Owen

19 | Investing & Markets
美股 / 宏观 / 公司研究
Following businesses, capital & market cycle
Learning in public.

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

I entered the stock market on my 18th birthday.

I'm 19 now, and I've realized something:

I've spent a year trading companies I barely understood.

So I'm starting over.

Inside the Nasdaq — one company at a time.

Not here to sell picks. Here to figure out what I actually own.

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

Hours after WSJ reported Ukraine had quietly paused strikes on Russian refineries for two weeks under US pressure, it hit the Novokuybyshevsk refinery in Russia's Samara region overnight. WSJ now says the pause is over.

Same morning, $BP posted record profit on high fuel prices (FT).

The pause was one of the few reasons to expect some relief on refined fuel supply. If strikes keep going, watch whether diesel and jet fuel move more than crude.

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

过去很多年，$AAPL 是闪存行业最难缠的买家：要最惠价格条款，还要查供应商的账。

WSJ 引 TechInsights：两年前苹果的 NAND 采购量约是微软、亚马逊、Meta、谷歌四家合计的2倍；现在倒过来，这四家买的是苹果的约2倍。NAND 价格一年涨了约5倍。

落到 iPhone 上：256GB升512GB，用户多付的还是$200，但苹果多花的闪存成本按 WSJ 估算从约$15涨到约$66。

$SNDK 刚公布的季度毛利率85.1%，是同一件事的另一面。接下来要看苹果是自己消化成本，还是连存储升级一起涨价。

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

$GOOGL, $MSFT and $AMZN holders spent this week arguing over whether AI capex is getting too big.

Tokyo Electron (8035.T) just answered from the supplier side: its first full-year outlook calls for ¥865B net income, +50.6% YoY, vs a ¥776.9B analyst average (Reuters, IBES). Plus a ¥150B buyback.

Murata is also adding $100M of capacitor capacity for AI data-center demand (Bloomberg).

Spenders worry about returns. Suppliers get paid first. Both can be true for a while. The real question is which side's numbers turn first.

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

Binance 被盗约63亿美元，Reuters 报道链上分析公司 TRM Labs 把这次攻击归到朝鲜黑客头上。

归因本身不改变已经发生的损失，但会改变追回的预期。Binance 此前称已核实冻结约30亿美元，并承诺用自有资金承担全部损失。

按这两个数字粗算，冻结之外还有三十多亿。如果这部分基本追不回来，接下来更值得看的是：这笔钱最终由谁承担，会不会通过 $BNB 或交易所流动性传导到更大的市场？

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

Binance now puts the funds impacted at $6.3B (Bloomberg).

Its initial read on the cause: a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop that got into a service container and submitted unauthorized withdrawals. No evidence of a private key leak, it says.

The weak point wasn't the cryptography. It was a laptop.

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

The BOJ just said Japan's underlying inflation is "generally consistent" with its 2% target, the first time it has said that since adopting the target in 2013 (CNBC).

It still held at 1.25%. The vote was 8-1, with board member Takata wanting 1.5%.

Core CPI was 2.1% in September, so even after declaring the goal met, the policy rate sits below inflation. That reads less like the end of tightening than the setup for December or January.

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

$NVDA is in talks to guarantee billions of dollars of Nscale debt for a 460MW data center that Anthropic plans to use (The Information; Bloomberg is also reporting the talks). Nothing is signed yet.

Same day, $GOOGL's backlog leaned on a JV it helps backstop, and $HSBC looked to hand data-center loan risk to insurers. More and more of the AI buildout runs on someone guaranteeing someone else's debt. Here the guarantor is the company selling the chips.

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

Binance update: it's gone from pausing withdrawals to suspending all deposits and withdrawals while it runs security checks and works with law enforcement. It says it will cover all losses.

Bloomberg: more than $2.5B in assets frozen so far. $BTC slipped below $78K (CNBC).

Shutting deposits too suggests the scope still isn't fully mapped. Until withdrawals reopen, "we'll cover it" is a promise, not proof.

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

At least $1.7B appears to have been stolen from Binance today, which would be the largest crypto heist on record (WSJ). Withdrawals are paused, and CZ says Binance will cover the loss.

The detail worth noticing: Ripple and USD1's issuer froze linked tokens within hours. In crypto's biggest hack, part of the backstop was a centralized freeze button.

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

Closing Bell | Thu Oct 29

S&P 500 -0.31% to 7,720.39
Nasdaq -1.38% to 26,184.72
Dow -0.25% to 52,342.56

The index fell, but most stocks didn't: NYSE advancers beat decliners about 2 to 1 (1,947 vs 872). The selling was concentrated in AI-exposed names: $GOOGL -12.6% (its worst day ever, per CNBC), $NOW -27%, $FTNT -20%, $CAT -9%.

