Technical analysis: Micron stock and the memory names fall up to 9% as long-term yields hit a twenty-year high
The 18 August session was written by the bond market, not by earnings. With the US ten-year around 4.72% and the thirty-year at its highest in almost two decades, Wall Street closed lower for a third straight day and the bill landed on the corner of the market most sensitive to the cost of money: semiconductors, and within them the memory names, down between 7% and 9%.
In the cards below you will find the technical analysis of the names that drove the day — Micron stock, Western Digital, Sandisk, Marvell, Nvidia stock and Home Depot on Wall Street, STM, Prysmian, UniCredit and Nexi on the Milan market — and for each of them our model's position, long or short, with the date the signal fired. The week's fresh buy signals open the page; the comparison between SPY and QQQ, the two US ETFs, closes it, and yesterday the two did exactly the same thing on the same day.
- The week's fresh buy signals
- Technical analysis of semiconductor stocks: memory down up to 9%
- Compute infrastructure and crypto
- Technical analysis of Baidu and Alibaba stock
- Home Depot beats expectations and the market will not pay
- Milan market: STM and Prysmian stock lead the fall
- Technical analysis of Infineon and the European front
- European indices: one of the four never left the station
- The ETFs that moved the session
- This week's earnings
- Technical analysis of SPY and QQQ
The week's fresh buy signals: the eight whose short horizon still agrees
The weekly analysis that closed on Friday opened thirty fresh buy signals. Below are the eight that, after yesterday's session, still have the daily signal aligned with the weekly one — a distinction worth more than usual today, because nearly half the cohort already has the short horizon pointing the other way.
Technical analysis of semiconductor stocks: memory names fall up to 9%
The sell-off had a precise address, and Micron stocks sat at the centre of it. Micron Technology lost 7.02%, Western Digital 7.43%, Sandisk 9.01%, Marvell Technology 7.82% and Intel 6.58%, dragged along by the slump in the SK Hynix ADR. Around them the rest of the sector gave back far less: NVIDIA down 2.34%, Broadcom down 3.17%, Advanced Micro Devices down 4.27%.
That distinction matters for anyone trading the theme. In the same risk-off session the logic makers lost a fraction of what the memory names shed, which says the driver was not broad AI sentiment but the specific storage and memory factor. The underlying worry is the same one that hit Europe: a possible overshoot in capital spending on artificial intelligence.
Compute infrastructure and crypto: the corner most exposed to rates
The sharpest move of the day sat one step beyond the chipmakers. CoreWeave lost 12.10%, Cipher Digital 13.00%, TeraWulf 11.25%, Applied Digital 8.56%, MARA 7.77% and Nebius 7.60%. These are the companies that build and lease computing capacity and those that mine crypto: two different businesses, one shared sensitivity to the cost of money.
Elsewhere in the crypto complex the damage was lighter. Strategy still gave back 5.28% after a fresh 333.7 million dollar equity raise and buybacks on its own tranche, while Coinbase Global slipped 2.87% with Bitcoin broadly unchanged.
Technical analysis of Baidu and Alibaba stock: a print that fails the test
The single widest move of the day across the names we follow came from Baidu, down 12.73% after a soft quarter: revenue fell 4% year on year to 31.3 billion yuan, the fifth consecutive quarter of contraction. The market read it as a failed test of the pivot towards artificial intelligence.
The signal spread to the whole Chinese ADR complex at an awkward moment, because Alibaba reports on Thursday 20 August. The stock still rose 2.76% yesterday, and its daily buy signal fired in that very session.
Home Depot stock beats expectations and the market refuses to pay for it
Against the prevailing mood, Home Depot delivered a better quarter than expected: revenue of 47.9 billion dollars, up 5.7% year on year and above the 47.24 billion consensus, comparable sales up 1.7% — the best reading since late 2022 — net income of 4.8 billion, adjusted earnings per share of 4.92 dollars and full-year 2026 guidance confirmed. The stock closed essentially flat, a tenth of a point lower.
It is a more reassuring read on the American consumer than the bond market would suggest, and it lands on the eve of Walmart, which reports on Thursday alongside Alibaba.
Technical analysis on the Milan market: STM stock down 7.6%, Prysmian stock down 4.9%
The FTSE MIB shed 1.04% and the bottom of the table is already familiar: STMicroelectronics down 7.57%, the worst on the index, and Prysmian down 4.88%, both caught by fears of an overshoot in AI capital spending. It is the American move, arriving in Milan undiluted.
