👋 ICYMI
The AI trade lost its most famous face this week. On Wednesday, Nvidia's board accepted Jensen Huang's resignation as president, CEO and director, effective immediately, after reports of affairs with an alleged Chinese spy and two company employees. CFO Colette Kress is now interim CEO and keeps the CFO job, and longtime director Harvey Jones became chair. The Financial Times reported that the board has approached Arm CEO Rene Haas about the job. Nvidia $NVDA ( ▼ 2.01% ) closed Friday at $162.85, down 12.7% on the week. Over six weeks, it has fallen more than 30%, wiping out roughly $2 trillion of market value.
Then the market did something few expected. It moved on. The S&P 500 rose 2.5% to 7,562, the Nasdaq 2.3% to 25,136 and the Dow 2.1% to 52,348, and all three had their best week since August. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq snapped four-week losing streaks, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index gained 8.0% for the week even with its biggest member in free fall. "The Nvidia story is now idiosyncratic," said Nationwide's Mark Hackett. "There's a lot of nervousness priced in right now, and the good news is, the market has proven its ability to withstand idiosyncratic but painful moves in tech."
The bond market had a much harder week. October CPI rose 0.4% against 0.3% expected, with core up 0.3% against 0.2%, and producer prices were up 6.5% from a year earlier, the highest since November 2022. The 2-year Treasury yield rose 37 basis points to 4.88% and the 10-year 29 basis points to 5.15%. Markets now fully price a December rate hike, and the odds of a half-point move rose to 11% from zero a week ago, per CME FedWatch.
🔁 Market Movers
🤖 Huang Out, Kress In: Nvidia Fell 12.7% for the Week
Nvidia $NVDA ( ▼ 2.01% ) fell 4.34% on Thursday, the first session after the resignation, and another 2.01% on Friday to $162.85. The board is searching for a permanent CEO while Kress fills in. CNBC reports that Ian Buck, Nvidia's head of hyperscale and high-performance computing, is emerging as an early favorite. Some investors see an entry point. "What I do know is that the line of sight is that they have a trillion dollars in demand verified," said KKM Financial's Jeff Kilburg, who bought January $200 calls this week. The business hasn't changed hands. The founder has. That's what the stock is repricing.
💻 AMD and Broadcom Each Gained About 18%. Then Redburn Downgraded Broadcom.
The money that left Nvidia didn't leave chips. AMD $AMD ( ▼ 8.75% ) finished the week up 18.9% at $534.06 and Broadcom $AVGO ( ▼ 4.76% ) up 18.2% at $347.01, as traders bet that customers might spread orders around. Friday showed the limits. Rothschild & Co Redburn cut Broadcom to Neutral and lowered its target to $398 from $595. Analyst Mike Harrison noted that up to 15 gigawatts of compute for Anthropic and OpenAI underpins Broadcom's $230 billion fiscal 2028 AI revenue guidance, and both labs "rely heavily on credit market access." Broadcom fell 4.8% and AMD 8.8% on the day. Redburn's point isn't about demand. It's about who pays for it.
☁️ CoreWeave Jumped 24.7%. Nebius Beat by $73 Million.
The neoclouds reported this week, and both beat. CoreWeave $CRWV ( ▼ 6.13% ) grew revenue 168% to $3.7 billion and guided 2026 revenue to $13 billion to $13.3 billion, above the $12.86 billion consensus. "We are 10x oversubscribed to the existing capacity that we have left in 2027," CEO Michael Intrator said, and the stock had its best day since April 2025. Nebius $NBIS ( ▼ 9.92% ) posted revenue of $980.8 million, up 571% and $73 million above estimates, and gave a first 2027 outlook of $12 billion to $13 billion, above the $11.98 billion consensus. The stock fell 16.8% on Thursday as investors focused on a 2027 capex plan of $40 billion to $45 billion. "The demand for AI is real and substantial," CEO Arkady Volozh said. "Everything else, like building the capacity and financing it, is just a task."
