U.S. stocks fell for a third straight session Tuesday as higher long-term bond yields put fresh pressure on richly valued technology names. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.33%, underperforming the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500, while the 30-year U.S. Treasury yield briefly touched 5.338%, its highest level since 2007. The move was part of a wider global bond sell-off that also pushed long-dated yields higher in France, Germany, Japan and the U.K. Markets are increasingly focused on the growing debt burden tied to artificial intelligence expansion. According to figures cited in the report, AI-related bond issuance has reached $489 billion so far this year, well above an earlier full-year 2025 estimate of roughly $322 billion, while The Wall Street Journal reported that nine major technology companies have about $3 trillion in off-balance-sheet AI commitments. That backdrop hit semiconductors, memory, optical communications and AI cloud-service providers especially hard. Investors are also weighing fiscal deficits, oil-driven inflation risks tied to the Iran situation, and a heavy event calendar that includes U.S. tariffs on some Canadian products, a 20-year Treasury auction, Federal Reserve minutes and China’s one-year LPR decision.

Situational Awareness LP, the fund run by Leopold Aschenbrenner, has disclosed its quarterly 13F filing for positions held as of June 30, offering the clearest view yet into the portfolio that preceded its recent collapse. The filing shows a nominal portfolio worth about $20.24 billion spread across 26 positions, but the diversification was mostly superficial: the fund had concentrated more than half of its disclosed exposure in SanDisk and Micron, with much of the rest tied to the same broad thesis around AI infrastructure, including power, advanced manufacturing, cloud compute, data centers, and related capacity buildout. The report also highlights a decisive shift from the prior quarter. In Q1, the fund had held more than $8 billion in put options tied to major chip and storage names and related vehicles, including SMH, NVDA, ORCL, AVGO, AMD, and ASML. By Q2, those downside hedges were gone. At the same time, Micron and SanDisk call options were closed and replaced with large outright equity stakes. According to Odaily, that move turned what had been a hedged structure into an effectively unprotected long book just before a broad selloff in AI and storage names. Weeks earlier, the fund had already suffered major losses as AI-linked stocks retreated and leverage amplified the drawdown, forcing large-scale liquidation of public-market holdings. Odaily said most of the stock portfolio was later sold at a discount to Citadel, the firm founded by Ken Griffin.

Applied Materials reported fiscal third-quarter 2026 results early on Aug. 14, Beijing time, posting revenue of $9.12 billion for the quarter ended July 2026, up 25% year over year and slightly ahead of the $9.02 billion market expectation cited in the source material. Gross margin reached 50.3%, up 0.4 percentage points from the prior quarter and also a touch above the 50.1% expectation. The company said demand was driven by the expansion of AI compute infrastructure, which lifted spending on advanced logic, DRAM and advanced packaging equipment. The operating picture was solid across key lines. Logic revenue came in at $4.72 billion, up 18% quarter over quarter, while DRAM revenue reached $1.83 billion, up 6% sequentially, with customer expansion timing and delivery-cycle mismatches, including cleanroom constraints, affecting the pace. Operating expenses rose to roughly $1.51 billion, with R&D climbing to $1.1 billion. Headcount also increased 7% sequentially after the company had announced a 4% workforce reduction in late October 2025. For fiscal Q4 2026, Applied Materials guided for revenue of $9.75 billion to $10.75 billion and non-GAAP EPS of $3.82 to $4.22, both above the market expectations cited in the article. Still, the source argues that investor disappointment centered on management not explicitly raising its prior view that semiconductor equipment revenue would grow more than 30% in calendar 2026, even as major chipmakers have recently lifted capital spending plans.

Hong Kong-based GF Securities said in its August technology sector report that the July pullback in AI-linked stocks is close to ending, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index seeing its forward P/E fall to 27x and crowded leveraged positions largely cleared out. The firm added AMD, Foxconn and Lumentum to its preferred list while removing United Microelectronics, MediaTek and ASML, arguing that current leadership is concentrated in GPU, CPU and optics rather than mature-node foundry, smartphone chips or front-end lithography. GF Securities also said supply-chain capital is rotating away from memory components toward optical interconnects, with near-packaged optics and co-packaged optics emerging as the next focus. It projected U.S. cloud service providers’ capital expenditure growth at 85% in 2026, 45% in 2027 and about 20% in 2028, while estimating debt issuance at $257 billion in 2026 and $419 billion in 2027. The report said net leverage should still stay around 0.5x by 2029. At the same time, it kept a cautious near-term view on smartphones and warned that NAND oversupply could begin to surface in the second half of 2027.

