7,800 Falls, And The AI Complex Sends Its Regrets

Stock Market Edge

Everybody Wanted The Memory, Nobody Wanted The Minutes The record was funded by chips that ship and paid for by companies that report.

Premarket snapshot:
S&P futures sit at 7,824.25, up 0.02%, having done almost nothing overnight. The cash index closed 7,798.99 after touching 7,816.70 and handing 17.71 points back into the bell, which is the tape’s polite way of admitting it noticed the altitude. Dow futures are down 0.14%.

Sector rotation:
SanDisk rose 13.7% on an investor-day slide deck. Micron added 4.2%, SK Hynix ADRs 7.31%. Netflix gained more than 5% because a famous man bought some. Workday jumped on a take-private rumour. Not one item on that list involved a quarterly filing.

Earnings or guidance:
Cisco delivered $17.3bn, up 18%, past consensus, and was marked down 8.4% on margin commentary. Cerebras grew 74% and raised guidance, then lost 11% for missing a revenue estimate by $14m. Applied Materials guided $680m above the Street and fell about 4%. Beating is no longer the entry fee.

Cross-asset nuance:
Brent settled $87.07, down 2.2%, on OPEC’s fourth consecutive demand downgrade. The 30-year eased to 5.214%, the 2s10s spread printed 0.48, and the curve steepened again into a soft inflation number. Gold futures $4,400.20, down 0.46%.

📊 There’s a level on SPX I’m watching closely this morning. My full analysis briefing has it – plus what happens if we hold it, and what happens if we don’t. [Read it here →]

Crypto Market Edge

Bitcoin Missed The Party And Left Before The Speeches A record in equities, a lower low in crypto, and a regulator voting this morning.

Price snapshot:
Bitcoin trades $62,693.57, down 1.15%, after closing Wednesday at $63,402 and spending Thursday shuffling between roughly $63,400 and $63,900. Ether sits near $1,897. Daily, weekly, monthly and annual trends have all turned negative in the same week equities cleared 7,800 for the first time.

Flows and positioning:
US spot bitcoin funds shed $61.16m on 12 August, three quarters of it out of Fidelity’s FBTC. Ether funds took in $7.38m, every dollar into BlackRock’s ETHA. Ten days ago the category logged $853.5m of inflows in a week. Fear and Greed reads 30.

Leadership and rotation:
Strategy sold 1,690 coins between 3 and 9 August at an average $64,262 and spent the $108.6m buying back preferred stock. The man who would never sell has now funded the dividend four separate times. Running 2026 total, 6,948 coins.

Catalysts and roadmap:
The SEC votes today on when a token sale becomes an investment contract, the Senate having left the CLARITY Act nine votes short and gone on holiday. Harmony’s bridge minted 4 billion tokens it did not have. Multiple audits missed it, which is a novel definition of assurance.

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TL;DR – The Bottom Line

• Wholesale prices printed 0.0% against a 0.2% forecast. The S&P 500 closed at a record 7,798.99, its first finish ever above 7,800, and 27th of the year.
• The 2-year gave up five basis points, September hike odds fell to roughly 34% from 55%, and small caps hit a record. The easing was real.
• Cisco booked record revenue and lost 8.4%. Cerebras raised guidance and lost 11%. Applied Materials beat guidance by $680m and fell after hours.
• Money went to memory chips, a Netflix stake and a take-private rumour. It avoided every company that produced audited numbers on the day.
• Bitcoin trades $62,693.57, down 1.15% into an equity record. Retail sales at 08:30 ET, Michigan sentiment at 10:00, and the record defends itself today.

📌 Fun Fact

The Oldest Number In The Room The index that moved every market on Thursday started life under Theodore Roosevelt.

The Producer Price Index dates to 1902, the oldest continuous statistical series the BLS publishes. It is older than the Federal Reserve, the income tax and the New York subway, and on Thursday it still outranked four sets of company accounts.