Why The Tech Selloff Just Reversed Course

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New episodes of Happy Hour are available every Wednesday. You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Cheers. Are you running a marathon this season? Then I need you to know the 10 mistakes that will disrupt your race before you even reach the starting line. I'm rapid-eyed son and I am running my 28th marathon and 9th New York City Marathon in two weeks. In the latest episode of my podcast Project Swagger, I'm turning my mistakes into your lessons. Watch or listen now wherever you get your podcasts, just search Project Swagger. See you there and at the finish line. Welcome to Profgy Markets. I'm Ed Elson. It is October 20th. Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq rallied as traders bought last week's dip. The Dow was flat. Meanwhile Brent Crude remained above $109 per barrel. The Dollar climbed and the yield on 10-year treasuries rose. Okay. What else is happening? Yesterday was the 39th anniversary of Black Monday, the worst single-day stock market crash in history and this week investors were bracing for something similar. Tech stocks were coming off their worst week since April 2025 and there was little sign that the selling was over but then Monday rolled around and investors decided that it was time to buy. Chip Giants rallied 1.6% yesterday and the Nasdaq gained 1.2% as investors bought the dip. Still, Cawweave fell another 0.4% even after Goldman Sachs upgraded the stock to a buy. That was on top of a 20% drop last week. So were last week's fears overblown? Here to help us answer this question, we're speaking with John Murray, Chief Investment Officer at NFJ Investment Group. John, thanks for joining us on the show. So last week was very bad for tech. It was generally brutal for any stock that was related to the AI trade. There was a lot of speculation that it would continue into this week when I was scrolling on Twitter. That's all I saw over the weekend is we might see Black Monday once again. That is not what happened. Investors bought what do you make of what we saw in the markets? Well, I think there's a couple different things going on. I think the concerns around what was happening with the credit markets with Cawweave's bonds is definitely something that investors need to take very seriously. I think that that's had a major impact across the space. These companies that are very exposed to the Neocloud bill out, which are the specialized data centers, those have a lot of debt. If you have slowdown in the economy or a little bit of a slowdown in CapEx spending, those are going to be the most exposed ads. I think that the markets are rightfully concerned about that and some of those Cawweave concerns have woven their way into the market. When we just look at the price action that we saw on Monday, it seems like Cawweave might have been ring-fenced a little bit because the Nasdaq rose, tech stocks rose, but Cawweave continued to slide. Do you think of this as a specifically Cawweave Neocloud problem that isn't a problem for one, the stock market, but two, the rest of tech stocks is this sort of contained? I always think it's about the credit markets. I go back to where we're seeing interest rates today, where you've got the 10-year over 5%, that's going to have a direct impact on the cost of capital for the companies that are the most exposed to debt financing. The hyper-scalers, if you remember, those can self-finance a lot of this. They're not as impacted by those higher rates. I think that you're going to have companies like Cawweave that are going to be more exposed, but I think that it does provide a real opportunity because you've got a lot of companies that are now trading at some of the lowest multiples in six months. If you look back at the AI trade and the company's more exposed to that, a lot of these have been dead money now for six months. People are now starting to pay attention to it because of additional volatility. The reality is a lot of these stocks have not had a very good return now for almost half a year. What are some of the stocks that you think are undervalued or some of the places in the market where at least some of these companies, some of these names have been overpunished when it comes to the AI trade? Yes. Some of the names that I would point to in the Semiconductor space, you've got stocks like Texas Instruments. The stock is growing at over 50% year-over-year, 2% dividend yield. You've got some really attractive names on the Semiconductor side. The video is obviously the standout stalwart of the group trading it under 15 times earnings on a four basis. I think you've got some really attractive opportunities on the chip side, but then also on the industrial side, companies like Generac that are involved in the HVAC systems and the cooling systems needed for some of these data centers in the backup generators. Those also have pulled back pretty significantly. Amazon did a deal with them recently, which I think really extends the pipeline for them. There are a lot of opportunities that I just think that folks are going to have to be a little bit comfortable with the volatility you may see in the market, but quite frankly, that's what sets up the opportunity. If we knew exactly what CapEx was going to be next year, if we knew exactly where the 10-year yield was going to top out, then that would be reprised quickly in the markets. I think that these dislocations are what provide the opportunity, particularly as we look out in the back quarter of the year. Something that I've been thinking about this market, and it sounds like you might agree, is that all of the fears about the AI bailout and about the amount of debt that