughly 328 points (+0.50%) to 65,856.43.
🟢 FTSE 100 added +0.29% to 10,886.16.
🟢 Shanghai Composite rose +0.19% to roughly 3,889.
🔴 CAC 40 slipped -0.16% to 8,439.20.
🔴 Hang Seng declined roughly -1.9%.

Currencies

🟡 DXY (Dollar Index) was little changed, down -0.04% to 98.96, holding near a one-month low as investors await Wednesday’s PCE data.
🟢 USD/JPY rose +0.14% to around 159.20, as the yen remained the session’s weakest major currency.
🟡 GBP/USD was roughly flat near 1.3639.
🔴 EUR/USD rose to 1.1654, with the dollar down -0.09% against the euro.

Commodities

🟢 Gold rose roughly +0.4% to around $4,657/oz, staying near its highest level in more than three months on continued “debasement trade” flows.
🟢 Silver held little changed near $69/oz, staying close to a multi-month high.
🔴 WTI crude fell -3.1% to settle at $82.36/bbl.
🔴 Brent crude fell -3.9% to settle at $88.58/bbl, as the shift toward economic sanctions on Iran eased supply-disruption fears (see Geopolitics).

Crypto

🟢 Bitcoin (BTC) topped $80,000 for the first time since May, last trading up roughly +3-4% over the past 24 hours near $80,300, extending a seven-day advance of roughly 25% on continued Treasury-buyback-fueled “debasement trade” flows.
🟢 Ethereum (ETH) was little changed near $2,478.

Prediction Markets

🟡 Polymarket’s “Fed rate hike in 2026?” market priced 56% odds of at least one hike this year as of Tuesday afternoon.
🟡 Polymarket, Kalshi, and Myriad converged near 73–75% odds of “no change” at the September FOMC meeting, with a quarter-point hike priced around 25%.

Volatility

🟢 VIX fell roughly -2.4% to 15.47, near multi-month lows as the Iran-driven risk premium eased alongside falling oil prices (see Commodities, Geopolitics).

Tomorrow’s Calendar

NVDA reports fiscal Q2 earnings after the close Wednesday — the week’s key catalyst for the AI trade (see AI).
July PCE price index (the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge) is due Wednesday morning.
Q2 GDP second estimate and durable goods orders are also due Wednesday.
Fed Chair Kevin Warsh delivers the closing keynote at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium on Friday.

3 Scenarios

🟢 Bullish: NVDA beats and guides above the roughly $92B consensus, PCE comes in at or below the 0.2% core estimate, and Warsh’s Friday tone stays measured — indices push toward fresh highs and small-caps extend Tuesday’s gains.
🟡 Neutral: NVDA delivers an in-line quarter that fails to meaningfully move the AI trade either way, PCE prints roughly in line, and markets mark time into Friday’s Jackson Hole keynote.
🔴 Bearish: NVDA disappoints on guidance or margins, core PCE prints hot at 0.3% or above and lifts September hike odds (see Prediction Markets), and Warsh strikes a hawkish tone — yields back up and equities give back this week’s gains.

Final Take

Tuesday’s session was a bridge day — a modest, broad-based gain ahead of a genuinely pivotal 48 hours for markets.

The chip rebound and falling yields gave investors a reason to look past a soft consumer confidence print, but the real tests start Wednesday with Nvidia’s earnings and the PCE inflation report landing on the same day.

Dick’s Sporting Goods’ -30% collapse was a reminder that single-name risk hasn’t gone away even in a rising tape — Foot Locker integration costs are proving more painful than Wall Street expected.

Bitcoin’s push back above $80,000 and gold’s continued strength both point to the same underlying story: investors are still hedging against dollar debasement even as equities grind higher.

Bottom line: this week’s real verdict arrives Wednesday afternoon and Friday morning — Nvidia’s guidance and Warsh’s Jackson Hole tone will likely decide whether the market’s calm holds into September.

Source: CNBC, Reuters, Yahoo Finance, Trading Economics, Bloomberg, CoinDesk, Seeking Alpha, TheStreet.

View premium services

Can Bonds Bounce?

Frank Cappelleri — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 15:31:03 GMT

Good morning. Here’s today’s full Opening Look, pre-market morning note. Every email contains also TL;DR summary like this first:

Key Points: The SPX has declined in five of seven sessions, but improving breadth and two live bullish breakouts remain constructive.

Potential SPX Pattern: A potential inverse H&S could develop soon.

Momentum: The SPX has a negative RSI divergence, but it remains a warning rather than a sell signal.

TLT: A small potential inverse H&S is developing, while two weekly DeMARK 13 Buy signals and major support near 82 strengthen the potential bounce setup.

SMH: Remains below its breakdown zone, keeping the 460-downside target in play.

Bitcoin: The recent surge may represent catch-up after its 50%+ decline, while weekly RSI

suggests the momentum recovery could have further room.

Bitcoin & Gold: Both are trending higher, although Bitcoin continues to materially underperform Gold.

URA Uranium: Potential bullish inverse H&S pattern.

Chart Trade (GPC): Potential bullish cup-and-handle pattern.

Watch List: CXW, OSCR, SPOT, Z.

Key Points
The SPX declined for the fifth time in the last seven sessions yesterday, but once again, the loss was relatively small, as the August lull continued for another day.

Today, we’ll look at a potential bullish pattern developing for the SPX, while also spending time on several TLT charts. The obvious question is whether the latest bounce attempt has enough technical support to become more meaningful than the prior ones. We’ll cover that along with several other key charts.

Daily Price Action
The SPX now has seven consecutive closes below its intraday midpoint and 11 in the last 14 sessions, continuing the recent pattern of weak intraday finishes.

However, breadth has improved, with the index logging two straight sessions with at least 60% of its stocks advancing for the first time since August 3–4, when the SPX gained 1.5% and 1.8%, respectively.

Yesterday’s small loss kept the SPX above its two remaining bullish pattern breakout zones, but not by much. The index now is less than 1% above each one as of last night’s close.

A Potential Bullish Pattern
As we know, the weakness already negated the small bullish pennant that developed immediately after the early-August surge. But as the pullback has continued, we can start to consider what the next pattern could look like.

Specifically, if buyers begin to step in soon, the recent decline could become the head of a potential inverse head-and-shoulders pattern. There’s nothing yet to suggest that a major bounce is imminent, but if one materializes, we could see the SPX work its way back toward the 7,800 area, potentially setting the stage for a right shoulder from there.

The best-case scenario would be for that to occur before the SPX retests the breakout zones from the prior bullish patterns. Still, we have to be prepared for any outcome.

This recent consolidation also could evolve into a bearish formation, although that possibility isn’t nearly as clear on the chart yet.

Another Negative Momentum Divergence
One clear knock on the SPX’s push to new all-time highs from late July into August is that it was not confirmed by the RSI reaching overbought territory. Instead, the RSI has made lower highs versus May and June, creating a clear negative divergence.

There are two important points to consider:

There’s a logical reason for the divergence. While Technology has bounced over the last few weeks, both XLK and, even more notably, SMH remain below their respective highs. Given Large-Cap Tech’s substantial weight in the SPX, that lack of full participation helps explain why the RSI has failed to reclaim 70. At the same time, strength elsewhere has helped the SPX hold near its highs.
Negative divergences are warnings, not automatic sell signals. Major corrections often are preceded by them, including the spring 2025 and 2026 downturns. However, since late 2024, there have been even more instances when similar divergences did not produce major declines. The clearest example occurred from May through the end of 2025, when the SPX continued higher despite a persistent divergence.

Thus, we shouldn’t ignore the current divergence, but understanding why it is occurring is important. For now, it remains a warning sign rather than a sell signal.

Can Bonds (TLT) Bounce?
With the 10-year and 30-year yields off their highs, bonds have bounced, and today we’re focusing on TLT. As of now, the ETF appears to be forming a small inverse head-and-shoulders pattern.

The formation isn’t particularly substantial, especially compared with TLT’s longer-term downtrend. Still, as we know, one of the first signs of a potential trend change is seeing a smaller bullish pattern develop and then successfully leveraged.

We’ve seen a few attempts along the way, most recently with the early-June breakout, which ultimately proved short-lived. Each setup is different, though, and TLT now has another opportunity to leverage a small bullish formation.

At the very least, we’ve seen quick snapbacks after TLT declines over the last year. As the chart shows, those rallies have ranged from roughly 4% to 6.5%, putting the average move near 5%.

A similar move from the recent low would take TLT into the 85–85.5 area.

Again, this is not a prediction. It simply shows what a normal snapback has looked like over the last year, regardless of whether the current bounce ultimately develops into something bigger.

TLT – Weekly DeMARK Buy Signals
As TLT pulled back over the last few weeks, we highlighted how it produced two separate weekly 13 Buy signals:

TD Sequential in red
TD Combo in purple

While these signals don’t always pinpoint the exact low, particularly on a weekly timeframe, they often do a good job of identifying trend exhaustion. The recent bounce could be a delayed reaction to these dual Buy signals.

Clearly, a lot will depend on what the Fed does and says in the coming weeks to determine whether this develops into a more meaningful long-term trading low.

Weekly 13s have marked important turning points before. The last signal on the opposite side occurred in the summer of 2024, which, as the chart shows, preceded a significant turn in TLT.

SMH Semiconductors
Here’s the latest SMH chart, with yesterday’s 2.4% decline pulling the ETF noticeably further below its breakdown zone. Thus, the 460-downside target remains in play.

This has been frustrating for both longs and shorts, given the numerous attempts in both directions to finally shift momentum. The real story is that momentum has been virtually nonexistent. After the initial July breakdown, a 10% or even 20% move in either direction would not have been surprising. Instead, SMH has spent weeks producing fakeouts on both the upside and downside.

With the ETF’s largest component reporting tomorrow night, there’s little reason to expect traders to make a major directional bet before receiving that final key piece of information from earnings season.

Bitcoin – Major Trading Lows
Here’s a chart we haven’t shown in a while, for obvious reasons, comparing key Bitcoin trading lows going back to 2015 with the SPX.

The last three major Bitcoin lows occurred around important lows for the SPX, as well. That was the case following the sharp fourth-quarter 2018 sell-off, the COVID low, and the 2022 bear market.

