Covers: Mon 9 Nov 07:10 ET to Tue 10 Nov 07:15 ET

Top 3 takeaways

The demand data killed last week's "AI is over" panic. TSMC's October revenue hit a record NT$586.9bn, up 59.7% year over year and above the NT$560–570bn analysts expected. One month already covers about a third of its Q4 guidance. The SOX rose 6.85% on Monday, and Korea, Taiwan and Japan followed on Tuesday. The selloff was about politics and positioning, not orders.

Nvidia is now a governance-and-policy stock. It fell 4.27% on Monday while the SOX gained 6.85%, an 11-point gap. Earnings are not the issue. The issue is congressional pressure on the Megaspeed sales channel, a class action, and a CEO who is suddenly a key-person risk. Its earnings on 17 Nov will not settle that.

Anthropic's IPO terms make the AI supply chain an investor in its own customer. A $70–78 range for 825 million shares (up to $64.4bn) comes with a $26bn private placement from Nvidia, Google, AMD, Broadcom, Micron, Microsoft and TSMC. That locks in compute demand, but it also deepens the circular financing that worried the market last week.

Market snapshot

US figures are Monday 9 Nov closes; Asian figures are Tuesday 10 Nov closes.

IndexLastChange
Nasdaq 10027,907.63+3.40%
Philadelphia Semiconductor (SOX)10,033.93+6.85%
Nikkei 22560,459.58+2.87%
KOSPI5,239.13+4.39%
Taiwan TAIEX42,711.92+2.52%
Hang Seng Tech4,084.45+1.08%
US 10-yr yield4.88%+2 bp

We could not confirm a close for the S&P 500 Information Technology sector or the Stoxx Europe 600 Technology index, so both are left out. The Stoxx 600 was up about 0.6–0.9% in early trading Tuesday, led by chips (CNBC). Nasdaq 100 futures were down about 0.2% at 05:30 ET as Nvidia trimmed its pre-market gain.

MoverTickerChangeWhy
AMDAMD+13.3%Google picked EPYC as host CPU for TPU 8tx; Oppenheimer upgrade to Outperform, $600 target
BroadcomAVGO+8.8%Short-covering in custom AI silicon after last week's rout
NvidiaNVDA−4.27%Board probe into Huang's ties to an alleged Chinese spy; the only SOX stock to fall
SoftBank Group9984+13.4% to +13.9%Chip rebound before results; reported a ¥1.12trn loss after the close
SK Hynix000660+6.69%Memory rebound and foreign buying, despite a 38% Morgan Stanley target cut
Sea LtdSE−8.9% (pre-market)Revenue beat, but adjusted EBITDA and EPS missed

Semiconductors & AI infrastructure

TSMC's record October is the clearest answer to last week's AI-demand panic

What happened:

  • TSMC reported October revenue of NT$586.9bn (about US$17.9bn), up 59.7% from a year earlier and 14.7% from September. It is the company's best month ever, above August's NT$514.8bn (TSMC monthly report; SEC 6-K; Hardware Busters).
  • Analysts had expected NT$560–570bn, according to BigGo Finance via InvestingCube. January–October revenue is up 43.3%.
  • TSMC guided Q4 revenue to US$52.3–54.3bn, with a 65–67% gross margin. October alone covers roughly a third of that range.
  • Taiwan shares rose 2.2% to NT$2,285 on Tuesday, and the TAIEX gained 2.52% (Focus Taiwan).

What actually drives it:

  • TSMC makes nearly every leading AI accelerator: Nvidia's GPUs, AMD's Instinct chips, and the custom chips Broadcom and Marvell design for Google, Meta and others. Its revenue is the earliest hard read on what hyperscalers actually buy, not what they say.
  • Last week's selloff (SOX down about 12% on 5 Nov, per Yahoo Finance and BigGo) was triggered by the Democratic midterm sweep and fears of data center moratoriums. Those affect where data centers get built in 2028, not how many wafers TSMC ships this quarter.
  • Monthly numbers are noisy: timing of advanced-packaging (CoWoS) shipments can swing a month by 10% or more. But a record month in the first month of the quarter makes a miss on Q4 guidance unlikely.

Is the market over- or under-reacting?

