CWS Market Review – November 4, 2025

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The stock market finally got a little pushback today. This was the second-worst day for the market in over two months. The S&P 500 was down 1.17% for the day while the Nasdaq was off by 2.04%.

Of course, there have been other down days recently, but this is the first one that damaged a lot of key stocks. The High Beta sector was especially hurt today (-3.10%). This is notable because this area of the market has been nearly unstoppable since the April low.

At one point earlier today, the S&P 500 came very close to falling below its 20-day moving average. The index has now gone every day for over six months without trading below its 50-day moving average. That shows you how long and low-key this rally has been.

Even Bitcoin has been slumping. Today it fell below $100,000 for the first time since June. Gold was down as well.

Shares of Palantir (PLTR) were down more than 10% earlier today after Michael Burry revealed that he had a short position. If you recall, Burry gained fame after he shorted the housing market before the financial crisis. He was played by Christian Bale in the movie The Big Short.

I think Wall Street tends to overrate famous gurus and their bold calls. Even with Burry, he was wrong on the trade for a long time before it paid off. I favor quiet consistent investing rather than looking for the big home run. The few ones that do get the big home runs can expect to be treated as geniuses for a long time, no matter what their future record is.

Alex Karp, Palantir’s CEO, went on Squawk Box to criticize the shorts and said they were using market manipulation. I’ve always noticed that it’s only stocks that are down where the management blames shorts and manipulation. Ever notice that bulls are never blamed for manipulating the price upward?

Bear in mind that we’re talking about a stock that’s up 25-fold in the last three years. It’s bound to get nicked along the way. Despite the stock losing ground today, the company posted very good earnings.

Palantir reported earnings of 21 cents per share. That was four cents better than expected. Revenue came in at $1.18 billion. That was $90 million more than expected. For the current quarter, Palantir expects revenue of $1.33 billion, Wall Street had been expecting $1.19 billion.

Palantir’s growth has been very impressive. For Q3, its sales were up 63% and its net income tripled. For this year, the company expected sales of $4.4 billion. Wall Street had been expecting $4.17 billion. CNBC notes that “Government sales, particularly from military agencies, have been central to Palantir’s ongoing ascent.”

Karp said, “I’m not against shorting as a matter of theory, but I’m just saying pick something that is not doing a noble task.” Oh. Well, I guess we should be thanking him.

Over the past few weeks, a few prominent Wall Streeters have sounded the alarm on a rising stock market. David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs (GS) said, “Markets run in cycles, and whenever we’ve historically had a significant acceleration in a new technology that creates a lot of capital formation, and therefore lots of interesting new companies around it, you generally see the market run ahead of the potential…there are going to be winners and losers.”

I’ve also seen many comparisons of today’s market to the dot-com bubble of 25 years ago. One difference is that during the dot-com bubble and the financial crisis, the parts of the economy outside tech and real estate held up well. This time, the parts of the economy away from AI are not doing so well.

With the government still closed, we’ve had to get a little creative on finding indicators of economic health. Normally, we would get the JOLTS report today, but we did get some jobs data from Indeed, the jobs site. Indeed’s jobs posting index fell to 101.9. That’s as of October 24 and it’s the lowest reading since February 2001.

Since the middle of August, the index has fallen by 3.5%. Indeed’s index also said that since January, wages are down by 3.4%.

If the government were open, then the regular jobs report would come out this Friday. For the ghost report, Wall Street expects a drop of 60,000 jobs last month. It also sees the unemployment rate rising to 4.5%.

The Fed doesn’t meet again for another five weeks but it’s looking as though we can expect another interest rate cut. That would bring the target for the Fed funds rate down to 3.50% to 3.75%.

I’m pleased to say that we had a very good earnings report today from Henry Schein (HSIC), one of our Buy List stocks. I’ll cover it in more detail in our premium letter, but I’ll touch on some highlights here. The company makes all sorts of products for the dental industry.

CEO Stanley M. Bergman said, “We are pleased with our financial results for the third quarter, with sales growth accelerating in each of our reportable segments including solid market share gains in our distribution businesses as we are once again focused on driving growth now that the cyber incident is fully behind us.”

For its Q3, Henry Schein made $1.38 per share. That’s up from $1.22 per share last year. Wall Street had been expecting $1.28 per share. The company raised its full-year guidance to $4.88 to $4.96 per share. The previous range was for $4.80 to $4.94 per share.

So far this year, HSIC has made $3.63 per share. That implies Q4 earnings of $1.25 to $1.33 per share. Wall Street expected $1.29 per share. Quarterly sales rose 5.2% to $3.3 billion.

During Q3, Henry Schein bought back 3.3 million shares at an average price of $68.62 per share for a total of $229 million. HSIC has $980 million left in its current authorization.

Henry Schein has been working with private-equity firm KKR to enhance shareholder value. KKR currently owns 12% of HSIC’s stock. The company gave KKR the right to increase its ownership to 19.9%.

Shares of HSIC gapped higher today. At one point, the stock was up 13.7% for the day. By the closing bell, it was up 10.78%.

Lastly, shares of Denny’s (DENN) soared 50% today on news that’s it’s being taken private.

That’s all for now. The regular econ reports from the government are still on hold, but tomorrow we’re due to get the ADP report on private payrolls. This may give us a look at the strength, or weakness, of the jobs market. I’ll have more for you in the next issue of CWS Market Review.

– Eddy

Posted by on November 4th, 2025 at 7:16 pm


The information in this blog post represents my own opinions and does not contain a recommendation for any particular security or investment. I or my affiliates may hold positions or other interests in securities mentioned in the Blog, please see my Disclaimer page for my full disclaimer.