The exception was 2015, when Bitcoin bottomed late in the year around an initial turning point for the SPX. That proved short-lived, however, with the SPX declining again through February 2016 before establishing its more durable low.

This time is clearly different, with Bitcoin bottoming after the SPX already had been advancing for several months.

Regardless, as we know, Bitcoin and the SPX rarely move in opposite directions for extended periods. Thus, the recent surge simply could represent Bitcoin playing catch-up after enduring a decline of more than 50% from its October 2025 high.

Bitcoin – Weekly RSI Extremes
We last discussed this chart in the spring. It highlights Bitcoin’s extreme weekly RSI readings, both overbought and oversold. None of these marked precise turning points, however, they ultimately proved meaningful over the ensuing weeks and months.

In other words, there was plenty of volatility along the way, but it generally paid not to buy after extreme overbought readings, such as those in 2021 and 2024. Similarly, the extreme oversold reading in June 2022 ultimately proved to be a poor time to sell. The March 2026 oversold signal provides the latest example.

These signals are far from perfect, and substantial moves can occur before the ultimate turning point. The bigger-picture takeaway is that extreme oversold readings historically have been followed eventually by extreme overbought readings.

Bitcoin’s weekly RSI currently sits near 59 and hasn’t approached 80 in roughly two years, last reaching 79 in late 2024. Thus, this provides another potential indication that the recent comeback could still be in the early stages of a larger momentum move.

Bitcoin & Gold
Even though Gold has come back well over the last few weeks, Bitcoin’s recent spike has been considerably stronger, bringing the two much closer together from a year-to-date performance perspective.

Gold remains up roughly 8% for the year, while Bitcoin is still down about 8%, although both now are trending higher.

The relationship between the two is always interesting to track. From a relative perspective, Bitcoin still has considerably underperformed Gold, making the Bitcoin/Gold ratio another important one to watch as we determine whether Bitcoin’s recent comeback can develop into something more substantial.

URA Uranium
Metals overall have come back strongly, and now the URA Uranium ETF has formed a potential inverse head-and-shoulders pattern with an upward-sloping neckline. If URA can break out relatively soon, the formation would produce a 55-upside target.

GPC (Genuine Parts Co.)
GPC did a good job of bouncing back from its initially negative reaction to earnings in mid-July and now is getting close to pushing through its highest levels of the summer.

The stock has endured a volatile ride since the beginning of 2026, but the recent action has formed a clear potential cup-and-handle pattern. A breakout through the 136 area would trigger the formation and produce a 163-upside target.

We’re using a suggested stop loss at 127, giving the trade a little more room given how close the handle remains to the breakout zone.

GPC also has outperformed larger peers ORLY and AZO, which currently still are moving lower, making its relative strength within the group another notable positive.

Watch list: CXW, OSCR, SPOT, Z

View premium services

Closing Look - 8/24/26

Frank Cappelleri — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 23:44:44 GMT

Summary

🔴 Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled a sweeping new round of Iran sanctions dubbed “Operation Economic Outcast,” reigniting geopolitical unease even as oil prices fell sharply on the news.

Chipmakers and memory names bore the brunt of the selling, pressured by reports of steep AI server price increases and lingering supply-glut worries in the storage complex.

The Dow eked out a gain on strength in consumer staples and financials, while the Nasdaq lagged as megacap tech and semiconductors underperformed.

Treasury yields eased modestly and gold pushed higher as investors positioned ahead of Nvidia’s earnings, Wednesday’s PCE inflation report, and Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s Friday address at the Jackson Hole symposium.

Adding to the uncertainty, US-Canada trade talks collapsed over the weekend, with Washington imposing fresh tariffs on Canadian goods and Ottawa vowing retaliation.

Major Indices & Breadth

🟢 Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 53,417.16, +0.26% (+140.15 points)—the only major average to finish in the green.
🔴 S&P 500 closed at 7,652.86, -0.28%—pulling back further from its record set earlier this month.
🔴 Nasdaq Composite closed at 25,980.19, -0.76%—dragged lower by chip and memory weakness.
🔴 Russell 2000 closed at 2,995.08, -0.76%—small-caps offered no shelter from the tech-led slide.
🟡 Breadth was mixed: six of the 11 S&P 500 sectors finished higher, led by consumer staples (+1.4%), while information technology lagged (-1.3%). Advancers outnumbered decliners on the NYSE.

🟢 Leaders

FCN +9.8%
V +3.17%
MSTR +2.9%

🔴 Laggards

SNDK -6.7%
STX -5.7%
MU -5.62%
WDC -5.55%

Earnings

🟡 No major market-moving earnings crossed the tape during Monday’s session. The week’s real catalysts are still ahead: Nvidia (NVDA) reports fiscal Q2 results Wednesday after the close, followed by Marvell Technology (MRVL) on Thursday (see Tomorrow’s Calendar).

AI

🔴 NVDA closed -2.07% ahead of Wednesday’s earnings, with Wall Street looking for roughly 99% year-over-year EPS growth and revenue near $92.07B.
🔴 The memory and storage complex sold off sharply on reports that AI server prices could rise more than 15%, stoking fresh margin concerns after a run of enormous 2026 gains: SanDisk (SNDK) fell -6.7%, Seagate Technology (STX) fell -5.7%, Micron Technology (MU) fell -5.62%, and Western Digital (WDC) fell -5.55% (see Laggards).
🔴 The iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) slid -2.7% as the broader chip trade de-risked into a week headlined by Nvidia’s print and the Fed’s Jackson Hole symposium.

Corporate

🟢 FTI Consulting (FCN) surged +9.8%, extending an aggressive buyback program that has materially shrunk its share count.
🔴 WDC fell -5.55% in a post-earnings profit-taking reaction, with a brokerage downgrade to neutral and elevated valuation multiples cited alongside broader chip-sector softness (see AI).

Market Structure

🟡 Nothing to report today—no index rebalances, additions/removals, or market-structure rule changes.

Macro/Policy

🔴 US-Canada trade talks broke down over the weekend after Washington imposed new tariffs on Canadian goods; Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney suspended negotiations and vowed like-for-like retaliation.
🟡 The Treasury Department reiterated plans to at least double its buyback operations for longer-dated securities, with CNBC reporting Secretary Bessent could tap nearly $1 trillion from the Treasury’s General Account to help fund the purchases rather than issuing short-term bills.
🟡 July PCE, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, is due Wednesday morning, with Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s Friday Jackson Hole speech looming as the week’s other key catalyst (see Tomorrow’s Calendar).

Treasury Bonds

🟢 2Y yield: 4.23%
🟢 10Y yield: 4.70%, easing off the prior session’s 20-month high of 4.75% as lower oil prices took some pressure off the inflation outlook.
🟢 30Y yield: 5.23%
🟢 2s10s spread: ~47bps. Yields eased broadly across the curve, though long-end levels remain elevated on persistent fiscal-deficit and corporate-issuance concerns.

Geopolitics

🔴 Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled “Operation Economic Outcast,” a sweeping new campaign of secondary sanctions on Iran covering digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping, as the war approaches its six-month mark in a “no war, no deal” standoff.
🔴 Bessent warned that at least one major financial institution could be sanctioned this week and said China—Iran’s largest oil customer—”is not exempt” from the new measures, though he stopped short of naming Chinese banks directly.

Foreign Markets

🟡 Asia closed mixed: Japan’s Nikkei 225 slipped -0.10% while the Topix was roughly flat; South Korea’s Kospi dropped -0.71% even as the small-cap Kosdaq gained +0.94%; Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose +0.33%. Hong Kong futures pointed to a softer open Tuesday versus the Hang Seng’s prior close.
🟡 Europe closed mixed: Germany’s DAX slipped -0.07% to 26,118.98; France’s CAC 40 fell -0.37% to 8,453.02, led lower by Stellantis (-4.60%) and STMicroelectronics (-1.97%); the UK’s FTSE 100 gained +0.35% to 10,854.33; Spain’s Ibex rose +0.69%; Italy’s FTSE MIB slipped -0.24%.

Currencies

🟢 DXY: 98.99, +0.19%—the dollar firmed modestly on the session even as it hovers near a three-month low following last week’s slide.
🟢 EUR/USD: -0.13%
🟢 USD/JPY: +0.08%
🟢 GBP/USD: -0.07%

Commodities

🟢 Silver: ~$69.69/oz, +1.0%
🟢 Gold: $4,732.10/oz, +0.73%
🔴 WTI: $85.19/bbl, -2.15%—ending a two-week rally as traders awaited details of the new Iran sanctions.
🔴 Brent: $92.20/bbl, -2.32%

Crypto

🟢 Bitcoin (BTC): $78,924.51, +1.54%, extending last week’s sharp bounce.
🟢 Ethereum (ETH): ~$2,470, +1%
🟢 Strategy (MSTR) gained +2.9%, the best performer in the Nasdaq-100, as a bitcoin proxy play.

Prediction Markets

🔴 As of the most recent readings, prediction markets price the September FOMC meeting at roughly 70.5% odds of a hold, 28.5% odds of a 25bp hike, and only about 1% odds of a cut—a notably hawkish skew following July’s 9-3 vote.
🔴 Polymarket traders put the probability of zero Fed rate cuts in all of 2026 at 88.8%, up sharply from roughly 78% before the July meeting.

Volatility

🟡 VIX closed at 15.85, +4.76%—a modest uptick off historically low levels as traders position for a genuinely event-heavy week: Nvidia earnings Wednesday, PCE inflation data Wednesday, and Fed Chair Warsh’s Jackson Hole speech Friday.

Tomorrow’s Calendar

Earnings: roughly 34 companies report Tuesday; the week’s headline reports are Nvidia (NVDA) Wednesday after the close and Marvell Technology (MRVL) Thursday after the close. Intuit and Salesforce are also expected to report results later this week.
Economic data: July PCE price index, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, is due Wednesday morning.
Fed speakers: Fed Chair Kevin Warsh delivers keynote remarks at the Jackson Hole symposium Friday, with markets looking for clarity on his inflation assessment and broader “regime change” philosophy at the Fed.

