Jensen Huang said on Monday that he is not afraid of custom chips. The same day, Nvidia put US$3.5 billion into MediaTek convertible bonds and brought MediaTek onto its own NVLink. He is not trying to keep custom chips outside the door; he wants them running across Nvidia's network. Reports say the tie-up is meant to get custom data-centre chips deployed faster. Nvidia closed 1.48 per cent higher at US$220.78. On the custom-silicon side, the tape read the opposite way. $Marvell Technology(MRVL)$ fell another 2.29 per cent to US$211.66, and its gain for the year slipped from 154.91 per cent on Friday to 149.07 per cent. The wound is the same one as last week. Revenue from the US$120 billion arrangement with

On Wednesday $S&P 500(.SPX)$ closed 0.48 per cent lower, its third session in a row heading down. $Meta Platforms, Inc.(META)$ rose 6.55 per cent the same day to close at US$653.69. The whole market was backing away while one of the largest companies in it put on six and a half points, and those look like two unrelated things. They are one thing. What is holding the indexes down is rates: Brent crude moved back above US$100 for the first time in two months, the inflation print lands on Friday, the ten-year Treasury yield was pushed to 4.85 per cent and the thirty-year broke above 5.30 per cent. The Treasury stepped in that day and raised the cap on its buybacks of ten-

One batch of results, three different share prices. $Dell Technologies Inc.(DELL)$ closed 15.81 per cent higher on Wednesday at US$492.20. Credo's revenue more than doubled from the previous quarter and the stock closed down 20.04 per cent at US$165.22. $Broadcom(AVGO)$ left its answer until after the close, beat on both revenue and earnings, and saw its shares push above US$370 before being knocked back below US$350. The hardest number in Dell's results is US$95 billion — a record order backlog for AI servers. It raised full-year revenue guidance by US$25 billion to US$192 billion at the same time. At least 15 firms moved their targets that day: UBS from US$455 to US$500,

The indices: three of them, three directions On Tuesday the $NASDAQ(.IXIC)$ Composite closed 0.45 per cent higher at 27,244.28, up 122.18 points on the day and a second straight close at a record; the $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ closed 0.36 per cent lower at 51,863.69, down 185.14 points, with $Cisco(CSCO)$, $JPMorgan Chase(JPM)$ and American Express leading the fallers at 4.50 per cent, 3.35 per cent and 2.62 per cent lower respectively; and the S&P 500 finished at 7,764.64, just 0.06 points below the 7,764.70 it closed at the previous session. That list of Dow f

The $NASDAQ(.IXIC)$ Composite closed 2.3 per cent higher on Monday at a record, its first since June; the $S&P 500(.SPX)$ closed 1.49 per cent higher at 7,764.70, which leaves it 0.4 per cent short of its own record; the $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ closed 0.7 per cent higher. What brought risk appetite back was falling oil prices and lower Treasury yields, and no company put out an announcement that day big enough to move the whole market. The $Philadelphia Semiconductor Index(SOX)$ rose 4.3 per cent, a fifth straight session of gains. The distance that opened up

The indices: three directions the day before, one direction now All three indices closed lower on Wednesday: the $NASDAQ(.IXIC)$ Composite fell 1.13 per cent to 26,936.04, down 308.24 points on the day, giving back the record it had set in the previous session; the $S&P 500(.SPX)$ fell 0.75 per cent to 7,706.03, down 58.61 points; and the $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ fell 0.68 per cent to 51,511.59, down 352.10 points. The previous session had the three running separately — the Nasdaq closing at a record, the Dow lower, the S&P 500 finishing flat to within 0.06 points. A day later they were back on the same heading, a

The three US indices closed Friday almost where they started. The $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ fell 0.18 per cent to 51,682.64, down 95.40 points on the day; the $S&P 500(.SPX)$ closed 0.17 per cent higher at 7,650.50, up 12.74 points; and the $NASDAQ(.IXIC)$ Composite closed 0.39 per cent higher at 26,522.54. It was a triple-witching day, with stock options, index futures and index options all expiring together and an index rebalancing on top, so volume was always going to be heavy. The calm at index level says very little; what was actually happening was money moving between sectors. The split between the indices is par

All three indexes closed lower on Tuesday, the Dow worst of them at 1.18 per cent, $S&P 500(.SPX)$ down 0.58 per cent and $NASDAQ(.IXIC)$ Composite down 0.32 per cent. Chips went the other way on the same day: Intel put on 9.05 per cent to close at US$104.47, back above US$100 and the biggest gain in the row. The indexes went one way and the chips went the other, and that is the split this day comes down to. What pushed the indexes down was oil. WTI moved above US$94 and Brent came close to US$99, and what pushed oil up were attacks in the Middle East. The attacks fell over the weekend, so they were not in Friday's closing prices and only arrived at Tuesday's open. The

Hello. The Treasury's buyback tool was upsized again, and the bond market bought it for half a day. US Treasury Secretary Bessent said on Thursday that the size of each long-dated Treasury buyback had gone from US$2 billion to at least US$4 billion, and could rise further. The 30-year yield fell as much as 10 basis points and the dollar index weakened — and then the bond market pushed back. The reason is simple enough: buybacks deal with liquidity, while the deficit, inflation and the term premium have not moved at all. There was a new variable that day: the consumer. $S&P 500(.SPX)$ closed down 0.87 per cent and $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ 1.32 per cent, about 600 points — Barro

Hello. The largest first tranche of any IPO lock-up in US market history came free last night: 911.5 million $SpaceX(SPCX)$ insider shares became eligible to sell, taking the freely tradable count from about 639 million to roughly 1.55 billion in one step. The shares rose 6.14 per cent. The day the selling actually happened wasn't last night. It was the day before. On Wednesday the stock fell 13.61 per cent on about 200 million shares, the heaviest turnover since 18 June; last night volume hit 251 million and set another high, yet the price went up. Heavier volume than Wednesday, and the price went the other way — the people who wanted to sell had mostly finished on Wednesday. Someone went back through three comparable cases: in ea