Financials suffered too, penalised by the climb in sovereign yields: FinecoBank down 3.13%, BPER Banca down 1.64%, UniCredit down 1.51% and Banco BPM down 0.98%. Bucking the trend, Nexi gained 1.97% on improving sentiment towards digital payments after Stripe's merger activity. Among industrials Avio lost 3.25% and Fincantieri 1.02%.
Technical analysis of Infineon: the worst of the DAX in the same chip wave
In Frankfurt the index lost 0.86% with Infineon Technologies the worst performer at minus 7.63%, again on the semiconductor thread, and Siemens Energy down 5.23%. Siemens also gave back 2.30%. In London, during a week thick with results from the index heavyweights, GSK rose 1.97% against the tide.
European indices: the same signal for twenty weeks, and one of the four never left the station
All four European baskets have carried a buy signal since the spring, yet what they produced could hardly be more different. FTSE MIB leads with more than 14% from the signal that fired in the week of 7 April and sits 1.91% below its own record; DAX shows 5.43% from 13 April and stands 1.64% below its high; CAC 40 5.15% from 7 April, 2.89% below. FTSE 100, the London basket, has carried the same signal from the same day and has produced 1.04%.
Yesterday the geography flipped: Milan lost 1.04%, Frankfurt 0.86% and Paris 0.84%, while London was the only one of the four to close higher, up 0.13%.
The ETFs that moved the session: from the semiconductor ETF to the gold ETF
Yesterday reads more clearly through the instruments than through single stocks. semiconductor ETF, the semiconductor ETF, lost 4.96% and is the one line that summarises the rest of this page. At the other end US energy ETF, the US energy ETF, gained 1.76% and was one of only two of the eleven American sectors to close higher, alongside Health Care US, the US health care ETF, up 1.60%. Technology US, the US technology ETF, finished last at minus 2.47%.
Two baskets outside equities complete the picture. gold ETF, the gold ETF, gave back 1.71%, penalised by the double climb in yields and the dollar; SPY, the S&P 500 ETF (S&P 500), lost 0.68%, far less than the sector that dragged it, because it carries 32.91% in technology against 50.54% for the Nasdaq basket.
This week's earnings: Alibaba and Walmart on Thursday, Nvidia next Wednesday
Nine names from our universe report within seven days, and for each of them you will find our model's position.
Thursday 20 August
Alibaba Long
Walmart Short
Tuesday 25 August
Intuit Long
Zoom Communications Long
Wednesday 26 August
NVIDIA Long
Salesforce Long
CrowdStrike Short
HP Long
Li Auto Long
Technical analysis of SPY and QQQ: two different baskets, the same move on the same day
SPY, the S&P 500 ETF (S&P 500), lost 0.68% and QQQ, the Nasdaq 100 ETF (Invesco QQQ Trust), 1.69%: two and a half times as much. The weights explain the gap — the former carries 12.59% in financials and 4.02% in energy, the two sectors that rose yesterday, while the latter holds 0.24% and 0.66% respectively, which is to say no cushion at all.
Their ages differ just as sharply. The S&P 500 basket is in the twentieth week of its signal, close to 13% up from entry with all three profit-taking windows already banked; the Nasdaq basket is in its second, down 1.85%, with every window still ahead.
When long-term yields take charge, the damage is not broad: it is addressed
The underlying picture has not broken. Stress indicators remain lower across the whole four-week window — equity volatility is down 15%, the BTP-Bund spread 3%, tail risk 2% — and yesterday they rose only slightly and out of step with one another, which is the opposite of a rush for protection. Bond volatility actually fell on a day driven by yields: the market watched rates climb without fearing they will climb much further.
What changed sits one level down. Between the best and worst American sector of the day there are more than four percentage points, and the identical spread opened in Europe: when two continents punish and reward the same sectors on the same day, the cause is shared. We know what it is, and it is the cost of long-term money.
One thing to keep an eye on in the coming days concerns market breadth, the measure of how many shares are rising alongside the index: it has lost 6.7% in two sessions after three straight weeks of gains. Over the longer window it remains comfortably higher, so the structure holds, but it was the sturdiest piece of the picture and it is now the piece in motion. A rally with breadth expanding stands on many legs; when breadth retreats, the legs get counted. It is the kind of measure that in our ai trading work outweighs any single quarterly print, and it shapes the trading strategy far more than one session does.
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.