In partnership with
Weekly Newsletter
💼 Job Market Continues To Be Strong
📉 Nasdaq Enters Correction Territory
🔍 Why Thursday's Sell-Off Was Technical And Not Fundamental
📊 Key Takeaways From This Week’s Earnings
📈 Earnings Tracker
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
“This is a transformative technology and capability. The demand behind AI is real. And so what we're seeing is some of the adjustments as players de-risk.” - Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser
KEY US ECONOMIC EVENTS NEXT WEEK:
MARKET CLOSE:
WEEKLY MARKET WRAP:
Good Afternoon. Markets sold off this week due to technical reasons. A sell-off was widely expected if democrats sweep elections, which turned out to be true. The October jobs report, finally released after the shutdown delay, printed 165K vs. ~55K expected, with unemployment falling to 4.1%. SF Fed’s Mary Daly said Friday that “higher rates are likely to be needed.” Strong payrolls plus a hot CPI expected next week puts a December hike back on the table — the opposite of what the market was pricing a month ago. 10Y yields eased to 4.86% anyway as flight-to-safety outweighed the rate signal.
The Nasdaq is now in correction territory. The S&P closed its fourth consecutive weekly decline. Earnings and the economy are fine, so I see this as a buying opportunity. More analysis of the sell-off in the curated insights section below.
For the week:
CNN's Fear & Greed Index now stands at 22 (Extreme Fear) out of 100, down 4 points from last week. Details here
The top five trending stocks on Reddit are NVIDIA, SPY, Micron, VOO, and DTE Energy. Read More
Liquidity:
Banking Reserves + ON RRP: Banking reserves remain at approximately $2.962 trillion. ON RRP, where money market funds park spare cash overnight, remains immaterial. In August 2025, I estimated that funding stress begins when reserves fall to around $2.5 trillion. That leaves a cushion of roughly $395 billion, so banking-system liquidity remains ample.
Standing Repo Operations: The New York Fed’s standing repo operation (primarily reflecting SRF take-up) is $0. This is the Fed’s backstop for banks that need overnight cash. Zero usage means no bank needed emergency funding this week, so there is no sign of funding stress.
Here is a summary of this week’s key economic releases:
Target Rate Probabilities for March 18th FOMC Meeting:
CURATED INSIGHTS & ANALYSIS:
Why Thursday’s Tech Sell-Off Was Technical, Not Fundamental:
Thursday, Nov 5: S&P −4.4%, Nasdaq −5.5%, roughly $2.3T wiped off Nasdaq 100 market cap. The Nasdaq Composite closed Friday at 24,579, down 10.9% from its Oct 6 peak — officially in correction territory.
No new catalyst hit the tape. No earnings miss, no Fed decision, no policy shock. The move was mechanical.
The five triggers, in order:
Crowded positioning. Goldman’s prime brokerage flagged hedge-fund nets as stretched. Same trades, same side.
Technical break. Nasdaq lost its 50-day moving average. CTAs sell mechanically when levels break.
Risk limits hit. Long-short, multi-strat, and quant books all posted losses in size on the same day. PMs were forced to cut.
Cross-asset margin signal. Silver fell ~19% overnight. Bitcoin saw billions in liquidations. One book being raised across asset classes.
Dealer gamma. VIX moved 19.4 → 25.6. Dealers hedging short gamma had to sell futures into the decline.
Credit markets confirm it was positioning, not solvency. US swap spreads stayed calm. The MOVE index eased from its October peak. The 10-year yield fell ~50bp from its early-October high. Hyperscaler CDS stayed muted relative to the equity move. Stress is isolated to the known AI-leverage pockets: CoreWeave’s 5-year CDS blew past 1,000bp into distressed territory, and CCC junk spreads are at their widest since 2020. If this were a real thesis break, broad credit would have moved with equities. It did not.
The reframe: Thursday was a deleveraging event. Positioning blew up. Fundamentals did not.
Earnings Tracker:
Q3 reporting is 88% done across the S&P 500, and the earnings are strong. The typical company grew GAAP net income 14.7%, with revenue up 12.2% and 84% beating estimates. The typical Russell 3000 company grew 15.4%, still slightly ahead of large caps. Blended growth for the index stands at 31.4%, the third straight quarter above 25%.
The surprise has shrunk. Companies beat estimates by 2.7%, down from a five-year average of 7.5%. Analysts raised their forecasts in each of the last three quarters, so results landed close to expectations this time. Blended growth has risen 2.3 points since quarter-end, not the six points the usual pattern implied.