has been taken on to finance this buildout, all of these fears are warranted, correct, justified. But it does seem that they're being priced in. It does seem like the public markets at least are recognizing that the futures of a lot of these names are very uncertain. They're pricing that into the multiples. Yes, the stocks went up, but also the earnings went up way more than the stocks did, and so the multiples have kind of contracted. When I think about the extent to which there is an AI bubble, it seems to me that it only exists in certain areas of the market, most particularly, in my view, the private markets. It seems like an anthropic open AI, asking for $2 trillion, $1.5 trillion valuation. It seems like those companies are significantly exposed to the downsides of the AI trade going wrong, more so than a lot of the names that we're talking about, like in video, for example, but they're being treated differently as if the risks don't exist. I guess your reactions to my sort of theory of where the bubble actually is do you agree with me? I think the private market, I'll answer this in kind of two ways. The first point on the public side, I actually would argue that maybe the tech bubble back in the late '90s and in peaking in March of 2000, maybe in the biggest gift that we could have ever given the AI boom today, because I think what that did, Ed, is it created some guardrails? Everyone is worried about are we in '99? The number of times I see this on X, or people guessing, are we in '98, are we in '99, are we in March of 2000? So I think when you have so many people that are investigating this circular financing, has the bubble formed or is this just a boom that has much longer legs to go? So I think that the tech bubble provided almost kind of a guardrail for the spending that we have today. Really, when you think about how high interest rates are relative to the last several years, the fact that the AI build-up has continued with those restrictive rates, plus the scrutiny from the tech bubble, I think that actually is kind of an interesting setup for maybe it being more durable than folks expect. Your question on the private side, private markets always carry additional risk because of the opaque nature of those setups. And I really am curious and would like to see open AI and anthropic come public because I think that that will provide a lot more clarity to the markets. And so I think that will be another important data point for us, Ed. ironically the best. The best thing that we could have had for the AI boom that's going on in 2026 or the tech bubble of 2000. Yeah. I mean, anthropic is supposed to go public next month. My prediction is that I think they're going to struggle a lot because it does seem that public markets investors are actually quite discerning right now and they are concerned. They look back at 99 and they say, what are the similarities, where can we draw the analogies? And maybe last year they weren't doing that so much, it seems like they definitely are. And it seems like they're going to look at anthropic and they're going to look at the open AI and be like, OK, this is where the risk is. Like these are the companies that are burning billions of dollars. They're not profitable. They don't seem to be on a path where they're going to be profitable in the very near future. So we're going to slap some slightly difficult multiples on them in the same way that we've done it to a lot of these other names, like you mentioned, like we've done with Nvidia. So I guess my question, when those companies go public, when anthropic goes public for example, how do you think investors will receive it? Do you think that they will be going crazy for it or do you think that they'll be a little bit more cautious? If we look at SpaceX is kind of an interesting kind of proxy, I mean, that's more or less of blank check for me on Musk. I mean, if you look at the market cap that he commanded with that IPO relative to the earnings power, I think the market appetite might be a little bit richer than maybe were, you know, all assuming to some degree because it absorbed, you know, a very large IPO recently. I mean, a lot of these tech stocks when they were IPOing back in the, you know, late 90s or in 2000s had much smaller market caps, much higher valuations. So I think the appetite may be a little stronger, but we'll have to see anthropic. Looks like it's the first company to jump out into the ocean. And we're going to have to see if you can swim. So it's going to be scrutinized heavily. And I think that's good. And I think we need that. It needs to clear some hurdles and that will provide a runway for what are the returns on invested capital because ultimately that's what this is going to come down to as people continue spending what return are you getting? And I will tell you that as we extend the bull market in AI stocks, that threshold is going to get higher and higher because it's going to be harder to earn those returns that you could have earned four or five, six years ago if you were investing in the space. So the threshold is going to be high and the market needs that clarity. But all of this, I think, Ed is really what's setting up a unique opportunity in many pockets of the market, whether it's industrials, whether it's technology, whether it's some of the banking stocks, we're seeing really depressed multiples. And last time I was on it, you know, one of the things we talked about was kind of is the market, you know, narrowing. And I thought about this, you know, a lot since we discussed that. And you know, you would ask me the question, you know, this is healthy, this is a healthy thing going on. And I think that actually one of the things that is driving the narrowness