Market recap · 24 July 2026

US stocks

📊 2026-07-24 Market Review

The market exhibited a typical divergent and volatile pattern. The core dynamic was the support from value and cyclical stocks contrasting with the correction in tech stocks. Tomorrow, the focus will be on whether the tech sector can stabilize and the continuity of the overall market rotation from high to low valuation sectors.

🔍 I. Market Overview

Today's market showed a moderately warm and oscillating trend. Although core indices closed mixed, advancing stocks vastly outnumbered declining ones, indicating that the wealth effect and overall market breadth remain healthy. Capital is actively rotating between sectors from high to low, with no signs of panic selling.

• Market Signal: 60/100 (Moderately warm, actionable)
• Signal Basis: 73% of stocks advanced, wealth effect broadening; major indices average return -0.05%
• Trading Advice: Risk appetite is acceptable; focus on the continuation of main themes and maintain position discipline.

📈 II. Index Structure

The three major indices showed significant divergence. The Dow Jones and S&P 500 maintained resilience supported by traditional heavyweights, with the Dow performing relatively the strongest. The Nasdaq Composite experienced a noticeable correction dragged down by tech stocks. Structurally, traditional blue-chips and value stocks are supporting the market, while the previously crowded tech growth stocks have become the main drag on the indices.

🎯 III. Sector Themes

The market exhibited clear risk-aversion characteristics of "abandoning high valuation for low." Defensive and pro-cyclical sectors such as Real Estate, Materials, and Consumer Staples led the gains, reflecting capital's increased demand for a margin of safety in valuations, while also implying speculation on expectations of macroeconomic liquidity easing. The Information Technology sector led the declines by a wide margin, indicating strong profit-taking pressure. The current market is in a phase of rapid rotation and portfolio rebalancing, and a new, strongly sustainable unilateral theme has not yet formed.

Top 5 Advancing Sectors

Top 5 Declining Sectors

💰 IV. Capital & Sentiment

Total market turnover remained ample, and the advance/decline ratio showed good market breadth, indicating that capital has not withdrawn but is rather settling in non-tech sectors to seek undervalued opportunities. The VIX volatility index rose slightly, showing that overall market sentiment is stable, but carries a certain defensive inclination amidst the high-to-low rotation.

📰 V. News Catalysts

There are currently no major macroeconomic or fundamental news disturbances. The structural divergence in the market stems more from capital's spontaneous portfolio rebalancing and the need for valuation repairs. Technical factors and the competition for existing capital among institutions dominated the intraday rotational trends.

⚔️ VI. Tomorrow's Trading Plan

• Action Advice: Balanced.
• Position Range: Recommend maintaining a medium position level to flexibly handle wide oscillations.
• Focus Areas: Pro-cyclical assets with low valuation advantages and defensive attributes, high-dividend targets, and real estate-related sectors with solid bottom structures.
• Avoidance Areas: Tech concept stocks with excessive short-term gains, overstretched valuations, and signs of technical breakdown.
• Invalidation Conditions: If an accelerated plunge in the Nasdaq triggers a resonance of panic sentiment, dragging the S&P 500 below recent key support levels, and the VIX index rapidly breaks above the 20 mark, the balanced strategy will be invalidated, requiring a comprehensive shift to defense and proactive position reduction.

⚠️ VII. Risk Warning

China A-shares

📊 2026-07-24 Market Review

A pattern of broad-based decline with surging volume has emerged, with heavyweights showing relative resilience. Tomorrow, the focus will be on observing whether funds will rotate back into hard tech sectors on the STAR Market under a trading volume of nearly two trillion yuan.

🔍 I. Market Overview

Today's market exhibited a broad-based decline with elevated volume, with over 4,900 stocks across the two main boards closing lower. The wealth-destruction effect was pronounced, and the overall market remains in a weak, defensive posture. Despite this, total trading volume still reached a massive 1.94 trillion yuan, indicating extremely fierce wrestling between bottom-fishing funds and top-side selling pressure amidst the sharp market correction.