  • Our view: The 2.2% gain in TSMC is modest next to SK Hynix (+6.7%) and Kioxia (+7.6%). That makes sense: TSMC fell less last week, and Taiwan's own market had help on Monday from regulators who curbed short selling and made a NT$500bn stabilization fund available (GuruFocus; Focus Taiwan). Investors should not read the TAIEX rebound purely as fundamental buying. Foreign investors were still net sellers on the main board.
  • BofA estimates the SOX fell 38% from its 22 June peak to last week's low and sees the "indiscriminate selling" bottoming in early 2027 (BigGo). TSMC's numbers support the view that the drawdown outran the fundamentals.

Winners and losers:

  • Winners: Nvidia's suppliers and peers that depend on TSMC volume (ASE Technology +7.8% Tuesday, MediaTek +2.8%), and advanced-packaging and test suppliers (Advantest +4.9%).
  • Exposed: Nobody directly. The open question is 2028 capacity: if state permits slow US data center construction, TSMC's Arizona ramp matters less than its Taiwan output, which is a mild positive for margins.

Nvidia: the spy scandal moves from the boardroom to Congress

What happened:

  • Nvidia closed −4.27% at $178.67 on Monday, after opening about 8% lower. It was the only decliner in the SOX, which rose 6.85% (CNBC; Yahoo Finance). The stock now trades about 13% below its 200-day moving average, the widest gap since April 2025 (Benzinga).
  • Background: Huang told staff on Sunday he had an affair with Alice Huang (no relation), a former executive of Singapore data center company Megaspeed, whom US intelligence agencies reportedly say passed information to Beijing (NYT and FT reports via CNBC). Megaspeed has been investigated for possibly smuggling Nvidia chips into China.
  • An independent board committee with outside counsel is investigating; Stephen Neal has been named lead independent director. The board says it has "no reason to believe" national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised (CNBC).
  • Trump said the FBI is "looking into it." We found no FBI statement. Sen. Chris Coons called for a congressional investigation, and Rosen Law Firm filed a securities class action on Monday (Yahoo Finance; Decrypt). Nvidia was up 0.3% to 1% before the open on Tuesday (CNBC; Reuters via Yahoo).

What actually drives it:

  • Not current revenue. Licensed China sales are a very small share of data center revenue (under 1% last quarter, per Reuters). Hyperscaler demand does not depend on Huang's private life.
  • The sales channel is the real exposure. Megaspeed is reported to have bought more than $4.8bn of Nvidia chips since mid-2024. If investigators conclude that chips went to China through Southeast Asian GPU clouds, the likely response is tighter licensing for Southeast Asia and the Gulf, and chip-location tracking (the Chip Security Act is in the Senate defense bill). That slows a fast-growing part of Nvidia's sovereign and neocloud business.
  • Key-person risk. Intelligent Alpha's Doug Clinton puts the odds of Huang being pushed out at 10–20%. Patrick Moorhead (Moor Insights) says an ouster is unlikely unless the probe finds more. Bernstein's Stacy Rasgon expects much more scrutiny in Washington (CNBC; Yahoo Finance).

Is the market over- or under-reacting?

  • Our view: Roughly proportionate. Earnings estimates have not changed, but the range of policy outcomes has widened, and the board probe is expected to take 4–6 weeks (one analyst estimate, via Yahoo Finance). That leaves the overhang in place through earnings on 17 Nov and the Trump–Xi summit on 18–19 Nov.
  • Dan Ives (Wedbush) called it a "black eye moment" but kept his Outperform rating. Sell-side estimates are not the issue; the multiple is. A governance discount can last even without new facts, especially with a Democratic Congress from January looking for oversight targets.
  • The one thing that would change the picture fast: evidence that the board or Commerce knew about Megaspeed links earlier. Former official Chris McGuire said on CNBC that Commerce knew of Nvidia's reported ties to a Chinese spy group. That is a claim, not a finding.

Winners and losers:

  • Relative winners: AMD and the custom-silicon camp (Broadcom, Marvell), which benefit if buyers want a second supplier for political as well as cost reasons. Monday's tape already showed this.
  • Exposed: Southeast Asian GPU clouds and resellers, Gulf "sovereign AI" projects that depend on fast licensing, and server makers with heavy Nvidia concentration.

