US toy prices are surging just as holiday shopping begins, hit by the combined impact of tariffs and high energy costs from the Iran war. Toy prices rose 6.6% over the last year and 4.2% from August (seasonally adjusted) in the September CPI data — a bigger gain than other consumer categories. The toy industry makes most US-sold products in China, leaving it exposed to shifting tariff policy, and toys are largely fossil-fuel-based plastics, so higher oil prices add to the sticker shock. Fitch Ratings' David Silverman said the dual tariff and energy pressures are now showing up in pricing and that the Iran conflict's impact on commodity and shipping costs 'will certainly persist for the next several quarters.'
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Mattel (MAT) and Hasbro (HAS) — the two big US toy makers, both already reporting tariff-driven margin squeeze and higher input costs; big-box and online retailers heading into holiday season (Walmart, Target, Amazon) — face a choice between passing higher prices to cash-strapped shoppers or absorbing margin; consumer-discretionary sector broadly — toy prices are an early, visible read on tariff + energy pass-through into holiday spending. A Reuters/Ipsos poll through Oct 5 showed only 21% of voters approve of Trump's handling of cost-of-living issues.
Reuters reported, citing an unnamed U.S. official, that the Trump administration is considering easing sanctions on some vessels in the so-called shadow fleet — tankers used to transport oil and fuels from Venezuela, Russia, and Iran — in a bid to ease a deepening tanker crunch and bring down record freight rates. Shippers wanting to use a sanctioned tanker would have to apply to the U.S. Treasury Department. Oil prices fell on the news: Brent slid to about $104.39/bbl (from above $106 earlier in the week) and WTI to about $94, with Thursday's decline also reflecting signs of recovering Gulf supplies and a weaker IEA demand outlook.
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Oil majors and refiners: lower crude and freight costs would ease input and logistics costs; a lower war premium pressures upstream realizations.
Tanker/shipping owners (e.g., Frontline, International Seaways, Euronav-type VLCC operators): easing sanctions would add vessel supply and could deflate record freight rates — negative for tanker earnings.
U.S. crude exporters: record freight rates have dampened demand for U.S. crude, so cheaper shipping could help U.S. barrels compete.
Jefferies initiated coverage of Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) with a Buy rating and an $85 price target, implying more than 20% upside from the last close near $70.57. Analyst John Colantuoni argued Netflix can sustain earnings growth through higher subscription prices, advertising expansion, and improving operating margins, projecting annual EPS growth above 14% over the next decade and per-member revenue growth of roughly 6%. He also expects Netflix's standard subscription — currently about 60% cheaper per viewing hour than competing U.S. services — to narrow that gap to 50% by 2029 via ~7% annual price increases, and forecasts advertising revenue growing ~35% annually.
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Netflix (NFLX): direct beneficiary of the bullish initiation; shares ticked up ~0.6% in premarket trading after the call.
Streaming peers (e.g., Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount): a credible bull case on Netflix pricing power and ads could modestly support sentiment across streaming.
Asian equities tumbled sharply on Thursday as the AI-driven selloff spread from Wall Street. South Korea's Kospi plunged 7.7% to 5,548.78, with Samsung Electronics down 9.5% and SK Hynix down 11.4%. The drop triggered sell-side trading curbs (sidecars) on both the Kospi and the Kosdaq — the first time both were halted on the same day in about 11 weeks — and foreign investors sold a net $1.4 billion of Korean shares. Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 4.8%, with SoftBank down 9.4%, Tokyo Electron down 7.3% and Kioxia down 11.2%, while Taiwan's Taiex shed 3% and the MSCI Asia-Pacific ex-Japan index dropped 3.4%, its fourth straight losing session.
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TSMC reported a sixth consecutive quarter of record earnings. Q3 net profit rose about 69% year over year to NT$763.1 billion ($23.59 billion), beating the LSEG SmartEstimate of NT$746.3 billion. Revenue rose about 51% to NT$1.49 trillion ($46.72 billion). Gross margin hit 66.4%, operating margin 58.7%, and net margin 51.1%. Management guided Q4 revenue to $52.3–$54.3 billion, implying 55–61% year-over-year growth. The 2nm node contributed 8% of wafer revenue, up from 3% in Q2, and advanced nodes (7nm and below) made up 79% of wafer revenue. TSMC kept 2026 capex guidance at $60–$64 billion.