3 Scenarios

🟢 Bullish: Nvidia’s earnings clear a high bar Wednesday, July PCE comes in soft, and Warsh strikes a more dovish tone Friday than feared—stocks push back toward record highs and the beaten-down memory/chip complex stabilizes.
🟡 Neutral: Nvidia’s print lands roughly in line, PCE is steady rather than hot or cool, and markets chop sideways into Jackson Hole with yields range-bound in the mid-4.6%–4.7% area on the 10-year; the memory-stock selloff finds a floor without a clear catalyst to reverse it.
🔴 Bearish: The Iran sanctions campaign escalates further (particularly if China-linked entities are directly targeted), PCE runs hot, Nvidia disappoints, and Warsh leans hawkish—yields and the dollar move sharply, oil volatility returns, and the S&P 500 retests lower support.

Final Take

Monday was a placeholder session ahead of a week that actually matters.

The headline move wasn’t in the indices—it was underneath them, in a memory and storage complex that gave back 5-7% on fears the AI infrastructure trade’s pricing power is cresting.

Bessent’s Iran sanctions campaign adds a fresh geopolitical variable, but oil’s decline on the news suggests traders read it as posturing rather than an immediate supply shock.

The real tests come fast: Nvidia’s Wednesday report will either validate or puncture the AI capex story, July PCE lands the same morning, and Kevin Warsh closes the week in Jackson Hole with the market’s rate-path expectations already priced hawkish.

Until then, Monday’s action—a firm Dow, a soft Nasdaq, gently lower yields—reads as positioning, not conviction.

Source: CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Trading Economics, Washington Post, CBS News, NPR, Axios, Reuters.

View premium services

5 Best Charts for the week ending 8/21/26

Frank Cappelleri — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 13:02:50 GMT

Happy Saturday,

Here are this week’s five best charts, presented just as they originally appeared in the daily notes.

Also, I had the opportunity to do two more interviews to conclude the week:

Thursday: NYSE Live

Friday: CNBC Squawkbox

Have a great weekend.

Monday - Week of 8/17/26

JETS – The three-year pattern
JETS has had a strong run since its lows earlier this year, but fell 3% last week, following the sharp reversal from the prior week.

We’ve highlighted this chart before. While JETS has remained in an uptrend over the last three years, the path has been anything but smooth. Higher highs have been followed by notable multi-week declines several times along the way. Those pullbacks eventually were bought, but not before additional weakness developed.

Every situation is different, but we respect these patterns for as long as they persist. If this one follows a similar path, some additional downside wouldn’t be surprising. We’ll also track the daily chart for signs of a bullish formation developing that could help limit the pullback.

Tuesday, 8/18 - Retail’s Turn

RSPD Equal Weight Consumer Discretionary
A better indication of Consumer Discretionary as a whole comes from the Equal Weight Consumer Discretionary ETF (RSPD). It has been stuck in a massive trading range since topping nearly a year ago, right around the time retailers were reporting earnings back then.

Here we are a year later, with RSPD essentially at the same level despite plenty of movement in between. Investors have been hesitant to get aggressive near the highs, while consistently buying dips near support, creating the prolonged trading range we see today.

Most likely, it will take solid results and commentary from the major retailers to finally change that dynamic and push RSPD out of this range.

Wednesday, 8/19 - Dog Days

XLE – Extending the breakout
Energy has been, by far, the best-performing sector this week and over the last several weeks, as well. XLE gained another 1.76% yesterday, extending further beyond its breakout zone and moving closer to its 69-price target. The question now is whether XLE has become too extended short term after such a strong run…

Thursday, 8/20 - Bonds, Dollar, Gold, & Bitcoin

GLD Gold Breakout
Gold already was rising before yesterday’s news and benefited further afterward, allowing the GLD ETF to finish slightly above its 200-day moving average for the first time since early June.

From a technical perspective, GLD also is now poking above the inverse head-and-shoulders pattern we discussed earlier this week, putting the 450-price target in play.

Meanwhile, the 14-day RSI has surged from below 30 in June to the doorstep of overbought territory. As we saw during the second half of 2025, simply becoming overbought did not derail Gold’s advance. Thus, if motivated buyers continue to return, another overbought reading could once again be viewed as a sign of bullish momentum rather than an immediate warning.

Friday, 8/21 - SPX Down, Crypto (Way) Up

Bitcoin – RSI > 80
This third chart shows just how sharply Bitcoin’s momentum has shifted, with the 14-day RSI surging to 85.

Going back to mid-2020, there have been only a handful of similar moves into this territory, and most were followed by considerable additional upside.

As we know, when momentum returns to crypto, it can be both explosive and persistent. Coming after a decline of more than 50%, this certainly has the potential to be another one of those occasions. Now, it’s all about what happens after the next bout of profit taking.

View premium services

Closing Look - 8/21/26

Frank Cappelleri — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 23:51:44 GMT

Summary

🟢 The S&P 500 rose +0.43%, the Nasdaq Composite added +0.43%, and the Dow jumped +0.98%, though all four major indices still finished the week lower after a sharp Treasury sell-off earlier in the session.

Bitcoin ripped higher by roughly +7%, lifting Robinhood Markets (HOOD) to its best day in months on a mix of crypto enthusiasm and a fresh push into private-market products.

Alibaba (BABA) was the session’s biggest earnings casualty, sliding after investors balked at a profit collapse tied to surging AI capital spending.

Treasury yields held stubbornly close to multi-decade highs even after this week’s expanded government bond buyback effort, and oil stayed firm as the Iran war approaches its sixth month.

Markets now turn to Monday, when Treasury Secretary Bessent is set to detail a sweeping plan to economically isolate Iran, with the Fed’s Jackson Hole Symposium and Nvidia’s earnings on deck for next week.

Major Indices & Breadth

🟢 Dow rose +0.98% to close at 53,276.81, the best-performing major index of the session.
🟢 Russell 2000 gained +0.88% to 3,018.81, with small-caps keeping pace with the blue-chip rally.
🟢 S&P 500 climbed +0.43% to 7,674.31.
🟢 Nasdaq Composite added +0.43% to 26,180.46.
🟡 Despite Friday’s gains, all four major indices closed the week lower, weighed down by Wednesday’s bond-market selloff.

🟢 Leaders

HOOD +13.70%
DK +11.60%
RGTI +11.48%
CVI +10.27%
MP +9.10%

🔴 Laggards

HUT -8.79%
BABA -8.57%
CIFR -8.40%
CBRS -6.54%
MRVL -5.61%

Earnings

🔴 Alibaba (BABA) fell -8.57% after fiscal Q1 2027 results showed revenue of $39.64B (+9% YoY) and cloud revenue up +45% YoY — its fastest cloud growth in 22 quarters — but adjusted earnings per ADS of $1.26 missed the $1.85 estimate by a wide margin as net profit tumbled -75% YoY.
🔴 The miss came down to AI spending math: quarterly capex of roughly RMB67.7B ran about 4.5x the incremental cloud revenue gain, flipping free cash flow negative for the quarter and raising fresh questions about how quickly AI infrastructure spend converts to profit.

AI

🔴 Alibaba’s capex-versus-cloud-revenue gap (see Earnings) rattled AI-infrastructure-adjacent names, with Cerebras Systems (CBRS) and Marvell Technology (MRVL) among the day’s steepest decliners (see Laggards).
🟢 Quantum computing names bucked the pullback, with Rigetti Computing (RGTI) and Quantum Computing Inc (QUBT) both posting double-digit gains; RGTI led the group (see Leaders), while QUBT added +9.58%.
🟡 Nvidia’s (NVDA) fiscal Q2 earnings are due next week and are shaping up as the next major test of the AI capex debate (see Tomorrow’s Calendar).

Corporate

🟢 Robinhood (HOOD) priced an 8-million-share IPO for its Robinhood Ventures Fund II (RVII) at $25 per share, targeting $225.5M–$255.5M to invest in early-stage, Y Combinator–linked private companies, adding to the catalysts behind the stock’s surge (see Leaders).
🔴 Bitcoin-mining and crypto-infrastructure stocks broke sharply from the crypto rally: Riot Platforms (RIOT) fell -5.48%, TeraWulf (WULF) dropped -4.92%, CleanSpark (CLSK) slid -4.92%, and Applied Digital (APLD) lost -5.03%, alongside HUT and CIFR (see Laggards) — a notable divergence given Bitcoin’s roughly +7% advance the same session.

Market Structure

🟡 No index rebalances, additions or removals, or market-structure rule changes to report today.

Macro/Policy

🟢 Weekly initial jobless claims came in at 206K, below the prior week’s 209K, a modestly reassuring signal on the labor market.
🟡 Treasury Secretary Bessent teased a forthcoming fiscal-consolidation announcement alongside OMB Director Russ Vought, details still pending.
🟡 Attention now shifts to Monday’s Bessent press conference on Iran economic isolation (see Geopolitics) and next week’s Jackson Hole Symposium (see Tomorrow’s Calendar).

Treasury Bonds

🔴 2-year yield rose 4bps to 4.24%, extending its climb.
🟡 10-year yield held around 4.70%, little changed after Thursday’s sharp rebound off this week’s buyback-driven dip.
🔴 30-year yield climbed back to roughly 5.25%, near its highest level in nearly two decades and erasing most of Wednesday’s buyback-driven relief.
🟡 The 2s10s spread sits around 46bps, little changed on the day.

Geopolitics

🔴 The US-Iran war is nearing its sixth month, with President Trump pledging the “most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country” against Tehran.
🟡 Treasury Secretary Bessent is set to unveil the specifics Monday, calling it “the greatest coordinated economic isolation in the history of the world” and pressing US allies to choose sides.
🔴 China is squarely in the crosshairs as the largest buyer of Iranian crude, raising the risk of secondary sanctions and renewed US-China friction.

Foreign Markets

🟡 No confirmed major developments in European or Asian indices to report today.

Currencies

🔴 Dollar Index (DXY) eased to roughly 97.9, down about -0.15%, as the dollar softened against most major counterparts.
🔴 EUR/USD rose +0.21% to 1.1705.
🔴 USD/JPY fell -0.20% to 158.70, with the yen firming modestly against the dollar.
🔴 GBP/USD gained +0.15% to 1.3651.

Commodities

🟢 Gold jumped +2.38% to $4,680.10 per ounce.
🔴 WTI crude slipped -0.13% to $86.72 per barrel.
🟢 Brent crude traded near $94 per barrel, its highest level since early August, as the Iran war keeps a geopolitical risk premium in the complex.

