Vol. III · No. 151 · Monday, July 27, 2026

Golden Terminal

Momentum, rotation, and the tape that actually moved — read before the bell.

Overnight drift: S&P 500 September futures (ESU6, a proxy) are +0.75% and the SPY ETF is +0.96% in Monday's pre-dawn session — a risk-on open extending Friday's rebound. Drift shows where the tape has already traveled overnight; by rule it never changes a completed-bar momentum verdict.

Nine of eleven sectors rose Friday, yet the S&P 500 finished up just 0.10%. The momentum board flipped from 2 green Thursday to 5 green Friday — Real Estate, Materials, Health Care, Industrials and Utilities all read GREEN. The catch: the one sector that fell was Technology, the market's heaviest, and it dragged the cap-weighted index to a standstill even as almost everything else rallied.

Technology (XLK -1.44%) was the lone red on a green board — but the damage was entirely in the chips. Semiconductors slid across the board (AMD -3.29%, Broadcom -2.69%, Qualcomm -2.42%, Texas Instruments -1.90%, Nvidia -0.92%) and Oracle fell 4.21%, while software staged a sharp reversal of Thursday's selloff: Adobe +6.10%, Intuit +5.26%, Salesforce +4.29%, IBM +3.65%, Apple +3.53%.

Telecom earnings lit up Communication Services. Verizon jumped 5.84% and AT&T 5.10% after Verizon beat on the bottom line ($1.30 vs. $1.27 est.). Schlumberger, punished Thursday for a beat, ripped 11.01% Friday — the single best move on the 79-name Dominator roster.

American Express fell 4.30% despite beating. It earned $4.53 against $4.41 expected but revenue came in a touch light, and the market sold it — the mirror image of Comcast on Thursday, and a reminder that in this tape a beat is the price of admission, not a reason to rally.

The week ahead is the heaviest of the year. The Fed decides rates Wednesday at 2:00pm — Kevin Warsh's second meeting as chair — and the mega-cap earnings avalanche runs straight through it: Microsoft and Meta Wednesday, Apple and Amazon Thursday, Exxon and Chevron Friday, with Q2 GDP and the June core-PCE inflation reading landing Thursday morning.

Friday was the kind of session that makes the headline number lie to you. Nine of the eleven S&P sectors closed higher. Real Estate rose 2.22%, Materials 1.93%, and the momentum board more than doubled its green count overnight — from two sectors Thursday to five Friday. By the only measure most people check, though, nothing happened: the S&P 500 gained one-tenth of one percent, and the Nasdaq Composite actually fell. The gap between those two facts is the whole story, and it has a single name attached to it — Technology.

Technology was the only sector to fall Friday, down 1.44%, and because it is the largest weight in the index, its decline alone was enough to cancel out a broad rally happening everywhere else. But look inside the sector and the picture splits cleanly in two. The chips got hit — Advanced Micro Devices fell 3.29%, Broadcom 2.69%, Qualcomm 2.42%, Texas Instruments 1.90%, and even Nvidia gave back 0.92% — and Oracle dropped 4.21% to lead the software laggards. Yet most of software went the other way, sharply: Adobe rose 6.10%, Intuit 5.26%, Salesforce 4.29%, IBM 3.65%, and Apple 3.53%, all reversing Thursday's selloff in a single session. A sector can be red on the surface and split down the middle underneath, and Friday's Technology tape was exactly that.

Away from the chips, the rally was real and it was led by the two most rate-sensitive corners of the market. Real Estate and Materials topped the board, both flipping their momentum verdicts to green, as the ten-year Treasury yield eased two basis points to 4.69% and the whole yield curve slid lower — a bid for the sectors that borrow the most. Earnings did the rest of the lifting. Verizon jumped 5.84% and AT&T 5.10% after Verizon beat, turning Communication Services into one of the day's quiet winners even as Alphabet finally steadied after two brutal sessions. And Schlumberger, sold off Thursday for the crime of beating estimates, rose 11.01% Friday — the best move on the entire roster, and proof that Thursday's "sell the beat" reflex didn't survive the weekend's approach.

