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Briefing.com Summary:
*AMD is soaring on news of a new partnership with OpenAI.
*The government remains shutdown, yet the equity market, at record highs, seems not to care.
*Japan's Nikkei soared 4.8% following the election of a new, pro-growth leader for the LDP party.
We're going to sound a bit like a broken record, yet that is just fine by the stock market, which likes the tune it is hearing. The refrain goes a little something like this:
The government shutdown persists. There is a buzz surrounding the AI trade. The major indices sit at record highs.
It is a simple song, and the bass you are hearing in the background is momentum investing. The trend is the market's friend, and everyone seems to be getting along.
Japan, for its part, had a bacchanalian gathering on Monday, with the Nikkei soaring 4.8% in the wake of the LDP electing Sanae Takaichi as its party leader. She is the first female leader of the LDP and is widely viewed as a pro-growth leader in favor of stimulative fiscal and monetary policies.
Equity futures here are piggybacking a bit off Japan's party atmosphere, yet they are also vibing with the news that OpenAI and Adv. Micro Devices (AMD) have announced a new partnership that entails a 6 gigawatt agreement to power OpenAI's next-generation AI infrastructure across multiple generations of AMD Instinct GPUs. The kicker is that AMD has issued OpenAI a warrant for up to 160 million shares of AMD common stock.
Shares of AMD, up 35% in pre-market trading, are making the Nikkei's gain look like a pittance.
AMD's gain, at the moment, is looking like NVIDIA's (NVDA) and Broadcom's (AVGO) loss. Those two stocks are down 1.4% and 1.5%, respectively. They are among the few blemishes on an AI trade that is shining brightly in the futures market.
Currently, the S&P 500 futures are up 20 points and are trading 0.3% above fair value, the Nasdaq 100 futures are up 205 points and are trading 0.8% above fair value, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures are up 78 points and are trading 0.2% above fair value.
An M&A deal in the banking industry has provided another dose of support. Fifth Third (FITB) is acquiring Comerica (CMA) for $10.9 billion, or $82.88 per share, in an all-stock transaction.
Bitcoin is at a record high. Oh, and gold prices are, too.
In other developments, Verizon (VZ) has named a new CEO, effective immediately; Tesla (TSLA) has teased an event tomorrow; Micron (MU), which has surged 58% over the last month, has been upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Morgan Stanley, which raised its price target to $220 from $160; OPEC+ will raise its output by 137,000 barrels per day in November; and France's prime minister has resigned after just 27 days on the job.
There is a lot of news today, but the focal point is the price action itself, and that price action is still sounding the right note.