of the market is the repricing of credit. At the beginning of the year, everyone thought rates were going to go down. They thought Trump was going to put someone in a fed that would want lower rates. We didn't know about the war in Iran at that point. So I think those elements have allowed credit to reprice. And it's really punished some of the smaller stocks. And I think that's been less about kind of the AI trade driving the market and video holding up the market. And more about credit being repriced. And those companies that are most exposed are kind of the small and medium companies. So I think there's a lot of upside here. If we get clarity from anthropic on an IPO, if we get some resolution with the conflict in Iran, and if we get a little bit of reprieve on the credit markets, yeah, it does seem that there are some things that are suppressing the market right now, which if they just turned on a dime, you'd see stocks explode. Like I think you said this last time, like there is kind of a spring loading mechanism. If for whatever reason, to be clear, I don't think this is going to happen anytime soon. But if something goes right in Iran, that's a completely different environment for stocks. Like that suddenly changes the entire narrative in a day. And it's literally up to the decision of one guy it seems like. So I mean, again, I don't think it's going to happen to be honest. I think that it's going to go on for a long time, but it does seem like that is overwhelmingly what investors are pricing in, that this is that we are in for a long time situation. But that means potentially more surprise to the upside. I guess just final question before you go, what do you expect the market to look like in the next few months? Are you expecting more upside going forward? Where do you think will be come say end of the year? Yeah, I would be surprised if markets are substantially higher by year end. I mean, there's a couple caveats about I would make. The first is that if the conflict in Iran continues to be drug out, that obviously is going to keep pressure on the inflation number. So you were right. That is a definite concern. I think Trump's in a tight spot because Iran knows the political calendar. And we all in the US know the political calendar. And depending on what happens in the House and the Senate, if Democrats take both and right now, probably markets show, I think a 90% chance the Democrats take the House and a 65% chance they take the Senate. If that happens, he may have a harder time getting funding for the war. So he may look at a little different timetable on how he wants to proceed. So near turn, that could depending on what he does, I don't know what he will do, but that could put upward pressure on oil price depending on if he escalates things there. So that is a wild card risk to the downside. The flip side of that is that we do see a little bit easier interest rate environment if oil comes off, if there is some resolution. And I think investors need to be prepared for that because if you look historically, so much of the total return ad comes in just a few days over the market cycles. And so the risk of not being in when you're trading it, I think we're now at 18 and a half times four earnings for the S&P with 30% earnings growth. The risk of not being invested, I think outweighs some of the risks we're seeing on the horizon. So I agree with you. We shouldn't be cavalier about the risks, but I think you're being paid for them. And I think it's a good time to be stepping in. And I think we'll see some upside here if we get any resolution. All right. John now is Chief Investment Officer at NFJ Investment Group. John, appreciate your time. Thank you. Thanks, Dad. After the break, investors bet big on the Democrats. And for even more markets insights, you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter, simply put at edroadelson.substac.com. Support for the show comes from Alpha Space by Yahoo Finance. Instead of bouncing between countless tools and tabs to manage your portfolio, Alpha Space by Yahoo Finance brings your entire investment workflow into one easy to use platform. 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On Kalshi, the odds that Democrats win both the House and the Senate are now at 63% up from 40% in July. Over the same period, the IShares US Aerospace and Defense ETF fell 16%. That is a short reversal from earlier this year after President Trump proposed raising defense spending to one and half trillion dollars. Meanwhile, the S&P's healthcare sector is up 9% over the past three months. The second best performance of the index is 11 sectors. In other words, investors are now starting to bet billions of dollars on the prospect that the Democrats are going to win this thing, which has us wondering an obvious question, will they? So here to discuss the midterms and the likelihood of a democratic sweep, we are speaking with Aaron Parnass, author of the Parnass perspective, and co-host of raging perspectives. Aaron, thank you for joining us. So defense stocks are sliding presumably because they're pricing in lower likelihood of more defense spending. We're seeing the opposite happening in healthcare, more spending on healthcare is the assumption. But I think what is really striking here is that the markets are basically telling us, investors are telling us Democrats are going to sweep this. What are you seeing right now? Why is it that right now? Suddenly, there is this opinion that seems to be pervasive across the investment world, which is Democrats are going to win. Yeah, I mean, and it's a smart bet to put your money on Democrats right now for a number of reasons. Number one, if you just look at overall historical trends, Democrats are