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Tesla finally showed off its next-generation Roadster at an outdoor livestreamed event Thursday evening near SpaceX's McGregor, Texas test site, after nearly nine years of delays. Elon Musk called it a 'better than James Bond car.' The car features air thrusters and fans using SpaceX-derived cold-gas thruster technology; during the demo it drove up a ramp, briefly hovered upside down, and jumped over a row of Teslas. Tesla demonstrated an acceleration run clocked at around 1 second 0-60 mph (timing method unclear), cited a 230-mph top speed, and said production will begin in 2028. Musk acknowledged the car was not necessarily designed with safety as the top priority. TSLA shares fell about 1.3% in Thursday's regular session before the evening event.
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J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth raised his price target for Alphabet to $425 from $420 on Thursday, implying roughly 22% upside from Wednesday's close of $347.64. He now expects Google Cloud revenue to grow 100% in Q3, up from an 88% estimate, driven by sky-high demand for Google's tensor processing units (TPUs), custom chips used in data centers and to run AI large-language models. Anmuth said TPU sale inclusion was the primary driver of the increase and that he 'could still be conservative,' and he raised his 2027 Alphabet earnings forecast by 3% to $14.05 a share. In the same note he lifted his Amazon growth estimate on the OpenAI partnership and modeled $10 billion of settlement expenses for Meta.
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Alphabet (GOOGL) — raised target implies about 22% upside from Wednesday's $347.64 close; Amazon (AMZN) — J.P. Morgan also raised its growth estimate, citing the scaling OpenAI partnership; Meta (META) — model tweaked to include $10 billion in expenses tied to the proposed settlement with 52 state attorneys general; Nvidia (NVDA) — Alphabet's custom TPU momentum is a competitive read-through for merchant AI-chip demand
⏰ Heads-up: PPI + retail sales Thursday 8:30 AM ET — the last big inflation reads before the Oct 27-28 FOMC.
CPI context: today's September CPI already came in hot — headline 3.7% y/y vs 3.6% consensus (up from 3.4% in August), core 2.6% vs 2.5% (up from 2.4%). Hike odds jumped to ~39% right after the print, easing to about one-third by the close. So Thursday is the follow-up exam: a second upside surprise would put a second consecutive hike firmly back on the table.
PPI bar (WSJ survey medians): headline +0.6% m/m (prior +0.4%), core PPI (ex food & energy) +0.3% (prior +0.2%), PPI ex food/energy/trade +0.3% (prior +0.3%). On y/y, don't anchor to a single number — surveys are dispersed: WSJ median +5.5% (prior +5.4%), others at 5.3-5.4%. Watch the m/m core and ex-trade prints — they're the cleanest read on underlying pipeline pressure.
Retail bar (WSJ survey medians): headline +0.4% m/m (prior +1.2%), ex-autos +0.5% (prior +1.4%). Other surveys sit a touch softer at +0.3% headline, and the control group (feeds GDP) is ~+0.3% vs +1.2% prior. Nominal-vs-real nuance: retail is nominal, and gas is flattering it — the Chicago Fed advance estimate had ex-auto nominal +0.4% but -0.7% inflation-adjusted, with regular gas ~$4.36-4.37 nationally (a record for this time of year) and diesel ~$6.32. A household spending the same dollars bought measurably less. One forecaster (Continuum) even expects +0.1% headline and -0.1% ex autos & gas — so the downside risk to the bar is real. Also watch August revisions.
Same-slot 8:30 AM ET: jobless claims ~200K (WSJ median; prior 197K; one week-ahead had 202K), Empire State manufacturing 10.3 (prior 7.6), Philly Fed 32.0 (prior 37.8; other surveys as low as 26.5). Beige Book today: price pressures intensifying in more than half of districts, while Bowman said she sees no urgent need to hike. Business inventories follow at 10:00 AM (+0.4% expected).
How to read it:
• Hot PPI (headline ≥+0.6% and/or core ≥+0.4%) + firm retail (≥+0.4%) → second upside inflation surprise after hot CPI: Oct hike odds jump again, yields higher, growth/tech pressured. The Fed has cover to hike.
• Hot PPI + soft retail (≤+0.1% headline, or negative in real terms) → stagflation-lite: pipeline inflation with a weakening consumer. Hardest mix for markets; the Fed is torn between inflation and demand.
