# Early August's three loudest stocks scored 87, 80, and 41 > Early August's conversation looked like a rotation into software and chips. It was an earnings week in disguise: Palantir, AMD, and Applied Optoelectronics pulled the crowd in on August 4. The score rated them 80, 41, and 87, and the spread is the whole point. By Maya Koeva · 2026-08-05 Read the conversation by corner of the market and early August looks like a rotation. Software infrastructure more than doubled its share of the chatter, from 5.8% in the back half of July to 14.3% in the first days of August. Chips got louder. Autos and the banks went quiet. Lay the two windows side by side and the crowd looks like it picked up and moved. It did move, but not for the reason a rotation story would tell you. It moved because the earnings calendar moved. August 4 was a heavy earnings day, and three names pulled the crowd in with them. The useful question is not where the conversation went, which the calendar already decided. It is which of those three earnings the credible crowd believed. ## The board We take every graded mention in the accounts we track and group it by the corners people talk in, then compare early August (the 1st through the 5th) against the back half of July (the 16th through the 31st). Because summer volume drifts, the honest measure is each corner's share of the conversation, not its raw count. | Corner of the market | Share, late July | Share, early Aug | Positive now | Trusted now | | --- | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | | Semiconductors | 17.3% | 20.2% | 58% | 21% | | Software infrastructure | 5.8% | 14.3% | 72% | 23% | | Internet and social | 13.7% | 12.2% | 58% | 19% | | Optics and comms equipment | 4.7% | 7.6% | 93% | 50% | | Computer hardware | 5.4% | 3.2% | 69% | 29% | | Internet retail | 3.2% | 2.6% | 74% | 21% | | Restaurants | 1.5% | 2.6% | 50% | 12% | | Credit and fintech | 0.9% | 2.6% | 21% | 12% | | Consumer electronics | 3.0% | 2.3% | 55% | 24% | | Capital markets | 4.6% | 2.0% | 76% | 15% | | Semiconductor equipment | 2.2% | 2.1% | 80% | 43% | | Aerospace and defense | 2.6% | 1.9% | 81% | 53% | | Auto manufacturers | 4.6% | 1.3% | 55% | 5% | | Everything else | 30.5% | 25.1% | | | The biggest green numbers on that board trace back to one date. Software infrastructure doubled on Palantir. Semiconductors grew on AMD. Optics held its place on Applied Optoelectronics. All three reported around August 4, and all three drew a wall of posts the same day. ## The three the crowd chased | Company | Mentions, late July | Mentions, early Aug | Trusted | Score | | --- | ---: | :--- | ---: | ---: | | Palantir (PLTR) | 19 | 112 (bull 71% / bear 17%) | 25% | 80 | | AMD (AMD) | 98 | 113 (bull 43% / bear 31%) | 15% | 41 | | Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI) | 49 | 58 (bull 93% / bear 2%) | 50% | 87 | Three names, nearly the same volume, three different scores: 80, 41, and 87. The volume alone would rank them AMD, Palantir, Applied Optoelectronics, in a dead heat. The score ranks them the other way, and the reason is under the mention count. Palantir went from 19 mentions to 112, the biggest jump on the board, and the room stayed one-sided: 71% bullish against 17% bearish, with a quarter of the posts from accounts with a track record. That is a loud earnings report the credible crowd leaned into, and the score marks it 80. Applied Optoelectronics is smaller and cleaner. It drew 58 mentions at 93% bullish, with half of them from trusted accounts, the most credible read of the three. It scores 87, the highest name in the whole early-August conversation. That is the photonics complex again, the same quiet, one-sided, credible corner that led the [July rotation](/blog/sector-rotation-early-july), and it is why optics and comms equipment holds a 93% positive, 50% trusted reading up top. AMD is the tell. It was the single loudest stock in early August at 113 mentions, and it earned the lowest score of the three at 41. The room split, 43% bullish to 31% bearish, and only 15% of the posts came from accounts with a record. Loud, divided, and short on credible voices is the profile the score marks down. Being the most-talked-about name on an earnings day is not the same as being believed. ## Underneath the earnings, the credible names held Strip out the earnings-day noise and the corners that carried real conviction are familiar. The photonics names lead it: Lumentum (LITE) at 89% bullish and a score of 86, Coherent (COHR) at 75% and 86, and AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) at 100% bullish across 13 mentions, 69% of them trusted, the cleanest small room we track and a score of 90. On the chip side, the memory trade cooled from its July peak but kept its conviction, with Micron (MU) still at 65% bullish and a score of 84, and Astera Labs (ALAB) at 83% bullish and 85. Nebius (NBIS), July's loudest AI-infrastructure name, fell from 464 mentions to 73 but held an 84% bullish, 41% trusted read and a score of 85. It is quieter than July, and still one of the most credible names on the board. ## The rooms that emptied out The other half of the board is the late-July magnets going dark now that their earnings have passed. Auto manufacturers fell from 4.6% of the conversation to 1.3%, most of it Tesla cooling from 293 mentions to 21. Capital markets halved now that the banks have finished reporting. Entertainment faded from 2.4% to 0.7%. None of that is a verdict on those names. It is a coverage reading in the accounts we track, and the crowd talks about a company loudest in the days around its report, then moves to the next one. ## The loud names worth distrusting A few corners rose on volume that the score would tell you to discount. Credit and fintech nearly tripled its share, but the room reads 21% bullish and 12% trusted, led by SoFi (SOFI) at 46% bearish and a score of 37. Snap (SNAP) re-entered the conversation at 51 mentions and 55% bearish, with 2% of posts from trusted accounts, scoring 50. Groupon (GRPN) went from nothing to 19 mentions at 63% bearish. Lululemon (LULU) rose to 17 mentions at 65% bearish. And the single loudest name anywhere in early August, SpaceX (SPCX) at 127 mentions, leans net-negative at 33% bullish. Volume found these names; conviction did not. ## Why read the week this way A rotation chart would have told you the crowd moved into software and chips in early August, and it would have been describing the earnings calendar. What it could not tell you is that of the three names that drove the move, two earned credible conviction and one earned only a crowd. That is the line the score exists to draw: it weighs who is talking before it weighs how many, so a 113-mention name with a split, low-credibility room lands below a 58-mention one carried by trusted voices. For the mechanics, see [volume versus signal](/learn/volume-vs-signal) and [how a track record is graded](/learn/how-a-track-record-is-graded). --- *Quantral surfaces signals and context from public sources to support your own research. Nothing here is financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell. Past signals are not indicative of future results.*