The Tech Rout That Wasn't: 48 Advancers, 52 Decliners
Monday's selloff was a rotation, not a de-risking. Micron fell 5.83% with its 2026 supply already sold out, and Nvidia reports Wednesday, not today.
Monday was written up as a tech rout, but the index split 48 advancing to 52 declining — money moved sideways within the market rather than out of it. Futures are pointing higher into the open, with Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.4%.
A rotation, not a de-risking
The large-cap tape split 48 advancing to 52 declining — close to even on a session the press framed as a chip-led rout. What fell was concentrated and expensive: Micron −5.83%, MongoDB −6.53%, Cloudflare −4.36%, Datadog −4.18%, Tesla −3.83%, AMD −3.49%, Intel −3.12%, Snowflake −3.00%. What rose was the other side of the same trade: Altria +3.6%, Mastercard +3.31%, Visa +3.06%, Walmart +2.69%, Disney +2.63%, Costco +2.5%, UnitedHealth +2.22%, Duke +1.77%, Berkshire B +1.71%. Meta, up 1.66%, was the only megacap tech name among the gainers — note also that high-multiple software fell as hard as semiconductors, so this was about valuation, not chips.
Micron: the number that doesn’t fit the story
Micron closed down 5.83% at $910.43 on 29.8 million shares, the second-worst large-cap decline of the day. The awkward part: the company has told investors it has completed price and volume agreements for its entire calendar 2026 high-bandwidth memory supply, HBM4 included — the order book for the year is closed. A near-term demand scare does not fit a company whose 2026 volumes and prices are already contracted, which points the selling at something else: litigation risk, 2027 pricing, or simply positioning in a stock that Benzinga notes sits 64.1% above its 200-day moving average of $571.10. Korea’s Kospi fell 3.5% to 6,664.36 on Monday, the standout loss in Asia and consistent with a memory-led move.
Nvidia is Wednesday, not today
Nvidia reports after the close on Wednesday, August 26 — anything framing today as Nvidia day is wrong. Last quarter it delivered $81.62 billion in revenue, up 85.2% year on year, with guidance above expectations, and analysts have generally reconfirmed estimates over the past 30 days. Overnight the pressure eased: Nasdaq 100 futures rose 0.4% after the underlying index fell almost 1% Monday, MSCI’s Asia Pacific benchmark erased a 0.7% loss to close up 0.3%, and India opened marginally lower with the Sensex down 73.62 points at 77,295.49.
Crypto brokers went the wrong way
Coinbase fell 3.76% and Robinhood 4.17% on a day bitcoin rose — a Monday-afternoon print had BTC/USD at 78,716.63, up 1.275%, and Bloomberg has it advancing again overnight. The beta names moving opposite the underlying is a real dislocation, not rounding, and no explanation has emerged. Elsewhere in the small caps, Alvotech gained 19.0% to $5.26, a fifth straight advance built on first-half results and an August licensing deal with Lotus Pharmaceutical covering AVT34 and AVT87 in the US and eight Asian markets, worth about $150 million in upfront and milestone payments; the company guides to 2026 revenue of $650–700 million against a first-half net loss of $65.79 million. Fluence rose 12.4% to $10.84 despite a downgrade to Hold at GLJ Research on August 20 and a Citi target cut on August 16 — no catalyst has surfaced.
What to watch today
- Housing starts, 8:30am ET (prior 1,239K)
- Nvidia results, Wednesday August 26 after the close
- GDP and the July PCE inflation reading, Wednesday 8:30am ET
- Jackson Hole symposium, August 27–29, on “Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy”
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.