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.
1 · The signal — the axis turned
For two years the argument inside technology was software versus semis. That axis is gone. The market is now sorting tech against everything else — and paying for growth that has no AI inside it.
Read the three windows together. The year is still tech: the Nasdaq 100 is +16.3% for 2026, its ex-technology sibling +5.2%, the technology sector fund +27.6%. The month and the quarter are not. Over one month the Nasdaq 100 ex-tech is +6.0% against the Nasdaq 100’s +0.6%; the S&P 500 ex-tech is +2.7% against the S&P’s +2.3%. Over three months, +6.0% against −0.1%. And the week finished the sentence: ex-tech +0.49%, the Nasdaq 100 −2.41%; health care +4.33%, technology −3.53%.
The ratio above is the whole thesis in one line. Nasdaq-100 ex-technology over the Nasdaq-100 fell for nineteen years, made its all-time low on 15 June 2026, and has lifted twelve percent off it since. Nothing in that line says the AI trade is over. It says the marginal dollar of growth capital has, for the first time since 2022, found a reason to be somewhere else — and that is the definition of a regime change, not a correction.
The same test on the broad index: S&P 500 ex-tech over the S&P 500 is +2.7% against +2.3% on the month and +4.2% against +3.1% on the quarter. Equal-weight confirms it from underneath — the equal-weight S&P is +4.2% on the month and +8.3% on the quarter against the cap-weighted +3.1%; the equal-weight Nasdaq 100 +10.5%. Breadth is not a problem in this tape. Concentration is being unwound, in favour of the names that never had the AI multiple.
2 · Growth with no tech inside — the names and the index
This is the part of the rotation that matters for a growth investor, because it is not a flight to utilities. The HALO 100 — the house index for growth leaders, with a large non-AI share by construction — closed the week +0.01%, +6.6% on the month, and sits 2.0% below its January high. The AI complex around it did not: Rubin Build-Out −7.27%, the Agentic Ecosystem Index −6.46%, Euro-AI −3.45%. One growth index flat, three AI indices down six to seven points in the same five sessions — the cleanest single-week separation the house board has printed.
The names carrying it are not a sector. Tempus AI +39.52% on the week (+48.4% on the month), Freeport +15.30%, Illumina +14.94%, Celsius +14.68%, Uranium Energy +13.83%, e.l.f. +11.48%, Chipotle +10.15%, Robinhood — the Chart Pick — +13.15%. Diagnostics, copper, genomics, energy drinks, uranium, cosmetics, restaurants, brokerage. The common thread is growth, not silicon. Software is the exception that proves the rule: the software fund is +12.6% on the month while the semis are down, which is the old axis resolving inside the new one — capital leaving the compute layer is stopping first at the software layer on its way out of tech.
Health care is the largest expression. The US health-care fund +4.33% on the week, +9.0% on the month, +17.9% on the quarter; the global health-care fund +4.34% and +13.5%. Against technology the line has turned from the bottom of its range:
Materials is the second. The US materials fund +1.90% on the week and +6.9% on the month; the global materials fund +4.86% and +11.4%, +22.0% for the year — at its own one-month high and ahead of every technology cut on the board. Materials and health care are the two sectors where this week’s leadership and the month’s leadership are the same sectors. That is what “may lead” looks like before it is obvious.
Energy is a story on its own and should be read as one. The energy fund +2.79% this week after +7.67% the week before, +8.8% on the month, +43.3% for the year; oil +6.35% on the week and +94.7% for 2026. That is not a rotation out of tech. It is a supply story with a geopolitical floor under it, and it was leading before the axis turned. Put it on the board, but do not add it to the growth-without-tech column — it is a different bet, and the reader deserves to know which one they are making.
The house expression for the growth-without-tech column is the fourth wikifolio, The Compound — non-tech growth, tradable later this year. This week is the kind of week it was built for.
3 · End of hibernation — gold, bitcoin, and a weaker dollar
The 2025 stars are back, and they are back together. Gold +5.45% on the week, +13.0% on the month, +6.8% for 2026 — at a one-month high after a spring spent doing nothing. Silver +7.25% and +18.2%. Copper’s largest miner +15.30%. Uranium +2.54% and +14.5% on the month.
Bitcoin ended its own hibernation loudest. The spot fund +22.59% in five sessions — the year-long channel broke on Thursday the 20th at 41.20 and the week closed at 43.68, with bitcoin at 78,000 — still −12.0% for the year, which is the point: this is a turn from a low, not a high. Against the S&P 500 the line has done what the health-care line did, from the other end of the risk spectrum.
Under all of it, the dollar. The dollar index fund −0.75% on the week and −2.0% on the month; the DXY −0.83% on the week to 98.84. A weakening dollar is the common cause that makes a materials week, a gold week and a bitcoin week the same week — and it is the reason a regional table in dollars (the world ex-US at a record) and a local-currency table (Europe red in local terms, flat in dollars) can tell different stories at once. The axis turned in the equity market; the dollar is what is tilting it.
