Speaker 1Welcome to the Saxo Market Call. Before we get started, it's important we emphasize that the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guests and do not constitute investment advice or recommendations. All information provided is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Hi, everyone. It is Monday, 9th of November, 2026, and my notes for today's podcast are about as sparse as they've ever been. I'm not sure why that would be the case. There's certainly plenty going on and some new developments, some of which we've talked about before, but are deepening. And talking about deepening, the deepening trouble for Jensen Wong. We'll get to that. Let's wrap Friday's session briefly. Another one of these interesting sessions with all the, I wouldn't say usual divergences, but market divergences in the headline versus the market internal. So we had recovery in all the key stocks that were down so heavily the prior day. Of course, that Thursday wipeout really was remarkable. Was this a climactic capitulation trade in the AI trade? Sort of the apotheosis of the whole pre-election fear and loathing, democratic victory, AI data center slowdown, what have you. I don't know. It was certainly quite a move. And Friday, we saw a bounce back, but it wasn't a rejection by any means just yet. It just, depending on which instrument you're looking at, maybe 25% or so of the move was rejected, maybe a bit more in some cases. So we're still left here wondering where is this headed with a very dramatic new twist in NVIDIA being marked down ahead of the market to open today. Again, more on that later. So yeah, NASDAQ up 1.35%, the SOX index, which was down, I'm forgetting how much it was down. It was at 12%, something like that on last Thursday. And all I have to do is flip back one page to the prior podcast and down 12.25%. It was down 12.25%. It was down 12.25%. It was down on Thursday. So Friday up 2.33%. So pretty meager bounce back. And we saw intraday, the bounce stock was much more profound. So it was kind of closing on a slightly soft note relative to where it had been intraday, to say the least. S&P 500 overall up only 0.3%. And then the median stock, the S&P 500 equal weight was down 0.4%. Only 183 gainers on the S&P 500. Russell 2000 up 0.8%. And the overnight we had in Asia, the Nikkei up quite strong, but the KOSPI was down a bit. Europe having a decent open after a down day on Friday, though it did bounce off of its 200-day moving average in the case of the Stoxx 50. And the broader Eurostoxx 600 has not even come anywhere close to its 200-day moving average. Trading a little bit like the, I'd like to put up a chart actually at some point of the Eurostoxx 600 and the S&P 500 equal weight. I suspect, they would correlate rather closely. So the sort of the median non-AI impacted stock out there not having a terrible time of things and still not that far reduced or off of its all-time highs. We of course got the supposed premier economic data point of the month on Friday in the U.S. October jobs report, that nonfarm payrolls number, a very handily beating expectations. And then on top of that, you got the two-month revision that was positive. I don't have a number in here. I mean, this was a plus 160. It was so not in focus that even it got a little bit of a reaction and that reaction was pretty much wiped away, at least in terms of the most important market, and that was U.S. Treasuries. But it was, I mean, it was a broadly strong report. Kind of makes sense. I mean, the previous month was soft when everything else looked absolutely fine. So the previous month looks suspicious. So you could say it should have come in a bit positive when everything else was also positive again in October. And then on top of that, maybe a bit of mean relative to other indicators the last time around. We even saw average hourly earnings coming in stronger than expected. A 0.4% month-on-month print looked quite nice. And the year-on-year was higher than expected. And the prior number was revised higher as well. That's been a soft point. These earnings, this earnings growth has been slower as inflation has started rising. And then even on the household survey, you've got this unemployment rate dropping down to 4.1% despite an uptick in the participation rate. So larger labor force and yet lower unemployment rate. So that was, that side of things was strong as well. Again, not much of a read-through into market. Certainly not the stock market. Not looking at general employment levels here. And the Fed, if we're supposed to be keying off of what the Fed is going to do, it's more about inflation. And we don't get the next inflation print until tomorrow, where we see the October official CPI release. And I'm still not convinced that we'll see a lot of volatility around that. Of course, if it's a huge shocker in either direction on the core, it could raise some eyebrows. Do note, we have a Wednesday holiday this week, by the way, in the U.S. to mark Veterans Day. Yeah. And then I guess, you know, with this jobs report, again, we saw Treasuries selling off. They, of course, have been rallying like crazy on the big risk-off move from Thursday. There was a bit of follow-through in that rally in Treasuries, lower yields, into Friday morning. And then you got the jobs report release at the front end of the curve. You saw a sell-off. By the end of the session, that sell-off was completely erased, and then some. And then it sort of rose back to slightly higher in the day overall. But it certainly wasn't the action post the U.S. jobs report. Again, to