AMD wins a Google slot, and the chip rebound broadens

What happened:

  • AMD closed +13.3% at $508.58 (Motley Fool). Google Cloud said its new TPU 8tx systems, its first TPUs with hardware-enforced confidential computing, will use AMD's fifth-generation EPYC CPUs as host processors. The systems target banks and governments and are due in 2027.
  • Oppenheimer's Rick Schafer upgraded AMD to Outperform with a $600 target. He expects AMD's data center revenue to grow about 135% in 2027 (FX Leaders; Motley Fool).
  • Broadcom rose about 8.8%, Micron 6.3%, Intel 5.5% and ASML's US shares about 6.2% on Monday (Yahoo Finance; BigGo; Motley Fool).

What actually drives it:

  • The Google win is a CPU win, not a GPU win. Most of Google's TPU fleet runs on Google's own Axion CPUs, so AMD wins one configuration (confidential computing), not the whole fleet. It still matters: it confirms that x86 server CPUs keep a role next to custom accelerators, and that AMD is gaining at Intel's expense in AI servers.
  • Much of the move looks like short-covering: AMD traded as low as about $402 last week and regained $500 in two sessions (FX Leaders).

Is the market over- or under-reacting? Our view: Monday overshot on AMD. The Oppenheimer target implies only about 18% more upside from Monday's close, and the Google systems do not ship until 2027. The more durable signal is the AMD–Anthropic link (AMD takes $2.5bn of Anthropic's private placement, see below), which points to a second large GPU customer beyond OpenAI.

Winners and losers: Winners: AMD, TSMC (makes both EPYC and TPU) and Broadcom (Google's TPU design partner). Loser: Intel, which loses another hyperscaler host-CPU socket.

Memory: Korea rips higher even as Morgan Stanley cuts long-term margins

What happened:

  • SK Hynix closed +6.69% at ₩1,212,000 and Samsung Electronics +4.74% at ₩198,900 on Tuesday. The KOSPI rose 4.39%, and a buy-side "sidecar" (a five-minute pause on program buying) was triggered (Seoul Economic Daily; Korea Times).
  • Morgan Stanley cut its SK Hynix target 38% to ₩1.6m (from ₩2.6m) and Samsung to ₩309,000 (from ₩381,000), but kept Overweight on SK Hynix. It lowered its 2027–28 HBM operating-margin assumption for SK Hynix to about 70% (from 78–80%) and its 2029–35 average operating margin to 28% (from 53%) (JKN; Seoul Economic Daily).
  • Foreign investors sold about ₩10.4trn of KOSPI shares last week, including ₩5.4trn of SK Hynix. They returned as net buyers on Tuesday.

What actually drives it:

  • Morgan Stanley is not cutting near-term earnings; reports say it raised some 2027–28 profit forecasts. It is cutting the value it puts on profits after 2028, when it expects new memory supply to catch up with demand. That is a valuation-method change, not a demand warning.
  • SK Hynix says long-term agreements cover more than half of its 2027–28 capacity and expects tight supply until 2030. DS Investment keeps a ₩2.64m target while also modeling price declines from 2028.

Is the market over- or under-reacting? Our view: The market chose to look at the next two years, which is reasonable given TSMC's numbers and record HBM contracting. But memory is a cyclical business that the market has priced like a utility for the past year. The Morgan Stanley note is a reminder that the multiple, not the earnings, carries the risk. Expect memory to stay the most volatile part of the AI trade.

Winners and losers: Near term, all three memory makers (SK Hynix, Samsung, Micron) and Kioxia (+7.6% in Tokyo). Longer term, buyers of memory (PC and phone makers, cloud providers) benefit if Morgan Stanley's post-2028 normalization is right.

