Technical analysis: the SEC lifts crypto stocks as Strategy and Coinbase soar, while Europe slides with Stellantis and the banks
On Friday 18 September the week of the first US rate hike since 2023 ended at two speeds. Wall Street held on to Thursday's rebound, with the S&P 500 barely changed and the Nasdaq 100 up 0.63%, while European markets fell between 1.4% and 1.7% and the Milan market lost 1.6%, as the spread between Italian and German ten-year yields widened to 92 basis points.
In this edition you will find the technical analysis of the names that made the session, with our model's position on each. On US stocks the news was the SEC opening the door to tokenized securities: Strategy stock, Coinbase stock and Robinhood stock gained between 9% and 16%, and among semiconductor stocks Sandisk added 11%. In Milan Stellantis stock closed at the bottom of the list and the banks weighed, from UniCredit to Intesa Sanpaolo, while STMicroelectronics went the other way. In Germany carmakers were the weakest group, led lower by Volkswagen and Mercedes. Our trading strategy on each name is set out below.
With the weekly close our model confirmed a sell on all four European baskets we follow, and on the day's names it often had the right reading: short Stellantis at 28.66%, long Strategy at 20.90%. Every reading comes from a systematic model, that is ai trading applied to about 450 instruments, and they remain references: the choice always belongs to whoever trades.
Crypto stocks take off: the SEC opens the door to tokenized securities, and Strategy, MARA Holdings, Coinbase and Robinhood gain 9% to 16%
The session's biggest move came from a regulatory decision. The whole crypto stock group rose together. Press reports say the SEC has granted a five-year exemption that lets some platforms trade tokenized securities on a blockchain, and bitcoin climbed back above 80,000 dollars. On our data Strategy stockLong gained 16.39%, MARA HoldingsLong 13.75%, Coinbase stockLong 11.66%, Robinhood stockLong 9.12%, CircleLong 7.86% and Figure TechnologyLong 5.28%.
Robinhood also collected two higher price targets: according to press reports Goldman Sachs raised its target to 142 dollars, valuing the prediction-market joint venture, and Jefferies to 140. Behind them came the miners and the hosts of crypto computing: Riot PlatformsShort up 8.55%, CleanSparkShort 8.39%, CipherShort 8.26%, IrenShort 7.36% and Applied DigitalShort 6.60%.
Semiconductor stocks: Sandisk, Arm, Micron and AMD higher, Qualcomm and Netflix lower, software gives ground
Semiconductors held on to Thursday's rebound: Sandisk stockLong gained 10.99%, Arm stockShort 4.04%, Micron stockLong 3.92%, Broadcom stockShort 2.97%, AMD stockShort 2.70% and Nvidia stockLong 1.34%. AlibabaShort rose 4.33%: press reports put the growth of its AI cloud revenue at 45% year on year.
The rest of technology gave ground. Qualcomm stockLong fell 5.82% on volume 4.2 times its median, almost all of it selling; Netflix stockShort lost 4.67%, DellLong 3.46%, IBMLong 3.45%, CrowdStrike stockLong 3.28%, Palo Alto NetworksShort 3.06%, Meta stockLong 2.43%, SalesforceLong 2.03% and Microsoft stockLong 0.80%.
Milan market lower: banks sold, Stellantis stock at the bottom, STMicroelectronics and Prysmian against the tide
Press reports put the FTSE MIB down 1.6%, in line with the rest of Europe, while the Italian-German yield spread rose 6 points to 92. On our data Stellantis stockShort closed at the bottom of the list, down 5.23%. Banks and insurers weighed: UniCredit stockLong fell 3.05%, UnipolLong 2.75%, Intesa Sanpaolo stockLong 2.14%, Banco BPMShort 2.03%, GeneraliLong 1.97%, BPERLong 1.74% and MediobancaLong 1.42%. Utilities were lower too, with HeraShort down 3.02%, A2ALong 2.64% and Enel stockShort 2.00%, as was Telecom ItaliaLong at 1.65%.
Against the tide, STMicroelectronics stockShort rose 2.30% in the wake of US chipmakers, and PrysmianShort 0.66%: press reports say Intermonte upgraded it to outperform, lifting its target from 130 to 154 euros. DiaSorinLong closed up 0.47% on its last day in the main index: under FTSE Russell's review, from today its seat in the FTSE MIB goes to Technoprobe. The volumes show who was selling: Banco BPM traded 10.4 times its median with 92.5% on the sell side, Telecom Italia 9 times and UniCredit 4.3 times, both with all of it selling, on the day of the quarterly derivatives expiry.
Europe lower: Volkswagen, Mercedes and BMW stock sink, Orange and Deutsche Telekom down, Infineon against the tide
According to press reports Frankfurt lost 1.7%, Paris and London 1.5%, and the French spread over the Bund broke above 100 basis points. German carmakers were the weakest group: on our data Volkswagen stockLong fell 5.58%, Mercedes-BenzLong 4.76% and BMWLong 4.46%. Telecoms dropped, with OrangeShort down 5.83% and Deutsche TelekomLong 4.20%, and so did banks, with Deutsche Bank stockLong down 3.49%, BarclaysShort 3.48%, BNP ParibasShort 2.93% and LloydsShort 2.90%. SAP stockLong lost 2.60% and AllianzLong 1.73%.
