The weekly analysis closed on Friday opened thirty new buy signals. Four sessions later seven still have the daily signal agreeing with the weekly one: on Tuesday there were twenty-nine, yesterday thirteen. These are them.

The Italian story of the day came from the board of Monte dei Paschi, which approved two public exchange offers — voluntary, simultaneous and entirely in shares — for all the ordinary shares of Banco BPM and Banca Generali, for a combined consideration of roughly 34 billion euros. The resulting group would be worth around 70 billion. And it is a defensive move: it exists to build an industrial alternative to the offer Intesa Sanpaolo has tabled for Monte dei Paschi itself.

The interesting part is not the announcement, it is the reaction. Prices did not move. Monte dei Paschi stock lost 0.34%, Generali stock 0.07%, Mediobanca stock 0.42%, while Banco BPM stock gained 0.66% and Intesa Sanpaolo stock 0.41%. Five protagonists of a multi-billion deal, all within seven tenths of a point: on a day like this MPS stocks and Banco BPM stocks would normally be the most traded on the market. On an all-share offer aimed at two targets at once, until exchange ratios and acceptances are visible there is almost nothing to price: the market took note and waited.

Across the rest of the Milan market the index closed essentially flat while Paris and Frankfurt lost more than half a point, because it is the one most tilted towards energy and defence. Eni stock gained 2.59%, the best of the session, while Stellantis stock lost 3.71%. Behind them, Italgas up 1.92%, Snam up 1.25%, UniCredit up 0.55%, Ferrari up 0.46%, Enel up 0.25%, against Leonardo down 1.95% — with Leonardo stock still ahead 4.01% from its late-July signal.

The case of the day is Walmart. The group beat on earnings per share — 0.81 dollars against 0.74 expected — and on revenue, and the stock lost 9.15%. There are two reasons: US like-for-like sales grew 2.6% against 3.7% expected, and above all the market looked inside the margin and found that much of the operating improvement came from tariff rebates, a benefit that does not repeat.

The move is worth more than three times the stock's typical swing, which for a defensive giant is a lot: when Walmart moves like this, the move is never only its own. And indeed the same session took down every cruise line and the carmakers — Carnival down 4.95%, Royal Caribbean down 4.31%, Ford Motor down 3.52% — with US consumer discretionary off 1.61%.

On the other side of the day risk came back into the crypto complex all at once. Bitcoin jumped more than 11% towards 72,000 dollars and pulled every linked name with it: MARA up 15.54%, Strategy up 7.81%, Coinbase Global up 7.58%, Circle Internet up 6.45%.

There is an operational rule behind this move and it is worth stating: when the underlying moves like this, crypto-linked stocks behave as a single block, and the chart to read is bitcoin's, not the individual share's.

On CrowdStrike what moved the price was not the numbers but the people. The global chief technology officer is leaving after thirteen years to launch a venture capital fund of roughly 170 million dollars dedicated to cybersecurity startups for the AI era. The company announced no successor and the stock gave up 5.60%.

The almost ironic detail is that on the very same morning CrowdStrike was named overall leader in an industry study on cloud workload protection platforms. The reaction shows how much the market treats technical continuity as a critical asset for security names.

Alibaba reported earnings down more than 75%, because the company pushed quarterly capital spending to almost 10 billion dollars to defend its position in the AI race. Adjusted earnings per share landed roughly 19% below the analyst consensus.

And yet the stock closed at plus 1.26%, and the paradox sits right there: the good part was very good, with AI-related cloud growing 45% and a twelfth consecutive quarter of triple-digit growth on those revenues. The bill for that growth compresses near-term profit, but the market looked past it.

Moderna gave back 23.55% twenty-four hours after almost tripling on phase 3 data for its melanoma vaccine. The move is worth almost three times the stock's typical swing, and the session took back pieces of the whole sector: Intuitive Surgical down 5.84%, Novavax down 4.21%, with US health care off 1.87%.

A distinction is needed here, or it reads wrong: that decline comes after a month at plus 7.58%, and it is concentrated almost entirely in two names that had news of their own. This is not the sector breaking, it is the sector handing something back.

If the day had a winner it is energy, the only major US sector to close green. Crude gained 6.7% in a week on tensions around the Strait of Hormuz, and the stocks followed: BP up 3.22%, Occidental Petroleum up 2.38%, Exxon Mobil up 0.84%, Shell up 0.57%, with the European oil and gas basket at plus 1.01%.

Alongside energy sits gold, rising for three weeks and up 8% on the month, with the dollar losing 1% in yesterday's session alone, well beyond its normal range. These are two faces of the same read on real rates, and together they explain why Barrick Mining gains 2.53% and Newmont 2.05%.

All four European baskets have had a buy signal live since April, and from there on they look very different. The FTSE MIB is ahead 13.42% from the twentieth week, the DAX 4.84% from the nineteenth, the CAC 40 4.50% from the twentieth, the FTSE 100 1.27% from the twentieth. In yesterday's session Milan and London stopped on the line, Paris lost 0.61% and Frankfurt 0.57%.

The one that diverges is Paris, and that is the point of this panel. The CAC 40 sits 0.05% above its own weekly Inversion Point: effectively on the line. The other three carry a cushion between 1.11% and 1.27%. On records there is a second gap: the FTSE 100 is 8.38% below its own high while the other three sit between 2.17% and 3.41%.

Yesterday's rotation reads better on the sector baskets than on individual stocks. US energy ETF — US energy — is the only one to close higher, up 0.27%, and the only one ahead on the month by a real margin, almost 9%. At the far end Health Care US, health care, lost 1.87% and Consumer Discretionary US, consumer discretionary, 1.61%. In between US financials sector, financials, at minus 0.92% and Technology US, technology, at minus 0.29% on the session but down 3.64% on the week: the worst sector of the seven days on both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe Europe oil and gas, the sector basket, did best at plus 1.01%.

Outside the sector baskets, the session favoured gold ETFs, carried by a metal up 8% on the month, while the semiconductor ETF followed technology lower. On the two broad baskets — the SPY ETF on the S&P 500 and the QQQ ETF on the Nasdaq 100 — the read sits in the closing panel.

The week ahead is concentrated and heavy. 26 August is the real pivot: NVIDIA reports alongside Salesforce, CrowdStrike, HP and Li Auto on the same day. After a session in which the market punished the quality of earnings more than their level, Nvidia's numbers become the decisive test of whether the AI theme can still justify the multiples with long yields backing up.

Tuesday 25 August

Intuit Long

Zoom Communications Long

Wednesday 26 August

Salesforce Long

CrowdStrike Short

HP Long

Li Auto Long

NVIDIA Long

Thursday 27 August

Autodesk Long

Marvell Technology Short

S&P 500, the ETF on the S&P 500, lost 0.84%; Invesco QQQ Trust, the ETF on the Nasdaq 100, 0.72%. On paper they look alike: both have the daily Inversion Point now above the price, both slipped below the floor of their own congestion zone. Beyond that they look nothing alike.

SPY is in the twentieth week of a buy trade ahead 12.24%, with all three profit-taking windows already banked and a stop that protects a matured gain. QQQ is in the second week of a buy trade opened on 10 August and already down 2.75%, with a stop that protects nothing: it caps a loss. From their records SPY sits 2.15% below, QQQ 5.04%, more than double. And the weekly MACD, the gauge of momentum, is positive on the first and negative on the second.