Williams AO/AC Signals W30 2026 — 30 Signals Across 9 Sectors

Edition 14 · July 24, 2026

W29 Scorecard

🔴 MODEL OUTPUT — Published candidates from last week. No edits. No omissions.

Performance of all Category A candidates named in W29. Prices measured from the Thursday close of W29 (2026-07-17) to the Thursday close of W30 (2026-07-24). Alpha Vantage weekly bars — last bar of the trading week.

Result key: ✓ escalation · ✗ signal lost · — holding/no position. Entry Reference = Thursday close of W29 (2026-07-17). W30 Close = Thursday 2026-07-24. Source: radar.db weekly_bars.

Scorecard summary: 3 escalated · 9 lost signal · 20 holding · 12 of 32 positive · Avg Δ: -0.1% · SPY W29→W30: -0.6%

Análisis de Salidas — Señales W29

🔴 ANÁLISIS — ¿Los 9 nombres que perdieron señal salieron por apreciación real o por ruido?

Resumen: 0 apreciación real (0%) · 1 rango (11%) · 8 sin soporte de precio o deterioro (89%)

Portfolio Tracker

🟢 LIVE POSITIONS — Actual entries with real or paper capital. Updated every week.

Mode: Paper

The Number of the Week

🔴 MODEL OUTPUT

30 active signals across 388 tickers analyzed — 7.7% of the universe.

From 33 signals last week to 30 this week — a modest contraction, but the direction matters less than the composition. W29 was the energy surge story: seven names from XLE flooded in simultaneously. W30 tells us whether those names have staying power. The answer is: mostly yes — BKR, COP, HAL, SLB, DVN, RRC, MUR all remain on the board — but the cohort is uniformly S1 and none of them are near structural lows. They are sector-weakness signals in names that haven't yet been beaten to the floor. That's a different thesis than the deep-value setup.

The more interesting story is the S2D count: four names confirmed this week — CRM, TSN, PLTR, SPOT — and all four held from last week's escalation. That's the key question the model was asking in W29: do these AC crosses persist, or are they one-bar events? One week of confirmation is not a trend, but it is materially better than what we saw in W28's S2D cohort, which collapsed within seven days. Three of the four current S2D names are at structural lows (CRM p10%, TSN p39%, SPOT p38%); PLTR at p63% is the odd one out — elevated percentile, but the technical structure is real.

The Pre-Radar is the number that commands attention this week: 34 tickers at ≤p15 with no active signal. Healthcare and consumer names are piling up at the floor. MCD at p0%, LOW at p0%, ORCL at p0%, SNPS at p0%, CHTR at p1%, LEN at p1%, BSX at p0%, ZTS at p2% — this is an unusually dense accumulation of distressed names that the model has not yet confirmed. The signal has not turned on yet, but the conditions for a significant escalation wave are in place.

Follow-Up — W29 Key Names

🔴 MODEL OUTPUT

W30 Candidates — Category A

🔴 MODEL OUTPUT — Algorithm-generated. Not editorial picks.

The 30 tickers the model flagged as priority for W31 monitoring. Ordered by price percentile (lower = more depressed relative to 52-week range).

Decision week: W31.

S2 Signals — Week 30

🔴 MODEL OUTPUT

Pure S2 — Full Confirmation

None this week.

S2 Degraded — 4 Tickers

Pre-Radar — Approaching the Signal

🔴 MODEL OUTPUT

34 tickers at structural lows (≤p15) with no active signal yet. Names to watch heading into W31.

The Universe

388 tickers · 13 sectors
Sectors covered: XLU, XLI, XLP, XLE, XLF, XLV, XLB, XLY, XLK, XLC, XLRE, IBB, XBI
Market reference: SPY

Active signals by type:

• S1 active: 26
• S2 degraded: 4
• S2 pure: 0
• Tickers at structural lows (≤p30): 14

The Ticker of the Week — Deep Dive

🟡 ANALYST COMMENTARY — Editorial interpretation. Not model output.

FMC · FMC Corporation

Why FMC this week: FMC is the most structurally distressed name in the entire radar universe this week — p1% against a 52-week range of $10.56 to $43.97 — and it carries something the other names at the floor don't: a confirmed external vote of confidence at a price close to current levels.

The Business

FMC Corporation is one of the five largest agricultural chemicals companies globally, founded in 1883 and headquartered in Philadelphia. Its core products are crop protection chemicals — insecticides (Rynaxypyr, Cyazypyr), herbicides, and fungicides — sold to farmers across North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The company employs approximately 5,500 people and generates revenue from the timing-sensitive crop cycle: farmers buy inputs before planting seasons, which creates quarterly lumpiness but also predictable annual demand. Agriculture doesn't go away.

