StockMarket.News

$Meta Platforms(META.US) just burned cash for the first time since its 2012 IPO year

Free cash flow came in at negative $2.12B in Q3, down from positive $10.63B a year ago

Capex hit a record $34.91B, more than the $32.79B Meta generated from operations

That's 54% of revenue going straight into servers and data centers

Meta narrowed its 2026 capex outlook to $135B to $145B, raising the low end from $130B, and gave no 2027 number yet

Shares fell nearly 7% after the report and the 5 year credit default swap spread on $Meta Platforms(META.US) hit an all time high

This isn't a cash crunch. Revenue is still growing 26% and Meta has $82.45B on hand. But one of the greatest cash machines ever is now spending every dollar it makes on AI, and the market wants proof it pays off

Source: StockMarket.News

BREAKING 🚨 Trump has signed an executive order to cut the cost of owning a home, with the 30-year mortgage rate sitting at 7.32%

The order tells FHFA to launch a pilot where Fannie and Freddie automatically cancel mortgage insurance once borrowers build enough equity

It also makes the title insurance waiver on refinances permanent and nationwide, and orders lower rates on VA and USDA direct home loans

For scale, PMI on a $600K home with 10% down runs about $351 a month, or $4,212 a year, per a Freddie Mac calculator cited by CNBC

The catch is the PMI cancellation only applies to loans made after the pilot starts, and agencies still have to write the rules

FHFA Director Bill Pulte says millions of Americans will save thousands of dollars, but with rates above 7% and the midterms on Nov 3, the real affordability fix still runs through the Fed and the bond market

Mortgage insurers like $MGIC Investment(MTG.US) $Essent(ESNT.US) $Radian(RDN.US) $NMI(NMIH.US) are the names to watch, since faster PMI cancellations mean fewer years of premiums

Source: StockMarket.News

BREAKING 🚨 Silver has now lost more than half its value since January

$SLV COMEX silver settled at $53.71 today, down 53% from its $115.08 record close on Jan 26 and its lowest settle since Nov 26, 2025

Down 5.8% this week and 23% YTD. With oil above $115 keeping the Fed hawkish, precious metals are the ones paying the price

Source: StockMarket.News

Turkey's stock market just posted its 6th straight weekly loss, the longest losing streak since February 2008

The BIST 100 fell 5.16% this week to 11,117 and is now down about 23% since September 11

Friday it dropped as much as 4.6% intraday to its lowest level in about 11 months

Turkish stocks have lost about ₺6 trillion ($120 billion) in market value since mid September

The trigger was a fund crisis. Regulators ordered 131 investment funds holding ₺936 billion ($19 billion) into liquidation, hitting more than 455,000 investors

And the selling kept going even after Turkey's central bank cut rates by 100 bps to 36% on Thursday

When a rate cut can't stop a 6 week slide, the problem is trust, not rates. $TUR holders should watch whether repayments to trapped fund investors actually land

Source: StockMarket.News

BREAKING 🚨 Moody's just declined to downgrade France, keeping it at Aa3 with a negative outlook

That keeps France's last double A rating alive, even though most analysts expected a cut tonight

Fitch and S&P already have France at A+

The backdrop is ugly. France's 10 year yield topped 5% this week for the first time since 2002, and the spread over Germany is above 170 basis points, up from about 70 at the start of the year and the widest since 2011

Debt sits at 119% of GDP with a deficit near 5.4%, and riots hit several cities last weekend

PM Lecornu says the decision defies the pessimistic forecasts. The bond market is clearly still pricing in a lot more risk than Moody's is

Next test is the S&P review on November 27 $EWQ

Source: StockMarket.News

BREAKING. The Dow just dropped 653 points as Brent crude settled at its highest level since April 29

Dow -1.23% to 52,215

S&P 500 -0.52% to 7,624

Nasdaq -0.21% to 25,955

Brent +3.1% to $116.72 and WTI +3.8% to $103.27 after Houthi attacks in Saudi Arabia

Gold -1.3% after breaking below $4,000 intraday, down about 3.6% on the week

Nearly 3 of every 4 S&P 500 stocks fell, and the 10 year yield sits just under 5% at 4.99%

For the week, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq posted a 2nd straight weekly loss while the Dow notched its 3rd straight weekly gain

Brent is up 6.2% this week alone

Next week is the real test with $Alphabet(GOOGL.US), $Microsoft(MSFT.US) and $Amazon(AMZN.US) earnings plus a Fed decision

Oil at a 6 month high, yields knocking on 5% and doubts about AI spend is a tough mix for the Fed, and hyperscaler capex guidance next week will decide whether this week's AI wobble was a pause or the start of something bigger

Source: StockMarket.News

US companies are now sitting on a record $1.3 trillion in stock buyback firepower

Buyback authorizations have hit a record $1.305 trillion so far in 2026, up about 13% from $1.151 trillion in all of 2025, per Goldman Sachs

Citadel Securities' count using EventVestor data shows $1.33 trillion authorized by Russell 3000 companies through Sept 29, the most ever at this point in a year

The catch is most of that money has been stuck on the sidelines during earnings blackouts

Goldman says only 12% of S&P 500 companies were in an open buyback window this week, with another 22% exiting blackout by the end of the week