Then there is the setup, which is the real reason to read carefully this week. The Federal Reserve hands down its rate decision Wednesday afternoon — Kevin Warsh's second meeting in the chair — and it lands in the middle of the busiest earnings week of the year: Microsoft and Meta report Wednesday, Apple and Amazon Thursday, Exxon and Chevron Friday, with the advance reading on second-quarter GDP and the June core-PCE inflation print both due Thursday morning. Monday's pre-dawn tape is already leaning into it, with S&P futures up three-quarters of a percent and the chips that dragged Friday's board now bidding higher before the open. Nine green sectors and a flat index is a comfortable place to start a week. It is not a comfortable place to end one that has a Fed decision and five of the six largest companies in America all reporting inside of four days.

Brad Hoppmann

Editor, The Daily Update — momentum, rotation, and the tape that actually moved.

Durable Goods Orders for June land at 8:30am ET this morning, a quiet start before a loud week. The real events cluster Wednesday and Thursday: the Fed's rate decision at 2:00pm Wednesday with Chair Warsh's press conference to follow, then Thursday's double-header of advance Q2 GDP and the June core-PCE price index at 8:30am — the inflation gauge the Fed watches most. Threaded through all of it: Microsoft and Meta report Wednesday after the close, Apple and Amazon Thursday, and the oil majors Friday morning. The question for the tape is whether Friday's broad, tech-excepted rally can hold once the biggest names in Technology actually put numbers on the table.

"Nine sectors went up and the index went nowhere. When the market and the average stock disagree that loudly, the disagreement is the signal — read the whole board, not just the headline number."

Early Earnings Update — 24 roster names report over the next seven sessions, including Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Amazon, Visa and both oil majors. With the market-risk light reading yellow to open the week, none go in with full three-light momentum alignment today, and none have held an alignment across two sessions. The desk is tracking six names carrying two of three green lights into their prints. Full breakdown continues in the members' section.

The Reader, Investor & Active Trader Tiers

The full sector-by-sector breakdown, rotation snapshot, and validation data continue below.

Click here to read the full sector ratings

RED

XLK closed Friday at $175.88 (-1.44%). Current CCI -109.76 vs. prior session -74.15, vs. trailing average -84.82. Current reading trails both prior and average — verdict downgrades from YELLOW to RED.

RED as of Friday's close. Premarket +1.83%, drifting hard against the read — the chips that broke Friday's board are bidding higher before Monday's open. Momentum is a completed-bar reading; the overnight bounce does not change the verdict, but it flags a sector at odds with its own tape this morning.

Technology fell 1.44% Friday, the only sector on the board to close red, and the entire decline sat in semiconductors and Oracle. AMD dropped 3.29%, Broadcom 2.69%, Qualcomm 2.42%, Texas Instruments 1.90% and Nvidia 0.92%, while Oracle fell 4.21% to a fresh year-to-date low for the roster. Underneath that, though, software staged a clean reversal of Thursday's selloff — Adobe rose 6.10%, Intuit 5.26%, Salesforce 4.29%, IBM 3.65% and Apple 3.53% — leaving the sector split down the middle and the verdict red only because the chips carry the weight.

Adobe (ADBE) +6.10% — sector's best mover Friday, leading a broad software rebound.

Oracle (ORCL) -4.21% — sector's worst mover; now the roster's second-worst name year-to-date.

GREEN

XLRE closed Friday at $45.95 (+2.22%). Current CCI +171.02 vs. prior session +51.79, vs. trailing average +80.34. Current reading exceeds both prior and average — verdict upgrades from RED to GREEN.

GREEN as of Friday's close. Premarket +0.20%, drifting with the read.

Real Estate gained 2.22% Friday, the best session on the entire board, and flipped its momentum verdict straight from red to green as the ten-year yield eased to 4.69%. All three of the sector's Dominators rose, led by data-center landlord Equinix, which jumped 4.90% ahead of its own report Wednesday. Prologis added 1.73% and American Tower 1.23%, the latter reporting Tuesday.

Equinix (EQIX) +4.90% — sector's best mover Friday; reports Wednesday after the close, est. $4.73.

American Tower (AMT) +1.23% — reports Tuesday, est. $1.57.

GREEN

XLB closed Friday at $51.26 (+1.93%). Current CCI +11.45 vs. prior session -67.93, vs. trailing average -76.72. Current reading exceeds both prior and average — verdict upgrades from YELLOW to GREEN.

GREEN as of Friday's close. Premarket +0.66%, drifting with the read.

