Alphixir Weekly Review · Aug 9–14, 2026

WhatThe week ran Monday through Friday entirely inside a Risk-On regime, but with a noticeable air pocket midweek. The composite regime score opened near 52.8, sagged to 36.8 on Tuesday, then rebuilt steadily to close at 51.3 on Friday. Despite that dip, the label never flipped out of Risk-On, so the market stayed constructive throughout. SPY finished the week up +0.60%. Under the surface, dispersion was high: semiconductor-equipment and streaming names led, while select mega-cap tech and consumer/defense names lagged. Energy was a persistent quiet winner across the week, with refiners and integrated majors posting some of the strongest single-name moves. In short, a modestly positive index week masked a wide gap between the best and worst individual calls.

WhyThe Tuesday drawdown in the regime score to 36.8 appears to have been a brief risk repricing rather than a genuine regime change, since it reversed within two sessions. The strength in energy names — refiners like MPC and PSX and integrated majors like COP and CVX — was the week's most consistent catalyst, lifting the more energy-exposed sleeves. Semiconductor-equipment leadership (LRCX standing out) diverged sharply from weakness in adjacent chip names such as AMD and AVGO, showing this was a stock-specific, not a sector-wide, chip move. Streaming strength (NFLX as the top contributor overall) reflected favorable single-name momentum rather than broad communication-services beta. On the downside, consumer and defense names — HD, HON, RTX — dragged, hinting at rotation away from more defensive-cyclical exposure while risk appetite held. The result was a market where being right on individual names mattered far more than getting the index direction right.

So WhatMeridian led the group, decided to keep concentrated exposure to NVDA, TSM, and COP, and captured +0.18% of alpha over SPY with a 60% hit-rate — the cleanest week of the four. Maverick edged out a small +0.06% alpha, carried by a standout LRCX call and strong NFLX and TSM weightings, though its 45% hit-rate and -0.68% MDD show how much it leaned on a few big winners while eating losses in META, KLAC, and AMD. Sentinel and Regent both trailed SPY, at -0.28% and -0.14% alpha respectively; their conservative and sector-tilted sleeves held smaller energy weights, so they under-participated in the week's strongest theme. Sentinel's best calls (MPC, COP, PSX) were correct in direction but sized too lightly at 1.5–1.8% to move the needle. Regent's energy and streaming wins were partly offset by HD, RTX, and AMZN weakness. Across all four, AMD was the shared top detractor, and NFLX the shared bright spot. The lesson for the week: direction on the index was easy, but positioning size and single-name selection separated the leaders from the laggards.