EDITION 014THU 13 AUG 2026 · 12:45 DUBLINREGIME: RISK-OFF
Today's Move
The post-CPI calm has legs — yields and the dollar keep easing — but tonight's Applied Materials print is the real test, not this morning's PPI.
Wednesday closed higher for the first time in three sessions on the cool July CPI print — Dow -0.04% (-21.58pts) to 53,770.27, S&P +0.26% to 7,748.50, Nasdaq +0.54% to 26,588.49 — as September hike odds fell to roughly 38-42% from a near coin-flip. Thursday's premarket keeps drifting the same way: S&P futures +0.2%, Nasdaq-100 futures roughly flat, Dow futures +151pts (+0.3%), the 10-year eased further to 4.66%, and the dollar index slipped to 99.87. July PPI and initial claims land at 13:30 Dublin — a smaller stake than yesterday's CPI, but the YoY forecasts (headline 4.9%, core 4.1%) are still elevated enough to matter if the monthly prints run hot. The Buy Zone Radar improved to 5 names as Applied Materials reclaimed its zone after Tuesday's break — but AMAT reports after tonight's close, so today's reclaim is provisional until the print confirms it.
Big Picture RegimeUnchanged
The CPI relief is real but narrow — it eased the rate debate, not the Mideast one. September hike odds fell to roughly 38-42% (from a near coin-flip Tuesday) as the 10-year slipped to 4.66% and the dollar index eased to 99.87, both continuing Wednesday's post-print drift. Gold is holding near $4,441, up roughly 10% month-over-month, which is not what a market fully at ease looks like. Oil keeps falling anyway — crude eased toward $82, Brent near $88 — even though the Strait of Hormuz talks remain deadlocked: Trump said the US has "total control" of the waterway, and the IEA's monthly report still projects a 1.8 million-barrel-a-day shortfall this quarter from the ongoing conflict. That is the same divergence from Tuesday's edition, just calmer on the surface. Today adds a second, smaller data test — July PPI and jobless claims at 13:30 Dublin — before the session's real event: Applied Materials reports tonight.
What it means: don't read the easier yields and dollar as an all-clear — they're a rates-market reaction to one data point, and the oil market is still pricing a Hormuz standoff that hasn't actually resolved. Judge PPI's core monthly print, not the elevated YoY comp.
Trends: Now & Next Where the money is going
NOW · Oil keeps easing while the Hormuz standoff stays unresolvedDiverging
Crude eased toward $82 and Brent toward $88 even as Strait of Hormuz negotiations remain deadlocked — Trump reiterated the US has "total control" of the waterway, and the IEA still flags a 1.8 million-barrel-a-day shortfall this quarter from the Mideast conflict. The same read as Tuesday: the market is pricing a negotiated outcome, not a resolved one — any diplomatic or military reversal resets the oil trade fast.
NOW · Post-CPI easing continues in yields and the dollarConfirmed
The 10-year eased further to 4.66% and the dollar index slipped to 99.87, both extending Wednesday's reaction to the cooler July CPI (core +0.2% m/m, slowest annual pace since March 2021). September hike odds fell to roughly 38-42% from a near coin-flip. This is the rates market actually resolving the disagreement flagged in Tuesday's edition — for now it's resolving dovish.
NOW · Buy Zone Radar improves to 5 as Applied Materials reclaims its zoneWidening
Applied Materials moved back to BUY NOW · in zone (-1.7% to $557.87) after Tuesday's -5.5% break, joining Lam Research, Datadog, Goldman Sachs and TSMC. Broke-zone count fell to 4 (from 7 on Tuesday) as AMD also narrowed its break to -5.6% from -7.4%. AMAT's reclaim is real today but untested — it reports after tonight's close, so treat the zone read as provisional until the print confirms it.
NEXT · July PPI and jobless claims at 13:30 DublinCatalyst
Consensus: headline PPI +0.2% m/m (4.9% y/y, down from 5.5%), core PPI +0.3% m/m (4.1% y/y, down from 4.7%); initial claims forecast 202K vs last week's 199K. The YoY comps are still elevated even as the monthly prints are expected to cool — a hot core monthly number would reopen the hike debate CPI just calmed.
NEXT · Applied Materials reports tonight — the session's real eventCatalyst
AMAT reports fiscal Q3 results tonight (4:30pm ET / 21:30 Dublin), guiding ~$8.95bn revenue and ~$3.36 EPS (~23% y/y growth); Polymarket prices a 92.5% chance of another beat, but the stock has historically averaged a ~2% drop on earnings day despite five straight beats. Today's in-zone read is not an entry ahead of the print — the print decides whether the reclaim holds or breaks again.
Movers & Why Wednesday's close + Thursday's premarket
Cisco beats on AI orders, then fades · $9.3bn FY AI orders vs. expectationsMatters
Cisco's Wednesday post-close print showed product revenue +24% y/y and AI infrastructure orders reaching $9.3bn for the fiscal year ($4bn in Q4 alone), well above management's own guide; the stock rose as much as 2.86% to $123.88 after hours. It's since given back some of that move as investors weigh the FY27 revenue guide (low-teens vs. the Street's 9.5% assumption) against valuation. A genuine AI-networking-capex beat, but the fade shows the market wants monetization proof, not just order growth — the same bar AMAT clears or misses tonight.