🚀 Liftoff +30.6%, Modine +27.9%, Cerebras +11.2% on Friday
Friday's biggest winners were AI companies that don't depend on Nvidia's next quarter. Liftoff Mobile $LFTO ( ▲ 30.63% ) rose 30.6% to $24.44 after third-quarter revenue grew 32% to $238 million, net income reached $87 million against a $6 million loss a year ago, and it guided 2026 revenue to $907 million to $912 million. Modine $MOD ( ▲ 27.86% ) gained 27.9% after Bloomberg reported Samsung is in talks to buy it. Its data center sales grew 95% last quarter. Cerebras $CBRS ( ▲ 11.22% ) beat with core revenue of $230.9 million against $214.7 million expected, guided the fourth quarter to $310 million to $330 million against $271 million, and announced a deal with Microsoft. Cooling, ad software and inference chips all got paid in the same session.
🛰 Starship Reached Orbit and Deployed 26 Starlinks
SpaceX launched Starship Flight 15 at 5:48 p.m. ET on Friday, its most ambitious test yet, aiming to recover both stages for the first time. The upper stage, Ship 42, reached orbit and deployed 26 Version 3 Starlink satellites. The Super Heavy booster was diverted from its tower catch and was lost at splashdown in the Gulf. Ship 42 was set to coast for up to 14 orbits and attempt a return to Starbase around 4:20 p.m. ET on Saturday. Full reusability is what makes Starship's cost math work, and this flight put a working orbital ship and a full Starlink V3 deployment on the record. SpaceX $SPCX ( ▼ 0.59% ) finished the week up 3.6% at $139.11.
👀 Signals I'm Watching
🏛 The 2-Year Jumped 37bp. December Is Now 25 or 50.
The 2-year had its biggest weekly increase since early October 2024, and this week's three Treasury auctions each drew weaker demand than last month's. Fed officials did little to calm it. Governor Christopher Waller said a half-point hike should be on the table if core CPI came in "around 0.3", and it did. Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan sees two more quarter-point hikes. "Inflation is stubbornly high and the Fed's going to need to act a little bit quicker and a little bit more aggressively," said TD Securities' Molly Brooks. The Fed meets Dec. 8–9, with October minutes out Wednesday. A 10-year above 5% raises the bar for every long-duration growth stock.
💸 Anthropic Prices Wednesday at About $1.2 Trillion
Anthropic is expected to price its IPO on Wednesday at $70 to $78 a share and start trading Thursday on the Nasdaq under the ticker ANT. That values it at about $1.2 trillion, down from the $2 trillion it targeted earlier this fall. Powerlaw's Benjamin Black thinks the cut was smart. If Anthropic hits a $100 billion revenue run rate by the end of 2026, the price works out to roughly 12 times that run rate. "Anthropic's smart to give up some price to make it easy for the public to make some money here," he said. After Broadcom's downgrade on Anthropic exposure, this debut is the cleanest test of whether investors will fund the AI labs on public markets.
📅 Nvidia Reports Tuesday With an Interim CEO
Nvidia reports on Tuesday at about 4:20 p.m. ET, its first results since Huang left. In August it guided this quarter's revenue to $108.0 billion, give or take 2%, almost double the $57.0 billion of a year earlier. It will be Kress's first report as interim CEO. The numbers will likely be fine. What matters is how Kress handles succession questions and whether customers are changing their orders. The best result for the AI trade would be a quarter boring enough to turn the story back to demand.
🔁 Rotation, Not Retreat
The S&P 500 technology sector rose more than 2% this week, snapping a five-week slump, while its largest AI name fell 12.7%. Investors rotated into Apple, AMD and Broadcom instead of selling the theme. The pan-European STOXX 600 had its best week since late June, helped by a rotation out of tech globally. A market that can take a $2 trillion hit to its leader and still post its best week since August has more depth than it did a month ago. That depth now has to hold up against 5% yields.
The AI trade just lost its face. It didn't lose its demand.
Nvidia fell 12.7% while the chip index rose 8.0%, CoreWeave said it is oversubscribed through 2028 and Cerebras guided well above estimates. When the leader stumbles, the opportunity moves to the companies still compounding underneath it. That's what we cover in premium, one company at a time.
What premium members get every week:
one deep dive on a disruptive growth stock, with the full thesis, the risks and a price target
our price target list, updated every Wednesday
the members-only Discord, where we talk through the moves in real time
Join premium and discover how we diversify in these challenging market conditions.
