The weekly analysis that closed on Friday opened eighteen new buy signals and nine sell signals. We discarded five on insufficient setup quality, leaving thirteen tradable names. On Tuesday eight of the thirteen sat above their entry level; yesterday six did. The cohort gave ground back without changing its character.

The regular session said nothing, for a precise reason: it was waiting. NVIDIA closed down 1.59%, Salesforce was flat, Broadcom down 0.32%, Super Micro Computer down 2.78%. Then, with the market closed, the numbers landed: record revenue of $96.2 billion (up 106% year on year), a data-centre line of $89 billion (up 117%) driven by the Blackwell Ultra ramp, and current-quarter guidance of $108 billion that excludes any contribution from China. Salesforce lifted full-year targets to $46.25 billion of revenue at the midpoint; CrowdStrike closed the quarter at $1.47 billion, up 26%, and raised its outlook.

⚠️ One clarification worth more than the news itself: those reactions came after the close, so they are not in the session data on this page. Every percentage you read here on software names is the regular 26 August session, not the repricing the market is doing right now. That repricing already has a number: Nvidia is up 7.82% in pre-market. It is a pre-market quote and it will move until the bell, but it gives the measure of what last night's news is worth.

Inside the session, though, some had already chosen. Arista Networks gained 5.92% and led American technology, Western Digital 4.02%, ARM 3.93%, HP 3.39% and Oracle 2.84%; Microsoft added 0.95% and Micron Technology 0.58%. The US technology ETF closed up 0.61% and the semiconductor ETF up 0.26%: the sector barely moved while its parts moved a great deal.

The US health care sector lost 1.00% and the European one 1.15%: they were the two worst of the twenty we track, and on a flat day that alone makes the story. But the sector number hides what actually happened underneath. Moderna stock fell 5.77%, Hims & Hers Health 6.05%, Eli Lilly 3.59% and Novo Nordisk 3.02%. When the parts move six times the whole, it is not the sector moving: it is the individual stories.

Moderna stocks are worth a line of context, because without it the number reads wrong: the stock had gained 14.36% the session before, inside a run that has been going since mid-August. Yesterday's 5.77% is a give-back, not a reversal. In London AstraZeneca shed 1.94% ahead of a heavy week of results for the FTSE heavyweights.

Milan closed marginally higher but worked hard beneath the surface, and the theme is the one that has held the floor for days: banking consolidation. UniCredit stock rose 2.16%, Azimut 1.87%, Generali 0.96%, Intesa Sanpaolo and Banco BPM 0.31% each, while Monte dei Paschi gave up 0.62%. Outside the sector, Buzzi gained 3.18%, Fincantieri stock 2.22%, A2A 2.04% on volume close to twice its own average and Telecom Italia 1.12%.

On the other side of the board, oil weighed on Eni, down 1.03%, and the day was negative for Stellantis, down 0.57%, Ferrari, down 1.56%, and INWIT, down 1.68%. Leonardo shed 0.53%.

In Europe the direction of the indices mattered less than the calls on individual names. SAP lost 2.93% after a UBS downgrade, without managing to hold back the German index, which closed up 0.10%; adidas shed 1.25%, Volkswagen AG Pref 1.20% and Siemens Energy 1.09%. Against the trend, Rheinmetall rose 1.84%, Siemens 0.89% and above all Deutsche Bank 4.31% — the only genuinely outsized move of the European day, close to twice its typical swing.

The second theme is oil, down for a third straight session on the prospect of the Strait of Hormuz reopening following the Iran-Oman talks. Crude has given up 4.5% on the week and dragged the energy majors with it: BP down 0.84% and Shell down 0.46%. In London Rolls-Royce added 0.85% and Glencore eased 0.55% after a strong week. In Paris Kering recovered 2.25% and Safran 1.92%.

Across more than 430 instruments we follow, thirteen have their weekly signal turned to sell on the bar forming this week: Broadcom, Boeing, BNP Paribas, the French index, Datadog, VINCI, Eaton, First Solar, GE Vernova, Thales, Kering, Mercedes-Benz and Orange. Eight of those thirteen also carry a daily close beyond a stop we had published: two measures built on different sources pointing at the same names.

The part worth attention, though, is another one. Twenty-four hours ago there were thirteen then too: the count did not change, the composition did. Three dropped out — Lockheed Martin, RTX and GE Aerospace — because the price climbed back above its own inversion level and the sell signal withdrew; and three came in: Thales, Mercedes-Benz and Orange.

The four European baskets we follow all closed within a quarter of a point: Milan up 0.24%, Paris up 0.21%, Frankfurt up 0.10%, London unchanged. But beneath that uniformity one of the four is doing something different from the rest.

On Frankfurt, Milan and London our buy signal is live and the price sits above its weekly Inversion Point: the German basket by 2.27%, the Italian one by 1.23%, the British one by 2.24%. The German basket is also closest to its own record, which needs a 0.92% rise; the Italian one 2.18%; the British one 7.69%, by far the furthest away. On Paris, by contrast, the weekly Inversion Point sits 2.46% above the price and the sell signal has already printed on the bar still forming.

Across twenty sectors on two continents the total range of the day was two points, and the two extremes are the two sectors furthest apart. The US industrials ETF gained 1.09%, first of the list; at the bottom sits health care, the European ETF down 1.15% and the American one down 1.00%. Over the month, though, the two swap places: health care is up 6.21%, industrials down 1.56%, the second worst among the American sectors behind utilities, which are three times worse. Yesterday's bounce is one day inside an ugly month, and our system marks it as a divergence.

The second basket of the session is the European banks ETF, up 0.67%, one of five where day, week and month all say the same thing — and the best in Europe on the day. Among the baskets the public follows most closely, gold ETFs lost 1.58% — yet on the month gold is still up 13.7%, after three straight weekly gains and a fourth, the one now forming, slightly negative. The semiconductor ETF closed up 0.26%, effectively flat, and inside the sector the range was narrow too: from Nvidia down 1.59% to ARM up 3.93%. The eve of the numbers showed up more in the names adjacent to the theme than in the chipmakers themselves. The Nasdaq ETF added 0.09%.

With Nvidia's evening behind us, the calendar stays busy and stays concentrated on the same world: semiconductors and cybersecurity. Here is who reports over the next seven days among the instruments we follow, with our model's position beside each one.

Thursday 27 August

Marvell Technology Long

Autodesk Long

IREN Short

Tuesday 1 September

Palo Alto Networks Long

NIO Short

Credo Technology Long

Wednesday 2 September

Broadcom Long

Snowflake Long

Thursday 3 September

Zscaler Long

SPY, the S&P 500 ETF (S&P 500), closed up 0.02%; QQQ, the Nasdaq 100 ETF (Invesco QQQ Trust), up 0.09%. Two baskets frozen in exactly the same way, something that almost never happens and that describes a market which had stopped taking a view while it waited for a number.

What normally separates them is weight: the Nasdaq basket carries 50.54% in technology against 32.91% for the other, and just 0.24% in financials against 12.59%. Yesterday it had nothing to amplify; from this morning, with the results out, it will have plenty. The difference weights do not explain is one of state. To return to its own record the first needs a rise of 1.73%, the second of 5.24%. The first is in the twenty-first week of a buy signal up 12.75%, with all three profit-taking windows already banked and the stop 11.29% above the entry price. The second is in the third week of a signal still 2.69% below entry, with every window ahead and the stop 4.91% below entry.