Crypto

🟢 Bitcoin (BTC) surged +6.06% to $77,064.77, its best levels in weeks.
🟢 Ethereum (ETH) climbed +8.29% to $2,519.19.
🟢 XRP jumped +15.27% to $1.46.
🟡 The rally didn’t extend to crypto-mining equities, which fell broadly even as coin prices surged (see Corporate).

Prediction Markets

🟡 No notable new prediction-market developments to report today.

Volatility

🟢 VIX fell -5.50% to 15.13, easing off the week’s highs but still capping a choppy week overall driven by the bond-market selloff.

Tomorrow’s Calendar

Treasury Secretary Bessent holds a press conference detailing the administration’s plan to economically isolate Iran.
Fed’s Jackson Hole Economic Symposium takes place next week.
Nvidia (NVDA) reports fiscal Q2 earnings next week, a key test for the AI infrastructure trade.

3 Scenarios

🟢 Bullish: Bessent’s Iran plan lands without escalating US-China tensions, Treasury yields stabilize as buybacks gain traction, and Nvidia’s earnings next week reaffirm the AI trade — sending the S&P 500 back toward record territory.
🟡 Neutral: The Iran isolation plan draws a measured response, yields stay rangebound near current levels, the crypto rally cools, and indices grind sideways heading into Jackson Hole.
🔴 Bearish: China pushes back hard against secondary-sanctions threats, the 30-year yield breaks above 5.30%, and Alibaba-style AI-capex jitters spread to US megacaps ahead of Nvidia’s report, triggering a broader risk-off move.

Final Take

Friday’s gains papered over a genuinely rough week, one where a Treasury bond selloff did more to set the tone than anything happening in equities themselves.

The 30-year yield’s climb back near 5.25% despite this week’s expanded buyback effort is the real story — it suggests the market isn’t yet convinced the Treasury can out-buy the supply and deficit pressures pushing long rates higher.

Bitcoin’s sharp rally and Robinhood’s surge point to genuine risk appetite in pockets of the market, but the fact that crypto-mining stocks fell even as coin prices soared is a reminder that not every corner of “risk-on” is behaving the same way right now.

Alibaba’s selloff adds a new wrinkle to the AI trade heading into Nvidia’s report next week: investors are starting to ask harder questions about how AI capital spending converts into profit, not just revenue growth.

Monday’s Bessent press conference on Iran is the next real catalyst — a China-friendly rollout could calm markets, while a harder line risks reigniting both the bond selloff and geopolitical risk premium that defined this week.

Source: Yahoo Finance, Benzinga, TheStreet, Trading Economics, Reuters, Bloomberg, Semafor.

View premium services

Closing Look - 8/20/26

Frank Cappelleri — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 22:03:53 GMT

Summary

🔴 Walmart (WMT) -9.15% was the session’s single biggest drag, sinking despite an earnings beat after U.S. comparable sales badly missed expectations.

Moderna (MRNA) -19.9% gave back a chunk of Wednesday’s record cancer-vaccine rally as investors booked profits.

President Trump escalated his “economic warfare” campaign against Iran, and oil jumped as a result.

Risk appetite held up better in crypto, where bitcoin extended its buyback-driven surge from earlier in the week.

Major Indices & Breadth

🔴 S&P 500 closed at 7,641.16, -0.87%.
🔴 Nasdaq Composite fell -1.00% to 26,067.17.
🔴 Dow Jones dropped 703.84 points (-1.32%) to 52,759.21, its worst single-day point drop of the week.
🔴 Russell 2000 declined -1.34% to 2,992.43, underperforming the large-cap benchmarks.
All four major indices closed lower as bond-yield relief from Wednesday’s Treasury buyback announcement reversed.

🟢 Leaders

MRVL +1.9%
XOM +1.50%
KO +1.16%

🔴 Laggards

MRNA -19.9%
WMT -9.15%
BA -3.16%
SHW -2.99%
HD -2.85%
SPCX -2.6%

Earnings

🔴 WMT beat on both lines — adjusted EPS of $0.81 vs. $0.74 expected, revenue of $187.9B vs. $186.75B expected — but shares fell -9.15% after U.S. comparable sales rose just 2.6%, well below the roughly 3.7% Wall Street had modeled. Management raised full-year sales, operating-income, and EPS guidance, and said a roughly $2.9B tariff refund would be funneled into price cuts, but investors focused on the slowing comp growth and a soft Q3 EPS guide of $0.62–$0.64.

AI

🟢 Marvell (MRVL) +1.9% as its expanded custom-chip partnership with Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL) continued to reverberate: Google holds a warrant to buy up to $12.2B of Marvell shares tied to purchases across AI inference accelerators, networking, storage, and memory-interface silicon for its TPU ecosystem, a deal that could support up to $120B in qualifying revenue through fiscal 2033. JPMorgan reiterated an Overweight rating on the news.
🔴 Nvidia (NVDA) -0.45%, largely tracking the broader semiconductor/AI-infrastructure pullback.
🟡 Prediction markets remain skeptical Google’s chip push translates into AI-model leadership (see Prediction Markets).

Corporate

🔴 MRNA -19.9% as Wall Street reassessed valuation after Wednesday’s record +176.97% surge on positive Phase 3 melanoma-vaccine data from its cancer-vaccine partnership. Several analysts raised price targets following the trial results, but the new targets still sat below Wednesday’s close, and short interest of roughly 12.5% of float meant Thursday’s pullback also unwound some of the prior day’s short-covering dynamics.
🔴 SpaceX (SPCX) -2.6% as roughly 319 million restricted shares became eligible for sale under the company’s second post-IPO insider unlock.

Market Structure

🟡 Nothing to report today.

Macro/Policy

🟢 Initial jobless claims for the week ended August 15 fell to 206,000 from 212,000 the prior week, coming in better than expected and pointing to continued labor-market resilience.
🟢 The Philadelphia Fed’s manufacturing index posted its strongest reading since 2021, a positive surprise for regional factory activity.
🔴 The bigger story was bond-market policy: the effects of Wednesday’s surprise Treasury move to more than double buybacks of 10-, 20-, and 30-year debt proved short-lived, with yields rebounding across the curve Thursday (see Treasury Bonds). Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the buyback could be expanded beyond the initially announced pace.
🟡 The U.S. national debt surpassed $40 trillion this week, more than doubling in under a decade.

Treasury Bonds

🔴 2-year yield: 4.19%, +2bps.
🔴 10-year yield: 4.70%, +~5bps — back above where it stood before Wednesday’s buyback announcement.
🔴 30-year yield: 5.25%, +~5bps.
🟡 2s10s spread: +51bps, little changed as the curve rose in parallel.
🔴 Yields rose across the board as the relief from the Treasury’s debt-buyback intervention faded and investors judged it a short-term fix rather than a durable check on borrowing costs.

Geopolitics

🔴 President Trump escalated his campaign against Iran, vowing an “economic D-Day” — “Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale” — targeting any nation providing Iran a financial lifeline.
🔴 Treasury Secretary Bessent said the campaign of naval blockade plus new sanctions “could prevent the resumption of large-scale kinetic” conflict, comparing the strategy to prior pressure campaigns against Venezuela and Cuba, and said the toughest sanctions yet would be unveiled next week.
🟡 Iran’s foreign minister dismissed the campaign as certain to fail, and Strait of Hormuz shipping traffic has been largely unaffected so far.
🔴 Oil rallied on the headlines (see Commodities).

Foreign Markets

🟢 Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose +0.17% to 65,437.
🟢 UK’s FTSE 100 edged up +0.04% to 10,748.
🟢 China’s Shanghai Composite gained +0.24% to 3,904.
🟢 India’s Sensex rose +0.82% to 77,538, snapping a four-day losing run.
🔴 Germany’s DAX fell -0.44% to 25,976.
🔴 France’s CAC 40 dropped -0.63% to 8,448, extending its losing streak.

Currencies

🟢 DXY: 98.92, +0.09% — the dollar firmed modestly.
🔴 EUR/USD: 1.1672, -0.05%.
🟢 USD/JPY: 159.13, +0.61% — notable yen weakness versus the dollar.
🟢 GBP/USD: 1.3622, +0.11%.

Commodities

🟢 WTI crude: $86.21, +2.16%, rallying on the Iran economic-warfare headlines (see Geopolitics).
🟢 Brent crude: $93.36, +1.90%.
🟢 Gold: $4,575.10, +0.66%.
🟢 Silver: $67.84, +1.37%, touching a two-month high.

Crypto

🟢 Bitcoin (BTC): $72,799.41, +4.45%, extending a surge tied to this week’s Treasury buyback-driven yield relief and a last-ditch industry push for the Clarity Act.
🟢 Ethereum (ETH): $2,330.01, +3.66%.

Prediction Markets

🟡 Polymarket bettors give Alphabet’s Google just a 7% chance of having the world’s best AI model by the end of 2026, versus 66% for Anthropic, 14.5% for xAI, and 8% for OpenAI — a skeptical read on whether Google’s custom-silicon push (see AI) translates into model-level leadership.

Volatility

🔴 VIX: 16.01, +7.52%, a sharp jump in percentage terms but still a low absolute level historically.

Rest of Today & Tomorrow

July existing home sales are due Friday at 10:00 AM ET.
Treasury Secretary Bessent said additional Iran sanctions measures are coming “next week” — not tomorrow, but a headline risk worth watching into the weekend.
No major scheduled earnings identified for Friday morning as of publication.

3 Scenarios

🟢 Bullish: Bond-market jitters prove temporary as the Treasury signals further buyback expansion; jobless claims and the strong Philly Fed print reinforce a soft-landing narrative; Iran-related oil premium fades on any de-escalation signal. Indices stabilize and claw back Thursday’s losses into the weekend.

🟡 Neutral: Yields stay elevated but range-bound as markets digest the limits of the Treasury’s buyback tool; WMT‘s guidance overhang keeps consumer-discretionary names under pressure while AI-infrastructure names like MRVL hold up on deal flow. Indices chop without a clear catalyst.

🔴 Bearish: The bond-buyback “fix” is read as a one-off that can’t offset a structurally higher-for-longer yield backdrop; Bessent’s promised new Iran sanctions next week are read as escalatory rather than stabilizing, pushing oil and yields higher together; WMT‘s comp-sales miss is read as an early signal of consumer softening. Indices extend Thursday’s slide.

Final Take

Thursday was a reminder that Wednesday’s relief rally had a short shelf life.

