Weekly Market Pulse

Market map: energy and chips up, software and defence down

S&P 500+0.09%Close 7,718.60 on 4 September

Nasdaq-100+0.38%Close 29,544.15

Dow Jones−0.27%Close 53,414.25

VIX14.53Weekly high 16.34 on 1 September

XLE +2.20%XLK +0.86%XLU +0.82%XLV +0.17%XLF 0.00%XLC −0.85%XLI −1.06%XLY −1.96%

SPY daily chartOpen on Finviz

Four of the eleven sector trackers finished the week higher and the largest single move in the map was energy. The three weakest sleeves were consumer discretionary, real estate and materials, and outside the sector map aerospace and defence lost more than three per cent. That is a market rewarding real assets and cash flows priced off commodities, not one rewarding duration.

Weekly change is computed close to close between 28 August and 4 September 2026 from the Marketstack end-of-day series, which is the paid market-data source used across Merlintrader. The Friday column is shown separately so a single session is never mistaken for the week.

Cross-asset map: the oil move had no equivalent anywhere else

The cross-asset picture is unusually one-sided. Crude and the oil equity complex rose, everything with duration fell slightly, and gold and silver both lost ground in a week with a shipping crisis in the Gulf. Precious metals falling while crude rises nine per cent argues that the market read the week as a supply event with rate consequences, not as a generic flight to safety.

One line deserves to be read on its own. Aerospace and defence lost three per cent in a week in which a shipping lane carrying a fifth of the world’s seaborne crude was disrupted. Whatever the market was pricing in that sleeve, it was not a straightforward conflict premium, and any reading that assumes otherwise is contradicted by the tape.

Sessions in review: 31 August – 4 September

The week was a round trip with a very uneven interior. Monday and Tuesday took the indexes down about one per cent, Wednesday and Thursday took it all back, and Friday gave part of it away after the payroll release. Application software fell in four of the five sessions.

Index changes are computed on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 index levels; small caps, semiconductors and software use the IWM, SMH and IGV closes. All values recomputed close to close from the Marketstack end-of-day series.

Macro: a firmer labour market, expanding surveys and a curve that moved a little higher

The August Employment Situation

Nonfarm payroll employment rose 162,000 in August against an average monthly gain of 31,000 over the prior twelve months, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.1%, with 7.0 million people unemployed. The composition matters as much as the total. Food services and drinking places added 59,000 jobs and local government education added 42,000, largely offsetting a decline in the prior month. Manufacturing continued its upward trend at +16,000 and is up 58,000 since a recent low in December 2025. Information employment fell 23,000, with losses in computing infrastructure providers, data processing and web hosting (−8,000), publishing (−7,000) and broadcasting and content providers (−5,000).

Average hourly earnings rose 10 cents, or 0.3%, to $37.75, and are up 3.1% over the year. The labour force participation rate edged up to 61.6% but is down half a point since January. June was revised up 11,000 to +31,000 and July up 44,000 to +21,000, so the two prior months together are 55,000 higher than previously reported. The number of people employed part time for economic reasons fell 414,000 to 4.4 million.

The two ISM surveys

Manufacturing expanded for an eighth consecutive month, with the PMI at 54.6% in August against 55.6% in July. New orders fell 3.0 points to 53.7 and backlogs fell 3.2 points to 51.8, both still in expansion; production was almost unchanged at 58.3 and employment cooled 1.6 points to 51.2. The services survey went the other way: the Services PMI rose 1.3 points to 55.4%, its 26th month of expansion, with business activity at 61.7 and new orders at 60.9, while the employment index contracted for a second consecutive month at 47.8.

The two employment sub-indexes point in opposite directions and neither of them is the payroll survey. Reading them together, the August picture is one of firm activity with hiring that is no longer broad-based, which is exactly the combination that keeps a policy debate open rather than closing it.

The Treasury curve

Yields drifted higher across the curve. The two-year moved from 4.34% on 28 August to 4.37% on 4 September, the ten-year from 4.73% to 4.78% and the thirty-year from 5.22% to 5.24%. The gap between the two-year and the ten-year widened from 39 to 41 basis points. These are small weekly moves; the larger repricing happened earlier, with the two-year up from 3.38% at the end of February.