The only real slowing is at the top. Large-cap growth still posts the strongest numbers, with median earnings up 20.2%, but it is running 4.1 points behind its own Q2 pace at the same reporting stage. The S&P 500 and Russell 3000 are within two points of theirs.
The earnings are strong. Analysts expected it, so beats are small, and the fastest growers are slowing from a very high base.
Key takeaways from this week’s earnings:
Memory costs are squeezing phones and PCs
Qualcomm expects the smartphone market to shrink by a low-to-mid-teens percentage this year as memory costs push phone prices up. Arm’s smartphone royalties were flat for the same reason. AMD expects PC shipments to fall by double digits in 2027. Apple’s gross margin fell about 1 point on memory costs, excluding tariff refunds. The memory shortage now reaches most consumer devices.
AI agents are adding demand for standard processors
AI agents are programs that carry out tasks for people, and each one runs on a standard processor, not only on AI chips. AMD expects its server processor revenue to double in 2027, partly for this reason. Arm expects up to $2 billion of sales from its first server chip, and Qualcomm expects $5 billion of data center revenue next fiscal year. More agents may mean more demand for every kind of chip.
Business AI is moving from trials to large contracts
Palantir’s revenue grew 96%, and several customers turned pilot projects of $1–3 million into $15–29 million contracts within months. Arista’s revenue grew 58.5%, its fastest ever, as companies build networks to run AI models day to day. Business spending on AI appears to be shifting from testing to everyday use.
AI agents are starting to shop for people
Shopify said orders from AI shopping channels grew 3.3 times, and this quarter was the first time shoppers let personal AI agents complete purchases for them. Apple launched a new AI version of Siri, and Qualcomm said the first smartphones built around AI agents launched on its chips. The volume is still small, but a new way of shopping is taking shape.
Drug growth is coming from more patients, not higher prices
Novo Nordisk now treats 5.6 million people for obesity, nearly double a year ago, but lower U.S. prices keep its full-year sales outlook between −2% and +2%. Amgen’s Repatha grew 37%, with U.S. new prescriptions up more than 60%. Eli Lilly showed the same pattern last week. In pharma, volume is driving growth while prices are a drag.
Rising costs help some companies and squeeze others
ConocoPhillips raised its dividend 11% on strong cash flow. Toyota expects about ¥1 trillion of higher material costs this year but still raised its profit forecast through price increases and cost cuts. McDonald’s is testing cheaper meal bundles in about 6,000 U.S. restaurants to win back price-sensitive customers. Companies that can raise prices are holding up best.
FRONT PAGES:
Democrats Sweep 2026 Midterms: Democrats won control of both the House and Senate in Tuesday’s midterm elections, with Republicans failing to flip a single seat. Schumer vowed a “legislative razor wire” against the Trump agenda. Markets largely focused on the tech selloff later in the week, though the result raises the probability of softer tariff language, expanded healthcare enforcement, and tighter AI regulation heading into 2027.
Anthropic IPO Faces Valuation Pushback: Anthropic’s IPO roadshow has run into investor pushback over its sought $1.5-1.6 trillion valuation, with some advisors suggesting the deal could price closer to $1 trillion or be delayed entirely. The pushback follows this week’s AI equity correction and the company’s S-1 disclosure of $542-567 billion in cumulative compute commitments. Anthropic has not publicly commented on the reported revisions.
OpenAI Closes First $11B at $1.25T, Below Target: OpenAI closed the first $11 billion tranche of its secondary funding round on Friday at a $1.25 trillion valuation, below the $1.4 trillion the company originally sought. The round targets up to $30 billion in total and remains led by UAE investors. The step-down from the target valuation reflects AI investors reassessing risk after the Nasdaq correction and the Big Tech capex plateau signal.
Meta Acquires Conductor AI Coding Startup: Meta acquired Conductor, an AI coding startup whose agents run in parallel across multiple models, for an undisclosed amount. The deal shuts down the standalone service and folds the team into Meta’s Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs. The move extends the big-tech pattern of acqui-hiring AI coding startups to lock in developer workflows against OpenAI and Anthropic.
Lilly Partners With Hims for Obesity Drugs: Eli Lilly and Hims & Hers announced a direct distribution deal on Thursday allowing Lilly to sell FDA-approved obesity medicines, including Zepbound, through the Hims telehealth platform. The partnership ends a multi-quarter dispute over compounded GLP-1s and marks Lilly’s first major direct-to-telehealth consumer move. Hims shares rose on the news.
