Investment
Editor’s Notes: * Lam Research (LRCX) cannot ship tools fast enough, and Meta (META) can no longer pay for the buildout out of cash flow. Both sold off hard, but they point in opposite directions. Lam’s problem is demand outrunning cleanroom space and components, the same shape as early
Investment
Editor’s Notes: * The memory rally and the packaging deals are the same story. Samsung (005930.KS) rallied on an HBM manufacturing tie-up with TSMC, the same day Amkor (AMKR) signed a ten-year packaging agreement with TSMC. Read together, the world’s largest memory maker is routing its
Investment
Editor's Notes: * The AI benefit now showing up in earnings is cost, not revenue. Equifax (EFX) jumped on a margin guidance raise credited to AI savings, MSCI (MSCI) and Gartner (IT) rose on data businesses that scale without headcount, and the software winners, monday.com (MNDY) and BILL
Investment
Editor's Notes: * The oddest number in the market right now is Walmart (WMT) at a higher trailing multiple than Nvidia (NVDA). A retailer growing single digits priced above the company supplying the AI buildout tells you where the crowding has moved. Investors fled hardware into anything that looked
Investment
Editor's Notes: * The link across this week's earnings is who absorbs the cost. Domino's grew operating income and lifted supply chain margin while its US franchisees got squeezed enough that domestic openings were cut. TSMC held gross margin at home while telling customers that
Investment
Editor's Notes: * The AI trade is now being repriced through credit, not earnings. CoreWeave's unsecured bonds yielding 15% means the marginal buyer of GPUs has a cost of capital above what rented compute earns. That is why the sell-off hit the suppliers to neoclouds, Super
Investment
Editor's Notes: * Money moved from the AI hardware layer to the software layer in one session, and the two moves are linked. ServiceNow (NOW), Atlassian (TEAM) and Intuit (INTU) rallied on agent adoption while Vertiv (VRT), Dell (DELL), Lenovo (00992.HK) and the memory makers fell. Memory prices
Investment
Editor's Notes: * The hot CPI print and the AI infrastructure sell-off are the same story. With headline inflation at 3.7% and another hike now a coin flip, the cost of capital for the buildout went up again, and the market sorted names by how they are
Investment
Editor's Notes: * One thing explains most of last night. Goldman's prime brokerage flagged "long global semiconductors" as one of the most crowded trades, and the CXMT DDR5 headline gave that crowd a reason to leave at once. That is why the selling was so
Investment
Editor's Notes: * Sandisk (SNDK), Micron (MU) and Seagate (STX) fell on NAND peak warnings, SK Hynix (000660.KS) dropped as the sell side rotated from Korea to Taiwan, and GigaDevice (603986.SS) slid on fears the YMTC IPO will pull liquidity, which also means more Chinese memory capex
Investment
Editor's Notes: * PepsiCo's guide-down was about timing rather than demand. Its old low-cost commodity hedges are rolling off and replacement costs are hitting margins now. Add Lamb Weston closing a European plant on a poor potato crop and Kewpie absorbing startup depreciation on new
Investment
Editor's Notes: * Three items that look unrelated line up today. OpenAI's run-rate came in at $50bn against a $70bn expectation, yet Lumentum (LITE) says optical capacity is sold out through 2029 and Nvidia put $2bn of equity into it to secure supply, while HP (HPQ)