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S&P 500 (SPY) $772.67 −0.47% Nasdaq-100 (QQQ) $729.87 −0.16% Dow (DIA) $534.19 −0.49% Russell 2000 (IWM) $304.06 −0.34% 10-Year Treasury (IEF) $92.84 −0.21% Crude Oil (USO) $130.29 +2.91% Gold (GLD) $405.49 +1.00% US Dollar Index (UUP) $28.10 −0.04% Volatility (VXX) $19.50 +0.75% Semiconductors (SMH) $594.07 +1.06% Silver (SLV) $59.57 +1.86% Emerging Markets (EEM) $67.32 +1.07% Bitcoin (BTC) $64,484.18 +2.62% Ethereum (ETH) $1,911.94 +2.02% S&P 500 (SPY) $772.67 −0.47% Nasdaq-100 (QQQ) $729.87 −0.16% Dow (DIA) $534.19 −0.49% Russell 2000 (IWM) $304.06 −0.34% 10-Year Treasury (IEF) $92.84 −0.21% Crude Oil (USO) $130.29 +2.91% Gold (GLD) $405.49 +1.00% US Dollar Index (UUP) $28.10 −0.04% Volatility (VXX) $19.50 +0.75% Semiconductors (SMH) $594.07 +1.06% Silver (SLV) $59.57 +1.86% Emerging Markets (EEM) $67.32 +1.07% Bitcoin (BTC) $64,484.18 +2.62% Ethereum (ETH) $1,911.94 +2.02%
AEACapital Research

Independent student research — not an investment firm or financial advice

August 2026 · Interim Note

Memory Had a Reason to Rally; My Software Names Didn’t Have One to Fall

August 17, 2026 · Not a full monthly letter — a short check-in between them

Monday was a rotation inside my own book, not a uniform move in either direction. SanDisk (SNDK) rose 8.88% on its fiscal 2026 10-K plus a real, dated catalyst: the Trump administration signaled it wants Apple sourcing memory chips from domestic or allied suppliers rather than China, and Micron (MU) picked up 4.13% on the same news — alongside Elon Musk publicly arguing that memory, not compute, is now the binding constraint on agentic AI. SpaceX (SPCX) added 4.45% on what one report called “positive analyst notes,” consistent with its exclusive Nvidia commitment for its AI buildout. Intel (INTC) and Rocket Lab (RKLB) also closed higher.

The other side of the book had no such story. ServiceNow (NOW) fell 5.08%, Datadog (DDOG) fell 3.19%, Nebius (NBIS) fell 3.18%, and Meta (META) fell 3.54% amid what one source called broader “communications sector weakness” — real language, but not a company-specific reason. CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, and Salesforce fell alongside them, on a day the 30-year Treasury yield hit its highest level since 2007 and investors turned cautious ahead of Walmart, Home Depot, and Target earnings. That reads more like a rate-sensitive software basket getting sold than any single thesis breaking. Read the full session in today’s News writeup, and my take on the timing of it in today’s Opinion piece.

No trades today

7 of 32 positions closed higher. I’m not trimming rate-sensitive names into an unexplained air pocket, and I’m not adding to memory on one strong day either — the Blackout Rule and Holding Period exist for exactly this kind of session.

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