Market state
Market Temperature
Reading builds after US close. First snapshot lands tonight.
Full lab →Daily check-in · 2026-09-15
Tuesday, September 15, 2026. Everything fresh from the ecosystem on one page.
The Morning 10 Tue, Sep 15, 2026 ~90 seconds 08:00 CET
AI trade — sellers of compute sold, buyers bought: chips −5.6%, software +5%, SoftBank +7% in Tokyo
The market took one session to decide what a slower frontier is worth, and its answer was a split, not a sale. On the side that sells compute, the semiconductor ETF fell 5.6% to $497.40, through the $505 line and below Thursday’s $517.43, with Nvidia −3.4%, AMD −4.4%, Micron −5.3% and SanDisk −5.0%; the Rubin build-out index lost 5.3% with all eight layers red, and the interconnect, data-centre power and equipment groups fell 7% to 8.5%. On the side that buys compute, the software ETF rose 5.0% to $106.64, its best day of the year; Zscaler +16.5%, SentinelOne +14.5%, CrowdStrike +13.9%, Palo Alto +13.1%; Microsoft +2.0%, Alphabet +3.2%, Meta +2.7%. The S&P 500 closed $760.88, −0.4%, the Nasdaq-100 $709.18, −0.8%, the Dow −0.2%: the index barely moved because the two halves of the trade cancelled.
The rest of the tape said the same thing in other words. The 10-year Treasury touched 5.00% during the session, the first time since October 2023, and closed 4.975%; it is 4.96% this morning with the 30-year at 5.33%. Brent is $107.34, up 1.6% overnight after the Oman talks were postponed, WTI $103.27. The dollar index is 99.6, gold $4,338, bitcoin $77,400. The Empire State survey printed −8.7 against a forecast near +15, with new orders at −19.6. Europe fell with its chip names — Euro Stoxx 50 −1.0%, DAX −0.5% — while London rose 0.4%. Volatility closed 17.1, up 8%.
Asia is quieter this morning than it was on Monday. The Kospi is −1.2% at 6,604 after Monday’s −3.3%, SK Hynix −0.9%, Samsung −0.7%; TSMC is unchanged at NT$2,380 and the Taiex closed −0.7%; the Nikkei is −0.5% at 63,196 with Advantest −4.0% and Tokyo Electron −1.2%, and SoftBank has bounced 7.2% to ¥6,262 after Monday’s 11.3% fall. China’s August data showed factory output growth quickening while retail sales slowed and missed, and the investment slump deepened. US stock futures are down 0.4% to 0.5%. Today the Fed’s two-day meeting begins, with a quarter-point increase priced at roughly four in five, and Oracle and Adobe are scored at the close: Oracle $144.79 is below its $148.35 sold line, Adobe $265.60 above its $256.29 paid line.
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The Midday 10 Mon, Sep 14, 2026 ~60 seconds 12:30 ET
The index is doing very little at midday and the AI trade is doing a great deal. The S&P 500 ETF is at $761.69, down 0.4%; the Nasdaq-100 fund at $709.79, down 0.7%, back above the 704 shelf it opened below and still under Thursday’s $708.69; the Dow fund is flat at $525.46, the Russell 2000 fund down 0.2%, the equal-weight S&P unchanged. Under that surface the weekend’s call to pace the frontier has been priced as a sort, and the sort is the sharpest of the year: the semiconductor ETF is down 5.2% at $499.81, the software ETF up 4.5% at $106.07.
The test we set in this morning’s Pulse — chips below Thursday’s $517.43 with software above Friday’s $101.52 is a premium story, both down together is a market sale — has answered in the first form and then some. The components priced on a race are being sold: Astera Labs −9.9%, Arm −8.9%, SK Hynix’s US line −7.3%, Lam Research −7.2%, Marvell −6.3%, SanDisk −6.3%, Micron −5.6%, Super Micro −5.5%, CoreWeave −5.2%, Intel −5.0%, AMD −4.8% to $491, Broadcom −4.2%, Nvidia −2.9% to $211.96. The users of compute are being bought: Microsoft +1.9%, Alphabet +2.0%, Meta +1.8%, Adobe +4.4%, and the security names that Sunday’s Weekly said were building flow while sold on price are up 12% to 15% in a single session.
