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%

August 2026 · Interim Note

Arm Jumps 17%, Intel and SanDisk Both Rally 11% — No Trades

August 4, 2026 · Not a full monthly letter — a short check-in between them

Another green day, though a messier one than Monday. 29 of 32 positions closed higher, but the one clear loser wasn’t small: Vistra fell 8.15%, and I don’t have a story for why. The winners, by contrast, mostly do have stories — some good ones, some pretty thin.

Arm was the biggest mover in the book, up 17.36%. I can’t point to a single piece of Arm-specific news that explains a move that size — it rode the same broad semiconductor recovery that lifted the whole complex (more on that in today’s Opinion piece). Intel and SanDisk each rose exactly 10.84%, Micron added 7.62%, and Broadcom gained 6.61% — all part of the same sector-wide bounce off July’s selloff, per the day’s market wrap.

The two moves I can actually explain: CoreWeave and AMD both rose more than 7%, and Nebius’s leveraged NBIL ETF added another 12.11% on top of Monday’s 23%. SpaceX gained 9.43% ahead of its first earnings report as a public company. None of that touches my cost basis — I’m long all of these already.

Vistra is the one I keep coming back to. It’s a name Wall Street has spent months framing as a direct AI-power-demand beneficiary, and it fell 8.15% on a day the rest of the market rallied hard, with no dated news I could find that explains it. I’m logging it as unexplained rather than inventing a reason.

No trades. A good day, or a confusing one, still isn’t a decision.

Price data via Massive Market Data. Personal views only, not investment advice.