The week software sold its earnings and semis bought theirs

The cloud-software ETF returned 4.68 points less than the semiconductor ETF over the five sessions, a spread at the 5th percentile of 3,810 days in the pair's record. The index that holds both finished the week +0.1%.

The spread was made by earnings. GWRE fell 21.1%, MongoDB 17.4%, Autodesk 16.4% and UiPath 16.3%, each after a report. On the other side SNDK rose 17.2% and Dell 15.0% after its own.

Two weeks ago this issue reported software leading the upside inside a flat index. The same group led the downside this week on the same kind of catalyst, which is the reason to call it a rotation rather than a verdict on either group.

Leveraged funds bought back 27,140 contracts of E-mini Nasdaq-100 exposure, taking the group's COT index from 38.1 to 81.9 in one report. Against 1,054 weekly changes that is the 92nd percentile by size. The position is still net short, 14,092 contracts, but most of it was covered.

Small caps went the other way. The same group added 11,799 contracts to its E-mini Russell 2000 short, taking that COT index to 2.6, within a few points of the most short the record holds. The net position is 109,499 contracts short, 25.8% of open interest.

In rates the picture split as well: 71,837 contracts of 10-Year shorts were covered while 35,281 contracts were added to the 2-Year short, whose COT index sits at 98.7. Large caps and the long end were bought; small caps and the front end were sold.

Monday's session did most of it. Edison International fell 23.1% on August 31, a 14.2σ day against its own history, and PG&E fell 20.1%, 11.9σ. Over the five sessions Edison closed at 56.77 against 70.17 a week earlier, −19.1%, and PG&E at 14.30 against 16.60, −13.9%.

The driver is legislative. An amended wildfire-liability bill, SB 492, was published on August 31; the Assembly let it die on September 1; and on September 2 PG&E announced a strategic review and deferred about two billion dollars of 2027 capital spending, which is the company release this item rests on. The stocks recovered part of Tuesday and gave it back.

Sempra, the third California utility, finished the week close to flat. The market priced a bill about two companies, which is the reason this reads as policy rather than as a sector.

The UK 10-year gilt closed at 5.242% on 2026-09-02, above every reading of the previous ten years. Australia's 10-year closed at 5.22% the same day, also above its ten-year range. Japan's 10-year crossed 3% for the first time since 1996 on the same session, which was Thursday's Chart of the Day.

Three long-bond markets on three continents setting decade highs in one week is the kind of confirmation the selection bar asks for. It says the repricing of long duration is not an American story about deficits; it is a global story about term premium, and the US long end, which made its own record low in price three weeks ago, is part of it rather than the cause of it.

CNH Industrial closed at 14.40 against 11.68 a week earlier, +23.3%, on five-session volume 4.5 times its prior quarter's average, and at a fresh 52-week high. AGCO rose +17.6% and Deere +10.0% in the same week.

No company in the group published anything in the week that explains the move. A broker upgrade of CNH dated August 31 is in the record, and it is not the kind of source this issue treats as a catalyst. What the evidence supports is narrower: an entire equipment group repriced together on heavy volume, which is a sector event with no company document behind it yet.

Last week's tripwire asked whether the share of stocks above their ten-day average would recover 50%. It went from 38.88% to 47.04%: most of the way, and short. The Tape score moved from 48 to 56 on the same inputs. The slower horizons did not join; the 200-day share slipped from 53.62% to 52.90%.

Sentiment went the other way. Fear & Greed fell from 49.66 to 45.58, still neutral, while the index finished +0.1% and dispersion sat at the 76th percentile of its history. A tape that recovers while the mood cools is the opposite of last week's pairing, and the honest read is that neither measure has settled.

Ultragenyx closed at 15.30 against 25.61 a week earlier, −40.3%. A fall of 44.0% came on 2026-09-03, a 10.4σ session, two days after the company announced the publication of 96-week Phase 3 data for its glycogen-storage-disease gene therapy.

The release is the company’s own and the data it describes are positive on the study’s terms, which is what makes the move worth recording: a name that sat at the top of the unusual-options rankings on the call side into the week, and lost two fifths of its value on a publication it called successful. The market disagreed with the adjective.