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The S&P 500 fell 1.8% on Friday, its worst day since June, capping a third straight losing week as a selloff in tech stocks deepened.

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The Market Summary

Wall Street Wants Proof That AI Will Pay Off

Let’s start with stocks. The S&P 500 fell 1.8% on Friday, its worst day since June, capping a third straight losing week as a selloff in tech stocks deepened. The Nasdaq dropped 2.9%, and the Dow lost 1.1%. Investors moved money into safer U.S. government bonds, pushing the 10-year Treasury yield down to 4.92%. It had topped 5.3% earlier this month. Before the markets opened this morning, Dow and S&P 500 futures were both up 0.4%, while U.S. crude fell below $100 a barrel on hopes of a deal to end the Iran war.

Intel’s stock fell about 29% on Friday in its worst day since 1974 after the chipmaker warned that a factory shutdown in Israel and weak PC sales would hurt this quarter. Amazon also fell after missing Wall Street’s forecasts while sticking with plans to spend $220 billion this year, much of it on AI.

Oil prices settled at their highest level since late April on Friday, ending an October in which Brent crude rose 13.6% and U.S. crude climbed 15.2%. A tanker in the Strait of Hormuz was hit by explosives, a day after Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed attacks on Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura refinery.

What to watch today: Apple and Palantir report earnings after the close today, and the Institute for Supply Management releases its October survey of factories at 10 a.m. ET. Tomorrow is Election Day. Pfizer and Shopify report before the bell, the government releases September job openings at 10 a.m. ET, and AMD reports after the close.

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Buy, Sell, Hold

➤ Buy: Wedbush upgraded DoorDash (DASH) from Hold to Buy after the company agreed to buy Instacart for about $17 billion. Wedbush said the deal strengthens DoorDash in grocery delivery and singled out Instacart’s advertising technology as a standout. (More)

➤ Buy: HSBC upgraded power equipment maker GE Vernova (GEV) from Hold to Buy and raised its price target from $1,040 to $1,100. HSBC says broad demand for GE Vernova’s gas power equipment should keep the company resilient in 2027 and thinks its wind business is past the worst. (More)

➤ Hold: Bank of America downgraded Intel (INTC) from Buy to Hold after the chipmaker’s forecast for the holiday quarter fell short. The bank says a 25% to 30% drop in PC shipments from the prior quarter outweighs the strength in Intel’s data center business. (More)

➤ Sell: RBC downgraded hospital landlord Medical Properties Trust (MPT) from Hold to Sell and cut its price target from $4.50 to $2. The bank says problems with some of the hospitals that rent its buildings haven’t gone away and that the company’s cash is tight. (More)

Chart of the Day

I Bonds

Nov. 2021 – Nov. 2026

I bonds now pay the most since 2022, at 5.51%.

➤ I bond rates follow inflation. The rate on new bonds peaked at 9.62% in May 2022, then slid to 3.11% by November 2024 as inflation cooled. The rate has climbed since, reaching 4.26% in May and 5.51% now. Bonds bought through April 2027 get the new rate for their first six months.

The rate’s fixed part stays with a bond for its full 30 years and is now 1.4%, the highest since November 2006. Bonds bought from January through October 2022 have a 0% fixed rate and will earn 4.08% from their next reset. Buyers can put in up to $10,000 a year and can’t cash out for the first year.

Source: U.S. Treasury.

The Rotator

Alternative Assets

The biggest crypto heist ever hit more than Binance.

Hackers stole about $6.3 billion from crypto exchange Binance late last week, the largest crypto theft on record. The FBI said Saturday that North Korean hackers were responsible. It blamed the same group for stealing $1.5 billion from the Bybit exchange last year.

The thieves moved the money out of Binance’s online wallets on 10 blockchains, most of it in about 20 minutes. Binance first pointed to an engineer’s hacked laptop but later found other ways the attackers got in. Experts say North Korea steals crypto to raise badly needed money under tough UN sanctions. 

The world’s biggest crypto exchange has promised to make every customer whole and says it has already replaced about 95% of the stolen money.

The selloff spread across crypto. Bitcoin, ether, and other major coins fell at least 4% Friday morning, and bitcoin hit its lowest price in a month. Binance’s own coin fell 6.5%. Crypto-linked stocks fell even harder, and shares of Coinbase dropped more than 10% on Friday.

Customers pulled a net $3.64 billion off Binance in the first nine and a half hours after withdrawals reopened Sunday. That’s about 2% of the $171 billion the exchange holds.

Loose Change

➤ Chevron’s profit nearly tripled to $9.9 billion last quarter as fuel margins jumped and its U.S. refineries ran at 98% of capacity. (More)

➤ Wages fell 0.6% over the past year after inflation, which economists say means paychecks aren’t what’s pushing prices higher. (More)

➤ Anthropic accounted for about a third of SpaceX’s sales last quarter and is now its biggest customer, Bloomberg reported. (More)

➤ Apartment rents edged up 0.1% from a year earlier for their first annual gain in more than three years while home sale prices slipped 0.1%. (More)

➤ Regeneron shares jumped about 12% Friday after global sales of eczema and asthma drug Dupixent rose 35% to $6.5 billion last quarter. (More)

Reader Sentiment

▲ BULLISH · 72%

Composite score based on our previous edition’s votes.

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