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 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

$Microsoft(MSFT)$ up 7.70% after hours. $Meta Platforms, Inc.(META)$, down 7.10%. Same evening, same underlying fact — both companies are spending unholy amounts of money on AI — and fifteen points of daylight between them. Read those two numbers alone and you'd conclude the market turned on AI capex. It didn't. It did something more annoying: it started sorting. Start with who flipped the switch. The July FOMC didn't move rates and didn't change a word of the guidance. Warsh spoke, and within thirty minutes the ten worst names on the tape were almost all AI. The S&P 500 closed down 1.52% at 7,316.15, the Nasdaq Composite down 1.74%,

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 everyone. When last night's US session closed, $S&P 500(.SPX)$ and $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ were both at records, $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ above 54,000 for the first time. Not long after the bell, $Advanced Micro Devices(AMD)$ was down 8.68 per cent. It wasn't alone. $SpaceX(SPCX)$ was up 9.43 per cent at the close and dived 8.04 per cent after hours, at one point down almost 9 per cent. The two traced almost the same roller coaster: lifted in the session, knocked down after the bell. And neither paper wa

Good morning. Somebody got paid last night. Not the name you're thinking of. $Palantir Technologies Inc.(PLTR)$ rose 14.25 per cent after hours on Monday. The same day, $Micron Technology(MU)$ rose 0.79 per cent and $SK hynix(SKHY)$ fell 0.70 per cent. I ended the last piece saying $Apple(AAPL)$ had signed for the shortage and the side collecting the money hadn't. On Monday it signed. The signature doesn't belong to a memory maker. Palantir's quarter: revenue of US$1.935 billion, up 93 per cent year on year, commercial revenue growing at around 150 per cent, a

$Apple(AAPL)$ beat on revenue for its fiscal third quarter and fell 5.74 per cent after hours. Once the same call had wrapped up, $SanDisk Corp.(SNDK)$ rose 4.61 per cent in extended hours and $SK hynix(SKHY)$ 3.76 per cent. Between the two sits a single remark from Tim Cook: memory supply is tight, it will hit next quarter, and the company is stockpiling hard to get ahead of significant supply constraints. On Apple's books that sentence is a cost. On a memory maker's books it is revenue. One fact, two income statements, opposite signs. Before we put the whole 5.74 per cent on that one line: the same results missed

$Apple(AAPL)$ fell 7.35 per cent on Friday, the only mega-cap to drop hard. The same day, $Amazon.com(AMZN)$ rose 15.32 per cent and $Alphabet(GOOG)$ 6.88 per cent. I left a question hanging last time. Tim Cook's line — memory is tight, it will hit next quarter — went into Apple's guidance, and it went into somebody's revenue too. Friday answered. It answered half. Apple's column got copied down; the column belonging to whoever collects the money got rubbed out. $Micron Technology(MU)$ -5.90%, $SanDisk Cor