InfineonShort went the other way, up 2.68% alongside US chipmakers. Two volume stories stand out: AXAShort traded 5.3 times its median with 87% on the buy side while the price slipped 0.73%, whereas E.ONShort, at 3.8 times its median, and L'OréalLong, at 3.4 times, saw almost all of it on the sell side.
European indices: all four on a sell, as Frankfurt and London flip at Friday's close
On Friday the FTSE MIB ETF FTSE MIB ETFShort lost 1.64%, the DAX ETF DAX ETFShort 1.62%, the FTSE 100 ETF FTSE 100 ETFShort 1.48% and the CAC 40 ETF CAC 40 ETFShort 1.38%. Over the week Milan closed 1.84% lower, Paris 1.22%, Frankfurt 0.99% and London 0.86%. Milan sits 5.09% below its record high, Frankfurt 5.10%, Paris 8.24% and London 10.91%.
Friday's close redrew the map: with Frankfurt and London joining, all four baskets now carry a weekly sell signal. Frankfurt flipped with the week's typical price 0.90% below the level that judges it; London by 0.01%, the thinnest margin there is. Milan has been a sell since the week ended 4 September, 1.18% in profit, and Paris since 24 August, 3.80% in profit. The new weekly levels sit between 2.77% and 3.56% above the current price.
The ETFs that moved the session: the US tech ETF, the Fidelity tech ETF, the gold ETF and the European autos, telecoms and banks ETFs
XLK — the Technology Select Sector SPDR, the US tech ETF — gained 0.82% and, together with industrials, was the only US sector in the green. FTEC — Fidelity MSCI Information Technology, the Fidelity ETF on US technology — rose 0.60% on the day and 0.94% on the week. GLD — SPDR Gold Shares, the most heavily traded gold ETF in the world — added 0.71%, and press reports say gold posted its first positive week in four, a detail worth noting for gold trading.
In Europe EXHG — iShares STOXX Europe 600 Automobiles & Parts, the European autos ETF — was the weakest in the grid at minus 3.19%, followed by EXV2 — iShares STOXX Europe 600 Telecommunications, the European telecoms ETF — at minus 3.15%. EXV1 — iShares STOXX Europe 600 Banks, the European banks ETF — lost 1.94%.
This week's new buy signals: Virgin Galactic, Tesco and Inwit, with Apple and MARA Holdings
The cohort was born at the close of Friday 18 September: 5 new buy signals, against 15 the week before, and 3 tradable, all with an average setup quality and a cautious entry. As it has just been born we publish it in full; from Tuesday we will report only what changes. The other two, at the bottom of the table — Apple stockLong and MARA HoldingsLong — turned to a buy but with a setup quality we would discard. There are no new sell signals in this list: the week's sell reversals concern the European indices and a few sectors.
The usual caveat applies: past data do not guarantee future results.
This week's earnings: Costco on Thursday, Uranium Energy on Friday
Two companies in our universe report between now and next Monday. Right after the window come CarnivalShort on 29 September, MicronLong on the 30th and AccentureLong on 1 October.
Thursday 24 September
Costco Wholesale Short
Friday 25 September
Uranium Energy Short
Technical analysis of SPY and QQQ: SPY keeps its weekly signal by 0.34%, QQQ ends the week at its high
SPY, the ETF on the S&P 500 S&P 500Long, closed Friday down 0.12% and the week down 0.34%; QQQ, the ETF on the Nasdaq 100 Invesco QQQ TrustLong, rose 0.63% on the day and 0.92% on the week. Applying each basket's sector weights to the day's sector moves, both should have closed flat: SPY did a tenth worse, QQQ more than half a point better, thanks to semiconductors.
On the weekly chart SPY is in the twenty-third week of a long trade that is 12.10% in profit, with all three profit-taking windows reached: the week's typical price closed 0.34% above the trade's level after slipping below it midweek, and the daily signal has been a sell since 9 September. QQQ ended the week at its high, with the typical price 2.33% above its level and both time frames on a buy; the trade, opened on 10 August, is still 1.32% under water and has every window ahead, the first 3.83% above the price.
The bigger picture: a week that ended at two speeds
The week of the first US rate hike since 2023 ended with the two sides of the Atlantic moving in opposite directions. On Wall Street technology and crypto held the indices up, and the Nasdaq 100 closed the week at its high; in Europe autos, telecoms and banks dragged all four markets lower, with the Italian spread at 92 points and the French one above 100. The most concrete outcome for our model is the map of weekly signals: all four European baskets are now on a sell, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 remain on a buy. It is a split that next week will have to confirm, starting with the thinnest level of all, London's.
What you find here. If you are trying to understand how to manage risk in trading — stops, break-even stops, trailing, and the declaration of stops that have been taken out — or how to read chart patterns (double bottoms, Bollinger bands, the Ichimoku cloud, price action trading), this is the desk's trading journal: published every morning before the US premarket, with our model's position on every instrument mentioned.
The full analyses behind the cards on this page.
* Our system — The rows of names at the foot of each card carry our model's position, long or short. Position from the latest published weekly analysis. Levels, targets and the trading plan sit in each instrument's own page. The two letters in brackets lead to the instrument page (G) and the full analysis (P).