Twenty-seven new buy signals and five sells: the week that closed on Friday pushed almost everything one way. Below are twelve of them, chosen as the most representative, and the horizon throughout is weekly swing trading. Three families hold them together: gold and its miners, defence and aerospace, and large-cap technology.

The weekend produced no progress in the talks between Washington and Tehran over reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway that carried roughly a fifth of the world's crude and has been paralysed since late February. Iran's foreign ministry spokesman repeated that, while the US naval blockade continues, the conditions for reopening do not exist. With transits down to a handful a day against roughly 130 before the conflict, crude rose about 5%.

As a trading strategy the read is simple, and price action trading gives it away before the headlines do. The response on the board was immediate and orderly. Marathon PetroleumLong gained 7.42%, ValeroLong 5.58%, SchlumbergerLong 5.30%, OccidentalLong 4.90%, ConocoPhillipsLong 4.61%, ChevronLong 4.48% and ExxonMobilLong 4.41% — Chevron stocks and ExxonMobil stocks led the board; the five western supermajors come off a second quarter worth roughly $48bn in aggregate profit. Eight names in the sector broke out of their typical range together, and when eight names from one sector do that on the same day the anomaly is not the stock's: it is the sector's, and the explanation sits outside the charts.

The technical analysis that matters, though, is about money flow. On ExxonMobilLong and on the Vanguard energy ETFLong the weekly flow is heading out while price runs: distribution rather than accumulation. On ChevronLong and OccidentalLong the flow holds. That is the difference between a rally somebody is using to sell and a rally somebody is still buying into, and on a day when the whole sector adds 4% it is the only way to tell the names apart. It is also why an ai trading system earns its keep by scanning the whole universe before picking any direction.

One caveat on the entry price: Marathon PetroleumLong travelled six times its own typical swing in a single day. The theme can be right and the moment wrong, and that is precisely where risk management matters more than direction.

NVIDIALong shed 2.86% after reports that Beijing would let its AI companies buy limited volumes of H200 chips, approving less than half of what was requested. It is a regulatory constraint, the kind of news a good quarter does not fix, and the retreat carried a symbolic effect too: AppleLong took back the crown as the world's most valuable company, and did so while losing 1.62% on the day after a Jefferies downgrade citing cancelled product plans and rising memory costs. A change of guard by subtraction.

The rest of the sector followed: ARM HoldingsShort down 5.21% and MarvellShort down 4.65%. Underneath sits the question that unsettles the whole group — what the spending on AI infrastructure actually returns — and investors stay wary. Software, by contrast, had a constructive day: CrowdStrikeShort up 5.01%, PalantirLong up 3.90% and DatadogLong up 11.48%, helped by sector strength and by falling yields, which lighten the valuations of names whose worth sits entirely in the future.

The largest move across our whole universe was elsewhere, though: FastlyLong up 20.86%, on double the volume of preceding sessions and with a very wide daily range. Volume confirms price, so the move is real, but no company news explains it.

Archer AviationShort flew 11.99% after announcing the purchase of three BoeingLong subsidiaries, among them Wisk Aero, which works on an autonomous electric vertical take-off aircraft, and SkyGrid, which builds air traffic management systems for air taxis. In exchange Boeing receives roughly 19.75% of Archer's class A shares, plus options to buy more over the next four years.

It is a deal that redraws the balance of power in advanced air mobility and consolidates Archer as the sector's consolidator, with an aerospace giant as its industrial shareholder. Boeing itself shaved 0.70% on the session: it hands over a business in exchange for a stake, and the market judged that neutral.

Vertex PharmaceuticalsLong gained 6.61% after beating second-quarter estimates, with several analysts having already raised their targets in the preceding days. It is the healthcare name that pulled its own sector, and it is also one of our more mature buy signals, running since mid-June.

The more interesting case, though, is Rocket LabShort, which reported after the bell with revenue of $234.1m, up 62% year on year, earnings per share in line and third-quarter guidance above consensus — and the stock reacted badly, losing 3.37% on the session. A company growing 62% whose shares fall is telling you the price already held that growth.

Rounding out the picture, RegeneronLong added 3.02%, Eli LillyLong 3.90% and Intuitive SurgicalShort 3.85% in healthcare; against the trend, Coherent fell 11.6% on the eve of its own results. In crypto, CoinbaseShort shed 3.20% in a mixed day for the sector.

On the Milan market the American theme arrived softened, and the list of names that moved with their sector is short and honest: three against Wall Street's twelve. Eni stock added 1.27% in the wake of European oil and gas, up 1.29%; Amplifon stock 1.30% on healthcare; Telecom ItaliaShort lost 1.24% as European telecoms fell 2.14%, the sharpest divergence in the continental block.

