Biotech Catalysts, Stock Hubs & U.S. Small/Mid-Cap Research

Merlintrader’s Daily Briefing

Thursday, August 13, 2026, evening edition, written with the U.S. session in its final stretch. Wholesale prices did what consumer prices did on Wednesday: nothing. The July producer price index was flat against a consensus that looked for a rise, and the tape kept the same shape it has held all week, with the semiconductor complex carrying the index while the Dow sits still. The counterweight is a batch of earnings that were good on the numbers and bad on the reaction: Cisco, Cerebras and Coherent all beat and all fell. Applied Materials closes the semiconductor equipment reporting season after the bell. Crude gave ground for a second day as the International Energy Agency cut its demand picture for the year. Index and stock levels below are intraday marks taken at about 2:05 p.m. Eastern and will move before the bell.

• $SPY — The S&P 500 tracker is at $776.87, up 0.57%, a third consecutive session of gains that keeps the index within reach of its record.Equities
• $QQQ — The Nasdaq-100 fund is at $732.23, up 1.18%, twice the move of the broad market and the same gap that has defined every session this week.Equities
• $DIA — The Dow tracker is at $537.11, unchanged to a hundredth of a percent. The blue-chip index has now gone four sessions without a direction.Equities
• $SMH — The semiconductor tracker is at $595.40, up 1.81%, again the strongest sector move of the day and again the reason the two headline indices disagree.Semis
• $IWM — Small caps are at $303.28, up 0.19%. The Russell 2000 fund is participating without leading, which has been the pattern since the start of the month.Small caps
• $XBI — Biotech is the exception: the sector fund is at $157.81, down 0.99%, with $IBB at $199.57, down 0.57%.Biotech

• Producer prices — The July producer price index for final demand was unchanged on a seasonally adjusted basis. The Dow Jones consensus looked for a 0.2% rise. Final demand prices edged down 0.1% in June.Macro
• The composition — Final demand goods fell 0.7% while services rose 0.2% and construction advanced 2.2%. Energy prices dropped 3.1% and foods fell 0.9%, which is where the entire offset came from.Macro
• Twelve months — On an unadjusted basis final demand rose 4.7% for the twelve months ended in July.Macro
• Jobless claims — Initial claims were 209,000 in the week ending August 8, an increase of 9,000 from a previous week revised up to 200,000. The four-week moving average held at 199,000.Macro
• Insured unemployment — Continuing claims fell 22,000 to 1,777,000 for the week ending August 1, with the insured unemployment rate unchanged at 1.2%.Macro

• $CSCO — Cisco is at $112.76, down 8.98%, after a record fiscal fourth quarter. Revenue was $17.3 billion, up 18%, with non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.22. Hyperscaler artificial-intelligence infrastructure orders reached $9.3 billion for the fiscal year and management guides to roughly $7.5 billion of related revenue in fiscal 2027. Adjusted gross margin fell to 66.3% from 68.4% as hardware took a larger share of the mix.Earnings
• $CBRS — Cerebras is at $227.72, down 13.10%, after a second quarter that missed on revenue. UBS lifted its price target to $330 and called the reaction a buying opportunity, while other desks trimmed.AI
• $COHR — Coherent is at $335.18, down 5.75%, despite an artificial-intelligence-driven fourth-quarter beat and raise that prompted Jefferies, Morgan Stanley and Rosenblatt to lift targets as high as $500.Semis
• $TPR — Tapestry is at $129.35, down 15.86%. The company beat fiscal fourth-quarter estimates and announced a $1.7 billion shareholder return plan with $1.35 billion of buybacks and a 16% dividend increase, but the guidance disappointed.Consumer
• Elsewhere in earnings — $STUB is at $7.39, down 13.52%, with second-quarter revenue up 33% on World Cup demand and a raised gross-merchandise outlook but unchanged adjusted profit guidance. $BIRK is at $41.40, up 12.70%, after raising full-year growth guidance to 15%.Earnings

• $AMAT — Applied Materials reports fiscal third-quarter results after the bell, with the call at 4:30 p.m. Eastern. Company guidance put revenue at a midpoint of $8.95 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share at $3.36; consensus sits near $9.0 billion and $3.38. The stock is at $559.62, up 2.09%.Semis
• What it settles — Management has projected more than 30% growth in semiconductor equipment and more than 50% in packaging for 2026. This is the last of the equipment names to report and the one that either confirms or breaks that framing.Semis

• $OMER — Omeros is at $17.01, up 24.07%, the largest move in the sector today. Second-quarter revenue was $28.5 million with earnings per share of $0.15 as the YARTEMLEA launch turned the quarter profitable.Biotech
• $ADCT — ADC Therapeutics is at $1.04, down 15.04%. Second-quarter revenue was $19.2 million, of which $18.6 million was product revenue, and operating expenses fell 29% to $44.7 million. The move came from the regulatory update: after an early-August pre-sBLA meeting, the final minutes record substantial agency concerns over the benefit-risk profile of the Phase 3 LOTIS-5 trial, citing an imbalance in Grade 5 events against what the agency characterised as a marginal treatment benefit. The company says it is reassessing the regulatory path. LOTIS-5 had met its primary endpoint of progression-free survival in June.Biotech
• $ZBIO — Zenas BioPharma is at $28.05, down 10.37%, on a second-quarter loss, and the same release confirmed that the FDA has accepted the obexelimab application in IgG4-related disease with a target action date of May 27, 2027. A European filing is planned for the second half of 2026.PDUFA
• $ABEO — Abeona is at $6.39, down 14.34%. ZEVASKYN revenue rose 31% sequentially to $11.4 million, but management described launch cadence as constrained by operational and manufacturing variability and earnings missed at a loss of $0.35 per share.Biotech