The Treasury’s buyback intervention bought the bond market less than 24 hours of calm before yields rebounded across the curve.

WMT‘s post-earnings plunge did the most visible damage to the tape, a reminder that a slowing comp print can outweigh a clean beat-and-raise when a stock is priced for perfection.

MRNA‘s pullback was less a market signal than simple mean reversion after an historic one-day move.

The bigger story running underneath the session is the Iran economic-pressure campaign, which is now pushing oil higher in a way that could complicate the Fed’s inflation math if it persists.

With Bessent teasing a fresh round of sanctions next week, this is a story to keep watching heading into the weekend.

Source: CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg, Trading Economics, Reuters, Fox News.

View premium services

Closing Look - 8/19/26

Frank Cappelleri — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 22:44:40 GMT

Summary

🟢 Stocks snapped a three-day losing streak Wednesday as a Treasury Department move to sharply expand its long-bond buybacks pulled yields off multi-decade highs and gave risk assets room to breathe.

Moderna (MRNA) stole the show, surging +176.97% after a landmark Phase 3 win alongside Merck (MRK), up +12.6%, for a personalized melanoma vaccine, powering the health care sector to its best day in over a year.

Chipmakers were the drag, with Broadcom (AVGO) down -4% and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) down -4% on a Wall Street Journal report that OpenAI’s Q2 results disappointed investors even as revenue grew.

Geopolitics stayed front and center: the 60-day US–Iran ceasefire lapsed Monday, and the UAE said it paused trade with Tehran after two ballistic missiles landed in its territorial waters overnight.

Retail earnings were mixed, with TJX Companies (TJX) down -4.7%, Target (TGT) down roughly -3.5%, and Lowe’s (LOW) down -3.53% — all three topping estimates or raising guidance yet still turning in soft stock reactions.

Major Indices & Breadth

🟢 S&P 500: closed at 7,707.98, +0.21% (+16.22 points)
🟢 Dow Jones Industrial Average: closed at 53,463.05, +0.22% (+119.65 points)
🟢 Nasdaq Composite: closed at 26,331.09, +0.16% (+41.38 points)
🟢 Russell 2000: last traded near 3,042, +0.8%, broadly tracking the risk-on tone
🟡 Breadth was uneven rather than uniformly positive: health care led sector performance by a wide margin on the Moderna/Merck news, while chipmakers were the clearest laggard group

🟢 Leaders

🟢 MRNA +176.97%
🟢 BNTX +21.96%
🟢 EL +18.4%
🟢 MRK +12.6%
🟢 NVAX +10.8%
🟢 TSLA +4.2%

🔴 Laggards

🔴 NBIS -12.7%
🔴 MRCY -8.8%
🔴 DELL -7.2%
🔴 CRWD -7.1%
🔴 AVGO -4%
🔴 AMD -4%

Earnings

🟢 Moderna (MRNA) and Merck (MRK) announced positive Phase 3 data for their jointly developed personalized mRNA cancer therapy (intismeran autogene) paired with Merck’s Keytruda in melanoma patients — the treatment met both its primary endpoint of reducing recurrence and its secondary endpoint of preventing spread. MRNA closed at $174.38, up +176.97% on 185.1M shares traded (roughly 19x its three-month average volume), its best single-day move on record. MRK rose +12.6%, the Dow’s top percentage gainer. The rally lifted biotech peers BNTX (+21.96%) and NVAX (+10.8%).
🔴 Target (TGT) beat second-quarter earnings and revenue estimates, aided partly by tariff refunds, and raised its full-year sales guidance — its third consecutive strong quarter, with CEO Michael Fiddelke citing “increasing confidence that our strategy is resonating with our guests.” Despite the beat, shares were last down roughly -3.5% on the session.
🔴 TJX Companies (TJX) beat second-quarter sales and profit estimates and raised its annual profit forecast on resilient off-price demand, but shares were pressured -4.7% as investors weighed a third-quarter profit outlook that came in below expectations.
🔴 Lowe’s (LOW) gave a cautious full-year outlook, citing pressure in DIY consumer spending, alongside mixed second-quarter results; shares fell -3.53%.
🔴 Mercury Systems (MRCY) missed fourth-quarter earnings expectations; shares fell -8.8%.
🟢 Additional notable earnings: Analog Devices (ADI) guided fourth-quarter revenue above expectations on stable industrial demand, and shares rose roughly 2%.

AI

🟢 Marvell Technology (MRVL) struck an agreement with Google to supply custom tensor processing units, with Marvell issuing Alphabet (GOOG) a warrant to buy up to $12.2 billion of Marvell common stock. MRVL gained almost +10% on the news; GOOG closed roughly flat, up +0.1%.
🔴 Chip and AI-infrastructure names broadly underperformed after The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI’s second-quarter results disappointed investors — revenue grew 18% quarter-over-quarter, but losses widened as well. AVGO and AMD each fell roughly -4%, and the iShares AI Innovation and Tech Active ETF (BAI) declined about 2%.
🔴 Nebius Group (NBIS) fell -12.7% after disclosing a $4.5 billion convertible senior notes offering to fund AI cloud buildout (see Corporate).
🔴 NVDA slipped about -1.0% on the day, a relatively modest move given the sector-wide pressure.

Corporate

🔴 Nebius Group (NBIS) announced plans to raise $4.50 billion through a private offering of convertible senior notes — $2.75 billion due 2030 and $1.75 billion due 2034 — to fund AI cloud infrastructure buildout; shares fell -12.7% on dilution concerns.
🔴 Dell (DELL) fell -7.2% amid profit-taking in AI hardware names following recent Wall Street price-target adjustments and heavy insider selling.
🔴 CrowdStrike (CRWD) fell -7.1% as investors locked in profits ahead of its Aug. 26 earnings report.
🟢 Estée Lauder (EL) shares jumped +18.4% after fiscal fourth-quarter results beat on both earnings and revenue, alongside a fiscal 2027 profit outlook that topped consensus.

Market Structure

🟡 Nothing notable to report today — no index rebalances, additions/removals, or trading-rule changes surfaced in today’s session.

Macro/Policy

🟢 The Treasury Department said Wednesday it will more than double the maximum size of its debt-buyback operations, from $2 billion to at least $4 billion, targeting the 10-to-20-year and 20-to-30-year sectors that have seen a “buyers’ strike” since late June. The move sent long-end Treasury yields sharply lower and was the dominant catalyst behind the day’s equity rally (see Treasury Bonds).
🟡 The Federal Reserve released minutes from its July FOMC meeting at 2:00 PM ET; specific takeaways were not yet broadly reported at publication time.
🔴 The dollar backdrop was mixed: with long yields falling and risk appetite improving, the greenback slipped to a three-month low against major peers, though session-close currency-pair percentages were not confirmed by post-close sources as of publication (see Currencies).

Treasury Bonds

🟢 10-Year yield: fell roughly 5 basis points to about 4.65%
🟢 30-Year yield: fell roughly 10 basis points to about 5.18%, easing off levels not seen since 2007 that were hit earlier this week
🟡 2-Year yield was not confirmed by post-close sources at publication; the Treasury’s buyback announcement specifically targeted the long end of the curve (10–30yr sectors), which is where nearly all of today’s rally was concentrated

Geopolitics

🔴 The 60-day US–Iran ceasefire expired Monday with no extension; President Trump confirmed Tuesday the US is not currently in talks with Iran and has no plans to restart them.
🔴 The UAE said it paused all trade and financial transactions with Iran after reporting two ballistic missiles were launched toward its territorial waters overnight; both fell in the water without causing damage or casualties. It’s the first such incident to touch the Gulf economy’s shores in more than three months.
🟢 Separately, President Trump late Tuesday paused planned 50% tariffs on Canadian goods for three days, citing a near-final “DEAL” with Canadian PM Mark Carney’s team, just ahead of a midnight deadline.

Foreign Markets

🔴 Asian markets fell broadly overnight into Wednesday’s session, extending spillover from Tuesday’s US chip-stock selloff: Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped roughly -3%, and South Korea’s KOSPI dropped roughly -5%.
🟢 In China, robotics maker Unitree surged +629.4% in its Shanghai trading debut.

Currencies

🔴 The dollar slipped to a three-month low as Treasury yields tumbled on the Treasury buyback news; specific closing percentage moves for DXY, EUR/USD, USD/JPY, and GBP/USD were not available from confirmed post-close sources at publication and are flagged here as unconfirmed rather than estimated.

Commodities

🟢 WTI crude: around $85.99, +1.24%, supported by stalled US–Iran peace talks
🟢 Brent crude: around $92, +1.1%
🟢 Gold: rallied sharply intraday to roughly $4,555–4,579 an ounce (up +3% to +3.6% on the session) as safe-haven demand built on the UAE-Iran missile incident, before easing modestly off the day’s highs
🔴 Silver: fell roughly -0.8% early in the session to about $63.54 an ounce, underperforming gold’s later rally

Crypto

🟢 Bitcoin (BTC): closed around $69,367, +7.4% (+$4,788.67), tracking the broader risk-on move as Treasury yields fell

Prediction Markets

🟡 Contracts tied to US–Iran de-escalation are in focus after the ceasefire’s Monday expiration and the UAE missile incident (see Geopolitics); specific contract pricing was not confirmed by publication.

Volatility

🟢 VIX: eased to roughly 14.9–15.0, down about 5–6% on the session, reflecting the broad risk-on tone from the Treasury buyback and the Moderna-led health care rally

Tomorrow’s Calendar

Weekly Initial Jobless Claims — 8:30 AM ET
EIA Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report — 10:30 AM ET
EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report — 10:30 AM ET
No major S&P 500 earnings were confirmed for Thursday’s session as of publication; Ross Stores (ROST) is expected to report Friday, Aug. 21

3 Scenarios

🟢 Bullish: The Treasury buyback proves durable support for the long end, yields continue easing, and the Moderna-led health care rally broadens into a genuine rotation away from crowded AI-infrastructure names — indices push toward fresh highs even as chip stocks lag.
🟡 Neutral: Long yields stabilize near today’s lower levels but don’t fall further without more clarity from the July FOMC minutes’ fuller read-through; the market continues to bifurcate between AI-adjacent laggards and a broadening list of leaders, keeping the major indices range-bound.
🔴 Bearish: The OpenAI disappointment proves to be an early crack in the broader AI capex narrative, dragging chip and AI-infrastructure names lower again; a fresh escalation between Iran and a Gulf state (following the UAE missile incident) reignites the oil-driven inflation fear that had been pressuring yields before today’s buyback announcement.