• Market Signal: 28/100 (Weak, Defensive)
• Signal Basis: Advancing stocks accounted for 10%, reflecting a strong wealth-destruction effect; average change of major indices -1.55%; difference between limit-ups and limit-downs +17.
• Operating Suggestion: High risk; prioritize drawdown control and avoid chasing weak rebounds.

📈 II. Index Structure

The three major board indices all fell broadly with medium bearish candles, with the SZSE Component Index and ChiNext Index both plunging over 2.4%, placing severe pressure on growth and thematic sectors. However, the SSE 50 and STAR 50 demonstrated strong resilience, especially the STAR 50, which led the broad-based indices with only a marginal decline. This suggests that financial heavyweights stepped in to support the market at a critical moment, while some funds are still holding their ground in the hard tech track. In the short term, the Shanghai Composite Index is facing a support test at the crucial 3,800-point psychological level.

🎯 III. Sector Themes

The market displayed typical characteristics of high-to-low switching and risk aversion. Semiconductors and banks topped the resilience list, reflecting that a barbell strategy of "tech growth + high-dividend defense" is highly favored by funds in a weak market. The semiconductor sector is poised to become a potential leading theme in the ensuing rally. Conversely, previously strong sectors like precious metals, electric power, and industrial metals experienced concentrated profit-taking, leading the decliners. The ebb of the main theme and the loosening of high-level chips are very evident.

Top 5 Advancing Sectors

Top 5 Declining Sectors

💰 IV. Capital and Sentiment

Market sentiment chilled suddenly, with the number of limit-down stocks ticking up to 25, implying the emergence of localized panic selling. Under the massive trading volume of nearly two trillion, advancing stocks numbered only a little over 500, and limit-ups contracted from prior levels, indicating a loosening of the market's chip structure. Bulls are mostly huddling for warmth in a handful of core heavyweights and tech bellwethers, while the risk appetite of short-term hot money has drastically contracted.

📰 V. News Catalysts

There are currently no new major macroeconomic or industry news catalysts driving the tape. Today's resonant slump is more attributable to the market's endogenous need for a correction after continuously accumulating profit-taking chips, as well as spontaneous portfolio rebalancing by funds exiting high-level cyclical themes.

📝 VI. Tomorrow's Trading Plan

• Strategic Positioning: Defensive counter-attack; control drawdowns; strictly avoid blind bottom-fishing.
• Position Management: Recommended to shrink overall positions to 30%-50%.
• Focus Areas: Core STAR 50 targets defying the downtrend (such as the restorative rebound of unfairly battered semiconductor equipment and materials), as well as low-valuation state-owned mega-banks acting as defensive core holdings.
• Areas to Avoid: High-level cyclical resource stocks where trends have started to break down (non-ferrous metals, electric power), and high-level consecutive limit-up stocks that have surged excessively recently with fractured chip distributions.
• Invalidation Conditions: If the semiconductor sector experiences delayed declines in tomorrow's morning session, or if the Shanghai Composite falls below 3,800 without the support of buying volume, suspend all tentative position-building actions.

⚠️ VII. Risk Warnings

• Remain highly vigilant against a chain-reaction stampede and liquidity shocks triggered by the retreat of high-level cyclical stocks.
• If the two-trillion-level volume fails to catalyze a new offensive main theme in a timely manner, there is a risk of a sentiment collapse driven by the "long consolidation leads to a drop" pattern.

Hong Kong stocks

2026-07-24 Market Review

Today, the Hong Kong stock market showed a significant divergence characterized by "strong tech, weak broad market". The core contradiction lies in the drag from traditional heavyweight stocks and the massive withdrawal of Southbound funds. Tomorrow, priority should be given to observing whether the Hang Seng TECH Index can independently stabilize its footing and any marginal changes in the flow of Southbound funds.