Materials gained 1.93% Friday and all three Dominators closed higher, reversing Thursday's retreat. Sherwin-Williams led with a 2.24% gain into its own Tuesday report, Ecolab added 2.13% ahead of reporting the same day, and Linde rose 1.18% before its Friday print. A rate-sensitive sector catching a bid on a falling-yield day, with three earnings reports stacked into the week ahead.

Sherwin-Williams (SHW) +2.24% — sector's best mover Friday; reports Tuesday, est. $3.52.

Linde (LIN) +1.18% — reports Friday, est. $4.49.

YELLOW

XLC closed Friday at $106.30 (+0.87%). Current CCI -148.52 vs. prior session -158.09, vs. trailing average +50.26. Current reading exceeds prior but trails the average — mixed signal, verdict holds YELLOW.

YELLOW as of Friday's close. No directional premarket signal of note.

Communication Services gained 0.87% Friday on the back of two telecom earnings pops: Verizon jumped 5.84% after beating on the bottom line ($1.30 vs. $1.27 est.), and AT&T rode the read-across up 5.10%. Disney added 2.18%, Netflix 1.74% and Comcast 1.71%, while Alphabet finally steadied — up 0.65% — after two punishing sessions. Meta was the lone decliner, off 1.80% ahead of its own report Wednesday.

Verizon (VZ) +5.84% — sector's best mover Friday; beat with $1.30 vs. $1.27 est.

Meta (META) -1.80% — sector's only decliner; reports Wednesday after the close, est. $7.13.

YELLOW

XLF closed Friday at $56.31 (+0.86%). Current CCI +50.90 vs. prior session +21.44, vs. trailing average +86.15. Current reading exceeds prior but trails the average — mixed signal, verdict holds YELLOW.

YELLOW as of Friday's close. Premarket +0.60%, drifting mildly with the tape.

Financials gained 0.86% Friday, and the sector's story was one name moving the wrong way on good news: American Express fell 4.30% even after beating on earnings ($4.53 vs. $4.41 est.), undone by a revenue figure that came in a hair light. Everyone else leaned green — BlackRock rose 1.78%, Mastercard 1.77% into its Thursday report, S&P Global 1.52% ahead of reporting Tuesday, and JPMorgan added 0.95%. Goldman Sachs was the other soft spot, off 1.26%.

BlackRock (BLK) +1.78% — sector's best mover Friday.

American Express (AXP) -4.30% — sector's worst mover; beat on EPS but sold off on light revenue.

YELLOW

XLY closed Friday at $109.41 (+0.60%). Current CCI -245.83 vs. prior session -312.71, vs. trailing average -47.62. Current reading exceeds prior but trails the average — mixed signal, verdict upgrades from RED to YELLOW.

YELLOW as of Friday's close. Premarket +1.09%, drifting higher with the broad bid.

Consumer Discretionary gained 0.60% Friday as the retail and housing names rebounded while Tesla kept sliding. Lowe's rose 2.83%, Booking Holdings 2.68% ahead of reporting next Monday, and Home Depot 2.55%, with Nike adding 1.73%. Tesla, though, fell another 2.08% — extending Thursday's post-earnings collapse into a second session, the only meaningful drag left in the sector.

Lowe's (LOW) +2.83% — sector's best mover Friday.

Tesla (TSLA) -2.08% — extends Thursday's post-earnings slide into a second session.

GREEN

XLI closed Friday at $182.66 (+0.40%). Current CCI +54.64 vs. prior session -8.54, vs. trailing average -66.53. Current reading exceeds both prior and average — verdict holds GREEN.

GREEN as of Friday's close. Premarket +1.20%, drifting with the read.

Industrials gained 0.40% Friday, holding the green verdict it earned on Thursday's defense-earnings surge. Deere led with a 2.97% gain, Lockheed Martin added 2.46% and RTX 1.74%, extending their post-earnings runs, while GE rose 1.36% and Union Pacific 0.98%. Honeywell was the drag, off 1.27% as it gave back part of Thursday's breakup-driven pop, and Boeing was flat ahead of its Tuesday report.

Deere (DE) +2.97% — sector's best mover Friday.

Honeywell (HON) -1.27% — sector's worst mover, giving back part of Thursday's gain.

GREEN

XLV closed Friday at $162.57 (+0.70%). Current CCI +75.46 vs. prior session +10.32, vs. trailing average +26.56. Current reading exceeds both prior and average — verdict holds and strengthens GREEN.