EARNINGS UPDATE:
Apple. EPS $2.05 versus $1.99; revenue $114.5B, up 12%, versus $113.4B, a September-quarter record. Tariff refunds added about 1 point to gross margin; without them, margin fell about 1 point on higher memory costs. It expects its best quarter ever in December, with revenue up 7–10%, limited by supply.
Palantir. EPS $0.44 versus $0.41; revenue $2.31B, up 96%, versus $2.18B. U.S. commercial revenue grew 148% and passed U.S. government revenue for the first time. It raised its full-year revenue outlook to $8.53B.
AMD. EPS $2.09 versus $1.95; revenue $13.4B, up 45%, versus $13.1B. Data center revenue nearly doubled to $8.5B. It expects total revenue to grow more than 80% in 2027, but PC shipments to fall by double digits.
Amgen. EPS $6.45 versus $5.79; revenue $10.4B, up 8%, versus $10.1B. Its six main growth drugs rose 27%, led by cholesterol drug Repatha, up 37%.
Arista Networks. EPS $1.20 versus $1.08; revenue $3.66B, up 58.5%, versus $3.33B, its fastest growth as a public company. It said customers are building more networks to run AI models day to day.
Shopify. EPS $0.49 versus $0.46; revenue $3.68B, up 32% but slightly below estimates, its first revenue miss in four years. Merchandise volume of $119B also fell short. Orders from AI shopping channels grew 3.3 times.
Arm Holdings. EPS $0.52 versus $0.48; revenue $1.44B, up 27%, versus $1.38B. Data center royalties doubled, while smartphone royalties were flat as memory costs hurt phone sales. It now expects up to $2B of sales from its own server chip over two years.
McDonald’s. EPS $3.57 versus $3.38; revenue $7.16B versus $7.28B, a miss. Global same-store sales rose 1.5%; U.S. sales slipped 0.2% but turned positive in September. It is testing cheaper meal bundles ahead of a national launch in early 2027.
Novo Nordisk. EPS $0.89 per ADR versus $0.73; revenue $11.9B versus $11.1B. It now treats 5.6 million people for obesity, nearly double a year ago, and obesity sales grew 22%. Lower U.S. prices keep its full-year sales outlook at −2% to +2%.
Qualcomm. EPS $2.17, in line; revenue $10.4B versus $10.1B. Smartphone chip sales of $5.1B fell short of estimates as memory costs shrank the phone market. It expects $5B of data center revenue in fiscal 2027 and is raising chip prices.
Toyota. EPS $4.10 per ADR versus $3.37; revenue $84.8B, in line. It raised its full-year operating profit forecast by ¥500B to ¥3.9T, despite about ¥1T of higher material costs. Hybrids drove sales, while China was weak.
ConocoPhillips. EPS $3.27 versus $3.05; revenue $20.1B versus $18.6B. It raised its dividend 11% and returned $3.4B to shareholders.
EARNINGS PREVIEW:
Date | Symbol | Name | Time |
9-Nov | CEG | Constellation Energy | Before Open |
9-Nov | KKR | KKR & Co | Before Open |
9-Nov | OXY | Occidental Petroleum | After Close |
10-Nov | TDG | TransDigm Group | Before Open |
10-Nov | SE | Sea Ltd | Before Open |
10-Nov | PBR | Petrobras | After Close |
11-Nov | FNV | Franco-Nevada | After Close |
12-Nov | CSCO | Cisco Systems | After Close |
12-Nov | AMAT | Applied Materials | After Close |
12-Nov | NU | Nu Holdings | After Close |
13-Nov | MUFG | Mitsubishi UFJ Financial | Before Open |
13-Nov | SMFG | Sumitomo Mitsui Financial | Before Open |
VIDEO’s OF THE WEEK:
Autumn flights are here
Cool air, colorful leaves or a whole new city skyline: There's still time to book your fall escape with Alaska Airlines. Watch the aspens turn golden in Denver, catch a set on Broadway in Nashville, or trade sweaters for sunshine in Palm Springs. However you picture autumn, we fly there.
Fall is the perfect season for a quick reset. Maybe you're craving crisp hikes through New England, a weekend of orchards in the Pacific Northwest, or a food crawl through a city you've never explored. Whatever your version of autumn takes you, we've got a flight to get you there. Fly nonstop or connect to hundreds of destinations nationwide.
Flights start at great prices, so taking a little fall break won't break your budget.
Subject to availability. Terms and conditions apply.
Please Share This Newsletter With Your Friends.
Also, check my blog here.
This newsletter's content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered trading or investment recommendations. All the opinions in this newsletter are personal and do not belong to any organization.