I. Market Overview 📊

The overall performance of the Hong Kong stock market was weak today, with market sentiment clearly under pressure. The broader market exhibited structural divergence, with significant pullbacks in heavyweight blue chips and traditional economic sectors, leading to a drop of over 1% in the main board indexes. Combined with the trend of substantial net outflows of Southbound funds, a strong wait-and-see and risk-aversion sentiment pervades the market, which is overall in a defensive and volatile phase.

II. Index Structure 📉

At the index level, a typical divergence pattern emerged. The Hang Seng TECH Index edged up against the market trend, becoming the sole area of resilience and the main force supporting the market today; whereas the Hang Seng Index and the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index (HSCEI) showed highly consistent trends, both falling below key psychological integer thresholds, reflecting a significant drag from traditional blue-chip sectors. The center of gravity of the Hang Seng Index is currently pressured downwards, and the short-term trend is weak. If the relative strength of the Hang Seng TECH Index cannot be transmitted to broad-based indexes, the broader market faces the pressure of further probing lower to find support.

III. Sector Trends 🎯

Today's market lacked an absolute offensive main line with strong money-making effects, and defensive characteristics were extremely prominent. The telecommunications sector closed slightly in the red against the trend. Although financials and electronic technology recorded minor drops, they significantly outperformed the broader market, indicating institutional intentions to huddle in high-dividend defensive assets and certain technology leaders with high certainty in a weak market. Conversely, constrained by weak expectations for macroeconomic recovery, pro-cyclical and broad consumer sectors such as the retail industry, delivery services, and processing and manufacturing suffered heavy losses, becoming the main drivers of the sell-off. In the short term, these sectors have not yet shown signals of bottoming out and stabilizing, and should continue to be avoided.

Top 5 Advancing Sectors

Top 5 Declining Sectors

IV. Capital and Sentiment 💰

The capital side released clear warning signals, with Southbound funds recording a significant net sell-off of 1.65 billion yuan today. Against the backdrop of the Hong Kong stock market's high reliance on Southbound funds, the massive outflow of mainland capital indicates a sharp cooling of current institutional risk appetite, with a strong willingness for short-term profit-taking or risk aversion. The retreat of capital has directly suppressed the market's overall upward momentum, leading to a narrowing of market breadth and dropping the sentiment temperature to the freezing point.

• Southbound Funds: Hong Kong Stock Connect recorded a total net buy of -1.65 billion yuan today

V. News Catalysts 📰

The market is in a relative news vacuum today, lacking obvious policy or industry news catalysts. In this context, the market's sell-off is more derived from spontaneous emotional venting after technical breakdowns, as well as capital's preemptive pessimistic pricing of subsequent fundamental expectations. In the short term, the market will be more sensitive to potential negative disturbances.

VI. Tomorrow's Trading Plan 📋

• Operational Tone: Primarily defensive, watch more and move less.
• Position Range: Recommended to control within 30%, retaining ample cash positions.
• Focus Directions: Core heavyweight stocks in the Hang Seng TECH Index that are resilient against market drops, as well as telecommunications and underlying dividend-yielding financial assets with defensive attributes.
• Directions to Avoid: Broad consumer sectors such as retail and delivery services, as well as pro-cyclical varieties in processing and manufacturing, which are in a downward channel.
• Invalidation Conditions: If Southbound funds sharply reverse to a net buy of over 3 billion tomorrow, and the Hang Seng Index surges in the morning session with high volume to recover more than half of today's bearish candlestick body, the defensive strategy will be invalidated, and one can moderately follow the main tech line for exploratory position building on the right side.

VII. Risk Warnings ⚠️

• Be highly vigilant about the risk of negative liquidity feedback that may be triggered if Southbound funds experience continuous net outflows.
• Pay close attention to further valuation suppression on Hong Kong stocks' pro-cyclical sectors caused by external market fluctuations and exchange rate changes.