Weekly Investment News and Analysis

Last week, Dow Jones fell 1.9%, S&P 500 index was down 1.95%, and Nasdaq Composite was down 2.7%. Even though Friday provided investors with some respite, narrative has quickly shifted bearish in the past few weeks. Shifting odds of a Fed rate cut in December, could be one factor driving volatility, along with ongoing skittishness pertaining to the AI trade. Nvidia’s October quarter underscored why AI leaders keep funding the buildout. Revenue rose 62% to US$57 billion with growth re-accelerating, FCF hit US$22.1 billion, and it committed to US$26 billion of cloud server rentals over six years, making it one of the world’s largest GPU renters. Microsoft and Nvidia are also putting US$15 billion into Anthropic, which in turn will spend at least US$30 billion on Azure capacity. XAI is targeting a US$15 billion raise at a US$230 billion valuation. Amazon is selling US$15 billion of AI-linked bonds. At the same time, AI bubble anxiety is spreading. Sundar Pichai acknowledged “irrationality” in AI valuations. A Bank of America survey showed net 20% of fund managers think capex is excessive and >50% now call AI stocks a bubble, with AI crash risk topping macro as biggest tail risk. Credit markets are tightening at the margin, with tech bond spreads widening. Oracle CDS is now a favored hedge on AI downside, and several investment-grade issues seeing 40%+ order attrition at final pricing. Yet insiders are leaning in: corporate insider buying is running at the fastest pace since May. In Canada, Toronto-based Tenstorrent is nearing a Fidelity-led raise of at least US$800 million at a ~US$3.2 billion pre-money valuation. Brookfield launched a US$10 billion Brookfield Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Fund (targeting up to US$100 billion including co-investors) to buy power, land, data centers and GPUs, with Kuwait’s US$1 trillion fund and Nvidia as anchor partners.