The Trading Day · Tuesday, August 18, 2026
Monday's US close split hard along a line this desk has been tracking for weeks: semis ran, software broke. SOXX gained +1.58% to 559.12, with Applied Materials +5.55% to 535.31, Coherent +7.79% to 351.22, Lumentum +4.62% to 968.90, Fabrinet +4.97% to 598.58, and the memory-chip complex (DRAM) +5.36%. Software and cloud went the other way — IGV −2.01%, CLOU −1.90%, Microsoft −3.04%, Meta −3.54%, Workday −3.77%, MNDY −4.79% — and the split showed up in the family indices too: Rubin EW +2.03% on the day and +7.96% on the week, HALO EW −0.62% on the day and −0.12% on the week. VIX rose +6.60% to 15.19 on a session where semis were up — vol paying attention to something the equity tape wasn't.
The wire breaks — dollar-yen clears 159.5 overnight, and Fabrinet's clean beat gets sold into the print
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