CoreWeave reports tonight: the funding plan matters more than revenue

  • Results are due after the close. Consensus revenue is about $3.54bn (up about 159%), with a loss of roughly $1.16–1.21 per share. Q3 capex guidance is $11.5–13.5bn, and 2026 capex guidance is $35–39bn (TradingKey; Seeking Alpha via TradingView).
  • Interest expense guidance of $860–940m for the quarter is several times the guided adjusted operating income of $200–260m (EBC; TradingKey). Backlog was $104.2bn at end-June; one source expects more than $125bn.
  • Context: Bloomberg and CNBC reported last week that Microsoft is cutting back to fewer neocloud partners and winding down an older-GPU rental deal with Oracle. CoreWeave says the relationship remains strong. The stock is down about 66–73% from its high (Benzinga; KuCoin).
  • Our view: The key questions are how much backlog turns into billings, how much of it comes from Microsoft and OpenAI, and how 2026 capex gets funded without heavy dilution. A capex cut would hurt the shares but reassure the bonds. A weak print would weigh on Nvidia's neocloud channel, which is already under scrutiny (see above).

Big tech & platforms

Anthropic sets IPO terms, and its suppliers write $26bn of the check

Disclosure: this briefing is written by Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic.

What happened:

  • Anthropic launched its roadshow on Tuesday with an indicative range of $70–78 for 825 million Class A shares, up to $64.4bn at the top. It will list on Nasdaq as "ANT". Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley lead the deal; pricing is expected next week (Anthropic; CNBC; Reuters via TradingKey).
  • The amended S-1 shows a $26bn concurrent private placement at the IPO price: Nvidia and Google $10bn each, AMD $2.5bn, Broadcom, Micron and Microsoft $1bn each, TSMC $0.5bn, in non-voting shares. The IPO does not depend on the placement closing (FourWeekMBA; Trending Topics). Total raise: up to about $90bn.
  • Valuation depends on the share count used: about $968bn at the midpoint on outstanding shares, up to $1.02trn at the top (Reuters calculation), and up to $1.405trn fully diluted (CNBC). Monday's leaked $70–80 range for 867 million shares was withdrawn as inaccurate.

What actually drives it:

  • For big tech, the IPO is a mark-to-market event. Alphabet and Amazon are large existing holders, so a strong debut lifts the value of stakes that are mostly invisible in their share prices today. A weak debut would hurt AI sentiment more than their earnings.
  • The placement is the bigger industry story. Chip suppliers and a cloud provider are buying equity in a customer that spends most of its capital on their chips and cloud capacity. That secures demand, but it is the same circular financing (supplier money funding customer purchases) that helped drive last week's selloff in AI infrastructure.

Is the market over- or under-reacting?

  • Our view: The final terms are smaller than the $80–100bn raise discussed in early October and the up-to-$2trn valuations talked about then. That is healthy: a deal sized to clear the market is better for the AI complex than a stretched one that trades poorly. It is still the largest test of public appetite for AI risk this year, roughly five months after SpaceX's record IPO.
  • Watch index effects: a fast Nasdaq 100 entry would force index funds to buy ANT and sell other megacaps at the margin.

Winners and losers:

  • Winners if it prices well: Alphabet and Amazon (stake value), Nvidia and AMD (locked-in demand), and the lead banks.
  • Exposed: Other private AI labs whose valuations get a public comparison, and software companies most at risk from AI agents, which face a well-funded competitor with a public currency for acquisitions.

Megacaps rebound, led by Meta, Amazon and Tesla

  • Amazon closed +2.94% at $266.93; Meta rose about 5% early after JPMorgan added it to its Analyst Focus List. Alphabet gained 1–3% despite losing its spot on the list (Yahoo Finance; 24/7 Wall St.). Microsoft rose almost 3%, Tesla about 5.5%, Apple about 1%.
  • The Magnificent 7 lost about $1trn in market value on Thursday alone, so Monday recovered only part of that (CNBC).
  • Tesla's gain came despite last week's news that Cybertruck production in Texas will wind down around mid-2027 to free capacity for Cybercab. US Cybertruck sales fell 28% in the first nine months of 2026 (Kelley Blue Book via WSMV).
  • Our view: This was a relief rally, not a new story. The megacaps with the most cash and their own power and data center capacity (Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta) are the structural winners if state-level permits get harder. They can wait out delays that neoclouds funded with debt cannot.

