AlphaScala Weekly: MSFT leads, oil sinks 10%, gold firms

This Week's Highlights

• Microsoft led the Nasdaq 100 with a 3.47% weekly gain as focus shifted to AI inference economics, while Broadcom and Alphabet held Alpha Scores above 70. See the full breakdown in the Nasdaq briefing.
• Oil posted its steepest weekly loss since April, falling 10.5%, after a US-Iran ceasefire extension report drained the geopolitical risk premium. Details in our oil coverage.
• Gold edged higher by 0.91% to 4,537 as softer US inflation expectations offset calls for a resilient dollar. Read the gold briefing.
• Crypto majors drifted sideways as the Senate stall on the CLARITY Act offset structural catalysts; BTC slipped 0.23% to $73,342. More in the Bitcoin briefing.
• Paxos secured SEC approval as the first blockchain-native registered clearing agency authorized to settle securities on a regulated ledger. See the full story.

The Week That Was

It was a week of crosscurrents and rangebound action across most asset classes. The S&P 500 ended flat, with AlphaScala scores flagging strong momentum in healthcare names like JNJ and UNH against weaker sentiment in large-cap tech such as NVDA and AAPL. G10 FX stayed pinned by positioning extremes from the latest CFTC COT report, with large spec shorts in sterling and the yen keeping squeeze risk alive ahead of German CPI. The clearest move came in crude, which logged a roughly 10.5% weekly loss as ceasefire chatter unwound risk premium.

On the model side, Alphabet (GOOG) topped the AlphaScala rankings with an Alpha Score of 85, citing strong momentum, quality, and sentiment. Micron (MU) followed at 84 with broad-based strength, while gold and base-metal miners Kinross (KGC, 79) and Hudbay (HBM, 77) reflected strong momentum and value. Several ADRs and smaller names registered neutral 0/100 scores pending data ingestion.

The Week Ahead

• No high-importance economic events were supplied for the coming week, making for a lighter calendar — though watch for upcoming PCE and CPI prints flagged across the gold and forex briefings as the next macro catalysts.