Chips slide again as bank earnings open the season

Tuesday, October 13 is the first real day of earnings season. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Citigroup report before the open, alongside Johnson & Johnson and UnitedHealth, with Domino’s, Albertsons and FB Financial also on the morning slate. The calendar has no bank EPS actuals yet, so every number below for the banks is an estimate. The overnight story is chips again: Asia’s memory names took another leg lower, and that is the main drag on U.S. tech futures this morning.

Setup into the open

Monday closed Calm: the S&P proxy finished −0.06% with the vol proxy down about 1.7%, while the Nasdaq proxy lost 0.70% on the chip selloff and the Dow proxy gained 0.34%. As of about 6:20–6:25 AM ET, that split is wider. The S&P proxy is +0.05% premarket, the Nasdaq proxy −0.45%, the Dow proxy +0.63% and small caps +0.45%. Long Treasuries are up about 0.5%, the vol proxy is −0.5%, and the dollar proxy is about −0.2% on a stale late-Monday trade. Crude is the reversal: the oil proxy is −1.6% after Monday’s +1.9%. The chip ETF is −1.4%, Micron −3.1% and Nvidia −0.9%. Bitcoin is near $83,450, about +0.3% versus the Eastern midnight mark.

What to watch

Banks first. The calendar lists JPMorgan at an EPS estimate of $5.94 (options-implied move about 2.7%), Goldman Sachs $12.90 (about 3.6%), Wells Fargo $1.85 (about 3.8%) and Citigroup $2.66 (about 3.4%). Johnson & Johnson is estimated at $2.53 (about 3.1%). Into the reports, Goldman is about +1.2% premarket, JPMorgan +0.9%, Wells +0.6% and Citi +0.3%; those are pre-report marks, not a score of the prints. UnitedHealth (estimate $4.12, about 5.7%) is +2.5% premarket. Street accounts say it already reported a beat and raised its full-year outlook, but the calendar has not posted the actual, so treat that as unconfirmed for now. After the close the slate is just AZZ ($1.82 estimate).

On the macro side, the calendar lists NFIB small-business optimism (prior 98.7) with no forecast; street accounts report it printed 97.9, below a street estimate of 98.2. Existing home sales are due at 10:00 AM ET (prior 4.00M) and the monthly Treasury balance at 2:00 PM ET (prior −$167B). Fed speakers, per street calendars, include Waller early and Barkin and Collins later in the day.

What X is saying

Overnight posts frame this as a chip scare that Korea fully priced and the U.S. has only half priced. Street-reported figures put the Kospi down about 5.5% and SK Hynix down about 10%, with posts tying the move to Chinese memory-chip competition and AI spending worries. Several accounts note Europe’s chip names hit their lows early and recovered about half, and that the selling stayed inside chips rather than spreading. These are street-reported numbers and unconfirmed.

Fed chatter centers on Waller, who street accounts quote as saying higher yields are doing some of the Fed’s work and that AI investment could keep inflation sticky. Oil posts point to Brent easing about 1% on reports of Russian diesel supply; that also stays unconfirmed until it shows up in settled prices. UnitedHealth posts are uniformly upbeat on a medical-cost improvement, again not yet confirmed by the calendar.

Insight

This is a rotation tape, not a risk-off tape. Money is leaving chips and going into financials, healthcare, small caps and duration, while vol sits lower and the S&P proxy is flat. That makes the bank prints the swing factor for the index: clean trading and credit numbers can keep the Dow and small caps carrying the board while semis bleed. A weak bank read would remove the one sector holding things up into tomorrow’s CPI.

Desk stance

Publish mood is Calm, matching Monday’s close and the live hero. A flat S&P proxy with vol softer premarket doesn’t justify a re-score before the open, even with the Nasdaq lagging. Re-score after the open from the realized S&P and vol proxies, and again once the bank actuals are on the calendar. No bank or UnitedHealth EPS goes into the summary until the calendar confirms it.