• Soft PPI (headline ≤+0.3%, core ≤+0.2%) + soft retail → validates the pause camp: hike odds fall back, relief for rate-sensitive/growth names — but watch for recession chatter if retail goes negative.
• Soft PPI + firm retail → closest to goldilocks: disinflation with a resilient consumer. Best equity outcome, pause odds rise.
TSMC Q3 earnings land earlier the same morning (2:00 AM ET) — covered by its own heads-up tonight. I'll flag the actuals as they land Thursday.
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Treasury market (10-year yield spiked to 5.33% after CPI, then eased to 5.19%); banks/financials; consumer discretionary and retailers (retail read); energy (gasoline is flattering the nominal retail print).
The Federal Reserve's Beige Book, released Wednesday, noted intensifying price pressures in more than half of the Fed's 12 districts — a hawkish read coming on top of the hot September CPI. In contrast, Fed Vice Chair Bowman said Wednesday she sees no urgent need for the Fed to raise interest rates, a dovish counterweight.
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Treasury market (10-year yield spiked to 5.33% after CPI, then fell to 5.19% as stocks slumped). Banks, homebuilders, and growth/AI names are most exposed to the hike-odds repricing.
Apple shares closed at $342.96 on Wednesday, up 0.5% on the Nasdaq, pushing the company's market capitalization to $5.01 trillion — the first time Apple has closed a session above $5 trillion. Intraday the stock reached $347.07, just 0.31% below its record high of $348.15.
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AAPL (Apple) — first close above $5T market cap; the milestone underscores investor confidence under new CEO John Ternus. Broader mega-cap tech (NVDA, MSFT, META, AMZN, GOOGL) fell on the same day, making Apple's divergence notable.
Anthropic's Q3 revenue reached $16.8 billion — $67.2 billion annualized — up 46% from $11.5 billion in Q2, the Financial Times reported. In a closed-door meeting with institutional investors, the Claude developer said it was profitable on an adjusted basis ahead of a mammoth IPO planned for next month. Nasdaq-100 futures slipped after the report as AI stocks extended losses.
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AI ecosystem: NVDA, AMD, AVGO (chip suppliers to AI labs), MSFT, AMZN, GOOGL (cloud/hyperscalers), and neocloud names CRWV, NBIS, IREN. Strong Anthropic monetization supports AI-demand bulls; the IPO next month will test public-market appetite for AI valuations.
Wednesday's selloff broadened beyond the hot CPI print: the Nasdaq tumbled 1.9%, the S&P 500 fell 1.1%, and the small-cap Russell 2000 plunged 1.9% to its worst level in nearly six months. AI-infrastructure names led the damage — CoreWeave crashed another 15.5% with its debt below 80 cents on the dollar — after Gartner predicted that 80% of AI compute (neocloud) firms won't remain independent by 2030, saying massive AI spending is unlikely to deliver profitable returns.
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Thursday 2:00 AM ET: TSMC Q3 earnings — the AI supply-chain report card. TSMC reports Q3 results before the market opens Thursday Oct 15 (call 2:00 AM ET / 2:00 PM Taipei). The bar: consensus EPS ~$4.45/ADR and net profit ~NT$746.3B (~$23.4B), up 65% YoY per Reuters/LSEG (16 analysts) — a sixth straight record quarter if it lands. The top line is already known: Q3 revenue came in at a record NT$1.494T (~$46.7B), up ~51% YoY, reported Oct 8 — above TSMC's own $44.6-45.8B guide. TSM closed today at $430, ~12% off its Oct 5 high of $487.47 after the chip selloff (52-week range $266.82-$487.47). How to read it: the revenue beat is largely priced in, so watch gross margin vs the 65-67% guide (early 2nm depreciation and overseas-fab costs are squeezing it; Q2 was 67.7%), Q4 guidance, the full-year growth framing (Morgan Stanley expects a raise to low-to-mid 40% from >40%), and 2027 capex — the cleanest read on whether AI infrastructure spend stays on rails into 2027. It lands after the SOX fell ~10% over six straight down days, so the guide is the best chance to break the slide. Extra read-throughs: any update on the Arizona fab expansion ($265B total commitment) and a possible Texas site, plus 2nm demand signals, with hyperscaler custom silicon ramping — Microsoft's Maia 300 is reportedly in talks for 300,000+ TSMC chips for 2027. ASML reported this morning and front-ran the capex conversation: Q3 profit more than doubled, FY sales outlook raised, and it says AI demand will outstrip chip-tool supply in 2027-2028 — though its shares still fell on a narrow sales miss. I'll flag the actuals as they land Thursday.
