Weekend Recap | Sunday, August 16, 2026

Research Desk · August 16, 2026

The Week That Was

The S&P 500 closed Friday at 7,785.76, up about 0.4 percent on the week. That is a third consecutive weekly gain, and it came after a fresh all-time high earlier in the week.

The Nasdaq Composite finished at 26,729.16, holding a slim weekly advance. The Dow closed at 53,732.41 and gave back ground over the five sessions.

Friday is where the tone changed. July retail sales fell by the most in more than a year, and the University of Michigan's preliminary August sentiment reading showed households growing more downbeat with inflation still front of mind.

The VIX ended at 14.25. Gold sat near 4,437 an ounce. Brent crude closed around $89.53.

The Week Ahead

Monday brings the Empire State manufacturing survey and the NAHB housing index. Tuesday adds building permits, with Home Depot reporting before the bell.

Wednesday is the week's pivot. The Fed releases minutes from the July meeting, and Lowe's, Target, TJX and Analog Devices all report in the morning.

Thursday brings jobless claims, the Philadelphia Fed survey and the Leading Economic Index, plus Walmart before the open. Friday closes with the flash manufacturing and services PMIs.

Context matters here. The Warsh Fed left rates at 3.50 to 3.75 percent in July, and three officials dissented in favor of a hike, not a cut. Wednesday's minutes will show how close that argument actually was.

Two more dates worth marking: Nvidia reports August 26, and the Jackson Hole symposium runs August 27 to 29, Kevin Warsh's first as chair.

Tickers To Watch

HD: Tuesday morning. The read on big-ticket home spending with mortgage rates still elevated.
LOW, TGT, TJX: All Wednesday morning. Three different income tiers of the American consumer in one session.
WMT: Thursday morning. The single most useful data point on whether the retail sales miss was a blip.
ADI: Wednesday. Analog chips are the unglamorous read on industrial demand.
NVDA: Not this week, but positioning ahead of the August 26 print will move the whole index.
ONDS: Our profile below. Beat on revenue by 22 percent, then closed down 8.8 percent on the print.

Stock Highlight: Ondas Inc. (ONDS)

Ondas builds autonomous drones, the counter-drone systems that bring them down, and unmanned ground vehicles, mostly for defense customers. It has grown by acquisition at speed, absorbing US defense contractor Mistral, counter-drone firm Sentrycs, DZYNE Technologies and infrastructure inspection company Cyberhawk over the past year.

Here is what happened on August 13. Second quarter revenue came in at $83.8 million, against $6.3 million in the same quarter last year. That is roughly thirteen times bigger, 67 percent above the prior quarter, and about 22 percent ahead of what analysts expected.

Adjusted gross margin was 50.4 percent. Backlog stood at $613 million at quarter end, or $757 million counting the acquisitions. Management raised full-year guidance to a range of $525 to $550 million, up from $390 million in May.

And the stock closed down 8.8 percent that day.

The reason sits on the bottom line. Ondas lost 19 cents a share against an expected loss of 10 cents. Net loss for the quarter was $89.7 million, with an adjusted EBITDA loss of $50.6 million. Management called it the peak quarter for adjusted EBITDA losses and expects them to narrow through the second half.

Think of a small machine shop that spent a decade making one specialized part, then got handed a wartime order book. The orders are real. But you hire, buy the second plant and stock the shelves long before a single invoice clears. Record revenue and a record loss in the same quarter is what that looks like from the outside.

The bull case is order flow. In early August the Mistral unit took an order of more than $50 million under an existing US Army program for lethal unmanned systems, bringing awards under that program past $240 million. Israel's Ministry of Defense selected Ondas for a next-generation tactical attack drone tender, though no value was disclosed. The American Robotics Optimus platform was cleared for rapid federal procurement back in January, which shortens the government buying path considerably.

The bear case is the price and the paper. At $9.24 and roughly 570 million shares outstanding, the market cap sits near $5.27 billion, close to ten times the midpoint of this year's guidance for a company that has never turned an operating profit. Share count is up nearly 300 percent in a year, so the $1.4 billion of cash on the books as of June 30 was bought with heavy dilution.

Two more items a careful reader should weigh. Reaching even the low end of guidance implies roughly $256 million of revenue in the fourth quarter, far above anything the company has delivered in a single quarter. And short interest sat near 42 percent of the float at the July 31 settlement date, which explains a good deal of why this stock moves the way it does.

Wall Street cannot settle on a number either. One widely used consensus tracker shows an average twelve-month target of $16.56 with a spread from $10 to $19. Another puts the average closer to $19.28. A gap that wide between two panels of analysts is itself worth noting.

Bottom Line

Three weekly gains into a softening consumer is the tension going into Monday. Wednesday's minutes and Thursday's Walmart print will settle more of it than any headline will.

On Ondas: the business is real and the backlog is real. The share price is a separate question, and a stock that swung between $3.20 and $15.28 in twelve months is not a retirement anchor.

If a name like this belongs in your portfolio at all, it belongs in the small speculative sleeve you have already decided you can afford to lose. For anyone drawing income inside the next five years, the sequence of your returns matters more than the size of any single winner. Size it so that being wrong is survivable, then let the order book prove itself over two more quarters.