Why It's Depressed

FMC has been in free-fall for two years. The 52-week range tells the story with brutal clarity: from $43.97 to $11.30, a -74% decline. The causes are well-documented: channel destocking after COVID-era overbuying, pricing pressure from Chinese generic manufacturers entering Western markets, and currency headwinds across Latin America — FMC's largest growth region. Analysts have been lowering price targets steadily: RBC to $12, Mizuho to $16, Citi to $14, BMO to $15. The consensus view is that the business is impaired and recovery will be slow.

What changed this month: on July 1, Tessenderlo Group NV — a Belgian specialty chemicals and nutrition company — announced a $400 million minority equity investment in FMC, acquiring approximately 20% of outstanding shares at $13.30 per share. That price is materially above FMC's current trade (~$11.30). Tessenderlo isn't a financial buyer. This is a strategic partnership between two agricultural chemistry companies, and the acquirer is paying a premium to current market to get in. Simultaneously, FMC completed a $114 million sale-leaseback of its Newark, Delaware property — balance sheet repair, not financial engineering. Q2 earnings are scheduled for July 28, which will be the first real look at how the business performed after all these capital actions.

The Setup

The Williams model has held S1 on FMC for multiple weeks now. AO is negative (-2.70), AC is barely negative (-0.19), AC color has already turned green — this is the configuration that precedes S2D escalation. The price percentile is p1%: FMC is trading closer to its 52-week low than 99% of the time in recent history. The Tessenderlo deal provides an unusual anchoring signal: a strategic buyer studied this business and concluded $13.30 per share was fair value. The market is currently offering it at $11.30 — a 17% discount to what a strategic partner just paid.

The setup risk is the July 28 earnings. A miss combined with a guidance cut could push FMC below the 52-week low ($10.56), which would break the technical structure. The model would drop the signal. For the patient investor, however, the question is whether the thesis holds over 6-12 months, not over one quarter.

Risk Factors

The bull case requires believing that channel destocking is nearing its end, that Tessenderlo's $400M changes the balance sheet trajectory, and that Chinese generic competition doesn't permanently impair pricing. None of these are certain. The EPS outlook for Q2 shows an expected -69.6% decline year over year. This is a distressed name with real fundamental impairment — not just a mis-priced strong business.

The Patient Investor Case

At $11.30 and a market cap of $1.46B, FMC is priced for continued deterioration. The Tessenderlo investment at $13.30 provides a reference price and a strategic alignment that most distressed situations lack. A company doesn't take a 20% strategic equity partner at a premium unless both parties see a path forward. The Williams model identified this setup because the AO/AC structure is approaching the inflection pattern — not because the fundamentals have already recovered. That's the nature of the signal: it identifies when the selling pressure is exhausting itself, before the narrative changes. FMC is at that point. W31 earnings will either confirm or invalidate.

Manager Note — W30

🟡 ANALYST COMMENTARY — Portfolio manager's macro read. Not model output.

This week clarified something that had been building for several weeks: the market is not just dealing with company-specific risk. W30 delivered a full macro bundle — Brent crude crossing $100 for the first time since May, new U.S. tariffs on 60+ economies taking effect at midnight Friday covering 99% of U.S. imports, and Fed rate hike odds jumping from 13% to 36% in a single week. The 10-year Treasury touched 4.72%, its highest since January 2025. This is the environment in which the radar is operating, and it explains why the broad index fell while the model's S1 cohort showed slightly positive average performance for the second consecutive week.

The divergence is meaningful. When depressed, mean-reverting names outperform a falling market, it's either a sector rotation signal or a tell that these names are so far from fair value that macro headwinds don't add much incremental pressure. Both explanations are possible. The one that concerns me is the tariff variable. Five of the XLB names on the board — DOW, OLN, LYB, HUN, FMC — are chemicals companies with significant input cost exposure and international revenue. New tariffs at 10-12.5% on agricultural imports would specifically pressure FMC's Latin American business. This is not a reason to abandon the thesis, but it is a reason to be precise about position sizing when signals eventually confirm.

The Pre-Radar density is the number I keep returning to: 34 tickers at ≤p15 with no active signal. That's the largest accumulation of floor-level names I've tracked since this journal began. Healthcare (BSX, ZTS, ISRG, BDX), consumer (MCD, LOW, NKE), and tech (ORCL, SNPS, CHTR) are all compressed simultaneously. The model hasn't turned on yet — no S2 confirmation in any of these sectors. But the conditions for a significant wave are in place. W31 and W32 will be the test.

For now: no new positions. The macro environment is too noisy for conviction entry. We wait for S2 confirmation with broad market stabilization.

Published: Friday, July 24, 2026