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CoreWeave shares plunged over 15% Wednesday — the worst performer in the Nasdaq 100 — after a selloff in its corporate bonds pushed yields to distressed levels: its 9.625% notes due 2032 traded at $79.50 with the yield touching 15.06%, up from 13.42% at the start of October, while its 2031 and 2030 notes also fell sharply. The bond rout gained wide attention after venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya posted late Tuesday that the AI buildout is increasingly funded by debt with private credit playing a much bigger role, prompting Elon Musk to reply 'Yikes.' The Financial Times reported Wednesday that CoreWeave is courting life insurers' capital pools to fund its AI infrastructure spending. CEO Mike Intrator told staff the market is acting 'irrationally,' citing a $104.2B revenue backlog plus $25B+ in net new Q3 customer commitments. Oracle fell ~9% in the same session as investors questioned the funding of its $165B Project Jupiter data-center build amid negative free cash flow and a recent credit downgrade to BBB-, and Reuters reported CDS costs for Oracle and CoreWeave surged to record highs.
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CoreWeave (CRWV) — stock -15% to $65.78, lowest close since July 29, down 24% in October
2032 bonds fell to $79.50 with yield up to 15.06% from 13.42% at Oct 1, distressed territory. Oracle (ORCL) — shares -8.8% to ~$130.55, with CDS costs surging to record highs; debt-funded Project Jupiter ($165B New Mexico data center) and negative free cash flow under scrutiny. Nebius (NBIS) — fellow neocloud, -15%. Applied Digital (APLD) and IREN — data-center operators, -9% to -10%. Nvidia (NVDA) — CoreWeave's chip supplier and ~$3.1B investor, -3%+ as neocloud financing fears spread. SOXX — semiconductor ETF -4%+ to a 3.5-week low
Lumentum -8%, Marvell -7%, ARM -6%, AMD/SanDisk -5%.
Intuit announced that Intuit Intelligence, its unified AI platform, is now available internationally, rolling out across QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Online Advanced (in beta) and Intuit Accountant Suite, varying by product and region. The platform lets business owners trigger automated financial workflows in plain English — e.g., creating invoices from documents, sending them, and following up on overdue payments — and ask natural-language questions about cash flow and finances drawn from accounting records and bank transactions. For accountants, Accountant Suite adds cross-client portfolio insights and firm playbooks to spot signals across a whole client base. Intuit says early users of its AI tools have saved an average of 13 hours per month, while acknowledging the AI can make mistakes and that human review remains required.
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Intuit (INTU) — expands the monetization surface for its flagship AI platform beyond the U.S., supporting QuickBooks Online/Advanced and Accountant Suite adoption in international markets. Broader software/AI peers (e.g., Xero, Sage) face a more aggressive AI-enabled QuickBooks abroad.
UBS raised its price target on Meta Platforms to $884 from $715 — a roughly 24% increase — while maintaining a Buy rating, as part of a broader round of target updates across ad and AI-exposed names. UBS cited opportunities to develop additional AI-driven revenue streams, including the rollout of Business Agents and increasing use of Muse supporting monetization across WhatsApp and Messenger, alongside potential gains in search advertising share. Its advertising checks also pointed to strong incremental contributions from AI-driven automation and recommendations so far this year. META shares slipped 0.6% in premarket trading Wednesday despite the higher target, in a broadly lower market after the hot CPI report.
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Meta (META): direct — UBS raised its price target ~24% to $884 from $715, kept Buy; cited Business Agents rollout, Muse monetization across WhatsApp and Messenger, potential search-ad share gains, and AI-driven ad automation/recommendations.
Alphabet (GOOGL): peer — UBS nudged its Alphabet target only to $380 from $379 (Neutral), underscoring that the Meta call, not the Alphabet one, carries the AI-monetization optimism.
Snap (SNAP), Trade Desk (TTD): also got UBS target changes (Snap $5.70 to $7; TTD $16 to $15) in the same note, with ad-budget shifts toward Amazon flagged as a headwind for Trade Desk.
