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Communication Services outruns the S&P by 3.2 points while momentum's AI-linked long leg falls 10 to 14%

Monday, September 14, 2026 · as emailed at the close · the live view is always on the dashboard

Market snapshot

S&P 5007,620.25-0.5%
VIX17.1+8%
10-year4.97%+1bp
Breadth38%above 50-day · 70% a month ago

In brief

The story

The move. Communication Services beat the S&P by 3.2 points on the day, a z of +3.0 and the 100th percentile of the trailing year; it is the seventh-best one-session run for the sector since January 2020. The index itself fell 0.48% to 7,620.25, its fourth consecutive session in a week that is down 1.2%, and the VIX rose 8% to 17.10.

The books. Momentum's long-short spread lost 3.6% against the S&P, a z of -2.2 and the 4th percentile of the trailing year. The damage sat in the long leg: Corning -14%, Teradyne -13%, Coherent -13%, Hewlett Packard Enterprise -11% and Lumentum -10%, together 12% of the move, with Technology contributing -2.15 points. Reuters reported that tech stocks slid on AI slowdown talk after top lab CEOs called for slowing the technology's development.

The baskets. The same names run through the 20-session tape. Optical Interconnect is 14.9% behind the S&P over 20 sessions (Ciena -25%, Coherent -18%, Corning -13%), Power and Grid Buildout is 9.6% behind (Generac -19%, GE Vernova -18%, NRG -14%), and Nuclear Renaissance lost 5.8% on the week with Constellation -12%. Cybersecurity went the other way, +6.9% on the week on Palo Alto +12%, CrowdStrike +10% and Fortinet +9%.

The market. Breadth thinned: 38% of the index is above its 50-day average against 70% a month ago, a 20-session change at the 9th percentile since 2020. The 10-year yield closed at 4.97%, up 1bp.

The board · factors vs S&P 500, relative return with z vs the trailing year, sorted by the week

Factor1D5D20DYTD
S&P 500 (computed) absolute-0.4% -0.6σ-1.2% -0.9σ-1.9% -1.1σ+11.9%
Value+0.4% +0.5σ+0.5% +0.2σ+1.0% +0.1σ+6.7%
Low volatility+0.5% +0.5σ+0.1% +0.2σ-0.0% +0.2σ-5.4%
Dividend yield+0.8% +0.8σ+0.3% +0.1σ+0.3% +0.0σ+5.6%
Quality+0.2% +0.5σ+0.1% +0.0σ-0.5% -0.4σ+3.9%
Size+1.3% +1.5σ-0.7% -0.3σ-1.7% -0.5σ+1.2%
Momentum-1.7% -1.7σ-0.8% -0.6σ-2.2% -0.9σ+14.6%
High beta-2.3% -1.9σ-1.2% -0.6σ-2.8% -0.9σ+13.4%

Also

Breadth, leadership, revisions, realized vol and the baskets, every day: the dashboard. Explore correlations →. Headlines are quoted from their publishers for context.

Tomorrow · Sep 15

  • Tuesday: NY Empire State Manufacturing Index (Sep), consensus 14.75.

The narrative in this brief is drafted by an AI model from Factor Watch's computed data and checked against it, but it can still be wrong — verify anything before you act on it.

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