Archive for November, 2025

• Morning News: November 5, 2025
  Eddy Elfenbein, November 5th, 2025 at 7:05 am

  Thailand Is Hunting Down ‘Gray Money’ Behind Baht’s Odd Strength

  Lasting Economic Damage From the Longest Shutdown in US History

  Longest Shutdown in History Costs US Economy About $15 Billion Each Week

  Lawmakers See Hope for Ending Record-Setting Shutdown

  Wall Street Drops Fear of ‘Hot Commie Summer’ in Overture to Mamdani

  Wall Street Laments Mamdani’s Victory and Plots Its Next Move

  Election Day Sent an Unmistakable Warning to Republicans

  Thoughts On a Socialist Triumph In the World of Capitalism

  Almost Half of U.S. Imports Now Have Steep Tariffs

  Supreme Court Confronts Trump’s Power to Disrupt World Trade

  Contra Brookings, Tax Increases Won’t Shrink the Debt

  Trump Aides Raise Recession Fears, and Point Fingers at the Fed

  As US Rally Pauses, Global Stocks Enjoy Historic Outperformance

  Global Chip Stock Rally Founders on Concerns Over Valuations

  Bitcoin Shaken by Long-Term Holders Dumping $45 Billion

  Sahm: How the Fed Can Change the K-Shaped Economy

  Wall Street Bonuses Expected to Be Highest in Four Years, Consultancy Says

  Bank of America Raises Return Target in Bid to Catch Up with Rivals

  Why ‘Payment-In-Kind’ Debt Is So Appealing — and Risky

  Jensen Huang and Donald Trump Are Correct About Chinese Students

  Why Is Nvidia the King of AI Chips, and Can It Last?

  Palantir’s Market Value Skyrocketed. See How Its Revenue Is Still Catching Up.

  IBM to Cut Thousands of Workers Amid A.I. Boom

  AI’s Power Rush Lifts Smaller, Pricier Equipment Makers

  There’s a $10 Trillion Antidote to Trump’s Climate Backlash

  Kazakhstan As the Solution to the ‘Rare Earths’ Problem

  Google Clears DOJ Antitrust Hurdle for $32 Billion Wiz Deal

  There’s No ‘Hate Speech,’ and No Holding Tech Companies Liable For It

  Europe’s Self-Driving Cars Aren’t Even at the Starting Line

  Drug Distributor Cencora to Invest $1 Billion in U.S. Supply Chain

  McDonald’s Says Deals Are Delivering Sales

  Burger King Braces for the Demise of the Penny

  KPop Demon Hunters Is Netflix’s Biggest Hit Ever. Where Are the Toys?

  Be sure to follow me on Twitter.

• CWS Market Review – November 4, 2025
  Eddy Elfenbein, November 4th, 2025 at 7:16 pm

  (This is the free version of CWS Market Review. If you like what you see, then please sign up for the premium newsletter for $20 per month or $200 for the whole year. If you sign up today, you can see our two reports, “Your Handy Guide to Stock Orders” and “How Not to Get Screwed on Your Mortgage.”)