emphasize, the market wasn't particularly looking at this number for movement. The dollar move was a bit stickier for whatever reason. But we've seen a lot of that unwind. When I say it was stickier, I meant the dollar rally was quite sharp. Maybe it felt a bit like people were closing positions ahead of a weekend fear of Iran resumption. Who knows? And we've gotten quite a reversal of, not a reversal of that move, a decent bounce back from what seemed to be an extended move relative to what was going on in other markets. Gold had a decent rally. It's just come off that a bit today. But trying to emphasize this comeback after, again, breaching that key technical level and breaking down through that and now having rejected that. So this $4,000, you have to get a little slippage. $4,000 plus slippage area looks like an important stand for gold. Looks pretty decently strong given that oil has come down even further and given that dollar move on Friday. Crypto is really on its knees and looking technically very wobbly here. So I'll keep an eye on that for a full breakdown as we have pushed below $74,000 on Bitcoin at times here. A pretty solid divergence in behavior there relative to what's going on in the gold market. Oh, by the way, we have three 10 and 30-year auctions this week from the Treasury. Three-year today, the 10-year tomorrow, 30-year on. Well, I shouldn't say that. Probably not on Wednesday. It's either on Tuesday or it's on Thursday, the 30-year, because obviously with Wednesday closed, we're not going to be seeing any Treasury auctions that day. The only other story I think I would pull from FX is the New Zealand election. I did not recover this at all ahead of the fact. Apologies for that. But it was, at the weekend, the ruling National Party is sort of a center-right party there. And again, I know nothing about New Zealand politics, but it's basically a center-right party. They saw their mandate dropping, so they lost quite a few seats, but seem still likely to be able to forge a coalition. But to do so, they're going to have to rely on what is now a larger further-right party, so anti-immigration and what have you. I think one of them is called New Zealand First or something like that. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. These parties could, of course, they extract a high price in these coalition formations. So the policy could lean further to the right. It was seen as good news for New Zealand, or at least for the New Zealand economy and the New Zealand dollar. And we saw Aussie Kiwi sort of fully now retracing that latest wave higher, trading down towards 123. And that's getting close to some pretty significant range support at those levels. Technically, it looks like it is going to be continuing to consolidate, and I would guess could come in quite a bit lower in the coming weeks. Also lower is Naki Staki. So the Norwegian Krona selling offers the Swedish Krona. I think that's very much linked to oil and to some degree with risk sentiment. I'm curious if that one's gotten way overdone recently and could even roll back to something like parity in the coming weeks. Would likely require some decent stabilization in oil and gas prices in Europe to get there. And I still don't have any sense of what's going to happen in Iran. There's a lot of really, if you look at some of the headlines, it seems wildly concerning, some of the stuff that's going on, an attack on an LNG tanker. Obviously, it wasn't catastrophic, though we'd seen more about that. The US doing some kind of limited operations on this Keshem Island, which is in or very proximate to the Strait of Hormuz, et cetera. But Trump in an interview, I'll put a link into the summary of it. It's almost a whole hour, his interview on 60 Minutes. And he talks, he sounds a bit hopeful for the peace process, but trusting Trump is not exactly what we should do, I think, in the case of what will happen next there. Yeah, let's get to the story of the day, which is Jensen Wang and his essentially an affair with an operative at a company that had clear links to Chinese intelligence and the company. And the company was set up basically to funnel chips, acquire those chips and funnel them to China, I think Alibaba was to some degree implicated in this, the setup of this Megaspeed, which was the name of the company in Singapore that was doing this. What do we make of this? First of all, Huang has lost a lot of face and could be in serious trouble, depending on, though, how the Trump administration treats him. And he's been very clever in cultivating a strong relationship with Trump, sort of as a patron in a way. And you can imagine back channels what that might even implicate or mean in terms of enriching his family. I'll just put it out there. That's completely my own thought bubble, not an accusation, nothing that's in the press, certainly. But long story short, that is his lifeline here, because he would otherwise be in absolutely massive trouble, clearly from what is being documented in terms of his behavior. The question will be the degree to which it's him isolated and the degree to which NVIDIA more broadly is in trouble. And if it's him isolated, there's still a angle of the AI trade and NVIDIA being in trouble on all this, because he has been a key cheerleader. He's a strong CEO. He's seen his key for his prognostications and his cheerleading is seen, I think, as key for this whole trade, as well as NVIDIA's role in a lot of this circular financing and investing in other companies that then buy NVIDIA chips, et cetera. So I don't know where