Netflix laid off roughly 1,000 employees — about 6% of its ~16,000-person workforce — on Wednesday Oct 14, its biggest cut since 2022, according to an internal memo from co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos seen by Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. The bulk of the cuts fall on product, technology, legal, and human-resources teams; management said the business 'is strong and growing' and remains on track for its full-year forecast, framing the move as disciplined reallocation toward high-impact areas. Separately, research firm Apptopia reported Netflix's U.S. subscriber churn rose 16.6% year over year in Q3 — up from ~8% YoY in the prior three quarters, the seventh straight quarterly increase — while average time spent on Netflix fell in Q3.
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Netflix (NFLX): direct — cost cuts support margins ahead of Q3 earnings, but the size of the cut and the churn data confirm growth is stalling; shares volatile around $70, down ~25% YTD.
Alphabet (GOOGL): YouTube cited as the main share-gainer in viewing time (14.2% of TV vs Netflix 7.8% in July Nielsen Gauge).
Disney (DIS), Paramount Skydance, Amazon (AMZN): rivals in the same fight for viewing time; Netflix's engagement weakness is a sector-wide streaming-demand signal.
Dell shares plunged nearly 11% on Wednesday to about $512.65, on pace for the stock's largest single-day percentage decline since April 3, 2025, when it fell 19%, per Dow Jones Market Data. The selloff followed Barclays' downgrade of Dell, HPE, and NetApp to Equal Weight (Dell price target cut to $574 from $603) on the view that there is no 'meaningful AI inflection yet' in enterprise spending and that revenue strength reflects memory-cost pass-through. Dell undercut its 10-week moving average as the decline accelerated into midday alongside a broad market drop after the hot September CPI report.
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Dell (DELL): direct — fell nearly 11% to ~$512.65, undercutting its 10-week moving average; worst daily drop since April 3, 2025 (-19%).
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE): fell 6.5% to $64.33, same Barclays downgrade.
NetApp (NTAP): fell 5.4% to $226.10, same Barclays downgrade.
Super Micro (SMCI) and AI-server peers: SMCI fell 4%+ to a five-day losing streak as AI-hardware sentiment soured; broader AI-infrastructure and memory-exposed names under pressure.
State Street reported Q3 2026 results Wednesday morning: adjusted EPS of $3.69, a penny above the $3.68 consensus, but revenue of $4.00 billion missed the $4.03-4.04 billion expected. Fee revenue of $3.14 billion came in below the roughly $3.16 billion expected, with servicing fees of $1.492 billion vs $1.505 billion expected, and the bank raised the upper end of its expense-growth guidance. Net interest income of $864 million beat the $853 million projection, and assets under management of $6.31 trillion (up 15.8% year over year) beat expectations, with assets under custody and administration up 15% to $59.2 trillion. The flow picture drove the selloff: State Street ETFs led by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) drew $68 billion in net inflows, but $62 billion of cash withdrawals offset nearly all of it, leaving total net flows of just $7 billion versus $26 billion a year ago and $114 billion last quarter. Shares fell about 8-9% in premarket trading.
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State Street (STT) — Q3 EPS beat by a penny but revenue and fee revenue missed, expense guidance raised, net flows collapsed; shares down ~8-9% premarket to a multimonth low near the 200-day moving average
Custody and asset-manager peers (e.g. Bank of New York Mellon (BK), BlackRock (BLK), Schwab (SCHW)) — read-through on fee pressure, deposit/cash outflows, and flow trends in a higher-rate environment
Financials broadly — caps a split big-bank earnings week and keeps focus on whether higher yields and rising expenses are biting custody and servicing economics
The September Consumer Price Index, released at 8:30 AM ET Wednesday, came in hotter than economists expected. Headline CPI rose 3.7% year-over-year, up from 3.4% in August and above the 3.6% consensus; core CPI (excluding food and energy) rose 2.6%, up from 2.4% and above the 2.5% consensus. Stock futures turned lower after the data — Nasdaq 100 futures down 0.5%, S&P 500 down 0.2%, Dow down 0.1% — and the 10-year Treasury yield jumped to 5.26% from 5.19% before the reading. Per CME FedWatch, traders raised the probability of a Fed rate hike at the meeting in two weeks to 39%, up from 22% before the print.
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Broad market (S&P 500, Nasdaq, Dow futures fell after the print); rate-sensitive growth/tech
Treasury market (10-year yield jumped to 5.26%); banks and financials (higher-for-longer tailwind for net interest margins but headwind for credit and deal activity).