Final Take

Wednesday’s rally had one clear author: the Treasury Department.

A doubling of long-bond buybacks did what weeks of Fed speak couldn’t — it pulled 30-year yields back from their highest levels since 2007 and gave the S&P 500, Dow, and Nasdaq room to snap a three-day losing streak.

Moderna’s historic single-day move added a second storyline entirely its own, turning a rough stretch for health care sentiment into the sector’s best day in well over a year.

But the session wasn’t uniformly clean. Chip and AI-infrastructure names sold off on the OpenAI report, a reminder that the market’s enthusiasm for AI capex still has a nerve that can be touched.

Geopolitics didn’t go away either — a lapsed ceasefire and a missile incident off the UAE’s coast kept oil bid even as equities rallied.

Thursday’s open will show whether today’s move was a genuine turn in the yield story or a one-day reprieve.

Source: CNBC, Yahoo Finance, TheStreet, The Motley Fool, Bloomberg, Reuters, FXStreet, Trading Economics.

View premium services

Technical Setups You Need to Watch This Week

Frank Cappelleri — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 14:16:29 GMT

Good morning.

Check out the YouTube version here.

Also, here’s my latest LinkedIn post: The market doesn’t know you exist.

Timecodes:

0:20 - S&P 500
8:43 - Retail ETFs - XRT, XLY, RSPD
11:33 - SMH Semiconductors
14:04 - XLE Energy
15:08 - GLD Gold

View premium services

Closing Look - 8/18/26

Frank Cappelleri — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 22:16:29 GMT

Summary

🔴 The S&P 500 fell -0.69% to 7,691.76, the Nasdaq Composite dropped -1.33% to 26,289.71, and the Dow lost 116 points (-0.22%) to 53,343.40.

The proximate trigger was the bond market: the 30-year Treasury yield hit its highest level since 2007, and the 10-year pushed toward 4.71%, both driven by a mix of persistent inflation concern, heavy AI-related debt issuance, and a worsening US fiscal picture.

Layered on top was a fading path to Iran diplomacy, after President Trump declined to extend the 60-day negotiation window that expired Monday, keeping the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed and oil prices elevated.

Memory and storage chip names were hit hardest, with the semiconductor complex (Philadelphia Semiconductor Index) sliding -5.5% and dragging the Nasdaq to a one-week low.

Home Depot (HD) and Klarna (KLAR) both beat on the top and bottom lines, but investor reaction diverged sharply, underscoring how much guidance — not the headline beat — is driving today’s earnings reactions.

Major Indices & Breadth

🔴 S&P 500 closed at 7,691.76, -0.69%, its third straight losing session.
🔴 Nasdaq Composite fell -1.33% to 26,289.71, its worst day in roughly a week, led lower by memory and storage names.
🔴 Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 116.38 points (-0.22%) to 53,343.40.
🔴 Russell 2000 fell roughly -1.1% to around 3,023, giving back Monday’s gains as small-caps remained sensitive to the yield spike.
🔴 Nasdaq-100 declined -1.7%; the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) slid -5.5%, a significant outlier versus its typical daily range and the session’s single biggest sector story.

🟢 Leaders

TRGP +7.13% — closed at an all-time high after announcing 20-year, fee-based midstream agreements with ExxonMobil subsidiaries in the Permian Basin.
JNJ +3.33% — closed at an all-time high as investors rotated into defensive healthcare names.
CRM +2.71% — one of the Dow’s better performers on the session.
NKE +2.48% — advanced alongside the broader defensive/value rotation.

🔴 Laggards

KLAR -18.65% — its biggest single-day drop in roughly six months (see Earnings).
SNDK -9% — memory-chip selloff (see AI).
STX more than -9% — memory-chip selloff (see AI).
MRVL nearly -8% — memory-chip selloff (see AI).
WDC -7% — memory-chip selloff (see AI).

Earnings

🟡 Home Depot (HD) beat on both lines before the open: adjusted EPS of $4.92 topped the $4.73 estimate, and revenue of $47.86B topped the $47.2B estimate, with comparable sales up 1.7%. The company reaffirmed full-year guidance, citing “frozen” housing-market conditions. Despite the beat, HD closed essentially flat, -0.12% to $337.49, as investors focused on the unchanged outlook rather than the quarter’s upside.
🔴 Klarna (KLAR) beat on every headline metric — revenue of $1.04B (+27% YoY) topped the $996M estimate, and adjusted EPS of $0.01 beat an expected -$0.06 loss, turning net income positive for the first time since its bank-license expansion. But the buy-now-pay-later firm cut full-year revenue guidance to $4.08B–$4.16B from a prior above $4.34B, citing FX headwinds and softer German consumer spending, and disclosed that its CFO and CMO will both depart in early 2027. KLAR shares cratered -18.65% to $15.87, its biggest single-day drop in roughly six months. Peers Affirm and PayPal were little changed, signaling the market read this as company-specific rather than sector-wide.
🟡 Toll Brothers (TOL) reported after the close: EPS of $2.97 beat the $2.93 estimate, and revenue of $2.66B topped the $2.62B estimate. Initial after-hours trading in TOL was muted as investors weighed orders, cancellations, and margin guidance alongside the headline beat; a fuller reaction should be clearer by Wednesday’s open.
🟡 Additional notable earnings today: Baidu (BIDU), BHP Group (BHP), Keysight Technologies (KEYS), ZTO Express (ZTO), Iqiyi (IQ), and Pony AI (PONY).

AI

🔴 Memory and storage names led a broad chip-sector selloff as surging long-dated Treasury yields compressed richly-valued AI-infrastructure multiples: WDC fell -7%, SNDK dropped -9%, MRVL and STX were down nearly -8% and more than -9%, respectively.
🔴 The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) slid -5.5% and the Nasdaq-100 fell -1.7%, with the memory complex — this year’s best-performing corner of the market — bearing the brunt of the derating.
🟡 NVDA closed -2.34% to $219.74, a comparatively modest decline relative to the memory-chip carnage.
🔴 CoreWeave (CRWV) fell sharply during the session as surging long-term yields pressured the heavily-leveraged AI-infrastructure name.
🟡 Strategists framed the move as a sector-specific rate-driven derating rather than a fundamental deterioration, given the extreme 2026 run-up in names like SNDK and WDC.

Corporate

🟡 Disney’s ABC sued the FCC, alleging First Amendment violations tied to the agency’s early license-renewal review of ABC stations, which the network called a “retaliatory campaign.”
🟢 UGI jumped sharply intraday — briefly halted for volatility — after the Wall Street Journal reported KKR made a roughly $9B bid to take the Pennsylvania-based utility private; KKR declined to comment.
🟡 SpaceX (SPCX) completed its previously announced $60B acquisition of Cursor, the AI-powered code editor, vertically integrating Cursor’s application layer with Musk’s Grok models and SpaceX’s compute.
🔴 Carvana (CVNA) fell more than 3% after two company directors disclosed insider stock sales last week.

Market Structure

🟡 No index rebalances, additions, removals, or trading-mechanics rule changes to report today. The next scheduled S&P 500 quarterly rebalance and Nasdaq-100 rank-based review both fall in September.

Macro/Policy

🟡 No major US economic data releases today; the macro narrative was dominated by the bond market and geopolitics rather than fresh data.
🟡 Fed funds futures continue to price roughly 67% odds the FOMC holds rates at its September 16 meeting versus roughly 32% odds of a 25bp hike, per CME’s FedWatch tool — largely unchanged from recent sessions.
🟡 Wednesday brings the minutes from the Fed’s contentious July 28–29 meeting, where three officials dissented in favor of a hike (see Tomorrow’s Calendar).

Treasury Bonds

🔴 30-year yield touched a fresh 19-year high near 5.32% before retreating slightly to trade around 5.29%, driven by concerns over the US fiscal deficit, heavy AI-related debt issuance, and persistent inflation.
🔴 10-year yield pushed toward 4.71%, not far from its highest level since early 2025.
🟡 2-year yield was little changed around 4.18%, keeping the 2s10s spread near 53bps.
🔴 The move at the long end is this month’s dominant cross-asset story, pressuring housing, AI-infrastructure, and small-cap names alike (see AI, Corporate).

Geopolitics

🔴 The 60-day US-Iran memorandum of understanding, signed in June to negotiate a lasting peace deal and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, formally expired Monday. President Trump said he would not seek an extension.
🔴 Presidential envoy Jared Kushner said Iran is showing no interest in a deal “that makes sense” for the US, while a senior Iranian official told Reuters Tehran will shift to a “fully offensive” military posture in the Strait if diplomacy fails.
🔴 The Strait of Hormuz remains near-totally closed to commercial traffic; Polymarket prices roughly a 91.5% chance traffic does not return to normal by September 30, reflecting deep skepticism of near-term resolution.

Foreign Markets

🔴 Japan’s 10-year government bond yield reached its highest level in three decades.
🔴 Germany’s 30-year bund yield hit its highest level since 2011; France’s 30-year yield touched its highest since 2008.
🟡 Europe’s Stoxx 600 was down only slightly on the session, weathering the global yield spike better than US equities.

Currencies

🟢 DXY ticked up +0.04% to around 99.58, a modest bounce after recent multi-month lows.
🟡 EUR/USD was little changed, +0.06%, near 1.16.
🟢 USD/JPY rose +0.13% to 159.65, trading near its highest level since the last coordinated US-Japan currency intervention.
🔴 GBP/USD slipped -0.07% to 1.3535.

Commodities

🔴 WTI crude rose +0.60% to $84.24, and Brent crude added +0.24% to $91.09, both extending gains as Strait of Hormuz risk premia stayed elevated.
🔴 Gold fell -1.83% to $4,391.75, snapping a two-session winning streak as higher Treasury yields and a firmer dollar weighed on bullion.
🔴 Silver slipped roughly -2.8% to around $64.

Crypto

🟢 Bitcoin (BTC) rose modestly, +0.6%, to around $64,820.
🟢 Ethereum (ETH) added +0.5% to around $1,916.
🟡 Crypto largely shrugged off the equity-market weakness, trading in line with recent range-bound action rather than tracking the chip-sector selloff.

