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,

$Dow Jones(.DJI)$ fell 419 points on Tuesday, or 0.79 per cent, to 52,766.88; $S&P 500(.SPX)$ lost 0.71 per cent to 7,631.47; $Invesco QQQ(QQQ)$ fell 1.27 per cent. The selling started in the Middle East: US forces struck Iranian targets near the Strait of Hormuz, and Brent crude jumped about 5 per cent on the day to around US$95, a level reports call its highest since late July. When oil goes up, the inflation maths has to be redone. The ten-year Treasury yield closed at 4.78 per cent, which reports put as the highest since January 2025; the thirty-year reached 5.27 per cent. Futures at the CME now put the odds

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

Hello. After Warsh spoke on Friday, one estimate put the odds of a September rate rise at 60 per cent. Over the weekend US forces struck Iran and Brent crude went above US$90. Dearer oil makes inflation harder to hold down. But this particular fire is burning on the supply side, where a rate rise will not put it out and will press on demand as well. In three days, September became a harder question. This was Warsh's first appearance at Jackson Hole as chair. He restated the commitment to holding inflation down, and coverage rated the speech "moderately hawkish". He made clear he was not offering forward guidance; a former Fed vice chair said he had given it anyway. The market took him at his word: the two-year Treasury yield jumped, spot gold fell from US$4,649.60 last Thursday to US$4,478

Hello. $NVIDIA(NVDA)$ closed up 8.74 per cent on Thursday at US$227.98, and one report called it the largest single-day gain in market value the company has ever made; $Invesco QQQ(QQQ)$ rose 1.37 per cent. Another headline was blunter: $S&P 500(.SPX)$ was up that day because of Nvidia and nothing else. The other side of it appeared the same day: one report's headline said Nvidia is getting too big, and that this is a problem in itself. An index leaning on a single stock looks good on the way up and works the same way in reverse. The day before, it had fallen first and turned higher only on the 70 per cent growth

Hello. US markets barely moved during Wednesday's session — $S&P 500(.SPX)$ fell 0.02 per cent and $Invesco QQQ(QQQ)$ rose 0.09 per cent, with everyone waiting on one set of results after the close. They arrived, and the numbers were better than anyone had expected. Record revenue of US$96.221 billion, up 106 per cent year on year, with data centre revenue up 117 per cent; consensus was about US$92.38 billion, so revenue came in about 4 per cent ahead, and adjusted earnings per share was US$2.22 against US$2.09 expected, about 6.22 per cent ahead. Guidance for the current quarter is about US$108 billion, and revenue in financial year 2028 is expected to grow about 70 per

Hello. Nvidia does not report until after tonight's US close. Not one of Tuesday's five biggest gainers rose because of it. $NVIDIA(NVDA)$ itself closed up 2.19 per cent at US$213.05, snapping a seven-session losing streak, and added 0.29 per cent after hours. The indices rose with it: $S&P 500(.SPX)$ up 0.32 per cent and $Invesco QQQ(QQQ)$ 0.62 per cent, with coverage noting $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ had posted a third straight triple-digit gain. On the results themselves, the options market is pricing a swing of about US$280 billion in market value, with anothe

Hello. On Monday the chip chain was sold from end to end. $Micron Technology(MU)$ closed down 5.83 per cent at US$910.43, $SanDisk Corp.(SNDK)$ fell 6.45 per cent, $SK hynix(SKHY)$ 4.92 per cent, $Advanced Micro Devices(AMD)$ 3.49 per cent, $Marvell Technology(MRVL)$ 3.27 per cent and $Intel(INTC)$ 3.12 per cent, while the optical name $Applied Optoelectronics(AAOI)$ dropped 13.77 per ce

Hello. Last friday's US session was a quiet one — $Invesco QQQ(QQQ)$ closed up 0.35 per cent, $SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust(SPY)$ 0.41 per cent and the Dow 0.98 per cent — though the week as a whole still finished lower. What mattered happened after the close. On 23 August $BABA-W(09988)$ announced and priced a placement of new shares worth HK$80 billion, about US$10.2 billion, sold at an 8.4 per cent discount, with the net proceeds going into full-stack AI infrastructure. That is the fourth such raise in the same week. Intel sold US$20 billion of stock at US$95 a share;

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 long end, which had been pressing on everything for three days, got held down on Wednesday. The 30-year Treasury yield first set a 19-year high intraday, then turned back after the US Treasury said it would at least double the size of its liquidity support buybacks in 10- to 30-year securities. The 30-year fell as much as 9 basis points to 5.19 per cent, closed near 5.20 per cent, and is down to 5.18 per cent today. But technology did not come back. $SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust(SPY)$ closed up 0.21 per cent and $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ 0.22 per cent, and most of that came from healthcare while tech kept being sold. One headline put it plainly: the tech sell-off resumed an

Hello. Three companies reported on Tuesday. Put the three side by side and no order makes sense. $Fabrinet(FN)$ beat on revenue by about 3.1 per cent and on earnings per share by about 7.5 per cent, both records — and closed down 19.38 per cent at US$482.59. $Home Depot(HD)$ beat on both lines, posted net sales of about US$47.9 billion and its best comparable sales since 2022, and reaffirmed full-year guidance — and closed down 0.12 per cent. $BIDU-SW(09888)$ missed on both revenue and profit, with earnings per share about 22.7 per cent short — and closed down 12.73 per cent. Full marks fell 19 per cent, a pass fell 0.

