Weekly Market Update Into July 20th: CPI Cooled, Tech Cracked

It was a bearish week for the major indices, with most of the damage landing Friday when a broad tech selloff hit after China unveiled its Kimi K3 AI model. That capped a week that actually started constructively: a cooler-than-expected inflation read, with CPI down 0.4% and PPI down 0.3% month over month, pushed rate-hike odds lower and popped stocks midweek, even as oil kept grinding higher on geopolitical tension. The big banks were the bright spot of earnings, with JPM, GS, and BAC all beating and carrying the financial sector, while Netflix landed on the other side, missing on revenue and guiding Q3 below consensus after Thursday’s close to pressure communication services into Friday’s bell. Despite the rough finish, SPY is still holding above both its 100-day and 200-day SMAs, so the regime filter stays on and new entries remain valid.

Looking ahead, earnings season kicks into high gear with heavyweights like TSLA, GOOGL, and INTC all on deck, so the next stretch trades on single-stock reactions more than the macro. The economic calendar runs light, with new home sales and Friday’s PMI the only prints worth circling. With the charts flashing bearish signals into the open, the setups matter more than usual, so know your levels heading in. View the full economic calendar here.

Current Watchlist

Keep in mind that nothing I say or do should be considered financial advice, but you can see the constantly updated swing watchlist here. The watchlist lives inside the leaderboard where any journal user can submit their own portfolio for everyone to see. These are the daily pivot breakout plays I am personally in, based on the strategy.

It was a red week on the book, and with the tape turning lower I did not force new setups into the weakness. Two trailing stops came out: LSCC closed for a +15.89% gain and VRT stopped out for a -15.80% loss. With that capital freed up I opened new positions in NET and OKTA, both of which came straight off last week’s scan results, leaning a little further into cybersecurity. My only green name on the board last week:

• CRWD +3.12%

Every entry, exit, and the running P&L lives in the Financial Tech Wiz Trading Journal, which is exactly how I know a red week still nets out fine instead of just feeling like it did. Here is a full walkthrough of the journal app:

Top 3 Daily Pivot Scan Results

OKTA (Okta)

• Daily pivot breakout on 7/14/26. Broke out of a long base going back to 2022 with relative performance at 97 and plenty of monthly-timeframe room back toward the 2021 highs, all inside the trending cybersecurity group.
• Bull case: The clearest profitability inflection of the three, swinging to a positive operating margin (7.3%) and GAAP net income ($74M, EPS $0.42) with strong free cash flow ($276M), while the stock re-rated hard (+66.8% over 6 months, +32.1% in the last month) on a durable identity and access theme with margins still expanding.
• Bear case: Revenue growth has decelerated to about +11% YoY, the slowest of the three, so this is now a margin and FCF story rather than top-line, and after a 100%-plus three-month run the chart is extended, with net-retention softness or a breach headline the key risks.

NET (Cloudflare)

• Daily pivot breakout on 7/14/26. Playing out a cup and handle that formed off the 2021 peak, now breaking to new all-time highs on strong momentum.
• Bull case: The best fundamental momentum of the three, with revenue accelerating to +33.5% YoY, free cash flow positive and rising (about $93M per quarter), and a genuine category lead in edge, security, and AI-inference networking, while price rides a clean uptrend (+50.8% over 6 months, +22.4% in the last month) into new highs.
• Bear case: Valuation is extreme (about a $96B cap on a roughly $2.5B revenue run-rate), the company is still GAAP-unprofitable, and gross margin is quietly compressing (77.8% down to 71.2% over eight quarters), so a growth scare could hit an already-extended chart hard.

TWST (Twist Bioscience)

• Daily pivot breakout on 6/15/26. Broke out of a four-year base built since roughly 2022 with strong momentum and relative performance at 98.
• Bull case: A differentiated, patent-protected silicon-based DNA synthesis platform in a long-duration synbio and genomics theme, with durable 17 to 19% revenue growth, gross margins expanding from about 41% to 52%, biopharma-partnership optionality, and institutions accumulating into a very strong run (about +127% over 6 months).
• Bear case: Still structurally unprofitable with negative free cash flow every quarter, heavy insider selling into strength, and a parabolic weekly chart after roughly a 4x, so risk/reward for fresh capital is poor with high drawdown risk if momentum unwinds.

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Resources

• Join the free Financial Tech Wiz Discord
• The daily pivot breakout scanner and indicator I use on TrendSpider
• The Financial Tech Wiz Trading Journal
• The free trading journal template