What the Federal Reserve has already said

The Committee left the target range for the federal funds rate at 3.50% to 3.75% on 29 July 2026, by a nine to three vote. Beth M. Hammack, Neel Kashkari and Lorie K. Logan voted against, preferring to raise the target range by a quarter point at that meeting. The statement described economic activity as expanding at a solid pace despite elevated uncertainty that owes, in part, to the conflict in the Middle East, said inflation remains elevated relative to the 2% goal in part reflecting supply shocks that have driven price increases in certain sectors including energy, and closed with the sentence “The Committee will deliver price stability.” The next decision is on 16 September.

Earnings: the widest single-name dispersion of the quarter

Nine companies of size reported between Monday and Thursday and the share reactions ranged from plus fifteen per cent to minus twenty-one per cent on the week. The operating figures below come from each company’s own release or its Form 8-K exhibit. The weekly share move is a separate market observation, computed close to close, and is not presented as a single-cause explanation of the result.

Three of these companies raised full-year guidance and still fell. MongoDB raised its fiscal 2027 revenue outlook by seventy million dollars and lost 17.44% on the week; UiPath raised revenue, ARR and operating income and lost 16.31%; Zscaler beat every line of its own May guidance and lost 7.83% after issuing a first fiscal 2027 outlook implying growth of roughly seventeen per cent against twenty-five per cent delivered. Whatever is being repriced in enterprise software this year is not the current quarter.

A note on one figure that is often quoted and is not disclosed. MongoDB publishes only the growth rate of Atlas revenue, approximately 29% year on year, and its share of total revenue, 73% in the quarter from the Form 10-Q. The company does not publish an Atlas revenue figure in dollars, so any absolute number in circulation is a third-party calculation and not a company disclosure.

Biotech: no confirmed regulatory decision date fell in this week

Between 28 August and 11 September there is no Prescription Drug User Fee Act target date, advisory committee meeting or other confirmed regulatory decision date in the Merlintrader register of catalysts verified on primary sources. The eight approvals of the second half of August — Ultragenyx, Regeneron, Jazz and Zymeworks, Revolution Medicines, Gilead, Roivant and Protagonist — had all been decided before this window opened. The sector traded accordingly and without a company-specific driver: equal-weight biotech gained 0.88% and large-cap biotech 1.40%, both roughly in line with the index.

One advisory committee follows immediately after: the FDA has scheduled a meeting on 23 September to discuss the GRAIL Galleri multi-cancer early detection test. Advisory committee recommendations are not binding on the agency.

Verified calendar: 7 – 11 September

United States markets are closed on Monday 7 September for Labor Day. All times are U.S. Eastern Time and come from the issuing agency’s own release schedule or the company’s own announcement. Schedules can change, and the linked primary source remains controlling.

Verification sources and methodology

Prices, index levels and every percentage change in this edition are computed close to close from the Marketstack end-of-day series, the paid market-data source used across Merlintrader, on 4 September 2026. Treasury yields come from the Department of the Treasury daily yield curve. Every operating figure comes from the company’s own release or its Form 8-K exhibit on the Securities and Exchange Commission site. Macro figures come from the issuing agency.

• BLS, The Employment Situation, August 2026
• BLS, release schedule for September 2026
• U.S. Treasury, daily yield curve rates
• Federal Reserve, FOMC statement of 29 July 2026
• ISM Manufacturing PMI, August 2026
• ISM Services PMI, August 2026
• Broadcom Q3 FY2026, Form 8-K exhibit
• Dell Technologies Q2 FY2027, Form 8-K exhibit
• Snowflake Q2 FY2027, Form 8-K exhibit
• Guidewire Q4 and FY2026 results
• Lululemon Q2 2026, Form 8-K exhibit
• Zscaler Q4 and FY2026, Form 8-K exhibit
• Zscaler Form 8-K, Item 2.05 restructuring
• MongoDB Q2 FY2027, Form 8-K exhibit
• UiPath Q2 FY2027, Form 8-K exhibit
• Telix filing with the Pixclara target action date

Transparency boundary

No sell-side consensus, price target or probability of approval is used anywhere in this edition. No regulatory date is retained unless it appears on a primary source. Where a company does not disclose a figure, the absence is stated rather than filled with a third-party estimate. Market interpretation is kept separate from confirmed facts, and every interpretive paragraph is written as such.