Hello. The first thing to move this week was not a set of results. It was policy. The US government spoke up and asked Apple to steer clear of Chinese memory chips. That one request lifted the entire memory chain on Monday. $SanDisk Corp.(SNDK)$ closed up 8.88 per cent at US$1,786.85, and $Tradr 2X Long SNDK Daily ETF(SNXX)$ rose 17.73 per cent in a day. $Micron Technology(MU)$ closed up 4.13 per cent at US$1,011.75, back above US$1,000. $Western Digital(WDC)$ rose 5.35 per cent, $SK hynix(SKHY)$ 3.04 p

Hello. The weekend is over, and the most striking thing left from Friday's close was a pair of numbers pointing opposite ways: $Advanced Micro Devices(AMD)$ up 6.50 per cent, $Broadcom(AVGO)$ down 5.94 per cent. Both are AI chip names, and they spent the day going in different directions. What the market was reading that day was not results. It was second-quarter position disclosures. Stanley Druckenmiller's 13F showed him loading up on Amazon and AMD while dumping a batch of chipmakers, and a Soros fund was adding AMD too, alongside $Micron Technology(MU)$, $Appli

Hello. The last of this week's AI hardware papers came in overnight, and both were sold. $Applied Materials(AMAT)$ earned US$3.50 a share, ahead of forecasts, grew revenue 25 per cent year on year, said AI-related demand hit a record, and guided next-quarter revenue above Wall Street expectations. It closed down 2.48 per cent and fell another 5.13 per cent after hours, to US$507.11. $Coherent(COHR)$ was starker. Its report the previous evening beat on both lines — earnings of US$1.74 a share against US$1.6474 expected, revenue of US$2.046 billion against US$2.025 billion — and it closed down 7.99 per cent yesterday at US$327.23, giving back the whole of the prior day's 8.24

Hello. The figure this market had spent two days sitting still for landed last night, and all four parts of it came in on the nose: July CPI was 3.4 per cent year on year and 0.1 per cent on the month, with the core at 2.5 per cent and 0.2 per cent. Traders trimmed their bets on a September rate rise, with the odds easing to about 33 per cent. The gate opened. The water did not run towards the mega-caps. Of the Magnificent Seven, only $NVIDIA(NVDA)$ rose, up 3.03 per cent. $Meta Platforms, Inc.(META)$ fell 3.38 per cent, $Microsoft(MSFT)$ 2.26 per cent, $Amazon.

Hello. In the last piece Nvidia was out raising up to US$500 billion for AI infrastructure and the market had started asking where the money would come from. Last night we got half an answer: the money is there, but the people putting it up and the people spending it went in opposite directions. The providers all rose: KKR up 6.88 per cent, Apollo 6.26 per cent, Brookfield 4.77 per cent, Blackstone 3.89 per cent and BlackRock 1.54 per cent. The spenders fell for a second day: Alphabet down 3.61 per cent, its fourth decline in five sessions; $Amazon.com(AMZN)$ down 2.09 per cent, $Broadcom(AVGO)$ 1.5 per cent, $Apple(AAP

Hello. The biggest story last night was Nvidia out raising money: it is working with Blackstone, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, KKR and others on a consortium to fund AI infrastructure, for as much as US$500 billion, to be spent on AI chips, power generation and data centres. $英伟达(NVDA)$ fell 2.86 per cent on the news. It didn't fall because demand is short. It fell because people have started to wonder whether Nvidia is creating that demand itself: it has signed agreements worth hundreds of billions of dollars with participants across the AI ecosystem, lifting overall demand and valuations, while those counterparties themselves depend on the AI boom staying alive. That structure has a name. Circular financing. Jensen Huang answered on

Hello. Friday's payrolls report was genuinely bad: July payrolls fell by 23,000, the May and June gains were revised down by a combined 103,000, and hourly earnings rose just 3.2 per cent year on year. $S&P 500(.SPX)$ rose 0.62 per cent to a record close. $NASDAQ(.IXIC)$ rose 1.30 per cent and $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ 0.28 per cent. Data that bad turned out to be good news, because the market immediately cut the odds of a September rate rise to about 44 per cent. Loosen the rate outlook and valuations get room to breathe: $Palantir Technologies Inc.(PLTR)$ ros

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