Alphabet extends its slide to ~$343.54 · Pixel 11's $100 price hike keeps the memory-cost story aliveMatters
Alphabet fell further Wednesday as the Pixel 11 launch highlighted a $100 starting-price increase (to $899) and cut Pro-model base RAM from 16GB to 12GB — both attributed to a 78-83% quarter-on-quarter jump in LPDDR5X mobile memory contract prices. The stock stays a radar name at AT ZONE · downswing (-3.1% to its zone). The same memory-cost inflation squeezing Alphabet's hardware margins is the tailwind behind Micron's WAIT-tier read — one name's cost pressure is another's pricing power.
Oil eases toward $82 despite the deadlocked Hormuz standoffDiverging
Crude fell roughly 1.4% even as US-Iran talks over the Strait remain unresolved and the IEA projects a 1.8mb/d quarterly shortfall. Same tension as Tuesday's edition — price down, risk unresolved — and it's the backdrop PPI lands on top of.
AMD +1.82% to $482.93 · still broke zone, but the break is narrowingSteady
AMD ticked higher after last week's 50% revenue growth print (data-center sales +107% y/y) and a Q3 guide implying ~41% y/y growth; the stock remains -5.6% below its 50-day zone, an improvement from Tuesday's -7.4%. Still a "do nothing, wait for repair" name — the improvement is real but not a reclaim yet.
Smart Money Who's actually buying
TSMC (radar name, in zone) shows the only qualifying insider signal this session, and it's a soft one: VP Bor-Zen Tien bought 1,000 shares in the open market on 3 Aug at NT$73.06 (10 days old — note this is the Taiwan-listed ordinary-share price, not the US ADR), and four more executives (SVP Kevin Zhang, SVP Hou Yung-Chin, VP He Jun, Controller Chih-Ho Chen) added shares via the company's scheduled ESPP on 7 Aug — routine, not discretionary. A third-party insider-activity tracker flags TSM with three distinct buyers over the trailing 90 days as of 9 Aug, the highest score in its semiconductor coverage. Read this as mild, dated confirmation, not a fresh signal. Corporate Form-4 cluster scan and congressional-disclosure sweep otherwise surfaced no qualifying cluster tied to an Alpha 100 name this session — honest gap, not an empty market.
Buy Zone Radar Alpha 100 · fetched 13 Aug 11:15 UTC via GitHub Actions — 5 in zone, 4 broke zone
Name
Status
Level & anchor
Action
LRCX In zone
Lam Research — etch & deposition leader, memory-capex proxy
Buy in thirds. Stop $386 · sell $703–740. Reports tonight 21:30 Dublin — no add ahead of the print.
GS In zone
Goldman Sachs — capital-markets thaw + rates desk
$1,037 vs 50-day zone $1,055 (-1.7%)
Buy in thirds. Stop $928 · sell $1,096–1,154.
TSM In zone
TSMC — everyone's foundry
$429.15 vs 50-day zone $425.69 (+0.8%)
Buy in thirds. Stop $362 · sell $455–479.
AMD Broke zone
AMD — Zen 6 + Helios racks, the credible #2 in accelerators
$482.93 vs 50-day zone $511.73 (-5.6%)
Do nothing — still waiting for repair. Break eased from -7.4% Tuesday. Stop $322 · sell $555–585 (informational).
Next 48 Hours Dublin time · through Friday
THU 13 AUG 13:30
July PPI + initial jobless claims (8:30am ET) — consensus headline PPI +0.2% m/m / 4.9% y/y, core +0.3% m/m / 4.1% y/y; claims 202K vs 199K prior.Judge the core monthly print — the YoY comps are still elevated enough that a hot number could reopen yesterday's rate debate.
THU 13 AUG 21:30
Applied Materials reports after the close (4:30pm ET call).Tests whether today's zone reclaim (BUY NOW, -1.7%) holds or breaks again — no add ahead of the print.
FRI 14 AUG
No confirmed major US macro print scheduled.Watch for follow-through in yields/dollar from Thursday's PPI and any overnight Hormuz headlines.
Ignore This Noise filter
Cerebras' -19% premarket plunge on a Q2 revenue miss. A small-cap AI-hardware name missing estimates is generating "is the AI trade cracking?" headlines this morning, but it's a single-company miss, not a read on the mega-cap AI-compute names on this radar — Cisco just posted a $9.3bn AI-orders beat and AMAT heads into tonight's print with Polymarket pricing a 92.5% chance of another one. Don't let one small-cap miss recolor how you read tonight's actual test case.
So: if "AI bubble" headlines built on Cerebras dominate your feed today, treat it as one company's number, not a verdict on AMAT, LRCX or the rest of the radar.
Alpha 100 List changes
No editorial adds or ejections today. Market-data refresh completed via the automated GitHub Actions pipeline at 11:15 UTC (5 in zone, 47 buy-tier, 4 broke zone, 62/100 above the 50-day, 100 ranked) — broke-zone count down from Tuesday's 7 as Applied Materials reclaimed its zone. AMD narrowed its break to -5.6% from -7.4%; Rocket Lab (-6.8%), Marvell (-9.9%) and Nokia (-13.9%) remain broken with no fresh catalyst today. Micron stays a WAIT · crowded knife read, now trading against a genuine memory-price-inflation tailwind (see Movers). Editorial tiers/tags/theses unchanged since the 14 Jul regime read.