The comparison with Wall Street shows how much less exposed Milan is to the day's theme. EniLong moved 1.27% while ChevronLong and ExxonMobilLong did more than 4%: the same theme at a quarter of the price, and that difference matters to anyone looking for an entry rather than a chase.

Across the rest of the board the technical picture is the one of recent weeks. Banco BPM stock and Unipol stocks remain among the most mature positions in our Italian basket, both with weekly relative strength above 73 and therefore little room ahead. Intesa Sanpaolo stock and UniCredit stock have held their buy signal since April. On the other side sit STMicroelectronics stock and Stellantis stocks, both on a sell.

In São Paulo the picture was one of profit-taking despite the numbers. PetrobrasLong lost around 3% even after publishing one of its most solid quarters in some time, beating expectations: much of the good performance was already in the price and doubts remained over how sustainable it is. ValeShort shaved 0.6% despite higher iron ore, while ItausaLong gave up 0.7% ahead of its own results after the close.

The week ahead is dense with results on the Brazilian board, with banks, utilities and builders reporting between 12 and 14 August. That is why Brazil matters more this week than its weight would suggest.

Five baskets tell the session better than the single names. The US energy ETFLong gained 4.66% and is the outright protagonist: the sector was the worst of the week that closed on Friday and on Monday became the best of the day. Alongside it the Vanguard energy ETFLong added 4.74%, with the difference that on the latter the weekly money flow is heading out while price rises.

On the other side the US technology ETFShort lost 0.88% after a week that closed at plus 7.20%: this is the transfer that penalised the Nasdaq and not the S&P 500. Across the semiconductor and technology ETFs the picture remains Beijing's cap, and it is worth recalling that our published stop on the US technology basket was passed on 3 August with a minus 7.20%.

Anyone looking at the gold ETF finds the calmest corner of the day instead: SPDR Gold SharesLong added 1.02% while the miners ran harder — NewmontLong up 3.79% — and that is the practical difference between owning the metal and owning those who dig it out. The US healthcare ETFLong closes the picture at plus 1.67%, the only rotating sector doing the same thing on both time horizons.

Nine names in our basket report by Friday. Next to each you'll find our model's position as of the last completed week.

Tuesday 11 · Home DepotLong

Wednesday 12 · E.ONLong · Banco do BrasilLong · CiscoShort

Thursday 13 · Applied MaterialsShort · JD.comLong · Intuitive MachinesShort

Friday 14 · CosanLong · PDG RealtyLong

The two names where results weigh most are CosanLong and PDG RealtyLong, both on Friday and both Brazilian: on the first we are long with both published stops already passed, on the second the weekly signal was born last week and the daily has already turned. Home DepotLong reports next Tuesday and sits on our list at minimum size precisely because of that.

The four European baskets we follow are all on a buy and have been since April: DAXLong from the 13th, CAC 40Long and FTSE MIBLong from the 7th, FTSE 100Long from the 7th. Four months on the same side is a rare condition, and the first thing to say is that agreeing signals do not mean agreeing contents.

On Monday the move was minimal and split: Frankfurt up 0.02% and Paris up 0.03% on the positive side, Milan down 0.20% and London down 0.47% on the other. The divergence that matters is London's, which is also the basket with the lowest return from its own signal of the four, while Milan remains the highest.

The reason for the gap sits in composition, as always. The Italian basket is full of banks, the dominant theme of the European summer; the British one leans heavily on energy and commodities, which pulled on Monday but were among the weakest sectors over the week that closed on Friday.

SPYLong, the S&P 500 ETF, has been on a buy since 6 April, so into its eighteenth week, with 13.77% earned from the signal, and on Monday closed 0.49% below its all-time high. The technical news is that all three of the system's take-profit windows have now been reached — the first at week six, the second at week eleven, the third at week seventeen: from here the plan has no targets ahead, only a rising stop, the weekly Point of Inversion, 2.73% below current levels.

QQQShort, the Nasdaq 100 ETF, tells the opposite story and is flipping right now. The signal in force was a sell from 20 July, and since then the basket has risen 5.35% above the level where that signal fired: a sell that produced nothing, and we say it with the number in front. This week the Point of Inversion printed a buy on the candle still forming, dropping the reference level by nearly 33 points. Confirmation comes only with Friday's close.

The difference between the two sits almost entirely in the weights. The S&P 500 basket carries 32.91% in technology and 12.59% in financials; the Nasdaq 100 basket carries 50.54% and 0.24%. On the day money left chips for energy, the first had four points of energy and twelve of banks as a cushion, the second had zero point six and zero point two. The result reads in one number: minus 0.49% from the record against minus 3.71%.