Software & internet

Sea Ltd: strong growth, weaker profits, shares down about 9% pre-market

What happened:

  • Q3 revenue was about $8.6bn, up roughly 39–43%, above estimates. Net income rose 34% to $502.5m, and Sea approved another $1bn buyback (company release via Business Wire; Investing.com).
  • Adjusted EBITDA of $931m missed the $974.5m consensus. Sources disagree on the EPS miss: Investing.com reports adjusted EPS of $0.78 versus $0.99 expected; StockStory shows only a small GAAP miss.
  • By segment (company release): Shopee revenue $5.3bn (+40.9%), Garena revenue $840m (+28.6%) with bookings up 5.9%, and Monee (fintech) revenue $1.6bn (+63.9%) on lending growth. Shares fell 8.9% pre-market (Investing.com).

What actually drives it: Sea is spending heavily to win e-commerce share in Southeast Asia and Brazil, and lending is growing faster than e-commerce. Investors are paying less for growth that comes with lower margins and more credit risk. Garena's single-digit bookings growth also shows its main game is maturing.

Is the market over- or under-reacting? Our view: A 9% drop on a revenue beat says the stock was priced for margin expansion. The buyback provides some support. Watch whether management commits to Shopee margin targets on the call; that is what the market wants to hear.

Winners and losers: Pressure on regional e-commerce rivals that must match Shopee's spending (Tokopedia/TikTok Shop, Lazada at Alibaba, MercadoLibre in Brazil). Monee's growth is a credit-cycle risk to watch.

Security and cloud software join the relief rally; Qualys gets punished

  • Cloudflare rose about 11% on Monday to around $297, extending its rally after Q3 revenue of $782.5m (+39.2%) beat the $738.3m consensus and it raised its 2026 outlook. Gross margin fell to 71.2% from 74% (24/7 Wall St.).
  • Palo Alto Networks closed +5.4% at $330.89 ahead of earnings on 18 Nov; SentinelOne rose about 8% (Yahoo Finance).
  • Qualys beat on Q3 revenue ($188m, +10.7%) and guidance but fell about 8% after hours on margin concerns (StockStory).
  • Oracle rose about 3% Monday, recovering part of Friday's 4% drop on Bloomberg's report that Microsoft is winding down an Oracle AI-capacity rental that used older Nvidia chips (24/7 Wall St.; Yahoo Finance).
  • Our view: The market is separating software that uses AI traffic (Cloudflare's edge network, security platforms protecting AI workloads) from software that AI agents could replace (seat-based workflow tools). Monday's leaders were in the first group. Anthropic's IPO keeps the second group under pressure.

Asian & European tech

Infineon guides to 20%+ growth as AI power revenue more than doubles

What happened:

  • Infineon's fiscal 2026 revenue was €16.35bn (+12%), with a record Q4 of €4.71bn. The full-year segment result margin was 19.7%, up 2.2 points (Infineon release via MarketScreener).
  • For fiscal 2027, it guides to about €20bn revenue (more than 20% growth) and a margin about 5 points higher. AI power revenue of about €1.7bn in fiscal 2026 is expected to rise to nearly €4bn in fiscal 2027 (Investing.com, from company slides). The dividend rises to €0.38.
  • Shares rose about 5–9% early Tuesday, depending on the listing and time (+5.8% on Tradegate, +9% for the US ADR; CNBC reports +4.8% at the open).

What actually drives it:

  • AI data centers need far more power conversion per rack as GPU power climbs, and the industry is moving to 800-volt power systems. Infineon sells the power chips (silicon, silicon carbide and gallium nitride) that do that conversion. That revenue is less exposed to the GPU vendor fight: it grows whether Nvidia, AMD or custom chips win.
  • Our view: The AI power target is the headline. In February, Infineon expected AI revenue of €2.5bn in fiscal 2027 (Reuters). "Nearly €4bn" is a raise of roughly 60% in nine months.
  • Autos (still Infineon's largest market) are recovering slowly; software-defined vehicles are part of the guidance, but the AI segment is doing the heavy lifting.

Is the market over- or under-reacting? Our view: The reaction looks justified. Infineon offers AI exposure at a lower valuation than US AI chip stocks, and it is one of the few European chipmakers with a clear AI growth line. The risk is execution: power semiconductors need new capacity, and the company says it is raising investment.

