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. Last friday's US session was a quiet one — $Invesco QQQ(QQQ)$ closed up 0.35 per cent, $SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust(SPY)$ 0.41 per cent and the Dow 0.98 per cent — though the week as a whole still finished lower. What mattered happened after the close. On 23 August $BABA-W(09988)$ announced and priced a placement of new shares worth HK$80 billion, about US$10.2 billion, sold at an 8.4 per cent discount, with the net proceeds going into full-stack AI infrastructure. That is the fourth such raise in the same week. Intel sold US$20 billion of stock at US$95 a share;

Hello. The long end, which had been pressing on everything for three days, got held down on Wednesday. The 30-year Treasury yield first set a 19-year high intraday, then turned back after the US Treasury said it would at least double the size of its liquidity support buybacks in 10- to 30-year securities. The 30-year fell as much as 9 basis points to 5.19 per cent, closed near 5.20 per cent, and is down to 5.18 per cent today. But technology did not come back. $SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust(SPY)$ closed up 0.21 per cent and $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ 0.22 per cent, and most of that came from healthcare while tech kept being sold. One headline put it plainly: the tech sell-off resumed an

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. The biggest story last night was Nvidia out raising money: it is working with Blackstone, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, KKR and others on a consortium to fund AI infrastructure, for as much as US$500 billion, to be spent on AI chips, power generation and data centres. $英伟达(NVDA)$ fell 2.86 per cent on the news. It didn't fall because demand is short. It fell because people have started to wonder whether Nvidia is creating that demand itself: it has signed agreements worth hundreds of billions of dollars with participants across the AI ecosystem, lifting overall demand and valuations, while those counterparties themselves depend on the AI boom staying alive. That structure has a name. Circular financing. Jensen Huang answered on

Hello. Three companies reported on Tuesday. Put the three side by side and no order makes sense. $Fabrinet(FN)$ beat on revenue by about 3.1 per cent and on earnings per share by about 7.5 per cent, both records — and closed down 19.38 per cent at US$482.59. $Home Depot(HD)$ beat on both lines, posted net sales of about US$47.9 billion and its best comparable sales since 2022, and reaffirmed full-year guidance — and closed down 0.12 per cent. $BIDU-SW(09888)$ missed on both revenue and profit, with earnings per share about 22.7 per cent short — and closed down 12.73 per cent. Full marks fell 19 per cent, a pass fell 0.

Hello. In the last piece Nvidia was out raising up to US$500 billion for AI infrastructure and the market had started asking where the money would come from. Last night we got half an answer: the money is there, but the people putting it up and the people spending it went in opposite directions. The providers all rose: KKR up 6.88 per cent, Apollo 6.26 per cent, Brookfield 4.77 per cent, Blackstone 3.89 per cent and BlackRock 1.54 per cent. The spenders fell for a second day: Alphabet down 3.61 per cent, its fourth decline in five sessions; $Amazon.com(AMZN)$ down 2.09 per cent, $Broadcom(AVGO)$ 1.5 per cent, $Apple(AAP

Hello. The weekend is over, and the most striking thing left from Friday's close was a pair of numbers pointing opposite ways: $Advanced Micro Devices(AMD)$ up 6.50 per cent, $Broadcom(AVGO)$ down 5.94 per cent. Both are AI chip names, and they spent the day going in different directions. What the market was reading that day was not results. It was second-quarter position disclosures. Stanley Druckenmiller's 13F showed him loading up on Amazon and AMD while dumping a batch of chipmakers, and a Soros fund was adding AMD too, alongside $Micron Technology(MU)$, $Appli

Hello. The figure this market had spent two days sitting still for landed last night, and all four parts of it came in on the nose: July CPI was 3.4 per cent year on year and 0.1 per cent on the month, with the core at 2.5 per cent and 0.2 per cent. Traders trimmed their bets on a September rate rise, with the odds easing to about 33 per cent. The gate opened. The water did not run towards the mega-caps. Of the Magnificent Seven, only $NVIDIA(NVDA)$ rose, up 3.03 per cent. $Meta Platforms, Inc.(META)$ fell 3.38 per cent, $Microsoft(MSFT)$ 2.26 per cent, $Amazon.