this heads. I will be the first to admit. I do think he has a potential lifeline in his cultivation of that patronage of the Trump administration and the way it works, like some, well, just like all patronage networks have always worked. If you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Jensen Huang has some pretty decent resources on that account if he wants to employ them. And if Trump decides that his gain by allowing Huang to use that leverage versus the loss of face or risks on the other side of being accused of corruption. Who knows? That to me is one of the key questions here. The other key question would be, what is the deal? What is the bargain? Does he have to leave? Can he stay on? What does that mean for NVIDIA as a company? For now, it's pretty limited damage, I must say, given the potential seriousness here. NVIDIA has fallen a lot on this story, I think. Or actually, it's a bit difficult to isolate how much NVIDIA has fallen on this story relative to the general AI markdown. I think it's mostly just the general AI markdown, maybe with a little bit added. And we've seen this story splashing. It's a bit difficult to isolate how much NVIDIA has fallen on this story relative to the general AI markdown. But let's look at it in a bigger way, with Jensen actually having to fully come out in the open and apologize to employees on his behavior, knocking NVIDIA shares another 5% lower. But let's, you know, 5% of a now $4.5 trillion company as of Friday's close, that's a lot of money. That's $250 billion, $225 billion, actually. And that's on top of the $1.3 trillion this company has been marked down from its all-time high. So we're talking about more than $1.5 trillion of mark-to-market capital losses. So it starts to have a serious impact here should this continue. And there's even a short outfit out that has really done a lot of forensics on this whole situation, this mega speed, all the different bits and pieces, all the evidence that was kind of already there out in the open. You know, when NVIDIA supposedly shut off its China business, but then suddenly its sales to this region called Southeast Asia spiked by however much percent it was. You know, it was kind of obvious that something might be going on there if anybody cared to inspect. Well, this Culper Research has done a pretty thorough inspection of it. And I'll put a link in the podcast episode description if you want to get into all the forensics, the details of this. Long story short, I think they say they suspect that their China business was still or is still at 20% for, I don't know if they mean the NVIDIA financial year, which I'm forgetting when it is, but it's very odd relative to the normal year. But they said basically 20%. 20% of 2026 revenue was from China. This would obviously be critical if so, and if that has to get shut off. That's also a short report. You have to keep that in mind. They've got an agenda here, this Culper Research. This is not an investment recommendation on my part, but I think it makes for interesting reading for sure. All right. So looking ahead of this week, again, we have that macro focus on the U.S. CPI Wednesday closed markets in the U.S. And then a few interesting earnings, bits and pieces. Rolling in one of these marquee companies in the insanely overvalued category from some time back. Super interesting company, very innovative, amazing technology and everything else. Rocket Lab. They are reporting today, actually, but just got to valuation levels that were just completely absurd. I mean, here we have a company. It's down 67% from its all time high. I don't have in front of me when that was probably around around the time frame. A lot of other things. Earlier this year, when and now after the 67% drop ish, that was probably top to bottom were up a little bit from a 67% drop after Friday's a strong rally, still valued at $33 billion, this company, when it is expected to make less than $1 billion in revenue. And this is a company in the physical world. It's not like they have a product that can be, you know, launched via software that can become viral and grow in those types of exponential ways. It's got to make these rockets. And that's a costly process. Of course, a lot of expectations around this next or it's coming neutron rocket, which will be a bit more like the low end Falcon nine type of competition, potentially reusable, etc. But it's just, you know, it's still after that drop is has that kind of valuation level would still be a concern on that evaluation levels on that valuation level. So they're reporting today. Tomorrow, we get SoftBank, SoftBank Group. That's the main one with, of course, Masayoshi-san. The head. The interesting thing there being there, this is a company that's run around and done all kinds of wild acquisitions over the years. And it's kind of interesting to look at their debt and the CDSs. So there's credit default swaps, the price of insuring against default of their debt over the years. Just, you know, a number of these back and forth in spikes. And it's on the top of a recent spike, the biggest in quite some time. I think that's the biggest since early 2023, if memory serves. This morning when it reached, I think, just sub 600. But it's currently spiked to 465 basis points. Now, what they report, I'm sure, with these types of companies, you have all these assumed values of your portfolio. You can report anything under the sun you want to. But just one of those names to track because, you know, if we do have some huge squeeze on credit and there's some kind of wipeout, I'm wondering