favored from the get-go. Historically, when you have a Republican in the White House, Democrats overperform in the midterms, and we've seen it even when Donald Trump was in the White House back in 2018. And so you could see kind of a repeat this time around. Same thing, vice versa. If you had a Democrat in the White House, Republicans would overperform in the midterms. But this year is especially different in the fact that the economy is not performing too par. And so voters kind of vote based on how much money they have in their pockets. And right now, they have less money today than they did 18 months ago. They're paying more for groceries, paying more for gas. And they are struggling in many respects. And so that's why you see the markets kind of pricing in a likely Democratic win. Now, the question is, to me, is not whether Democrats will win, for example, the House of Representatives. By how much I think right now, the House is kind of a lost cause for Republicans. Now, the Senate's going to be a tougher uphill battle for Democrats and to anyone's guess what will happen. But when it comes to the House of Representatives, it's, we'll see what happens. I think Democrats will win pretty handily. Just looking at the odds of a sweep in both the House and the Senate. In January, the probability, based on the prediction mark is present, because she was 30%. Now we're at 63%. What exactly has changed in that period? I mean, we kind of know. But what have been, in your view, the most important political events that have ratcheted that number up? The war, the war, the war. I mean, the war in Iran is that. I mean, that is the most important thing and that is what is impacting them in November midterms. If we never went to war with Iran, you may have had inflation remain a little stubborn and gas prices remain relatively, I don't know, $3 gallon on average. But ultimately, you would not have seen the high prices that we're seeing today. And I think that's really what swung this into a situation where Democrats could potentially win the Senate. I think if you asked any Democratic strategists, like what, four months ago, five months ago, whether Democrats had any chance at winning the United States Senate, they would have looked at you and laughed at you, just given what the map is like, because Democrats would have to win states like Iowa, Texas, which are uphill battles for them in normal election years. But now, I mean, it's a completely different ballgame. When you think about the Democratic strategy at this point, what is the strategy? Like, I mean, just looking at the odds of winning the House, for example, is that 90%. It seems like people think that this is pretty much a sure thing. How are they going to make it a sure thing? And in what world could they screw that up? So I think, and I give this advice every single Democrat that I talk to. Right now, the best opportunity for Democrats is to actually not have an agenda to not screw it up, because what Democrats are really notoriously good at is losing elections. They know how to lose an election really well. And so right now, a two weeks ago, I think their best bet is to stay quiet, shut up, and let the president of the United States do the talking. The more he talks, the more polls slide. And so let him talk more, let him go to deep red areas and talk about how he admires men's bodies and how he is preventing us from getting a new, from getting nuked every other day. Let him talk. The more he talks, the worse it is for him. Just switching over to the Republicans now. What is the Republican strategy? What do they think it's going to take in order to win this thing? And what would it take in your view? Yeah, I mean, listen, I think for Republicans right now, it's about triaging, right? You have a patient on the table who's hemorrhaging. And so you're trying to figure out what body part you can save, where they can save as the United States Senate. They can save a state like Texas, potentially, a state like Iowa, a state like Alaska. They can potentially keep the United States Senate so it's not a foregone conclusion by any respect that Democrats will. And so that's where you pump all the money and is into the Senate races and you hope and pray that you keep one of the chambers. In the house, it's all about limiting the seats you lose. Ultimately, I think for them, their best bet right now is a 10 seat minority, right? Democrats pick up enough to have a 10 seat majority. That's about where the floor is for Democrats. I think the high is anywhere from 50 to 60 seats. And so just stop the bleeding. That's what Republicans should be looking at right now. It's just in terms of their messaging. To what extent do you think it will or will not involve Trump? Because he is so unpopular right now. It seems like he's sort of toxic to associate with, but at the same time, he has become the brand of the Republican party. Like, to what extent will he play a role in some of those campaigns? Yeah, I'm going to be honest with you, it won't matter. We are two weeks away from Election Day. There have been millions of ballots already counted and cast. There's really nothing that Trump or Republicans can do that'll move the needle more than one or two points in any race. So a lot of the results are really baked in. Any messaging changes that they're going to implement now won't really radically change much. Because at this point, if you're not a decided voter, I mean, there are very few people that are undecided at this point. The only question is whether people are going to turn out or not, not whether they're going to decide or not. What are some of the key races that you're going to keep an eye on that you think will be particularly important? Well, I