The other two prices did not take the morning off. The 10-year yield touched 5.00% for the first time since October 2023 before easing to 4.95%, with a quarter-point hike on Wednesday now priced near 90%; Brent traded to $108.33, above Thursday’s $107.63 settlement, after Oman postponed today’s Gulf–Iran meeting on the Strait, and is $107.06 now; the Empire State survey printed −8.7 with new orders at −19.6. And in the print record, Oracle is below its sold line and Adobe above its paid line with one session to go.
US midday, intraday quotes (delayed, ~11:55 ET); Asia and Europe closes; oil, gold and rates live
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The board reads like a quiet Monday until the two technology funds. The S&P 500 ETF is at $761.69, down 0.4% and above Thursday’s $757.83; the Nasdaq-100 fund at $709.79, down 0.7%, above the 704 shelf it opened under and below Thursday’s $708.69; the Dow fund flat at $525.46; the Russell 2000 fund down 0.2% at $288.52; the equal-weight S&P unchanged at $215.12. The iShares semiconductor ETF is down 5.2% at $499.81 — through Thursday’s $517.43, through the $505 line we have carried since August, and 6% under its 50-day average at $531.52 — and the VanEck fund is down 4.4% at $543.78; the technology sector fund is down 1.4%. The software ETF is up 4.5% at $106.07, its largest gain of the year, after seven red sessions in eight. The energy fund is down 0.2% at $65.00 with the oil fund up 2.4%: a third day in four on which the sector and the barrel have opposite signs. The 20-year-plus Treasury fund is up 0.4% at $81.22 after the 10-year touched 5%; the 7-to-10-year fund +0.2%. The VIX is 16.86, up 6%. The memory ETF is $55.05, down 6.5% and below the $58 it had held through every test since July. The Magnificent Seven fund is up 0.4% at $70.14, above the 69.5 weekly line.
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Sunday’s Weekly said ten cybersecurity stocks had been sold for a month on clean quarters while every flow reading strengthened, and that frontier models would need a security layer whoever paced them. Monday paid it: Zscaler is up 14.8% at $188.94, SentinelOne 14.6% at $22.63, CrowdStrike 14.7% at $237.09, Palo Alto 12.1% at $370.55, Okta 11.3% at $185.38, Fortinet 7.9% at $168.42, Cloudflare 6.6% at $326.82. The trigger is the same weekend that sold the chips: CrowdStrike’s chief executive answered the pacing essay by saying the industry should make AI progress secure rather than slower, its Fal.Con conference last week shipped products aimed at securing AI agents and their identities, and three brokers raised targets this morning. Third-party evaluators with permanent access inside every frontier lab, which is what the labs committed to, is a procurement statement for the security vendors. We hold the group as the Agentic index’s security sleeve, which sold for three weeks; on Friday it was the index’s weakest sector, on Monday it is the strongest group in the market.
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The chip sale has an order and it is not Friday’s order reversed. Friday bought back the names sold hardest into the data; Monday is selling the names priced most on scarcity, and it has widened from memory to equipment in New York in a way it did not in Tokyo. Astera Labs is down 9.9% at $262.44, Arm 8.9% at $241.15, Lam Research 7.2% at $276.85 — the equipment and interconnect names that Asia left alone overnight — alongside SK Hynix’s US line −7.3% at $176.13, Marvell −6.3% at $221.14, SanDisk −6.3% at $1,530, Micron −5.6% at $920.57, Western Digital −4.0%. The compute renters and the power are in it too: CoreWeave −5.2% at $84.33, Super Micro −5.5%, Bloom Energy −6.4% at $257.21. Intel is down 5.0% at $97.80, AMD 4.8% at $491.15 — below $500 — Broadcom 4.2% at $346.78, Nvidia 2.9% at $211.96, TSMC 2.9%. The six names on which Situational Awareness bought calls last week are all down between 4.8% and 7.3% at midday, with the memory ETF, the sixth, down 6.5%. On our three pairs from this morning: chips below Thursday with software above Friday says premium, not volume; the memory ETF below $58 says the floor of the memory economy has broken on the first test; and equipment joining memory in the sale — Lam, Astera, Arm — is the one reading that leans the other way, because equipment is bought a year ahead of the chips it makes. The Rubin index’s factory sectors at the close, against its memory sectors, decide which of the two it was.
Market state
Reading builds after US close. First snapshot lands tonight.
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Ten cybersecurity stocks sold for a month on clean quarters while every flow reading strengthened. The deciding level, the print record, the Fed week.
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Read →Functional indices
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