  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

• Morning News: November 4, 2025
  Eddy Elfenbein, November 4th, 2025 at 7:08 am

  Stiglitz Declares an ‘Inequality Emergency’ in G-20 Report

  The EU Needs To Kick Its Addiction To Tech Regulation

  This Trillionaire Economy Thrived in a Global Order Trump Is Ditching

  Interesting Trade-offs on Trade Await the Supremes

  Trump Tariffs’ Fate Rides on Supreme Court Justices He Picked

  More Tax Revenue Won’t Solve a Problem of Too Much Tax Revenue

  Embattled Fed Governor Lisa Cook Voices Support for Recent Rate Cut

  The Fed’s Wait-and-See Approach to AI Can’t Last

  Bank Strength Comes From Prudent Lending, Not FDIC Insurance

  Investors Really Don’t Care About the Shutdown

  UBS Warns of Systemic Risk From Weak US Insurance Regulation

  The Endless Quest to Compare College Prices Before Applying

  China Is Quietly Sparking Latin America’s Startup Race

  Portugal Has Plenty of Tourists. Now It Wants Data Centers

  What a New Model of Climate Finance Can Look Like

  Oil Glut Helps Indian Refiners Pivot Away From Russian Crude

  Rick Perry’s Nuclear Ambitions Begin With Gas Power

  ‘Trumpette’ Billionaire Rinehart Wins Big From Rare-Earths Fight

  Rheinmetall Advances East Europe Expansion With Lithuania Plant

  Wall Street’s AI Energy Agenda Bleeds Into Global Climate Talks

  OpenAI Wants Brands to Allow Their Mascots to Appear in Gen AI Videos

  Xiaomi’s EV Gambit Includes Heavy Human Cost

  Ferrari Shrugs Off Tariffs With Higher Third-Quarter Profit

  First Brands Sues Founder for Allegedly Pilfering Firm Funds

  The Workers Left Out of Trump’s Drug-Manufacturing Renaissance

  Kimberly-Clark/Kenvue Embodies M&A’s Growth Potential

  Yum Brands Explores Sale of Pizza Hut

  Denny’s to Go Private in $322 Million Deal

  I Saw a Vision of Chocolate’s Future in an Amsterdam Brownie

  Sex Dolls, Boycotts, Protests: Furor in France as Shein Opens Paris Store

  Spotify Gains Subscribers as App Offering Expands

  Meet the Billionaire Trying to Save College Football From Itself

  Be sure to follow me on Twitter.

• Morning News: November 3, 2025
  Eddy Elfenbein, November 3rd, 2025 at 7:03 am

  The Arctic’s Main Carbon Sink Is Increasingly Unstable in a Warming World

  OPEC and Allies Agree to Boost Oil Production, Then Pause

  OPEC+ Shows Its Pursuit of Oil Market Share Has Limits

  Big Oil CEOs Warn Trump’s Russia Sanctions Will Hit Supplies

  Singapore’s Top Real-Estate Asset Managers Mull Merger That Could Create $150 Billion Entity

  Europe’s Role Reversal: The Problem Economies Are Now Further North

  Swiss Inflation Declines as SNB Mulls Negative Rates

  Stablecoin ‘Rewards’ Threaten Nascent Financial Instruments

  Banks Shouldn’t Have to Answer to the Reputation Cops

  SEC Aim to End Shareholder Proposals Won’t Depoliticize Corporations

  Will Trump’s Tariff Deal Tilt the Playing Field Back Toward China?

  Treasuries Rally Is Proving Trump’s ‘Sell America’ Critics Wrong

  How the U.S. Economy Has Defied Doomsday Predictions on Tariffs

  The Complex Role of Slavery in Building America’s Wealth

  Builders Find Hardship in Trump’s Tariffs and Deportations

  Supreme Court Confronts Trump and His Tariffs in Test of Presidential Power

  Toymaker Gears Up for Supreme Court Fight Over Trump’s Tariffs

  We Are a Republic, Which Means SCOTUS Should Rule Against Trump Tariffs

  The ‘Peace President’ Is Driving a Defense Stock Bonanza

  Food Stamp Cuts Expose Trump’s Strategy to Use Shutdown to Advance Agenda

  Don’t Be Ridiculous, No One Will Starve Without SNAP

  ‘A Big Positive’: How One Company Plans to Profit From Medicaid Cuts

  Surging Power Costs Are Putting the Squeeze on Customers

  A Wave of US Layoffs Flash Early Warning Sign for Job Market

  Why Companies Are No Longer Hanging On to Employees

  Palantir Thinks College Might Be a Waste. So It’s Hiring High-School Grads.

  Microsoft Vows to Spend $8 Billion in UAE Through 2029 on Cloud, Chips

  Chip Startup Substrate Draws Skepticism in Quest to Take On TSMC

  BlackRock Manager Says an AI Bust Wouldn’t End Clean-Tech Rise

  Eaton to Buy Boyd Thermal for $9.5 Billion in Data Center Play

  Former Honeywell CEO’s Firm Strikes Deal for Machinery Maker Husky

  Driverless Freight Trucks Are Off to a Bumpy Start

  Control of Tesla Is at Stake in Vote on Elon Musk’s Pay Plan

  Kimberly-Clark Strikes $40 Billion Deal for Tylenol Maker Kenvue

  Chipotle’s Big Bet on Younger Consumers Is Unraveling

  Why the Future of Coffee Doesn’t Belong to Starbucks

  Be sure to follow me on Twitter.