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Samsara Jumps 15%, Zscaler Stalls, Bitcoin Tops $81,000

Samsara jumps 15%, Zscaler beats and goes nowhere, bitcoin tops $81,000 — Wall Street’s best day in a month lands the night before the jobs report

Two more software companies reported after Thursday’s close. Samsara beat on every line, raised its forecast and jumped 13% to 15% after hours. Zscaler beat, guided above the street, spiked 10% and gave it all back within the hour, ending about 1% higher. In the regular session the S&P 500 rose 1.1%, its best day in a month, after Fed Governor Waller said he would rather not raise rates this month; the chance of a September hike fell from 63% to 50%, the 10-year yield eased to 4.77%, bitcoin climbed 5.5% to $81,491, and the Agentic Winners index led the house with a 2.1% gain. Asia is mostly green ahead of the first jobs report of the Warsh Fed at 08:30 ET.

In this edition

IOT ZS IBIT SNOW HPE AVGO DELL ORCL

The Morning 10 Fri, Sep 4, 2026 ~90 seconds 08:00 CET

The ten points

Thursday was the day the week’s selling paused and the market showed what it still wants. Fed Governor Christopher Waller said he would be inclined to hold interest rates steady in September if next week’s inflation report shows progress, a week after Chair Kevin Warsh had put a hike on the table. That one sentence cut the market-implied chance of a September rate increase from 63% to 50%, pulled the 10-year Treasury yield down for a second day to 4.77% from Wednesday’s 4.82% peak, pushed the dollar to a third straight loss and sent the S&P 500 up 1.06% to 7,747.71, its biggest gain in nearly a month. The Nasdaq rose 1.4%, the Dow 624 points, and the Nasdaq-100 closed back above its 50-day average after two days beneath it. Bitcoin, which had spent two sessions stuck under $78,000, ran 5.5% to $81,491, its first close above $80,000 this month and its highest in almost four months.

The earnings season kept teaching the same lesson from opposite directions. Samsara, the fleet-and-operations software company, earned $0.20 a share against $0.16 expected, grew revenue 30% and raised its full-year forecast; the stock jumped 13% to 15% after hours to about $44 from a 38.75 close. Zscaler beat by 9% on profit, beat on revenue, and gave a fiscal 2027 forecast well above what analysts had, yet after touching $196 in the first minutes of after-hours trading, up 10%, the stock fell all the way back to about $180, roughly 1% above its 177.80 close. Same kind of quarter, opposite receptions: Samsara had been sold 5.8% on Wednesday before reporting and was rewarded; Zscaler had rallied 24% over three months into its number and was met with a shrug.

Thursday’s daytime session graded Wednesday night’s three reports the same way. Snowflake, sold down 8% before its print, rose 16.6% to 356.47 and touched its highest price since 2021. Hewlett Packard Enterprise fell as much as 12% in the morning on its supply-constraint warning, then reversed to close up 5.0% at 54.44. Broadcom, the one that came in at a record high with a merely excellent quarter, fell 6.8% at the low and closed down 2.7%. Dell, up 15.8% on Wednesday, added another 4.8% to a record 516.39. Among our own indices, the Agentic Winners 40 rose 2.1% while the chip-heavy Rubin ended flat, the fifth day in a row that software has out-run silicon. Asia is mostly higher this morning, led by Hong Kong and Seoul. The August jobs report, the first since Warsh took the chair, lands at 08:30 ET; the consensus is about 55,000 new jobs after July’s loss of 23,000.

  1. Samsara soars 15% after hours — beat, raise, and a record 20 million-dollar customers
  2. Zscaler: a 10% spike, then nothing — the beat that went flat
  3. Bitcoin tops $81,000 — its highest close in almost four months
  4. Snowflake +16.6%, HPE +5%, Broadcom −2.7%, Dell +4.8%: Thursday graded Wednesday night
  5. Today’s close grades Tuesday night: Dell and GitLab paid, MongoDB and Palo Alto sold, unless Friday changes it
  6. Best day in a month: S&P 500 +1.1%, Nasdaq-100 back above its 50-day, software up a fifth day against chips
  7. Waller cuts the hike odds to a coin flip; the 10-year eases, the dollar drops a third day, gold and oil rise
  8. Agentic Winners lead the house: AW40 +2.1% while Rubin stands still; Money Temperature back to 51
  9. Asia mostly green: Hong Kong +2%, Seoul +1.4%, Tokyo +0.9% at the break
  10. Today: the first jobs report of the Warsh Fed, 08:30 ET. Consensus +55,000 after July’s loss

