GS US Equities Color UNWINDY

GS Ariana Contessa - US EQUITIES COLOR: UNWINDY 18 Aug 2026 Ariana Contessa · Goldman Sachs · Vice President, FICC & Equities Tue 18 Aug 2026, 4:52pm ET

S&P -69bps closing @ 7,691 w/ a MOC of $1.3B to BUY. NDX -168bps @ 29,490, R2K -117bps 3,021, and Dow -22bps @ 53,343. 14.7bn shares traded across all US equity exchanges vs ytd daily avg of 19.1bn shares. VIX +441bps @ 15.86, WTI Crude +52bps @ $84.94, US 10YR +1bp @ 4.71%, gold -164bps @ 4,400, dxy +4bps @ 99.67 and Bitcoin +41bps @ $64,620.

GS momentum long/short pair down ~8% today, driven by ‘wrong way’ price action in Semis (-6.5%) vs Software (+1%). Not much out there other than a ‘give back’ after GS Mo’ Pairs rallied >500 bps yesterday. Focus on Oil back to ~$90 and the Long End of the curve with US 30 yr yields through 5.3% (highest level since June’07). In Consumer, HD (unch) and AS (+3%) both had very strong prints but both reactions were a bit uninspiring. Why? HD simply has the global yields overhang and AS there is just always a question these days if brands will see beats rewarded. Flows remain muted. Our floor was a 2 on a 1-10 scale in terms of overall activity levels. Asset Mgr and HF skews titled for sale with overlapping supply in tech and macro products.

DERIVS: While SPX ultimately realized almost 2x the daily straddle, it still ranked as one of the tightest intraday bands this year. Vols were crushed on the selloff with fixed strike vols past Sep tenors down over 30 vol bps. Floating strike vol was down in SPX beyond the 2m space which is shocking given the large realized move to the downside. Today's moves in vol highlight just how long dealer gamma positioning is at this node. To that effect, the straddle through the end of the week is now 83bps down only 4bps from Monday morning. Flowswise, we saw buyers of skew in the morning on the continued bid in the risk parameter. We then saw people step in to fade the skew move in the afternoon. In the singles/thematic space, we saw buyers of DRAM upside in shorter-dated tenors with the fundamental picture constructive despite today's move. The S&P implied move through tomorrow is 0.47%. (ty Gail Hafif)

Today’s sell off top 10d move lower in the "post chatGPT" era – TY Stephen Brennan

Source: Goldman Sachs FICC & Equities. Derivs color: Gail Hafif.