Market snapshot, not real-time
S&P 500 (SPY) $767.45 −0.68% Nasdaq-100 (QQQ) $717.51 −1.69% Dow (DIA) $532.91 −0.24% Russell 2000 (IWM) $300.23 −1.26% 10-Year Treasury (IEF) $92.93 +0.10% Crude Oil (USO) $130.66 +0.28% Gold (GLD) $398.55 −1.71% US Dollar Index (UUP) $28.14 +0.14% Volatility (VXX) $19.65 +0.77% Semiconductors (SMH) $569.77 −4.09% Silver (SLV) $57.44 −3.58% Emerging Markets (EEM) $65.34 −2.94% Bitcoin (BTC) $64,681.33 +0.31% Ethereum (ETH) $1,916.72 +0.25% S&P 500 (SPY) $767.45 −0.68% Nasdaq-100 (QQQ) $717.51 −1.69% Dow (DIA) $532.91 −0.24% Russell 2000 (IWM) $300.23 −1.26% 10-Year Treasury (IEF) $92.93 +0.10% Crude Oil (USO) $130.66 +0.28% Gold (GLD) $398.55 −1.71% US Dollar Index (UUP) $28.14 +0.14% Volatility (VXX) $19.65 +0.77% Semiconductors (SMH) $569.77 −4.09% Silver (SLV) $57.44 −3.58% Emerging Markets (EEM) $65.34 −2.94% Bitcoin (BTC) $64,681.33 +0.31% Ethereum (ETH) $1,916.72 +0.25%
AEACapital Research

Independent student research — not an investment firm or financial advice

August 2026 · Interim Note

CoreWeave Fell 12%, My Leveraged Nebius Position Fell 15%, and I Made Zero Trades

August 18, 2026 · Not a full monthly letter — a short check-in between them

Tuesday was the roughest session I’ve logged since mid-July, and unlike that one it landed almost entirely inside the sleeve of my book I’m most exposed to. The S&P 500 fell 0.68%, the Nasdaq-100 fell 1.69%, and semiconductors (SMH) fell 4.09% — more than double the index move, which is the pattern that actually explains the day.

What actually moved

CoreWeave, my largest AI-infrastructure position by cost, fell 12.10% to $93.17 on reporting that tied the decline to its debt load — $9.4 billion in second-quarter capital spending against nearly $30 billion in long-term debt — getting repriced as Treasury yields moved higher. Nebius fell 7.60% on what outlets described as the same mechanism, and because I also hold NBIL, a 2x daily-leveraged fund on Nebius, that position fell 15.23% — almost exactly double NBIS’s own move, which is leverage doing what leverage does, not a separate story. Full writeup is on the News page; my take on the underlying mechanism is in today’s Opinion piece.

Micron fell 7.02%, Sandisk fell 9.01%, Arm fell 6.67%, and Intel fell 6.58% — the memory and semiconductor half of the same trade. Talen Energy, Vertiv, and WhiteFiber, my power and data-center-infrastructure sleeve, fell 11.00%, 6.80%, and 10.81% respectively, with no single dated headline explaining any of the three individually; the pattern looked like sector-wide rotation rather than three separate stories.

One number worth logging honestly: Vertiv closed at $272.54 against my $304.90 average cost — the first time that specific position has closed below what I paid for it. Everything else named above is still solidly ahead of my cost basis even after Tuesday, some of it by several multiples.

No trades today

The Blackout Rule and Holding Period exist for exactly this kind of session — one bad day, even a genuinely bad one, is data, not a decision. Nothing about Tuesday’s move changes a thesis I’ve written up on any of these names; it moved the price I’d be buying or selling at, not the case for owning them. I made no trades.

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.