Thursday, August 13, 2026

Market Regime: MILDLY BULLISH QNTM's regime overlay reads Mildly Bullish. With VIX near 14.6, equity risk appetite remains intact even as geopolitical and inflation crosscurrents build underneath the surface.

Conviction: 49.9/100 A near-neutral composite (only 3.0% of the 1,422-name universe screens "high conviction") suggests QNTM's model sees a market without a clear, broad-based edge today — leadership is narrow rather than universal.

On the calendar today The main event is the July Producer Price Index at 8:30 a.m. ET, scheduled for release at 8:30 a.m. ET, with economists polled by Dow Jones expecting the index to increase 0.2% from the prior month. A $42 billion 10-year Treasury auction is also on tap today. Earnings include Brookfield (BN), NetEase (NTES), JD.com (JD), Tapestry (TPR), Applied Materials (AMAT), and Nu Holdings (NU).

Overnight & premarket

Stock futures edged higher and oil prices fell as investors awaited the inflation report; Cerebras (CBRS) tumbled 19% in premarket trading after missing Wall Street's second-quarter revenue estimate, while Cisco Systems (CSCO) and Coherent (COHR) were also falling. On oil, crude fell toward $82 a barrel, snapping a five-day advance as investors assessed prospects for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Trump said the US had "total control" over the waterway amid escalating rhetoric with Tehran, with negotiations deadlocked, and the administration is moving toward tighter sanctions on Iran.

What to watch 1. Whether PPI confirms yesterday's tame CPI or reignites hot-inflation fears (QNTM flags "inflation_hot"). 2. Iran/Strait-of-Hormuz headlines — a war-escalation tag is live in the macro overlay, and oil remains sensitive to any blockade or strike news. 3. AI/hardware earnings reaction (Cerebras, Applied Materials) as a read on tech breadth given QNTM's thin 3% high-conviction pool.

Educational research only — not investment advice.