Thank you for your continued support,
George
⚠️ Red Flag to Note
The Inflation Pipeline Is Still Filling Up
Friday's PPI headline came in a touch softer than expected, and stock futures added to their gains. The details were worse. Prices for intermediate processed goods, the materials companies buy before they make finished products, were up 14.6% from a year earlier, the biggest annual gain since July 2022. The goods index rose 10.2%, the most since October 2022, and intermediate services prices rose 6.9%, the most since November 2022. That's inflation still in the pipeline, not yet on store shelves. A net 37% of small businesses plan to raise prices in the next three months, the highest since July 2022, and electricity prices rose 0.9% in October alone. "Lately we're not making any progress, and if anything, it's going the wrong way," said Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee. This doesn't mean the cycle is over. It means a December hike is unlikely to be the last one, and the market's best week since August came with rates still moving the wrong way.
🔍 Insider Transactions I’m Watching
Ticker | Insider | Action | Value | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Jim Anderson — CEO | Buy | ~$1.0M | Anderson bought 5,000 shares at $199.48 on Nov. 9, lifting his direct stake to 190,287 shares, and director Enrico Digirolomo added 1,000 shares at about $222.89 the next day. The stock had dropped about 16% after a quarter in which revenue grew 50% to $2.37 billion and management guided fiscal 2027 pro forma growth above 60%. Coherent makes the optical parts that connect AI data centers. It closed Friday at $218.15, about 9% above the CEO's price. Buying right after a post-earnings drop is a vote that the selloff was about the sector, not the company. | |
Tom Leighton — CEO | Buy | ~$2.6M | Leighton bought 30,000 shares at a weighted $85.08 on Friday through his family trust, which now holds 2,559,963 shares. It's his third open-market buy since February 2025: he bought 37,670 shares at $79.58 that month and 50,000 at $72.26 in August 2025. Akamai runs one of the world's largest edge networks, and the stock closed Friday at $85.40. A co-founder adding to an already large stake, at a higher price than his last two buys, is a quiet but consistent signal. | |
Barry Sternlicht — CEO & Chairman | Buy | ~$14.7M | Sternlicht reported buying 1,245,000 shares at a weighted $11.81 on Nov. 11–12, the largest CEO purchase filed this month. One detail matters: the shares went to his charitable foundation, and the filing says he has no pecuniary interest in them. Starwood is a commercial real estate lender, so it's one of the most rate-sensitive stocks in the market, and the stock closed Friday at $11.34, below his price, as the 10-year hit 5.15%. A large buy into a 5% 10-year is a bet that credit holds up. The foundation structure makes it a weaker signal than a personal purchase. |
📬 Closing Note
Nvidia lost its CEO on Wednesday, and the S&P 500 still had its best week since August. The market isn't saying the AI build-out is in trouble. CoreWeave, Nebius and Cerebras all beat, and the chip index rose 8.0%. It's saying the bigger risk now is the cost of money: CPI, PPI and three soft auctions sent the 2-year up 37 basis points, and the build-out runs on borrowed money.
What gives me optimism is how the market absorbed the shock. Money rotated into other chips and AI winners instead of leaving; Nvidia's next quarter is guided to nearly double, and Anthropic cut its price to make the IPO work instead of forcing it. Next up: Nvidia on Tuesday, Fed minutes on Wednesday and Anthropic's debut on Thursday.
It was a busy week for my holdings. Rocket Lab $RKLB ( ▼ 3.96% ) posted record revenue of $267.8 million, up 73%, grew its backlog 52% in a single quarter and gained 15.9% on the week. Forgent Power $FPS ( ▼ 0.14% ) grew revenue 69% to $479 million, raised its fiscal 2027 outlook, says its backlog fully covers that guidance and finished the week up 13.6%. Nebius beat by $73 million and guided 2027 revenue above consensus, and SpaceX put Starship in orbit.
If you missed Wednesday's deep dive, AppLovin $APP: The Growth Engine Is Back covers how AppLovin answered its first-ever miss with 55% revenue growth to a record $2.18 billion and an 84% adjusted EBITDA margin. The stock gained 4.6% this week while the Nasdaq's AI leader fell 12.7%, which makes it a timely read.
Stay patient. Stay selective. And let the data guide the story.
Until next Sunday —