Winners and losers: Winners: Infineon, power-semiconductor peers (STMicro, onsemi, Navitas in gallium nitride) and wafer suppliers. Exposed: analog and power companies tied mainly to autos and industrial, which do not have this AI tailwind.

SoftBank swings to a ¥1.12trn loss after its shares jumped 14%

  • SoftBank reported a fiscal Q2 net loss of ¥1.12trn (~$7.1bn), its first quarterly loss in nearly two years, versus a Bloomberg consensus profit of about ¥129bn (CNBC; Investing.com).
  • The largest item was a ¥597bn loss from reworking purchases of US power equipment for its data centers. SoftBank says it may get up to $2.1bn in rebates on future purchases (CNBC; Implicator). Lower Arm, Intel and Coupang share prices added to the loss.
  • The OpenAI stake (about 13% for $64.6bn invested) is still carried at $99.6bn. SoftBank says a possible revaluation from a new OpenAI funding round could show up in its fiscal Q3 (ETV Bharat; Implicator). Startup Fortune reports SoftBank raised its Arm-backed margin loan by $5bn to about $25bn.
  • Shares had jumped 13.4–13.9% in Tokyo before the results, as the biggest gainer in the Nikkei (CNBC; Pomegra).
  • Our view: The headline loss is mostly mark-to-market on listed stakes that have partly recovered since. The data center procurement charge is the more telling number: building physical AI infrastructure is harder and more expensive than financing it. A bigger margin loan backed by an Arm stake that is 60% below its June high adds leverage at the wrong time. Expect Wednesday's Tokyo session to give back part of Tuesday's gain.

Asia rebound: Japan and Korea lead; Hong Kong lags

  • Japan: The Nikkei closed +2.87% at 60,459.58, back above 60,000 after last week's 9.25% drop (its worst week since March 2020). Tokyo Electron rose about 5.7%, Advantest 4.9% and Kioxia 7.6% (CNBC; Invezz; BBN Times).
  • Korea: Besides SK Hynix and Samsung, Korea's industry minister said talks with SK Hynix on placing a fab in the Honam semiconductor cluster will conclude this month (Seoul Economic Daily).
  • Hong Kong: The Hang Seng Tech index rose a more modest 1.08%. Meituan gained 6.5%; Tencent (+0.3%) and Xiaomi (+0.9%) lagged (Hang Seng Indexes).
  • China: No major regulatory action on tech in the window. Beijing's Foreign Ministry called the Nvidia spy story "unsubstantiated" (Reuters via CNBC).
  • Our view: Asia rose with the global chip trade, not on local news. China's platform stocks lagged because they do not benefit from the AI hardware rebound, and the Nvidia affair raises the risk of tighter US rules ahead of the 18–19 Nov Trump–Xi summit.

Watch today

  • 08:30 ET: US October CPI (no annual rate published). A core reading of +0.3% or higher would raise the odds of more hikes after December, which hurts long-duration tech; a +0.2% reading supports Monday's rebound.
  • After the close (about 17:00 ET): CoreWeave Q3 results: backlog, Microsoft and OpenAI concentration, and how it funds capex.
  • All day: Anthropic roadshow begins; pricing expected next week. Sea Ltd earnings call. Nvidia: more congressional statements likely; Fed Governor Waller speaks (time not confirmed).
  • Wed 11 Nov: Veterans Day (US bond market closed, stocks open). SoftBank's first Tokyo session after its loss.
  • Thu 12 Nov: Nebius before the open; Cisco, Applied Materials and Cerebras after the close (per earnings calendars). Applied Materials' China mix will be read against the MATCH Act in the Senate defense bill.
  • Next week: Nvidia earnings 17 Nov; Palo Alto Networks 18 Nov; Trump–Xi meeting 18–19 Nov.

Sources

Notes on method: Asian figures are Tuesday closes from wire reports; the Hang Seng Tech level is the index provider's 16:08 HKT reading. Cloudflare's Monday gain is an afternoon figure, not a confirmed close. Trump's statement that the FBI is investigating has not been confirmed by the FBI. The Arm margin-loan increase comes from a single source. Sea's EPS miss differs by source. The S&P 500 IT sector and Stoxx 600 Technology closes could not be confirmed and are omitted.

Market analysis, not personal investment advice.