Bank of America shares fell 4% Wednesday after its Q3 results came up shy of analysts' estimates, coming on top of the $1.21 billion Treasury Department fine for alleged money-laundering violations disclosed earlier. In contrast, BlackRock stock surged 5% on its own results, and Morgan Stanley shares advanced less than 1%. The divergence extends Tuesday's split bank-earnings picture, where Goldman soared on a big beat while JPMorgan, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo all closed lower despite mixed-to-positive results.
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Barclays analyst Tim Long downgraded Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and NetApp to Equal Weight from Overweight on Oct 14, cutting Dell's price target to $574 from $603 and HPE's to $77 from $83 while holding NetApp's at $219. Long said valuations have run up, commodity (memory) costs have flattered revenue, and 'we don't see a meaningful AI inflection yet' in enterprise spending. Dell shares fell about 2.5-3% in premarket trading to around $558, with HPE down ~4% and NetApp down ~3.6%.
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In its October monthly Oil Market Report, the International Energy Agency said constrained diesel supplies could persist well into 2027, after large counter-seasonal stock drawdowns combined with restricted production ahead of peak winter demand. Diesel refining margins soared to record highs of almost $95 per barrel in September as attacks linked to the Iran war cut refining capacity. Losses of diesel exports from the Middle East and Russia totaled a combined 1.3M bpd in September. The IEA also forecast global oil demand to contract by 2.6M bpd in 2026, a quarter of it from diesel, while global oil supply falls 5.8M bpd this year before rising 7.7M bpd in 2027 back into surplus. IEA members are coordinating the release of 100M barrels of oil and diesel from strategic reserves to calm prices.
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A container ship and a tanker were hit by unknown projectiles in the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, according to UK Maritime Trade Operations. Iranian officials told Reuters that Tehran has been deploying new tactics against vessels it considers in violation of its restrictions for about 10 days, and that the aim is to keep oil prices high and influence the U.S. midterm elections. On Tuesday night, a Houthi ballistic missile struck an office tower at Saudi Aramco's headquarters complex in Dhahran, damaging its top three floors and causing a fire, according to a company source; Saudi Arabia's energy ministry confirmed an administrative building was hit, with a limited fire and no casualties or reported impact on operations. The Saudi-led coalition said it intercepted missiles and drones targeting Riyadh, Dhahran and the south, with debris injuring at least four people in Riyadh. Brent rose to about $106 a barrel and WTI to about $94.40-94.80 on Wednesday morning.
Why it matters
The bigger picture behind this move, what it means for the company and the sector, and how it fits the trend we have been tracking for weeks.
What’s next
The dates, numbers and signals to watch from here, and what would change the story.
Why it matters & what’s next are part of Pro, along with the audio summary.
ASML reported third-quarter net profit of 4.96 billion euros ($5.55 billion), more than double the 2.92 billion euros a year earlier and well above the ~4.2 billion euro consensus, on record net sales of 11.66 billion euros. Sales came in slightly below the ~11.72 billion euro consensus, but gross margin of 57.5% beat guidance. ASML raised its full-year sales outlook for a third time in 2026, to 44-45 billion euros from 43-45 billion, and guided Q4 sales of 14.2-15.2 billion euros, above expectations. CEO Christophe Fouquet said customers keep raising short- and medium-term equipment demand forecasts on AI investment, with some expressing interest in orders for 2029 and even 2030, and that planned supply for 2027 and 2028 will not fully meet customer demand.
Why it matters
The bigger picture behind this move, what it means for the company and the sector, and how it fits the trend we have been tracking for weeks.
What’s next
The dates, numbers and signals to watch from here, and what would change the story.
Why it matters & what’s next are part of Pro, along with the audio summary.
ASML (ASML) — Q3 beat and raised outlook; U.S.-listed shares fell ~3% overnight on the narrow Q3 sales miss, while European shares rose 1.8%
TSMC (TSM), Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron (MU), Intel (INTC), SanDisk (SNDK) — ASML customers/beneficiaries of AI capex; MU, SNDK, INTC fell 1-2.6% in tandem overnight
Nvidia (NVDA) — ultimate demand driver as its chips are made on ASML tools; slipped into negative territory overnight
Semiconductor equipment peers (Applied Materials, Lam Research) — read-through from stronger AI equipment demand and capacity constraints