think Virginia's, and people never talk about this, but I think Virginia's always the bellweather and many of these elections. It's the state where polls close first. And whenever you look at Virginia, you always see Republican turnout push up at the beginning and then Democrats search late. This year, Democrats turnout right now is through the roof. If Democrats are overperforming in a state like Virginia by 10, 15, 20 points, which is what we're on track for, that gets at the stage for a massive wave across the country. But if after an hour of polls closing at 7 PM Eastern time, Virginia is still very tight and some of these races where you thought Democrats could flip, they aren't, then it'll be a sign that maybe this country is not ready for a radical shift to the left as many people predict. Your predictions for this election, what do you think will actually happen both in the House and the Senate? And that sort of cultural question of like, where is this party headed? Where does the country want the Democratic party to head? Your predictions on what we'll see. So I think if I had to predict that Kim Jeffries will become Speaker of the House after Election Day, Democrats will probably win about 30 to 35 seats in the House of Representatives to give him a comfortable margin as Speaker. I think the United States Senate will be a lot closer and I predict a 50/50 split with Republicans keeping the United States Senate just given how tough some of these states are for Democrats, but it's anyone's guess. But I think the Senate is a much more uphill battle. Aaron Parnas is author of the Parnas perspective, co-host of Raging Perspectors. Aaron always appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. It's been three days since the Elizabeth Holmes documentary came out and the film is already a roaring success. Nathan Field is you can see everything. Generated more than $15 million in ticket sales on its opening weekend, which makes it the largest box office opening for a documentary in more than 20 years. The film's distributor, A24, called it quote, one of the largest limited release openings of the 21st century, which is true. The film was screened in fewer than 900 theaters and despite that, it still broke several records. And how much of its success is a testament to the quality of the film itself. Online review aggregators rank it as one of the best movies ever, where they 99% score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 4.8 on letter boxed. By the way, I saw it over the weekend and while I don't think that it's one of the best movies of all time, I do think that it was very good. But the film's success also tells you something not just about the movie, but also about it. the cultural moment in which we live. And that is that today, unlike any time in history, we are fascinated by the mythology and the characters associated with technology and entrepreneurship. From Elizabeth Holmes to Elon Musk, tech founders have become the uber celebrities of our modern age. They are the subject of more press, more controversy, and frankly more obsession than any other category of person, even celebrities in Hollywood. In fact, this isn't the only tech founder movie to be released this month. Last week, the social reckoning came out, which unpacked the life and controversy of Mark Zuckerberg. The week before that, we got Musk, a four-hour documentary about the power and influence of the world's richest man. And in a couple of months time, we will get artificial, in which Andrew Garfield will play a tortured and more handsome version of Sam Altman. But this is a trend that has been brewing for a long time. Over the past four years, Hollywood has produced more than 20 movies about tech CEOs. That is nearly six times higher than the amount that was produced during the dark-com boom. It also doesn't include all of the founder-focused TV shows that have also come out recently. Examining companies ranging from Spotify and Uber to WeWork, and yes, Theranos. And so in a funny way, Elizabeth Holmes has become 2026's version of Britney Spears. Her celebrity transcends who she is as a person. She is a symbol of something larger, something so dark but so relevant that millions of us would pay money just to get a closer look at it. Now, what does that exactly say about our society? Is it that these people's stories are simply more interesting? Do they represent a side of the human experience that maybe feels unexplored? Or could it simply be a function of the sheer power and the wealth that they have accumulated? Could it be that more than anyone else, we love to see tech founders like Elizabeth Holmes fail? Is it some feeling of Shardon Freud that sold $50 million worth of tickets in one weekend? I don't really know, but at the very least, I think it is worth observing. It seems relevant that Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt are no longer the objects of our fascination. Instead, it is people in Silicon Valley. It is billionaires. Their stories are the stories that we cannot get enough of, especially when things go wrong. So if you already plan to see this movie, enjoy it. I think you will find it very interesting. But if you haven't, I wouldn't worry too much, because my guess is that something just like it is right around the corner. Okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by Claire Miller, Analysis and Weiss, and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our video editor is Brad Williams. Our research team is Dan Shalom, Kristen O'Donohue, and Mia Silverio, and our social producer is Jake McPherson. Thank you for listening to ProfG Markets from ProfG Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Adelson. I will see you tomorrow.