  1. Samsara soars 15% after hours — beat, raise, and a record 20 million-dollar customers

    Structure

    IOT

    What
    Samsara earned $0.20 a share against $0.16 expected, a 25% beat, on revenue of $508.4 million against about $483.3 million, up 30% from a year ago. Annual recurring revenue crossed $2.1 billion, growing 30% for a third straight quarter, and the company added a record 20 customers paying more than $1 million a year. It guided the current quarter to $514–516 million against $509.7 million expected and raised its full-year revenue forecast to $2.043–2.047 billion from $2.005–2.013 billion. The stock rose 13% to 15% after hours, to about $44, from a 38.75 close.
    If
    The gain survives to Wednesday’s close, September 9, when the reaction gets its final grade (Monday is Labor Day); anything above 39.91 counts as a win on our card.
    Why
    Samsara went in marked down 5.8% on Wednesday and delivered faster growth on the two lines the market is paying for this week, a bigger customer base and a raised forecast; on a record that has never once produced a mild reaction, the overnight read is a sixth win in eleven.
    Then
    The full card, with all ten prior reactions and the entry level, is on the print record.

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  2. Zscaler: a 10% spike, then nothing — the beat that went flat

    Structure

    ZS

    What
    Zscaler earned $1.19 a share against $1.09 expected on revenue of $898.2 million against about $877 million, up 25%; recurring revenue grew 25% to $3.77 billion and the operating margin hit a record 24%. It guided the current quarter to $935–939 million against $926.8 million expected and fiscal 2027 to $4.86–4.90 a share on $3.91–3.94 billion, against $4.58 and $3.89 billion. The stock, which had closed up 2.9% at 177.80, jumped to $196 in the first minutes of after-hours trading, then fell back to about $180, roughly 1% higher, by the time the call ended. The one soft number was free cash flow, $60.8 million against $171.9 million a year ago, as capital spending nearly tripled.
    If
    The stock closes above 183.13 on Wednesday, September 9 — the window opens from 177.80, and anything under 172.47 counts as sold.
    Why
    Zscaler has beaten expectations eleven quarters in a row and been punished for the last four; a rally of 24% over three months into the print left it priced for exactly what it delivered, and a forecast that merely confirmed 16–17% growth for next year was not the acceleration this market is paying for.
    Then
    The full card, with the last four reactions (−0.1%, −16.0%, −7.6%, −24.3%), is on the print record.

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  3. Market X-Ray The market-structure toolbox — regime, dispersion and stress on one surface. Open the X-Ray →

  4. Bitcoin tops $81,000 — its highest close in almost four months

    Context

    IBIT

    What
    Bitcoin rose 5.5% to $81,491, its first close above $80,000 in September and its highest since early May, after two sessions stuck between $77,000 and $78,000; it briefly traded above $82,000 overnight and sits near $80,970 this morning. The move started at the New York open and accelerated on Waller’s comments; about $164 million of bets against bitcoin were forcibly closed in four hours against $7 million of bets on it, so short-covering carried much of the day. The iShares bitcoin ETF IBIT rose 5.9% to 46.35. US spot bitcoin ETFs took in $101 million on Wednesday after a $236 million outflow the day before. Ether gained 5.3% to $2,513; the whole crypto market rose 5.2% to $2.74 trillion. Bitcoin is still down 8.8% for the year.
    If
    Bitcoin holds $80,000 through the jobs report — the chart level that matters next is about $82,800, above which the 2026 high near $98,000 comes into view.
    Why
    Bitcoin has traded as the most rate-sensitive risk asset all summer; a day when hike odds drop 13 points and the dollar falls for a third day is exactly the day it should lead, and it did.
    Then
    Our cointegration monitor flags the bitcoin-vs-Nasdaq relationship as breaking down, with bitcoin now running two standard deviations ahead of what the tech index would predict; watch whether stocks catch up or bitcoin gives it back.

    Open the detail →

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C · point 11 · members

Today in point 11: the cleanest pair of the season — Samsara and Zscaler reported nearly identical quarters and got opposite receptions, and why the ten-minute spike to $196 and full retreat to $180 is the whole week’s rule in one after-hours chart; how Thursday’s daytime market reversed HPE’s overnight verdict (−12% at the low, +5% at the close) while Broadcom ended a dollar above its sold line; why the market’s best day in a month was itself a marked-down asset being paid on the second derivative of rate expectations, and what that means for the first jobs report of the Warsh Fed at 08:30 ET; bitcoin’s squeeze to $81,491 and the two-standard-deviation gap to the Nasdaq our monitor now shows; and the software-over-chips rotation showing up on our own indices, AW40 +2.1% against a flat Rubin, with four scorecards closing at today’s bell.

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