GREEN as of Friday's close. Premarket +0.26%, drifting with the read.

Health Care gained 0.70% Friday, a quiet session that firmed its green verdict. Abbott led with a 2.29% gain, Johnson & Johnson added 1.59%, and AbbVie and Bristol-Myers both rose about 0.95% ahead of their prints this week. The two life-sciences winners from Thursday's blowout, Thermo Fisher and Danaher, gave a little back (-0.71% and -0.52%), and Pfizer was the sector's only real drag, off 1.88%.

Abbott (ABT) +2.29% — sector's best mover Friday.

Pfizer (PFE) -1.88% — sector's worst mover Friday.

RED

XLE closed Friday at $59.62 (+0.40%). Current CCI +131.18 vs. prior session +144.75, vs. trailing average +138.10. Current reading trails both prior and average — verdict downgrades from YELLOW to RED even on an up day.

RED as of Friday's close. Premarket -2.70%, drifting with the read and then some — crude is selling off into Monday's open, confirming the momentum verdict rather than fighting it.

Energy edged up 0.40% Friday, but the momentum verdict rolled over to red anyway — the sector's CCI has been fading for a week even as the stocks tread water. The one exception was loud: Schlumberger, sold off Thursday for beating, ripped 11.01% Friday, the best move on the entire roster. The majors barely budged — Exxon +0.03%, ConocoPhillips +0.05%, Chevron +0.19% — and with the crude ETF down 2.01% Friday and sliding further premarket, the equities look increasingly disconnected from a commodity that is now falling.

Schlumberger (SLB) +11.01% — best mover on the entire Dominator roster Friday, a day-late reward for Thursday's beat.

Exxon (XOM) +0.03% — dead flat; reports Friday, est. $3.60.

YELLOW

XLP closed Friday at $84.13 (+1.11%). Current CCI -45.04 vs. prior session -116.92, vs. trailing average +17.25. Current reading exceeds prior but trails the average — mixed signal, verdict upgrades from RED to YELLOW.

YELLOW as of Friday's close. Premarket flat, no directional signal.

Consumer Staples gained 1.11% Friday and every one of its seven Dominators closed higher — a clean sweep up, the exact mirror of Thursday's clean sweep down. Coca-Cola led with a 1.33% gain into its own Tuesday report, Altria added 1.26% and Pepsi 1.25%, with Procter & Gamble the laggard at +0.30% ahead of reporting Wednesday. A defensive sector bouncing in sympathy with the broad rally, carrying three earnings reports into the week.

Coca-Cola (KO) +1.33% — sector's best mover Friday; reports Tuesday, est. $0.92.

Procter & Gamble (PG) +0.30% — sector's smallest gainer; reports Wednesday, est. $1.43.

GREEN

XLU closed Friday at $46.29 (+0.22%). Current CCI +168.77 vs. prior session +120.32, vs. trailing average +11.44. Current reading exceeds both prior and average — verdict holds GREEN, strengthening.

GREEN as of Friday's close. Premarket +0.06%, flat and with the read.

Utilities gained 0.22% Friday, holding green for a fourth straight session on the same falling-yield tailwind lifting Real Estate. Duke Energy led with a 0.97% gain and Southern Company added 0.67% ahead of its Thursday report, while NextEra was essentially flat at -0.01%. Quiet, steady, and still the AI-era power-demand trade this letter keeps returning to.

Duke Energy (DUK) +0.97% — sector's best mover Friday.

Southern Company (SO) +0.67% — reports Thursday, est. $1.01.

The momentum board went from 2 GREEN / 4 YELLOW / 5 RED Thursday to 5 GREEN / 4 YELLOW / 2 RED Friday — a near-total reversal in a single session. But notice where the green came from: the rate-sensitive sectors, Real Estate and Materials, on a two-basis-point drop in the ten-year. And notice the two reds: Technology and Energy, the only sectors that fell or faded. When the leadership rotates from chips to landlords in one day on a yield move, that's not conviction — that's money looking for somewhere to stand while it waits on the Fed.

Friday's software rebound (Adobe, Intuit and Salesforce all up 4%+) pulled three of the roster's worst year-to-date names off their lows, but Oracle's 4.21% drop pushed it the other way, into the number-two laggard slot. The split at the top is the story that won't quit: semiconductors and industrial machinery leading the year by fifty points and more, while seat-based enterprise software sits at the bottom. Equinix's climb into the top five — on a falling-yield day, ahead of earnings — is the one new face, and a sign the rate trade is starting to matter again.