Bernstein has raised its global wafer fab equipment, or WFE, spending forecasts for 2026 through 2028 and says the current upcycle in chip equipment spending still has room to run. The firm now expects WFE to reach $148 billion in 2026, $204 billion in 2027, and $259 billion in 2028, up from prior estimates of $141 billion, $175 billion, and $198 billion. That implies cumulative growth of 75% over two years. The upgrade spans most applications and regions, but Bernstein said the larger contribution comes from memory outside China and from foundry and logic spending in China. DRAM and NAND are expected to post the fastest growth, outpacing logic and foundry. For 2027, Bernstein forecasts DRAM WFE at $69 billion, NAND at $20 billion, and logic/foundry at $104 billion, each above its earlier projections. The report also points to stronger-than-expected resilience in China. Bernstein forecasts China WFE demand at $57 billion in 2026, $57.3 billion in 2027, and $101 billion in 2028, with a sharp step-up tied to broad capacity expansion across memory, advanced logic, and mature logic. It also said recent pullbacks in semiconductor equipment stocks have created more attractive entry points, while warning that the views, ratings, and price targets cited are those of Bernstein analysts and do not constitute investment advice.

Elon Musk’s TeraFab chip manufacturing plan has moved from a compute-supply story into a lithography debate after speculation that the project may be aligned with a free-electron laser, or FEL, approach to extreme ultraviolet light sources. The discussion gained momentum after Musk posted 「FEL FTW」 on social media, a remark that many read as support for the idea. The core issue is whether FEL can attack one of the most entrenched positions in the semiconductor equipment business: ASML’s dominance in EUV lithography. The article lays out why that question is drawing attention now. ASML’s laser-produced plasma, or LPP, light source enabled commercial EUV, but its limits are becoming more visible as the industry pushes toward 2 nm and below. Conversion efficiency remains low, tin debris contaminates costly mirrors, and power requirements keep rising. FEL backers argue their approach avoids plasma conversion, removes tin-droplet contamination, and could deliver much higher EUV output. xLight, which raised an oversubscribed $40 million Series B in July last year and later brought in former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger as executive chairman, says its system could sharply raise fab productivity. Even so, the broader field remains mixed. ASML is still expanding EUV and DUV output, advancing High-NA EUV, and posting rising sales and profit. At the same time, alternative paths including X-ray lithography, nanoimprint lithography, and electron-beam direct write are also developing, each with different trade-offs in cost, throughput, and manufacturability.

Temasek is preparing a new round of investment in Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, marking the Singapore state-owned investor’s first entry into the South Korean stock market. According to government departments and institutions cited on Aug. 12, Temasek recently decided to invest in the two chipmakers and has already been in contact with the South Korean government to discuss the timing of execution. The firm is said to be handling the trades internally rather than hiring an external asset manager. A financial authority official said Temasek discussed market-entry timing after extreme volatility in the two stocks following approval of single-stock leveraged ETFs. The report said Temasek sees memory semiconductors as one of the most undervalued parts of the artificial intelligence value chain. The fund has been adding exposure across semiconductors, data centers, cloud services, AI model developers and software infrastructure, and plans to raise AI-related assets in its portfolio from 6% to as much as 15% over the next five years.

According to data from MSX.COM, stocks on major US exchanges closed the session on a lower note. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.34 percent, the S&P 500 index fell 0.32 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.6 percent. Meanwhile, the VIX, commonly referred to as the panic index, ended the day down 1.16 percent. In contrast to the broader market, AI-related concept stocks rallied broadly during the trading day. KLA moved up 4.01 percent, Teradyne advanced 3.96 percent, Symbotic gained 3.94 percent, ASML added 3.8 percent, and AeroVironment climbed 3.63 percent. The data for these moves was provided by MSX.COM, described in the report as a leading RWA trading platform. According to the article, MSX has so far listed hundreds of RWA tokens, with coverage spanning popular US stocks and ETF-linked tokenized targets. Specific names cited in the report include Nvidia, GOOGL, MSFT, AMZN, META, TSM, and AMD.