Key points
- The Nasdaq's six-day losing streak ended at exactly six, the most common outcome in 85 prior streaks.
- Chips led it. The PHLX Semiconductor index rose 8.05% after falling 5.33% on Wednesday.
- Three things landed inside 18 hours: Microsoft's (MSFT) Azure quarter, Samsung's call, and a $24B forced seller finishing.
- Samsung says the chip shortage runs to 2028, and it sees little need for a US listing to raise money.
Six red days in a row, and then this. The Nasdaq Composite is up 2.54% as I write this, the Nasdaq-100 is up 3.15%, and the PHLX Semiconductor index is up 8.05% after losing 5.33% on Wednesday. My SK Hynix (SKHY) position, which I sat on through Wednesday's miss and said so publicly, is up about 17%.
Our own piece on Wednesday counted every six-day Nasdaq losing streak since 1971, all 85 of them, and found that 42 stopped at exactly six days. The single most likely outcome was the boring one, and the boring one is what happened. Dennis ran that history here, and it aged about as well as anything we have published this month.
Three things landed between Wednesday's close and Thursday mid-morning. None of them alone explains an 8% move in the chip index. Together they do.
1. Microsoft actually paid for the buildout
Microsoft reported Wednesday after the close. Azure grew 43%, the fastest since early 2022. Commercial backlog hit $678 billion, up 84%. And the capital spending outlook stayed at roughly $190 billion, the same number the company gave in April.
That combination is the whole story for chips. The bear case on this trade has always been that hyperscalers are building capacity ahead of demand that never shows up. A signed backlog of $678 billion is the counterargument, and signed is the operative word. I wrote on Wednesday that this was what Nvidia and Micron needed to hear, and Thursday is the market agreeing. Microsoft itself is up about 17%.
2. Samsung said the shortage lasts two more years
Samsung posted its best quarter ever, with operating profit of 89.49 trillion won, about $62.1 billion. The stock fell anyway on worries about Chinese competition, and Seoul gave back a 5.54% intraday gain by the close. Mia covered that reversal here.
The number that mattered for everyone else was not the profit. On the call, Samsung said it expects the chip supply crunch to last until 2028. If you own memory, or anything that buys memory, that's a two-year runway spoken out loud by the largest producer in the world. Micron (MU) is up almost 18% today and SanDisk (SNDK) about 24%, and that sentence is a large part of why.
One more thing from that call, since we have been covering the SK Hynix listing all month. An analyst asked whether Samsung would follow SK Hynix onto a US exchange with its own ADR. Samsung said it is not currently under review, and that "the need for an ADR listing to raise capital is not high," while leaving it open over the medium to long term as a way to improve shareholder value. Read that next to SK Hynix raising $26.5 billion on Nasdaq earlier this month and it's a fairly pointed way of saying we don't need the money.
3. The biggest forced seller finished selling
This is the one people will underrate. Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness spent the last two weeks being liquidated, and on Thursday morning CNBC's David Faber reported it had sold its public stock book, longs and shorts together, in one block. Bloomberg and Reuters named the buyer in the afternoon: Ken Griffin's Citadel, which both say took the bulk of it. The fund reached $24 billion and was levered as much as four times.
Look at what it owned. Bloom Energy (BE), CoreWeave (CRWV), Nebius (NBIS), IREN, SanDisk, Applied Digital (APLD). Every one of those bottomed on Wednesday, the session before the book changed hands, and every one is up between 19% and 28% today. A leveraged holder of exactly these names being emptied out is not a coincidence sitting next to their lows. We covered the sale and what his last filing showed here, and the SEC deadlines that will show exactly what Citadel got here.
When a forced seller is done, the selling stops. That's not a theory about value, it's just supply and demand with a deadline attached.
What I'm doing
Nothing today, which is usually the right answer on a day like this. I bought SK Hynix at $154 and it's around $148 now, so a 17% rip still has me slightly underwater, and chasing an 8% day in the chip index has never once worked out for me.
The thing I'm actually watching is whether the memory names hold these gains into next week. One session doesn't undo six, and the Nasdaq is still below where it closed on July 21. Samsung's 2028 comment and Microsoft's backlog are the kind of facts that last longer than a single squeeze, and the Aschenbrenner unwind is the kind that does not. Sorting out which part of today was real is next week's job.
Disclosure: I am long Microsoft (MSFT) and long SK Hynix (SKHY). Index and stock moves are intraday as of about 1:30 p.m. ET on July 30, 2026, and will change by the close. Nothing here is investment advice.
Sources
- Index and stock moves computed from daily closing prices through July 29, 2026 and intraday quotes at about 1:30 p.m. ET on July 30, 2026.
- Microsoft fiscal fourth quarter 2026 results, released July 29, 2026: Azure up 43%, commercial remaining performance obligation $678 billion, capital spending outlook about $190 billion.
- Samsung Electronics second quarter 2026 results and July 30, 2026 earnings call: operating profit 89.49 trillion won, chip supply comments, and the ADR question.
- CNBC, David Faber, July 30, 2026: Situational Awareness sold its public equities book, longs and shorts, in one block; $24 billion near the highs; levered as much as four times.
- Bloomberg and Reuters, July 30, 2026: Ken Griffin's Citadel bought the bulk of Situational Awareness's stock positions; a Citadel representative declined to comment.
