Market snapshot · September 18, 2026 close
S&P 500 (SPY) $761.69 −0.13% Nasdaq-100 (QQQ) $721.45 +0.60% Dow (DIA) $515.88 −0.48% Russell 2000 (IWM) $284.10 −0.52% 10-Year Treasury (IEF) $90.80 −0.49% Crude Oil (USO) $153.82 −0.93% Gold (GLD) $401.17 +0.74% US Dollar Index (UUP) $28.39 −0.02% Volatility (VXX) $17.76 +0.31% Semiconductors (SMH) $573.00 +2.17% Silver (SLV) $59.93 +1.65% Emerging Markets (EEM) $67.03 +0.19% Bitcoin (BTC) $81,055.00 +4.51% Ethereum (ETH) $2,630.20 +5.92% S&P 500 (SPY) $761.69 −0.13% Nasdaq-100 (QQQ) $721.45 +0.60% Dow (DIA) $515.88 −0.48% Russell 2000 (IWM) $284.10 −0.52% 10-Year Treasury (IEF) $90.80 −0.49% Crude Oil (USO) $153.82 −0.93% Gold (GLD) $401.17 +0.74% US Dollar Index (UUP) $28.39 −0.02% Volatility (VXX) $17.76 +0.31% Semiconductors (SMH) $573.00 +2.17% Silver (SLV) $59.93 +1.65% Emerging Markets (EEM) $67.03 +0.19% Bitcoin (BTC) $81,055.00 +4.51% Ethereum (ETH) $2,630.20 +5.92%
AEACapital Research

Independent student research — not an investment firm or financial advice

July 2026 · Interim Note

ServiceNow’s Roughest Day in Months, and SpaceX Falls Further Below Cost

July 22, 2026 · Not a full monthly letter — a short check-in between them

The index barely moved Wednesday — the S&P 500 fell 0.12% — but the book itself had a genuinely mixed day, down 0.75% (about $250) on a mark-to-market basis, with the damage concentrated in two names and real gains showing up in several others.

ServiceNow (NOW), 6 shares at a $84.76 average cost, fell 6.47% to $95.46 — its worst single day in months — alongside a broader slide in high-multiple enterprise software (Datadog, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet all fell too) tied to a Goldman Sachs report on $489 billion in AI-related debt issuance this year. I haven’t found any ServiceNow-specific news driving the move; this reads as sector-wide repricing, not a company-specific problem, and the position is still comfortably above my cost basis. Full story on the News page.

SpaceX (SPCX) fell another 6.70% to $115.26, its fourth down day in two weeks and now well below my $135 average cost on 8 shares. Wednesday’s specific overhang was mechanical, not fundamental: several analyst notes focused on the roughly 911 million pre-IPO shares that start becoming eligible for sale in August, which could double the public float. That’s a real, dated supply event, and it’s exactly the kind of thing the dispersion piece two days ago was describing — a single name moving hard on a mechanical catalyst that says nothing new about the underlying business.

The other side of the book looked very different: CoreWeave rose 3.85%, Talen Energy rose 3.08%, Vistra rose 2.72%, and Broadcom rose 2.67% — the power and AI-hardware names holding up or gaining on the same day the AI-debt headline was hitting software. That split is the actual story of the day, and I go further into what I think it means in today’s Opinion piece.

No trades today

Neither ServiceNow nor SpaceX broke a thesis I’ve already written up, and a down day spread across a diversified book is exactly what the Blackout Rule and Holding Period exist to keep me from reacting to.

Sources: cited in full on the linked News article. Price data via Massive Market Data. This note is educational and reflects my personal views only. It is not investment advice.