Semis Lead, Software Sold: Rotation Inside Tech, Not Risk-Off

The most useful thing in Monday’s tape is what it wasn’t: a tech selloff. Semiconductors sat at the top of the large-cap gainer list while enterprise software sat at the bottom, and the trigger for the software side came from a private company’s revenue figure.

The split inside tech is the story

Applied Materials led large caps at +5.55% to $535.31, with Micron +4.13% to $1,011.75 and Texas Instruments +1.19%. At the other end: ServiceNow −5.08%, Affirm −4.89%, MongoDB −4.70%, Adobe −3.78%, Shopify −3.67%, with Microsoft −3.04% and Salesforce −2.67%. Per Bloomberg, reported via Yahoo Finance, the software complex sold off Monday afternoon after Anthropic’s preliminary second-quarter revenue was said to top $11.5 billion — a read-through from a third party’s numbers, not company news. Any framing of Monday as “tech sold off” gets the tape backwards; capital rotated within tech rather than out of it.

Breadth, the long bond and a calm fear gauge

Large-cap breadth was 25 advancing to 75 declining out of 100. Against that, CNBC reported Wall Street’s fear gauge hitting a 2026 low, while the WSJ flagged a fresh high in the 30-year Treasury yield — three things that do not normally sit together, and the inconsistency is unresolved. The long-end move is global rather than American: the Nikkei 225 fell 0.4% to below 69,000 on Tuesday, giving back part of Monday’s 422-point, 0.61% gain to 69,136, with Trading Economics citing surging global bond yields and a climbing Japanese 10-year. That cross-asset thread is the cleanest one available today.

Oil and gold are the entire green side

Chevron +1.35% to $202.70, the energy ETF XLE +1.08%, and gold via GLD +1.00% to $405.49. Per CNBC, Brent was up 55 cents at $89.07 and WTI up 17 cents at $82.57, both contracts having gained more than 5% the prior week after attacks on tankers. Trading Economics notes the June memorandum of understanding, which gave the US and Iran 60 days to negotiate, has expired, with Strait of Hormuz passage the sticking point: Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman has said the US must lift its blockade first, while Washington is reported as unwilling to accept anything short of guaranteed unrestricted passage. No agreement has been confirmed.

Three single names worth the detail

Applied Materials is a reversal, not an earnings pop: record fiscal Q3 revenue of $9.11B, up 25% from $7.30B, beating the $8.99B consensus, with adjusted net income of $2.79B or $3.50 a share — and the stock still fell 5% on Friday before Monday’s gain. Reddit was the worst large cap at −7.63% to $164.50, down 34% in 2026, after a revenue and EPS beat with above-consensus guidance was overshadowed by the investor letter calling Google search referral traffic “choppy.” Nike fell 4.03% to $39.09 on 58.2 million shares, the heaviest volume in the large-cap list, holding below $40 after J.P. Morgan’s August 4 downgrade to underweight with shares then at $41.25; coverage disagrees on how far back that price level reaches.

Home Depot opens the retail week

Home Depot hosts its fiscal Q2 call at 9:00 a.m. ET, per company IR, against a prior quarter of $41.77B in sales and $3.43 in EPS. Target and Lowe’s follow Wednesday, with Walmart also due this week — Reuters framed Monday’s slip as indexes waiting on retail results, and Caterpillar’s +2.93% to $881.65 on light 1.66 million shares was the odd one out among industrials. Retail Sales lands Thursday at 8:30 a.m. ET.

What to watch today

Housing Starts, 8:30 a.m. ET (prior 1,427K)
Home Depot fiscal Q2 conference call, 9:00 a.m. ET
Industrial Production, 9:15 a.m. ET (prior index 102.6395)
Target and Lowe’s report Wednesday, August 19
Retail Sales, Thursday, August 20, 8:30 a.m. ET
Kansas City Fed’s Jackson Hole symposium, August 27–29, on financial innovation and payments

Not financial advice. iTrading Buddy summarizes publicly available market data and news; every figure above is sourced from the reporting available before the US open on the date shown. Verify anything you act on.