5 GREEN (Real Estate, Materials, Health Care, Industrials, Utilities) · 4 YELLOW (Consumer Staples, Communication Services, Financials, Consumer Discretionary) · 2 RED (Energy, Technology). Thursday's board: 2 GREEN (Industrials, Utilities) / 4 YELLOW (Health Care, Energy, Technology, Materials) / 5 RED (Real Estate, Financials, Consumer Staples, Communication Services, Consumer Discretionary).

Methodology: CCI(20) computed from 48 sessions of daily OHLC (May 15 – July 24, 2026) via Massive Market Data aggregates. TP=(H+L+C)/3; SMA(TP,20); mean deviation = average absolute deviation of TP from SMA over the trailing 20-session window; CCI=(TP−SMA)/(0.015×mean deviation). Trailing average computed over the 10 CCI readings immediately preceding the current session. Verdict: GREEN if current CCI > prior AND > trailing average; RED if current < prior AND < average; otherwise YELLOW. Method validated against the 2026-07-23 published board before use.

Drift is a description of what the overnight tape has already done; it is never a forecast and never feeds a CCI calculation. Futures use the front-month E-mini S&P contract (ESU6) as a proxy; ETF premarket figures are the last completed one-minute bar before this pull versus the prior session's close. Sector premarket bars for thinly traded SPDRs (XLU, XLP, XLRE, XLB) were near-flat and are omitted from contradiction flagging.

Treasury yields sourced from Financial Modeling Prep's treasury-rates endpoint (current through 7/24) rather than the Massive Market Data Fed series, which lags one session. Nasdaq Composite's Thursday close (25,137.69) used to compute Friday's -0.64% was carried from the 7/24 issue rather than re-verified this pull. Bigdata.com was not called on this daily run; overnight-mover and earnings context was drawn from Financial Modeling Prep (earnings-calendar, earnings-company) and Massive Market Data premarket aggregates. YTD percentages recomputed fresh against 2026-01-02 opening prices for all 79 Dominators; minor variances of a few tenths versus prior issues are expected and are not data errors. Economic-calendar release times are conventional (BLS/BEA 8:30am, Conference Board 10:00am, FOMC 2:00pm) and were not individually reconfirmed against a dated feed this pull.

Friday handed us a clean example of a market that is quietly narrower than it looks. Nine sectors rose, the two rate-sensitive ones led, and the S&P 500 still finished flat because the one sector that fell — Technology — carries more index weight than the nine that rose combined. That is not a rally you can lean on. It is a rotation, money stepping out of the chips and into landlords and utilities on a two-basis-point move in the ten-year, and rotations of that kind usually mean the market is waiting on something rather than deciding on something. This week, it is waiting on the Fed. Chair Warsh delivers his second rate decision Wednesday into a Treasury market that is refinancing a record wall of debt — on the framework of liquidity analyst Michael Howell, the question that moves markets now is less the price of money than whether there is room to borrow at all, with the global refinancing bill climbing toward roughly $33 trillion this year on his July estimate. That is his projection, not ours, and worth naming as such. But it is the lens through which to read Wednesday: not just what the Fed does with the rate, but what it signals about the plumbing underneath it. And threaded through the same four days, five of the six largest companies in America report earnings. Nine green sectors is a pleasant place to begin the week. By Friday's close we will know whether it was a foundation or a head-fake.

The Daily Update tracks the tape day by day. Supercycle Trader steps back to the multi-year clock underneath it — the debasement supercycle in gold, energy and hard assets that a flat index and a rotating sector board only hint at. If this week's Fed decision has you thinking past the next session, that's the letter built for the longer view.

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Disclaimer: The Daily Update is an independent financial publication produced for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this issue constitutes personalized investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell any security, or a solicitation of any kind. The editor and affiliated parties may or may not hold positions in securities mentioned; no such positions are currently disclosed and none are known as of publication. Momentum verdicts (CCI-based GREEN/YELLOW/RED readings) are technical indicators derived from historical price data and carry no predictive guarantee. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Data is sourced from Massive Market Data, Financial Modeling Prep, and named third-party outlets; while believed reliable, accuracy is not guaranteed. Consult a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decision.

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