Prediction Markets

🟡 CME FedWatch continues to price roughly 67% odds the Fed holds rates in September versus 32% odds of a 25bp hike — essentially unchanged on the day.
🔴 Polymarket prices roughly 91.5% odds that Strait of Hormuz traffic does not return to normal by September 30, reflecting persistent skepticism of a near-term US-Iran resolution.

Volatility

🔴 VIX closed at 15.84, +4.28%, still well below its 2026 average despite today’s pickup.
🔴 The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fall of -5.5% was a significant outlier relative to its typical daily range, underscoring how concentrated today’s stress was in one corner of the market rather than broad-based panic.

Tomorrow’s Calendar

FOMC minutes from the July 28–29 meeting release at 2:00 PM ET, with markets watching for detail on the three dissents favoring a hike.
Earnings before the open: Analog Devices (ADI), Target (TGT), Lowe’s (LOW), TJX Companies (TJX), Estée Lauder (EL), Viking Holdings (VIK).
Toll Brothers (TOL) hosts its earnings call at 8:30 AM ET to discuss last night’s results.
EIA weekly crude oil inventories release at 9:30 AM ET.

3 Scenarios

🟢 Bullish — The Fed minutes read more dovish than the July dissents suggested, long-end yields stabilize, and Wednesday’s retail earnings (TGT, LOW, TJX) confirm consumer resilience, letting rate-sensitive names like memory chips and homebuilders stabilize into the back half of the week.
🟡 Neutral — Yields stay elevated near current levels without breaking materially higher, retail earnings come in mixed, and the market treats today’s memory-chip selloff as a sector-specific derating rather than a signal for the broader AI trade, keeping indices in a choppy, narrow range.
🔴 Bearish — The Fed minutes reveal broader hawkish sentiment than the three dissents implied, long-end yields push through fresh highs, and any further Iran escalation or Hormuz disruption sends oil and inflation expectations higher together, pressuring both growth and rate-sensitive value names simultaneously.

Final Take

Tuesday’s session was a reminder that the bond market, not the earnings calendar, is currently setting the tone. Home Depot (HD) and Klarna (KLAR) both beat estimates, yet HD finished flat and KLAR cratered nearly 19% — a clean illustration that guidance is doing all the work right now, beats included.

The real story was the 30-year Treasury yield’s push to a 19-year high, which hammered the year’s best-performing trade, memory and storage chips, and left the Nasdaq at its worst level in a week.

With the Strait of Hormuz still closed and President Trump signaling no urgency to extend the Iran negotiation window, the geopolitical risk premium embedded in oil and yields isn’t going away on its own.

Wednesday’s FOMC minutes and a wave of retail earnings (TGT, LOW, TJX) will be the next test of whether this is a one-day rate scare or the start of a tougher stretch into September’s Fed meeting.

Source: CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Reuters, Bloomberg, TheStreet, Investing.com, Trading Economics, CME FedWatch, Polymarket.

View premium services

SPX Breadth and Momentum

Frank Cappelleri — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 15:30:30 GMT

Good morning - here are some comments from today’s Opening Look note.

Also, check out my CNBC segment from (very) early this morning. We discussed SPX, bonds, retail, and seasonality.

The SPX’s recent breakout to new all-time highs has kept the bigger-picture trend firmly intact. But after one of its strongest four-day moves in years, the market has started to pause, and a few indicators are worth watching more closely.

Two stand out right now: market breadth and MACD momentum.

Neither is flashing a definitive warning yet. But if both begin to deteriorate at the same time price starts breaking down, the message would become much more important.

Breadth Remains Supportive

As we know, strong breadth has been one of the most important drivers of the market all summer.

It helped the SPX stay near its highs in June and July while Technology came under pressure. Instead of weakness in the largest growth stocks dragging everything lower, strength underneath the surface helped keep the broader market afloat.

More recently, that participation supported the SPX’s breakout to new all-time highs.

That remains an important positive.

In fact, both the S&P 500 and the cumulative advance-decline line made new highs last week. When price and breadth are confirming each other in that fashion, it is difficult to argue that there is a major breadth problem.

At least not yet.

Yesterday, however, provided something different. Just 26% of S&P 500 stocks advanced, the weakest breadth reading since July 8, when only 22% rose.

One bad breadth day by itself isn’t enough to change the trend. We’ve seen plenty of sharp one-day reversals during this advance that ultimately proved temporary.

But if yesterday’s action proves to be more than a one-day blip, it would represent a meaningful change in character.

That becomes especially important because the SPX is currently working through several bullish pattern breakouts. Strong breadth has helped support those moves. If participation begins to deteriorate while those patterns start failing, the technical backdrop would look considerably less constructive.

For now, breadth deserves the benefit of the doubt. The next few sessions should tell us whether yesterday was simply noise—or the start of something more meaningful.

MACD Sell Signal Watch

The second development to monitor is the SPX’s daily MACD indicator.

Looking back at all of the MACD Sell signals since the fall of 2024, the track record has been mixed. The red lines on the accompanying chart highlight signals that correctly preceded meaningful weakness, while the blue lines show the head fakes when the market simply continued higher.

The takeaway is pretty clear:

There have been far more head fakes than reliable sell signals.

Since the comeback earlier this year, three MACD Sell signals have triggered. None produced a major decline, with the market experiencing only modest pullbacks in June and again in late July.

Currently, we’re still a few days away from another potential signal, as highlighted in yellow.

Given that the SPX is at higher levels and recently logged one of its strongest four-day moves in years, some momentum deterioration wouldn’t be surprising. Markets rarely move straight up, and the recent pause could eventually be enough to produce another MACD Sell signal.

But the signal itself won’t be the most important development.

Price Still Comes First

As always, confirmation from price matters more than the indicator itself.

If another MACD Sell signal triggers while the SPX’s bullish patterns remain intact, breadth stabilizes and price holds above the recent breakout zones, history suggests there would be little reason to overreact.

On the other hand, if breadth continues to weaken and the three bullish patterns discussed above begin to fail, the same MACD Sell signal would carry considerably more weight.

It also would line up with the recent DeMARK Setup 9 Sell signal, which thus far has yet to produce meaningful downside.

That’s why the next several sessions are important. We don’t have a confirmed bearish shift yet. But we do have several potential warning signs beginning to line up.

Price, breadth and momentum remain the key combination to watch - in that order. If all three start deteriorating together, the message will be much harder to ignore.

View premium services

Closing Look - 8/17/26

Frank Cappelleri — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 21:47:38 GMT

Summary

The S&P 500 slid -0.52% to 7,745.06, the Nasdaq Composite fell -0.32%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 272.63 points, or -0.51% (see Major Indices & Breadth).

The US-Iran ceasefire memorandum of understanding expired Monday with negotiations stalled, sending Brent crude near $91 and the 30-year Treasury yield to 5.29%, its highest level since 2007 (see Geopolitics, Treasury Bonds).

Memory chipmakers rallied after a report that the Trump administration opposes Apple (AAPL) buying Chinese memory chips (see AI).

EyePoint Pharmaceuticals (EYPT) collapsed roughly -70% after a failed Phase 3 trial, while Reddit (RDDT) is set to join the S&P 500 before Tuesday’s open (see Corporate, Market Structure).

Major Indices & Breadth

🔴 S&P 500 closed at 7,745.06, down -0.52%, a second straight losing session pulling back from last week’s record territory.
🔴 Nasdaq Composite fell -0.32% to 26,644.91, holding up modestly better than the broader tape.
🔴 Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 272.63 points (-0.51%) to 53,459.78.
🟡 Russell 2000 slipped roughly -0.4% to around 3,055, small-caps giving back a slice of last week’s record close.
🟡 Breadth skewed negative; declines in most S&P 500 names overshadowed a rally in memory and chip stocks (see AI).

🟢 Leaders

LUNR +9%
MU +6%
SNDK +5%
CSCO +1.5%
CAT +0.7%
GS +0.3%

🔴 Laggards

EYPT -70%
JBLU -6%
WDAY -2.4%
MCD -1.8%
UNH -1.6%
MSFT -1.1%

Earnings

🟡 Fabrinet (FN) reports fiscal fourth-quarter and full-year 2026 results after tonight’s close, with a call at 5:00 PM ET; the Street models adjusted EPS of $3.81 on revenue of $1.28B, roughly in line with management’s own guidance of $3.72–$3.87 and $1.25–$1.29B.
🟡 No major S&P 500 names reported before today’s open; the market is bracing for a heavier retail-earnings slate later this week (see Tomorrow’s Calendar).

AI

🟢 Anthropic disclosed $11.5B in second-quarter revenue and is meeting with banks about a potential IPO that could be the largest on record, reinforcing the case that AI capex stays elevated.
🟢 Memory chipmakers rallied after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told the Wall Street Journal the Trump administration opposes AAPL buying Chinese memory chips; SanDisk (SNDK) jumped roughly +5% and Micron (MU) roughly +6%, while Nvidia (NVDA) and Amazon (AMZN) were both modestly higher.
🟢 Nvidia is reportedly in talks to invest as much as $3B in SB Energy, a SoftBank-backed Ohio data-center project being built for OpenAI.

Corporate

🔴 EYPT fell roughly -70% after its wet-AMD candidate Duravyu missed the primary endpoint in a Phase 3 trial.
🟢 Intuitive Machines (LUNR) rose roughly +9%, a fifth straight gain, after receiving authorization to proceed on a $600M multisatellite communications program.
🔴 JetBlue Airways (JBLU) fell roughly -6% to $5.33 after Seaport Research downgraded the stock to Neutral, citing renewed oil-price risk to its balance sheet as the US-Iran ceasefire lapsed (see Geopolitics).
🔴 Workday (WDAY) fell roughly -2.4% after Deutsche Bank cut the stock to Hold and BTIG moved to Neutral, unwinding part of last week’s Silver Lake buyout-rumor pop.

Market Structure

🟡 RDDT joins the S&P 500 before tomorrow’s open, replacing AvalonBay Communities (AVB), which is being acquired by fellow S&P 500 constituent Equity Residential; the combined company will be renamed Vivmark Residential (VMRK) and remain in the index.
🟡 Sun Communities (SUI) joins the S&P MidCap 400 on Thursday, replacing Webster Financial (WBS), which is being acquired by Banco Santander (SAN).

