Rekt Mkts: Summer grind is on

Feels like to me the “pullback thesis” is invalidated, at least for the next 2 weeks while we have no major datapoints and we’re over the hill on company earnings. I’m still cautious for Sep but just feels like everyone hence the continued squeeze into the second half of August (and possibly been beginning of Sep if payrolls allows it).

SPX slipped 0.2% on Friday while NDQ lost 0.1%. This morning S&P futures are up around 0.1% and Nasdaq futures are up roughly 0.5%, so tech is again showing the better early bid. Friday's data was softer. July retail sales fell 0.6%, the first decline in nine months, while early August consumer sentiment dropped to 51.0 from 55.2. China then added to the softer growth picture over the weekend, with July industrial output slowing to 4.5% and retail sales growing just 0.6%. Rates did not give us the comforting readthru tho: the 5Y rose about 5bps to 4.36%, the 10Y added roughly 6bps to 4.70% and the 30Y gained around 5bps to 5.27% on Friday. WTI is up around 0.6% near $82.90 this morning after sizeable gains last week as the Gulf war dragged on, while gold is up roughly 1.6% around $4,453. Softer consumer data, higher long yields, expensive oil and gold ripping is not a particularly clean setup. The July Fed minutes are the next obvious macro test this week. I want to see whether they calm rate-hike fears, but if long yields keep backing up the readthru is obviously less helpful. Either way…bull markets climb a wall of worry and that seems to be what is happening now.

Friday was bifurcated rather than a broad AI rally. SNDK ripped another 7.4%, NBIS gained 8.9% and MU added 2.3%, while NVDA was flat and Meta fell 0.9%. Kioxia is up another 15% today, so the memory move has kept going even without the broad indices joining in. As you know, I've been trying not to buy strength and I'm still flat stocks, but these technicals have clearly shifted. Repeated follow-through makes the old sell-strength playbook less useful and pretending the momentum is not real would be equally stupid. Memory remains the strongest expression of the AI trade right now. I'm not sure whether to top blast or sit it out, but if SNDK, MU and Kioxia can hold this move then I need to treat it as a proper technical shift rather than reflexively fade it.

Crypto majors are modestly green this morning. BTC is around $63.3k and up 0.5% over 24 hours, ETH is near $1,892 and up 0.7%, while SOL is basically flat near $75.30. HYPE is the useful exception, up 3.2% near $59.30, but broadly this is still a much calmer tape than memory stocks. The Robinhood Chain names are more violent again. CASHCAT is down 15.7% near $0.103, while STONKBROKER is down 9.8% near $0.023. PONS is up 2.7% near $0.0326 today but it’s was generally a grim weekend and a big pullback in RH names. I’m still very bullish on the chain and view this as more of a short-term setback rather than something that will persist. Elsewhere BNB chain has become active again after a memecoin related to a really shitty animated chinese film went viral (牛来) - it ran to $40M in 3 days amid continued speculation that Binance is about to release its own version of Pumfun/Fomo, with undoubtedly a runner or two expected to hit the ground. Good luck today.