Happy “BTFD Day” to all who celebrate… 

On Thursday, the AI trade was dead, and data centers were cancelled. Fast-forward exactly one trading day, and everyone had moved money from their Kalshi account to Robinhood (sup, degenerates). 

For context, the Nasdaq bounced 1.09% on Friday, and the S&P 500 eked out 0.31%. The Dow lost 237 points (0.46%). Cowards. If you recall, the Nasdaq got absolutely barbecued… falling 5.5% on Thursday on fears that the Dems’ midterm sweep kills the data center boom. That put it in correction territory (10% off its high), only for traders to go all YOLO into the weekend. 

Meanwhile, in Redmond, Microsoft just pulled out, leaving Oracle with another bad case of blue balls (see: Blue Owl). Per Bloomberg, OpenAI’s sugar daddy has been shutting off the AI computing it rents from Larry Ellison after letting the contract lapse. The deal dates back to 2023, when Microsoft needed extra juice for an AI version of Bing (lol). Turns out, Oracle’s older Nvidia chips no longer fit its specs.

Oracle says demand “remains strong, including for earlier-generation” GPUs (read: GILFs). The stonk still dipped below $116 on the news, which is the price Oracle sold $10B of new shares at on Monday. Woof. It’s lost more than half its value since June, and what’s left of the bull case is a $300B contract from, drumroll, Scam Altman.

Oh, and Microsoft’s also considering thinning out its roster of hoes neoclouds like CoreWeave, Nscale, and Nebius, which account for more than $80B of its commitments.

Elsewhere, in stonk land, IonQ did exactly what quantum stonks do (think: went to the f*cking moon), ripping 23% after lifting its full-year revenue guide to $505M-$515M vs. the $456.2M analysts expected. It probably helped that SkyWater, the plain old chip foundry it just bought, kicked in $83.5M of its $173.8M in Q3 revenue, which, sus.

Speaking of the moon, Firefly Aerospace (which has actually been there) went parabolic, up nearly 37% after AST SpaceMobile agreed to pay more than $1.3B for 36 rocket engines and a license to make more. AST is sick of begging Elon for rides, and Blue Origin yeeted one of its satellites into the wrong orbit in April. So AST went all “we’ll build our own rocket, with blackjack and hookers.”

But, but, but… Microchip (no, not the one Bill Gates put in your vaccine) face-planted 14% after guiding for 91 cents a share at the midpoint vs. the 94 cents the Street wanted. Justtt a bit outside. Per CEO Steve Sanghi, the stock’s so cheap that “I’m tempted to buy it myself.” BTFD, Steve…

Of course, Friday’s bounce is still only a semi. And if it lasts more than four hours (read: into next week), please consult your doctor.

Until next time, friends…

If you read all of this, congrats for having a 10 second attention span (better than me). As always, here’s our heatmap for today.

☕ Market Gossip

> Hedge Funds Dump Positions and Cut Staff as Selloff Deepens (Wall Street Journal): Long AI, short staff…

> Hackers Paid $15 to Drain $2.5 Billion From Binance in One Hit (Bloomberg): Cash-out Binance…

> Wendy’s rejects $1.4 billion takeover proposal from Nelson Peltz’s Trian (CNBC): Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve found “the beef”

> The New York Times reportedly in talks to buy Letterboxd for $330 million (TechCrunch): Times New Roman Polanski… 

“WTF” Meme of the Day

 

Grandpa: “Kids these days just don’t want to wor—”

(Car door opens)

Grandpa: “You little son of a b****…”

 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News holds positions in Microsoft as mentioned in the article.