Macro/Policy

🔴 Traders trimmed the odds of a September Fed rate hike to roughly 33%, down from over half a month ago, after last week’s soft retail sales and consumer sentiment data (see Prediction Markets).
🟡 Minutes from the July 28–29 FOMC meeting are due Wednesday and will be scrutinized for the internal debate over inflation risk versus growth risk.
🔴 Year-ahead inflation expectations from the University of Michigan rose again in August, a fifth straight month above 4%.

Treasury Bonds

🔴 30-year Treasury yield rose roughly 3bps to 5.29%, the highest level since 2007 and closing in on that year’s 5.44% financial-crisis-era peak.
🟡 10-year yield held near 4.69%, little changed on the day but up sharply for the month as long-dated supply and deficit concerns weigh on the belly and long end.
🟢 2-year yield eased to 4.17%, continuing this month’s short-end decline as traders lean toward a Fed hold rather than a hike.
🔴 The 2s10s spread widened to roughly 52bps as short rates ease while long rates climb on fiscal and AI-capex-driven supply worries (see Macro/Policy).

Geopolitics

🔴 The US-Iran ceasefire memorandum of understanding expired Monday with negotiations stalled; Iran ruled out an extension, and a senior Iranian official told Reuters the country would shift to an “offensive posture” if diplomacy with the US fails.
🔴 President Trump told Fox News the US would bomb Oman “if it gets in the way,” and separately said he doesn’t see the war ending anytime soon.
🔴 Oil jumped on the escalation risk (see Commodities), with the Strait of Hormuz remaining the key chokepoint to watch.

Foreign Markets

🟢 Nikkei 225 rose +0.74% to 69,220.25.
🟡 Euro Stoxx 50 slipped -0.14% to 6,530.45.
🔴 FTSE 100 fell -0.28% to 10,720.30.
🔴 DAX fell -0.38% to 26,338.61.
🔴 CAC 40 fell -0.66% to 8,579.60.

Currencies

🔴 Dollar Index (DXY) fell -0.09% to 99.57, a third straight down session as traders pare back rate-hike bets (see Macro/Policy).
🟢 USD/JPY rose +0.16% to 159.56.
🟢 EUR/USD rose +0.03% to 1.1577.
🟢 GBP/USD rose +0.01% to 1.3537.

Commodities

🟢 WTI crude rose +2.29% to $84.29, extending gains on renewed Iran-conflict fears (see Geopolitics).
🟢 Brent crude settled near $91, also higher on the same Middle East risk.
🟢 Gold rose +0.56% to $4,462.10 as haven demand ticked up alongside the equity selloff.
🟢 Silver rose +1.29% to $65.95.

Crypto

🟢 Bitcoin (BTC) traded around $63,900, up roughly +2% on the day even as risk assets broadly sold off.
🔴 Ethereum (ETH) slipped to around $1,875–$1,895, down roughly -1.8% on the week as analysts debate whether the crypto bear market has bottomed.

Prediction Markets

🟡 Traders put roughly 67% odds on the Fed holding rates in September versus 33% odds of a hike, up from near even a month ago (see Macro/Policy).
🟡 Traders put roughly 1-in-4 odds on Paramount’s bid for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) failing.

Volatility

🟡 VIX rose to around 15.2, up roughly +7% from Friday’s 14.25 close, but remains near its 2026 low after touching that mark last week.
🟡 Strategists flagged the combination of record-low volatility, fresh index highs, and unresolved geopolitical risk as a setup for a bumpier mid-August-to-mid-October stretch, historically choppier in midterm-election years.

Tomorrow’s Calendar

RDDT joins the S&P 500 before the open, replacing AVB (see Market Structure).
FN‘s fiscal Q4/FY2026 results, released after tonight’s close, will be digested at tomorrow’s open (see Earnings).
Retail-earnings season builds this week with Home Depot (HD), Target (TGT), Lowe’s (LOW), and Walmart (WMT) all reporting over the coming days.
FOMC minutes from the July 28–29 meeting are due Wednesday.

3 Scenarios

🟢 Bullish: US-Iran talks resume before tomorrow’s open, oil gives back some of today’s gain, and FN‘s after-hours report beats guidance cleanly — the S&P 500 stabilizes back above 7,770 and memory/AI names extend today’s strength.

🟡 Neutral: Geopolitical headlines stay noisy without fresh escalation, oil holds in the high-$80s-to-low-$90s Brent range, and traders mark time ahead of Wednesday’s FOMC minutes and this week’s retail earnings — the S&P 500 chops in a 7,700–7,780 range.

🔴 Bearish: Iran signals a shift to an “offensive posture,” Brent pushes toward $95, and the 30-year yield extends its push toward its 2007 peak — the S&P 500 tests 7,650 and the VIX moves back above 17.

Final Take

Monday looked like the mirror image of the summer’s “buy every dip” pattern.

A stalled ceasefire, a jump in oil, and a fresh multi-decade high in the 30-year yield combined to snap the S&P 500’s three-week winning streak.

The damage was orderly rather than panicked — the S&P 500 gave back just -0.52%, and the VIX, while up on the day, is still hovering near its 2026 low.

Underneath the headline weakness, money kept rotating into memory and AI-infrastructure names on the SanDisk/Micron chip-export story and Anthropic’s blockbuster revenue disclosure, a reminder that the AI capex trade has its own gravity independent of the macro tape.

The next 48 hours carry real catalysts: Reddit’s S&P 500 debut, Fabrinet’s earnings tonight, and Wednesday’s FOMC minutes, all set against a bond market where the 30-year is now within shouting distance of its financial-crisis-era peak.

If oil keeps climbing on Iran headlines, the inflation-versus-growth tension in that Treasury market becomes the story the rest of the week — not just for stocks, but for the Fed’s next move.

Source: CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg, TheStreet, Trading Economics.

View premium services

5 best charts for the week ending 8/14/26

Frank Cappelleri — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:02:55 GMT

Happy Sunday,

Here are this week’s five best charts, presented just as they originally appeared in the daily notes. At the end, we’re discussing a recently closed chart trade that gained 24% in 9 trading days.

Monday - Week of 8/10/26

SPX vs. 200-DMA
The S&P finished last week 10% above its 200-day moving average, a level last seen in late May/early June, when the spread reached roughly 11%. Since the 2022 low, that gap has expanded toward 15% several times before eventually peaking.

More importantly, during the S&P’s strongest uptrends, it has shown an ability to remain 10% or more above its 200-day moving average while continuing to advance. Thus, reaching this threshold isn’t an outright sell signal.

The best-case scenario would be some short-term consolidation following last week’s surge, allowing the market to digest the move, regroup, and potentially continue higher.

Tuesday, 8/11/26 - A lot of movement… under the surface

ETHE Ethereum
Overall, ETHE has been stuck over the last few weeks just below the 16 area, and we can see how important that level is from a pattern perspective: The ETF is now approaching its third bullish breakout attempt of 2026. As the red arrows show, the prior two failed, with significant weakness following soon thereafter.

That contrasts sharply with the spring and summer of 2025. Back then, ETHE broke out from a small bullish pattern, reached its target, and helped establish the foundation for a much larger bullish formation. That subsequent June breakout produced substantial follow-through, with ETHE reaching its 33-target and continuing higher from there.

It’s another example of why, when attempting to reverse a major downtrend, simply bouncing isn’t enough. Constructing and successfully leveraging an identifiable bullish formation can provide the foundation for a much larger recovery to develop.

Wednesday, 8/12/26 - CPI, SPX and a lot more

SKYY – Short-term Extended
SKYY has enjoyed a huge run over the last few weeks, gaining nearly 26% from its July 23 low through yesterday’s high and advancing in 12 of the last 13 sessions. Along the way, its 14-day RSI has surged from 37 to 76, putting the ETF firmly into overbought territory.

For context, SKYY rallied nearly 50% from its April 10 low through June 1 before suffering a roughly 20% pullback over the following four weeks. Thus, after another sharp run now, the question is whether it is again due for some consolidation.

The bottom panel adds to that concern. SKYY is now roughly 26% above its 200-day moving average, among its most extended readings since at least 2018. As the red arrows show, similar extremes typically were followed by some degree of mean reversion, whether through an outright pullback or several months of sideways digestion.

The major exception came during the powerful post-COVID advance in late 2020 (first green arrow). Otherwise, when SKYY has moved 20% or more above its 200-day, the gap eventually has narrowed considerably, making the current risk/reward increasingly stretched in the short term.

Thursday, 8/13/26 - Still Treading Water… for Now

HF HC Providers
IHF, the Healthcare Providers ETF, gained 1.3% yesterday. This updated chart highlights how its comeback since late March has been defined by a series of bullish continuation patterns, each of which was eventually leveraged to the upside and helped build the current uptrend.

We highlighted this phenomenon again in early July. This time, however, the consolidation has lasted longer, creating the largest and longest trading range since the comeback began. Whether we classify it as a trading channel or bullish flag, the setup remains constructive as long as IHF can eventually break higher.

The timing also is important from a momentum perspective. The 14-day RSI is once again trying to hold near 50, a level it has remained above since late March. Before the comeback began, that same 50 area consistently acted as resistance.

It’s another good example of how price and momentum can work together to define a trend—with the RSI’s 50 level shifting from resistance during the downtrend to support during the advance.

Friday, 8/14/26 - Chart Rundown

IGV vs. SMH
IGF also has finally started to leverage the extreme oversold condition vs. SMH. We can see how long this outperformance vs. SMH has lasted since 2021 when the IGV/SMH ratio broke through major downtrend lines.

Chart Trade: HPE +24% in 9 trading days

8/3/26 - Bought at 50

8/13/26 - Sold 62 target price

Original Chart and writeup - Monday, 7/27/26:

HPE has been on a wild ride this year. After rallying more than 220% and culminating in the parabolic spike, the stock reversed sharply, falling nearly 40% from its peak. Since bottoming in early July, however, it has staged a healthy rebound, carving out a potential inverse head and shoulders pattern.

Given how quickly momentum can appear, a breakout in HPE soon could attract additional buying interest. If that happens again soon with a move through the 50-zone, the upside target would be up near 62. We’re looking to establish a position slightly ahead of the breakout near 50.

The suggested stop-loss is near 45.

Chart as of 8/14/26

View premium services