Jensen Huang said on Monday that he is not afraid of custom chips. The same day, Nvidia put US$3.5 billion into MediaTek convertible bonds and brought MediaTek onto its own NVLink. He is not trying to keep custom chips outside the door; he wants them running across Nvidia's network. Reports say the tie-up is meant to get custom data-centre chips deployed faster. Nvidia closed 1.48 per cent higher at US$220.78. On the custom-silicon side, the tape read the opposite way. $Marvell Technology(MRVL)$ fell another 2.29 per cent to US$211.66, and its gain for the year slipped from 154.91 per cent on Friday to 149.07 per cent. The wound is the same one as last week. Revenue from the US$120 billion arrangement with

On Wednesday $S&P 500(.SPX)$ closed 0.48 per cent lower, its third session in a row heading down. $Meta Platforms, Inc.(META)$ rose 6.55 per cent the same day to close at US$653.69. The whole market was backing away while one of the largest companies in it put on six and a half points, and those look like two unrelated things. They are one thing. What is holding the indexes down is rates: Brent crude moved back above US$100 for the first time in two months, the inflation print lands on Friday, the ten-year Treasury yield was pushed to 4.85 per cent and the thirty-year broke above 5.30 per cent. The Treasury stepped in that day and raised the cap on its buybacks of ten-

One batch of results, three different share prices. $Dell Technologies Inc.(DELL)$ closed 15.81 per cent higher on Wednesday at US$492.20. Credo's revenue more than doubled from the previous quarter and the stock closed down 20.04 per cent at US$165.22. $Broadcom(AVGO)$ left its answer until after the close, beat on both revenue and earnings, and saw its shares push above US$370 before being knocked back below US$350. The hardest number in Dell's results is US$95 billion — a record order backlog for AI servers. It raised full-year revenue guidance by US$25 billion to US$192 billion at the same time. At least 15 firms moved their targets that day: UBS from US$455 to US$500,

The three indices closed Wednesday along two different paths. The $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ fell 1.21 per cent to 51,461.90, losing 631.21 points on the day; the $S&P 500(.SPX)$ closed 0.45 per cent lower at 7,551.81, a third consecutive fall; and the $NASDAQ(.IXIC)$ Composite barely moved, closing 0.01 per cent lower at 25,978.42. The Federal Reserve raised rates by 25 basis points that afternoon. All three had been higher before it did, and the turn began with the decision and the press conference. The target range for the federal funds rate went up to 3.75-4 per cent, from 3.5 per cent to 3.75 per cent before, with

All three indexes closed lower on Tuesday, the Dow worst of them at 1.18 per cent, $S&P 500(.SPX)$ down 0.58 per cent and $NASDAQ(.IXIC)$ Composite down 0.32 per cent. Chips went the other way on the same day: Intel put on 9.05 per cent to close at US$104.47, back above US$100 and the biggest gain in the row. The indexes went one way and the chips went the other, and that is the split this day comes down to. What pushed the indexes down was oil. WTI moved above US$94 and Brent came close to US$99, and what pushed oil up were attacks in the Middle East. The attacks fell over the weekend, so they were not in Friday's closing prices and only arrived at Tuesday's open. The

The indices closed lower for a second day on Tuesday, $S&P 500(.SPX)$ down 0.45 per cent at 7,585.73, the $NASDAQ(.IXIC)$ Composite down 0.78 per cent at 25,981.57 and the $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ down 0.63 per cent at 52,093.11. The reason for the fall, though, was not the same one as Monday's. On Monday the market was pricing what four executives had said, which is something that has not happened yet; on Tuesday two things had already produced a result — a Senate motion failed, and the 10-year Treasury yield reached a level it had not touched in nineteen years. The heaviest fall of the day was not in chips but in

Hello. The Treasury's buyback tool was upsized again, and the bond market bought it for half a day. US Treasury Secretary Bessent said on Thursday that the size of each long-dated Treasury buyback had gone from US$2 billion to at least US$4 billion, and could rise further. The 30-year yield fell as much as 10 basis points and the dollar index weakened — and then the bond market pushed back. The reason is simple enough: buybacks deal with liquidity, while the deficit, inflation and the term premium have not moved at all. There was a new variable that day: the consumer. $S&P 500(.SPX)$ closed down 0.87 per cent and $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ 1.32 per cent, about 600 points — Barro

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. On Monday the chip chain was sold from end to end. $Micron Technology(MU)$ closed down 5.83 per cent at US$910.43, $SanDisk Corp.(SNDK)$ fell 6.45 per cent, $SK hynix(SKHY)$ 4.92 per cent, $Advanced Micro Devices(AMD)$ 3.49 per cent, $Marvell Technology(MRVL)$ 3.27 per cent and $Intel(INTC)$ 3.12 per cent, while the optical name $Applied Optoelectronics(AAOI)$ dropped 13.77 per ce