4 · The boards — what led, and what may lead
Two tables, generated from the data. First the S&P 500 sectors, week first.
S&P 500 sectorFundWeek1 month3 months2026Health CareXLV+4.33%+9.0%+17.9%+13.3%EnergyXLE+2.79%+8.8%+7.6%+43.3%MaterialsXLB+1.90%+6.9%+7.0%+18.6%Cons. StaplesXLP−0.12%+2.3%+1.6%+11.3%Cons. DiscretionaryXLY−0.15%+2.7%−0.6%−1.0%Real EstateXLRE−0.42%−0.3%+1.3%+12.5%FinancialsXLF−1.17%+2.4%+11.1%+5.5%CommunicationXLC−1.37%+1.2%−4.0%−5.1%IndustrialsXLI−3.36%+0.9%+5.7%+16.5%UtilitiesXLU−3.48%−4.8%−5.0%+0.9%TechnologyXLK−3.53%+1.4%+2.8%+27.6%
SPDR sector funds, close-to-close · week = Aug 14 → Aug 21 · 2026 from Dec 31 close.
Health care, energy and materials on top; technology, utilities and industrials at the bottom. Read it with the month and the quarter columns: health care and materials are top-three on all three windows except the year — which is the definition of leadership that is new rather than old. Technology leads the year and nothing else.
Then the global sector engine — eleven sectors, four regions, the week.
Sector · week (5d)USEuropeAsia-Pac DMEMUS · 1mHealth Care+4.3%+4.3%+2.2%+0.8%+8.2%Energy+2.8%−0.9%+3.7%+1.3%+7.2%Materials+1.9%−1.4%−3.2%+1.1%+6.5%Cons. Staples−0.1%−1.3%−0.8%+1.3%+3.3%Cons. Discretionary−0.2%+0.1%+0.5%+1.2%+8.5%Real Estate−0.4%−0.9%+0.9%+1.8%+0.3%Financials−1.2%+0.3%−3.6%+0.8%+3.0%Communication−1.4%−1.3%−2.8%+1.4%+5.7%Industrials−3.4%−2.0%−2.5%+0.4%−0.9%Utilities−3.5%−0.8%+4.5%+1.3%−7.4%Technology−3.5%+1.4%−5.4%−1.4%+2.7%
Global Sector Engine, snapshot 2026-08-23 · 5-day returns per region, US 1-month at right · EM approximated from country funds.
Health care is green in all four regions — the only sector that is. Technology is red in three. Energy leads Asia. Materials is a US story this week, not yet a global one. If the turn is a regime and not a pause, the next thing the board should show is materials and health care going green across the regions the way health care already has.
5 · The two questions ahead
First: does the turn survive the referee? Nvidia reports on Wednesday the 26th — consensus $2.09 a share on $92.0 billion — and Jackson Hole runs Thursday to Saturday with Warsh speaking Friday. Those two events are a catalyst in either direction and we will not pretend otherwise. A clean Nvidia print and a dovish Jackson Hole can pull capital straight back into the compute layer and make this week look like a pause; a print that is merely fine, into a market that is already rotating, can confirm the turn. The test is not the headline but the second session after it: whether health care and materials hold their gains while the semis rally, or give them back.
Second: does the dollar’s slide turn the thaw into a trend? What to watch, with levels: the DXY below 98.5 and the dollar fund extending its one-month decline; the bitcoin fund holding above 44.5 (it closed at 43.68); gold holding its one-month break at 423.36; and the health-care-over-technology line not giving back the June turn. Three of four would say trend. One of four says pause.
The calendar argues for patience rather than prophecy. The period from the last week of August into October is the seasonally weakest stretch of the equity year, and a rotation out of the most crowded trade into the least crowded is exactly the kind of move that can run through a weak season — because it does not need the index to go up. If the turn is real, it should still be visible in October. If it is not, it will have been a two-week mean reversion with a Nvidia print in the middle. We will score it Sunday by Sunday.
6 · The count
Nothing on the count resolved this week, and that is itself a reading. The Nasdaq 100 holds its potential third-of-a-third-of-a-third — possible, not resolved — with the lines unchanged at 694 below and 746 above, and the week’s −2.41% took it closer to the lower line than the upper. The world ex-US index, counted as inside a third of a third, held its record and did not extend it. The rotation we are describing sits inside both counts: a regime change in leadership, not yet a regime change in direction.
Scorecards due: Walmart on Tuesday the 25th (the comps that were punished), Nvidia on the 26th, and the Chart Pick — Robinhood, +13.15% in week one — scores on the 28th. The bond market’s witness statement remains unsigned for a fifth week. Hold both sides: the record is real, the turn is real, and neither has been confirmed by the instrument that confirms things. Probability, not prophecy. We score it next Sunday.
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