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Weekly Recap: August 14, 2026

This Week's Market

A cooling inflation week that gave risk assets room to run. July CPI rose 0.1% on the month, putting annual headline at 3.4% and core at 2.5%, both down from June. Futures rose on the Wednesday release and Treasury yields went negative across the board. Thursday's PPI print confirmed the direction and pulled back expectations for a September Fed hike, with the Nasdaq adding 0.8% and the S&P gaining 0.7% to close at 7,800. Two soft prints back to back is a trend-following tape, not a fading one, and it kept a steady bid under AI names all week.

Good Trade

SMCI, trend continuation. Price was holding above the 9 EMA in a clean uptrend with the CPI tape bidding AI names, so the plan was simple: enter with the trend and trail behind it. Long at $36.10 at 12:51 PM with the hard stop set and the exit condition said out loud before entry. Price pushed straight up and the position came off in two fills at 1:00 PM, 200 shares at $36.99 and 300 at $36.95, for a blended exit near $36.97. That is $0.87 per share, about 2.4%, in nine minutes. It was not flawless. After adding size I forgot to update the stop quantity, which left roughly 500 shares sitting there unprotected. I caught it quickly and closed the runner before the loose stop could cost anything, but the lesson stands: a scale-in is not finished until the stop matches the new position size.

Bad Trade

INTC, VWAP rejection short. The setup looked right. Price broke below VWAP in a confirmed downtrend with the 9 EMA rolling over, and the first fill at $97.74 went green fast, which built conviction. I added 200 shares at $97.58. The whole thesis depended on a decisive break and hold below $97.50, and that break never came. The floor holding at $97.50 was the trade telling me it was over, and that was the moment to cover. Instead I waited, and got out at $98.33 only when a volume spike from roughly 100k to 500k launched price toward $98.50. Final damage was $0.66 per share, about 0.7%, and I held roughly $0.80 past my own exit signal to get it. The bias at work is sunk cost, refusing to accept that the thesis is already dead and hoping the level you needed still prints. The fix is mechanical: put the exit at the thesis level, not somewhere past the spike.

What to Watch

  • Exit when the thesis fails, not when the P&L does. INTC's thesis died the moment $97.50 held. Place the stop at the level that invalidates the idea so the failure closes you out instead of your patience running out.
  • Every scale-in is incomplete until the stop is resized. SMCI's add left 500 shares uncovered. A stop that does not match position size is not protecting the trade. Resize it before doing anything else.
  • Trade the plan, not the churn. The two setups that had a written thesis behaved. The forced off-plan re-entries around them are what bled. No thesis means no trade, even when the screen is right in front of you.
  • Trend continuation above the 9 EMA stays valid while a supportive macro tape holds the bid. It stops being valid the moment price loses the 9 EMA, and that is not the time to force the long into a fade.

Share counts and per-share figures are shown to illustrate how each trade was managed, not as a suggested position size. Scale any example to your own account and your own risk. This is trade review and education, not financial advice.