After the bell it got rougher: $AMZN down 6-7% on a light Q4 sales guide with 2026 capex still ~$220B, $INTC about -17% on guidance, $RDDT -16%, $RBLX -17%. Even $SNDK slipped ~2% after a big beat.

Tomorrow: $XOM and $CVX before the open, the Employment Cost Index at 7:30 a.m. CT, and whether the AH moves hold.

Open question: is the market done paying for AI spending before the cash shows up, or just getting pickier about who gets paid first?

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

$SNDK's gross margin a year ago: 29.9%. This quarter: 85.1%.

This is NAND flash, the part of chips usually treated as a commodity. Revenue hit $11.03B (+378% YoY), and data center sales went from $269M to $4.80B over the same year. Consumer revenue fell 39%. Next quarter's guide: $12.2-12.6B.

An hour after $INTC blamed weak PCs, Sandisk showed what a supplier with pricing power in AI looks like.

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

$AMZN fell more than 7% after hours (CNBC), even though AWS grew 39% to $46.0B, its fastest growth in nearly five years. Jassy is projecting 40%+ AWS growth in both 2027 and 2028.

What missed: ads ($19.64B vs $20.82B est., StreetAccount) and free cash flow, now -$42.4B over the trailing 12 months.

AI revenue is accelerating. The market is still pricing the cash it takes to get there.

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

$INTC 盘后一度跌约20%（CNBC）：营收和毛利率指引都低于预期，公司把原因归到PC需求下滑（FT/Bloomberg）。

但Bloomberg描述里更值得看的是另一半：数据中心相关产品需求非常旺盛，Intel却跟不上。

今年市场对Intel反转的信心，是靠连续几个季度的好财报建立起来的。现在的问题已经不是有没有需求，而是它能不能接住最赚钱的那部分需求。

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

White House NEC Director Kevin Hassett hinted he expects the Fed would raise rates if this month's inflation figures come in elevated (Bloomberg).

That's a notable line from the administration's top economic adviser, one day after two FOMC members dissented in favor of a hike. A Fed hike is no longer just a hawkish-dissent scenario. The White House is openly talking about it days before the midterms.

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

$GOOGL's 10-Q has a detail the earnings call didn't spell out.

Cloud backlog rose $46.9B in Q3 to $560.8B. Bloomberg calculates more than a third of that growth came from one $16.8B deal with Crux AI, a joint venture with Blackstone that Alphabet partly owns and has pledged up to $10B in backstops for.

That doesn't make the demand fake. But backlog from a partner you help finance isn't the same signal as a contract from an unrelated customer, and after today's drop, Cloud is doing most of the work in the bull case.

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

今天盘中，指数和大多数股票讲的是两个故事。

截至中午，纳指100跌约1%，罗素2000涨约1.2%；纽交所上涨家数约是下跌的2倍，标普11个板块里8个在涨。纳指100蒸发的市值里，大部分来自 $GOOGL 一家（Reuters）。

同一天Q3 GDP年化3.4%，高于预期。如果收盘还是这样，会是2024年7月以来第一次小盘涨超1%、纳指100跌超1%。

指数在跌，多数股票在涨。市场今天质疑的更像是AI投入的回报，而不是美国经济本身。

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

Hours after the ECB held at 2.50%, Reuters sources say policymakers see a 25bp hike on Dec 17 (deposit rate to 2.75%), followed by a pause, with energy prices the main thing that could change that.

The Bank of Canada hiked yesterday on energy-driven inflation too. If energy is what's pushing central banks toward hikes, Europe's next move may depend as much on oil and gas markets as on anything said in Frankfurt.

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

$HSBC is in early talks to offload credit risk on its data center loans to insurers, per Bloomberg.

The interesting part isn't that banks are lending to AI. It's that they want to keep lending without holding all of the default risk. As that risk moves from bank balance sheets to insurers, AI's credit exposure gets more spread out, and a little harder to track.

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

霍尔木兹又出事：UKMTO确认阿曼Khasab以北一艘船凌晨起火，伊朗官媒则称有油轮触雷（尚未获独立证实）。

同一天，QatarEnergy CEO说正在买美国LNG，用来对冲霍尔木兹中断风险，目标远超每年700万吨。

自己的出口也要经过这个海峡的卡塔尔，开始花钱买不经过海峡的气。风险已经被写进长期合同，而不只是体现在油价的日内波动里。

[Owen @OwenQ1114]

$MSFT is selling high-grade bonds for the first time in more than nine years (Bloomberg). Same morning, Lagarde said debt issuance by hyperscalers plays a role in the rise in yields, and that the long end has risen across the world.

AI capex isn't just an equity story anymore. When the ECB president names hyperscaler borrowing at her press conference, the buildout has become part of the bond market's supply math.