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.
Same quarter, two very different North American economies.
US Q3 GDP: +3.4% annualized.
Canada: real GDP flat in July, flat again in August, and -0.1% in September's advance estimate (StatCan). That works out to roughly 1.3% annualized for Q3, below what the Bank of Canada had forecast (Bloomberg).
The BoC just hiked anyway. Two flat months make it hard to argue the economy is running hot, so the hike is really about the energy shock. The next CPI print will show whether inflation is spreading beyond it.
BofA's Hartnett: buy Mag7 bonds, not Mag7 stocks. Worries about AI debt have pushed even investment-grade hyperscaler yields to 6-8% (CNBC).
The bigger shift is who funds the build. $MSFT is selling $25B of bonds, $META plans $95B of stock. For a decade these companies sent cash back to shareholders. Hartnett thinks the big-buyback era is over.
If AI returns arrive late, creditors are first in line. Shareholders are the ones being asked for patience.
台湾第三季 GDP 同比增长14.36%(主计总处初估),Reuters 调查的预期是12%。已经连续4个季度两位数增长,前三季累计是1976年以来最高。
更值得看的是结构:按 ING 的拆分,内需贡献9.41个百分点,净出口只有4.94,其中资本形成一项就贡献了6.32。
AI 不只是让台湾多出口芯片,而是带动整个产业链在本地扩产、买设备。数据里唯一的隐忧是 CPI 已到2.43%。
美股这周因为 AI 支出太大在卖科技股,FT 说大型科技股市值蒸发近9000亿美元。同一笔钱,在台湾的数据里已经变成了实打实的增长。
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.
$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.
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.
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.
$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.
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.
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.
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?
$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.
$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.
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.
$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.