if there's some stuff that's hidden under there that could come to light. That's certainly what the CDS price is suggesting. The risk here. So they're reporting Tuesday. Wednesday, we've got Siemens Energy. This is the other main, what do you call it, natural gas turbine provider besides GE. They've been on the defensive since the top. But obviously, they have strong demand for these natural gas turbines in part on the electric grid buildout needed for AI, etc. Thursday, two interesting names. The biggest one is Applied Materials. They've been on the defensive together with the general AI trade. What are they reporting? They're reporting in terms of their forward order book. I mean, this is a company that makes the equipment that makes chips so early in the whole process and is important in that light. It has had quite a comeback. I remember, like, speaking, you know, talking about those companies being, surely if we're going to need to build all these chips, it would need to rally way back when. And I was very wrong on the timing and then probably didn't mention it or look at it for a while. And it came screaming to life when, you know, in the later phases of this AI buildout. Cisco Systems, also a latecomer to the rally on the picks and shovels of AI. Picks and shovels in a slightly different context than literal sort of data center physical buildout, Caterpillar, energy providers, etc. But still, it's one of those network effects of AI, all the need for the bandwidth of network equipment. And Cisco has realized quite a comeback before the recent drawdown on that. So they're reporting also on Thursday. All right. As for the. The links in the podcast episode description, there's that short seller report from Culper Research on NVIDIA. They actually have an overview page with a look at a number of other companies. They were right on a couple of those. I don't know if they're a bit choosy about which ones they leave up there, but you might be interested in following that. Michael Every was on Macro Voices. I always enjoy listening to him, although sometimes his style is starting to degrade on me a little bit. More on that later. There's the interview with Trump that I mentioned. And then there's this really funny piece from. With some further reading. Links of its own. Another hat tip to FT Alphaville. It's a post. I don't know who this is. Petered is the name of the post. It talks about the Peter Principle, which is this idea that in a management or in an organization that somebody rises up through management until they get to the position of power where they're no longer particularly competent and are particularly good at their job. Therefore, there are an awful lot of imposters all around organizations if that is the case. But then also. Well, they may not be particularly competent and they may be sitting there kind of quiet is the idea. Or should the idea be that sometimes these people know that they're not particularly competent, maybe know they're imposters. But to cover that up, they actively seek to obfuscate that both from people under them and people around them who they then try to sabotage. Just super interesting take on the Peter Principle in short with a couple of links to some longer reads. Might be of interest to those of you out there working in. and large organizations if that kind of rhymes with anything that you've seen. All right, so that is a wrap for today's podcast. I'm super interested in how NVIDIA trades today as key number one, the general move and risk sentiment key number two. Let's recall that when we're in these, let's recall, let's say it this way. Often when we get into these VIX or volatility vortices or this sort of meltdown in sentiment, it sort of stays extremely volatile until you come out of it. In a very volatile fashion, you start to come out of it, and then there's maybe a settling process with decreasing amplitude of volatility, and you start to then rally again as the volatility decreases. So Friday did not provide any answers to Thursday's huge meltdown. It did see a deceleration of volatility, but we need to see a lot more deceleration and a really solid price comeback. We need to see a lot more deceleration and a really solid price comeback to get the sense that we're on the other side of this event. And then I'm curious, if we do, what does that look like? Does it look like the AI complex rallying like stink and getting us back on that trade, at least for a time, and then the broader market actually being quite soft? Or would the broader market, in terms of our internal divergences, would the broader market be a little bit weak in that scenario? I suspect it might be the latter, even if the AI trade does come back for a bit here and manage to get over this. Hurdle of this decline in sentiment. Then there's this other event that I can't talk about that is meant to happen soon. And I think that is critical as well. Read between the lines on what you think I'm talking about. I think you know what all it is, but I think it's very important for sentiment and the broader AI trade as well. So that's a wrap for today. Very interesting session ahead and sessions ahead. And I'll be back tomorrow with the next Saxon Market Call. This has been the Saxon Market Call podcast. Thanks for joining today's episode. We're always happy for your feedback and questions of all kinds. To reach out, you can drop us an email at marketcallatsaxobank.com. That's marketcallatsaxobank.com. Saxo. Serious trading worldwide. And we'll see you next time.
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