The Axis Turned

One signal to define the week and shape the month. Three minutes, six questions. Every Sunday at 21:00 CET — scored the next.

23 August 2026 · closes through Aug 21.

0 · Last week, scored

Verdict: both questions answered no — and the no is the signal.

Last Sunday asked whether Japan would join the Asian trifecta on the memory bid. It did not. Japan was −3.09% on the week, the Nikkei −3.93%, and the two leaders gave back part of their bull-market week — Korea −0.78% after +8.22% the week before, Taiwan −2.59%. The trifecta is still a duo with a bystander, and the concentration we flagged is exactly what the week tested.

The second question was whether global technology would reclaim its July high or fail at the corrective line a second time. It failed. The US technology fund closed at 183.31, −3.53% on the week and 7.4% below its 2 June top; the Nasdaq 100 fund closed 713.44 against a 746 high. The semiconductor leg did the damage — equal-weight chips −8.46%, the chip majors −4.66%, the broad semi index −5.52% — and the Rubin Build-Out 100 gave back 7.3% in five sessions and now sits 21.0% below its June high.

The referee we named did not move. The seven-to-ten-year Treasury fund closed at 92.82, a second failure at the 93.17 line it reclaimed and lost two weeks ago. The bond market has now declined to countersign the equity market for a fifth week. The world ex-US index held its record — 85.69 against the 85.85 close of Monday the 17th — and was flat on the week (+0.01%) while the all-world fund was −0.91% and the S&P 500 −1.37%. Holding a record while the US falls is not nothing; it is the ex-US story continuing under a different headline.