If you only watched the S&P headline each day, last week looks like a tug of war that never snapped. A down day that felt worse than it was. A rebound that could not quite stick. Nvidia doing what Nvidia always does and still not lifting the whole tape.

But the week was not random. It was a sequence. The market kept reacting to the same handful of forces, even when the headlines changed. And those reactions tell you what capital is paying for right now.

Here are the six things that mattered most, because they kept showing up in price action, in sector leadership, and in what stocks got rewarded versus punished.

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The Supreme Court took away the White House’s fastest tariff lever. That was the Friday headline. Then the weekend happened, and by Monday the market was pricing the replacement.

Section 122 is not some distant political debate. It is a clock. It can run for 150 days. It caps the rate. It forces Congress into the story. And it leaves CFOs trying to guide a quarter with a tariff that might be different by July.

That is why Monday felt like the celebration ended and the spreadsheet began. Not because tariffs are always market killers. Because shifting rules are. If you are an importer, you are not just choosing what to pay. You are choosing when to hedge, when to order, when to pull inventory forward, and how wide your margin assumptions need to be.

The refund angle made it messier. If a chunk of old collections have to come back, that is cash flow to companies, but also a bigger deficit on the government side. If it happens fast, it looks like a one time boost for corporate balance sheets. If it drags in court, it turns into noise for equities but still hangs over Treasury supply.

Investor Signal

Tariffs became a guidance variable, not a headline. When the rules keep moving, the winners are businesses that can hit numbers without perfect visibility, and the losers are the ones that need smooth planning windows.

This was the sneaky part of the week. Yields slid toward the low 4s, mortgage rates dipped under 6%, and oil faded into the mid 60s. In the old playbook, that is supposed to loosen everything up. Easier money feel, easier consumer math, lighter energy pressure.

Yet the index did not act like it was being rescued. That gap matters.

When bonds rally and stocks do not, it usually means the bond desk is leaning cautious while equities are still staring at the near term earnings picture. You saw it repeatedly. Rates drifted down, but risk did not open up cleanly. You got bounces, but they carried a hedge inside them.

Even Friday, you had a weird mix: the Nasdaq looked heavy, but breadth was better, small caps were green, the Dow was flat. That is not panic. That is money moving around inside the market, hunting for what still works if growth slows a bit later.

Trade Implication

If yields keep falling and stocks still cannot broaden, do not treat lower rates as a green light. Treat it as a warning label. Let the rate market tell you how much risk the market can actually carry.

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Nvidia did what Nvidia always does. Beat the quarter. Beat the guide. Say demand is strong. Lock in huge forward supply. If you were building a case for AI buildout staying hot, you got it.

And the stock still could not hold the pop.

That was the cleanest tell of the week. The market is not debating demand anymore. It is debating where the profits sit in the stack.

Here is what changed. Two years ago, the trade was simple: buy the chip king, buy anything with AI in the slide deck. Last week it got more specific.

Chips are priced like perfection because they have been paid like perfection. The market is now asking what happens one layer downstream. Are the cloud giants turning all that spend into cash flow, or are they just building capacity that takes longer to pay off than people hoped?

The Dell print was a perfect contrast. Dell got bought because it offered something the market is suddenly craving: orders you can count. A backlog that turns into revenue on delivery dates. You do not need belief, you need shipments.

That is the direction of the week. Long the parts of AI where demand has already turned into contracts. More careful on the parts where price still depends on what customers do after the hardware lands.

Execution Bias

Treat “AI” as a stack, not a label. The market is paying for visible demand and booked revenue. It is discounting anything that still depends on a future adoption story.

The IBM shock early in the week put a name on the fear: if AI tools can modernize old code and automate workflow, what happens to the businesses that charge for human labor inside software?

Then you watched the market apply that logic to almost everything that smells like seats, services, or manual workflow monetization. The hardest part was not the down day. It was what happened after.

Workday printed a clean quarter and got hit because guidance was a hair light. Salesforce could talk up deals and still get punished on the forward frame. You started to see a pattern: beat the past, get judged on the next sentence.

And the key point is this. The market is not waiting for software revenue to actually collapse. It is moving the multiple first. It is saying, “Show me that AI makes you more money, not that it makes your customers need fewer people.”

There was one more twist. The market was also questioning the AI trade itself at the same time. That is why you got the strange setup where software is being hit for being disrupted, while the chip leaders are being hit for needing ROI proof downstream. Both fears can’t win forever, but the market priced both last week anyway.

Investor Signal

Do not buy software dips just because yields are down. The market wants proof of what AI does to pricing power, and that proof takes quarters, not days.

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Thursday was the best example. The S&P closed down, but most names were up. NVDA dragged the headline lower. Small caps gained. Equal weight held up better.

That matters because it changes how you read index moves. A down index day can hide a healthier tape underneath. It can also hide a nasty story in a few names that are too big to ignore.

You saw money rotate into banks, industrials, healthcare, and other plain vanilla stuff, even while the chip complex was ripping the index around. It did not look like “everyone out.” It looked like “less crowding in the same three trades.”

Retail activity also mattered. The Nvidia dip buying was aggressive. That often puts a floor under a move, but it does not create a new uptrend by itself. It tells you the crowd is willing to absorb weakness, even if institutions are not chasing.

Edge Setup

Watch equal weight versus cap weight as a daily tell. If equal weight keeps winning while the megacaps stall, money is reallocating, not leaving. If both roll over together, that is when downside spreads fast.

A lot of last week can be summarized simply: the market did not pay for good. It only paid for better than expected next.

That is why Nvidia’s quarter did not lift the tape. Not because it was weak. Because the market already owned the story. The question moved from “did they deliver” to “does this change anything for the rest of the market.”

You saw the same dynamic in software. Clean prints still got hit if the guide did not feel bulletproof. You saw it in how quickly bounces faded intraday. The market was constantly testing whether moves were real demand, or just fast money patching a hole.

When this becomes the rule, it changes how you trade. You stop asking “will they beat.” You start asking “will they widen the window.” Will they make the next quarter feel easier than the market thinks? Will they make planning feel less fragile? Will they show orders, not hopes?

Trade Implication

In this tape, earnings are not a history lesson. They are a credibility test for the next 90 days. Buy the names that can show contracted demand, backlog, or pricing power. Be careful with anything that needs sentiment to do the heavy lifting.

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Last week was not six separate stories. It was one chain reaction.

Tariffs stopped being a yes or no story and became a timing and planning problem.

Bonds kept signaling caution even when rates were helping on paper.

AI demand got confirmed again, but the market moved on to the “who gets paid” question.

Software stayed in the penalty box because the market wants proof that AI expands revenue, not just productivity.

Breadth improved under the surface, even when the megacaps yanked the headlines around.

And the bar for getting rewarded rose again, which is why “good” stopped being enough.

That is what mattered last week. Not the vibe. Not the daily close. The repeated reactions that tell you what investors are willing to pay for right now, and what they are no longer willing to excuse.