Meta clears 730 as CPUs outrun GPUs
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All four indexes rose. Tech carried the tape.
All four indexes finished green Monday. SPX closed 7,765, up 1.5%. Nasdaq closed 27,122, up 2.3%. The Dow gained 0.7% and the Russell 0.5%. Technology and consumer discretionary led. Energy, staples, and utilities lagged. Communication services rose 3.6% with META. The tape looks cleaner. Stability still needs a few more sessions. September and October volatility is not finished. Connect is still ahead, and the midterms will put more on the table later.
The S&P still sits in that 7,000 to 8,500 swing range. Monday opened some room toward the top of the band. It did not pick a side. Extend-then-fade and fade-then-extend are both still live.
Meta cleared 730. The short-term repair is not done.
META was the switch. It opened 680, high 753, low 680, and closed 741, up 11.3%. Friday was still repairing inside 656 to 680. Monday gapped and ran through 690 to 730 in one move. 730 was the last strong supply. Through it, the structure is cleaner and the map looks to the prior high. That high and the Wells Fargo target sit near 796. The close is among the strongest prints since October 2025. The old high is still a gap.
Wells Fargo raised the target from 640 to 796 and kept Overweight. The note landed before Connect: new products and early traction in the Muse assistant give the company a story again. Muse launched September 8 and reached No. 1 on the US Apple free chart within about two weeks. Shopping, calls, subscriptions, travel — packed as a consumer agent, with payments and safety layered in. High-frequency usage is still an expectation, not booked revenue. Connect is September 23–24. Usage numbers are not out yet. A big-bank raise can trigger passive buying, the same mechanism as last week’s Wells Fargo cut on NFLX, just the other way. After 680 broke, discretionary buying stacked on top. Passive plus active produced the 11% bar.
Friday did not finish the short-term repair. Monday did not either. The bearish divergence is still there. The tape is now overbought plus divergence. The repair is still two paths: extend first, then fade, or fade first, then go. The destination is still the prior high. The road is different. Hold 638 and treat it as a right-side structure. 690 to 730 is turning into the new support band. The 500 long-term chip is gone for now. Anyone who built inside 500 to 700 can sit with time. Do not trade a long-term book like a day trade at 741. If 730 is given back around Connect, the short-term map has to be redrawn.
CPUs ran harder than GPUs. AMD tagged a new high.
A personal agent like Muse looks more like a cloud PC left on, drawing CPU, memory, and storage, not a one-shot GPU answer. That is the read on why CPUs outran GPUs today. The evidence is relative strength, not a new order print. AMD closed 616, up 10.0%, high 617, a new high. Friday was still mapping 585. Monday took that high out. The 528 break was already in last week. Today was acceleration. Forward valuation at 556 is already rich. Overbought can stay overbought. That does not mean it has to drop tomorrow. Holders can wait for a stall before cutting. Do not dump the first large green bar. Lose 528, and this new-high structure has to be redrawn.
INTC closed 122, up 12.1%, high 125. It is still inside 106 to 124. 127 to 135 is the next supply. ARM rose 17.2%. NVDA rose only 2.3% and closed 227. GPUs did not break. They also did not lead. CPU expectations got pulled forward. Rivals will ship similar agents, so the narrative can last a while. Calling this a capex pivot is early.
QQQ cleared 724. SOXX is in the supply zone.
QQQ opened 728, gapped through last week’s 724, high 743, closed 741, up 2.8%. The 724 gate is open. The one-year high is about 749. The session high at 743 is still a step short. Mag 7 in gear, chips strong, software not dragging — the index has little to do but look at the old high. A breakout is not a one-way melt-up. Retail likes the grind. Hedge funds like the whip. September and October volatility is not done. After the break, plan for a pullback.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose 4.3%. SOXX opened 545, high 562, closed 559, up 4.9%. Friday left the 520 box on volume and closed 533. Monday kept going and entered the 550 to 577 supply zone. Friday’s breakout entry already has a short-term profit. Chasing the close is a worse risk/reward. A pullback into Friday’s body, back toward 533, is still an add, not a breakdown. If 577 goes, the S&P can move higher faster. 655 remains the cycle high to watch. 559 is the lower edge of supply, not the destination.
IGV closed 107.13, high 107.15, back above 107 on rising volume. Hedge funds have bought US software for four straight weeks, and in six of the last eight. Net allocation rose from the February low of 1.3% to 5% of US software net market value, still below about 7% at the start of the year. The one-year percentile is about 66, the five-year about 13. They are adding, not pressing a full-size long. Software and chips did not see-saw this week, which helps QQQ.
Retail’s one-month rolling net buying is fading. The overall bid is still soft. Soft totals do not mean every name is quiet. After the AI-safety warning, CRWD accounted for about 53% of all retail call volume, the 97th percentile, and it is one of the few names with both call buying and net stock buying. In semiconductors, retail cash net buying of SOX members topped $2 billion over the past month, with NVDA about 63% of those inflows. Strip Nvidia out of the past two weeks and retail would have been a net seller of chip stocks. About 19 of 30 names were still bought. This week’s follow-through after Friday’s break may jump those prints again. That is ex-post. Do not treat it as already in.
Global equity inflows last week were about $79.3 billion, with about $63.8 billion into the US, the fastest US clip in three months and a five-week high in net buying. Tech was the largest US net-buy sector for a third week. The dip-buying in the mega-caps showed up last week. Monday confirmed the breaks. The tape feels safer than last week. Stability still has to be earned. IWM closed 286, high 286. 288 is still out. Small caps are no help. Connect, the volatile months, and the midterms are still ahead. QQQ is through 724. SOXX is in 550 to 577. META is through 730. The direction opened. Do not chase the first print in the supply zone.