Buyback activity since the start of October has run about 40% below the year to date daily average

And this isn't just paper, S&P 500 companies bought back 15% more stock in the first half of 2026 than a year earlier, with Q2 up 20%

Authorizations aren't guaranteed spending, but the single biggest buyer of US stocks is just getting its window back heading into November, historically the busiest month for buyback executions. That's a lot of quiet support sitting under this market

Source: StockMarket.News

Amazon $Amazon(AMZN.US) has scrapped its plan to build data centers on a $427 million campus in Northern Virginia after a wave of opposition from residents, per The Washington Post

AWS bought George Washington University's 122 acre Ashburn campus this year and planned 4 data center buildings totaling more than 800,000 square feet

Instead Amazon will donate about 25 acres worth roughly $65 million for an arts center and sports facility, give $5 million to the county housing fund and rezone the rest for homes

This is Loudoun County, the biggest data center hub on the planet. Data centers make up about 45% of the county's budget, and supervisors still voted for a one year moratorium on new projects in September

When the world's data center capital starts saying no, the bottleneck for AI isn't just chips and power anymore. It's neighbors, and that pushes the next wave of buildouts to wherever land, power and local permission are easiest to get

Source: StockMarket.News

Anthropic's security chief just warned that cyber attacks are going to "get a lot worse before they get better"

Cybersecurity stocks are ripping on it today

$CloudFlare(NET.US) +7.3%

$Palo Alto Networks(PANW.US) +6.1%

$CrowdStrike(CRWD.US) +6.0%

$Zscaler(ZS.US) +5.6%

$Okta(OKTA.US) +5.3%

Anthropic deputy CISO Jason Clinton told companies to "hold on for about 18 months" as AI finds software flaws faster than humans can patch them

It comes after 2 critical flaws in PHP, the code behind roughly 70% of websites, led governments to tell sites to go offline until they were fixed

$Palo Alto Networks(PANW.US) and $CrowdStrike(CRWD.US) are now both up more than 10% this week

AI is creating the threat and the demand to stop it at the same time. Every model that finds bugs faster is another reason for companies to spend on the firms paid to close them

Source: StockMarket.News

One SpaceX report is repricing an entire industry, and it's leading Friday's biggest movers

$Crown Castle(CCI.US) +11.3% after Bloomberg reported SpaceX is in talks to lease 80,000+ US cell sites for a 4th national carrier

$American Tower(AMT.US) +4.9% and $SBA Communications(SBAC.US) +4.3% are riding the same report, while carriers $AT & T(T.US)-Mobile US(TMUS.US) -5.1% and $AT & T(T.US) -5.5% slide

$Robert Half(RHI.US) +20.9% after its core staffing business grew year over year for the first time since 2022

$Comfort Systems USA(FIX.US) -7.5% even with revenue up 54% to $3.77B and a record $17.81B backlog, as co-founder and CFO Bill George announced his retirement

$Bloom Energy(BE.US) -12.0% despite beating and raising its 2026 revenue guide to $4.4B to $4.6B, on record capex and about $180M of negative net cash flow

$LKQ(LKQ.US) -20.3% after preliminary Q3 EPS of $0.47 to $0.53 vs $0.69 expected, a CEO exit and a pulled 2026 outlook

Two of today's worst losers actually beat estimates. In this tape a beat isn't enough, investors are punishing cash burn and any leadership uncertainty, while a single SpaceX headline can rewrite the outlook for towers and telecoms in one morning

Source: StockMarket.News

Gold just broke below $4,000 an ounce for the first time since July

Gold futures are now down about 25% from their record close of $5,318 in January, and gold is headed for its worst week since June as oil above $100 pushes rate-hike bets higher

The strange part is central banks bought about 63 tonnes in September, the most since November 2024 per provisional World Gold Council data. The long-term buyers haven't left, gold is being sold to raise cash in a market-wide selloff

Source: StockMarket.News

4 major companies have now announced about 10,500 job cuts in just 10 days

$American Express(AXP.US) is cutting 5% of its global workforce, about 3,500 jobs, and took a $336M restructuring charge, CEO Stephen Squeri said Friday

$Barclays(BCS.US) Barclays is cutting about 5,000 jobs, or 5% of staff, with 60% in support functions including fewer developers as AI makes staff more productive

$eBay(EBAY.US) confirmed it is cutting about 9% of its workforce, roughly 1,000 jobs, its second round of layoffs this year

$Netflix(NFLX.US) is laying off about 6% of staff, roughly 1,000 jobs, its biggest cuts since 2022

What stands out is that none of these companies are in trouble. $American Express(AXP.US) just raised its 2026 profit guide, Barclays grew pretax profit 12% and $eBay(EBAY.US) says Q3 will beat its own forecast. This is cost cutting from a position of strength, and AI is increasingly the reason given. That's a very different signal than the layoffs of a typical slowdown

Source: StockMarket.News

US inflation has now been above the Fed's 2% target for 66 straight months

That's more than five years in a row without a single CPI reading at or below 2%

Per Bespoke Investment Group, it's only the 3rd time in the past century that inflation has stayed above 2% for five years or longer

The other two streaks lasted 242 months and 129 months, and together they ran almost nonstop from February 1966 to October 1997

September CPI came in at 3.7% year over year, up from 2.4% in January

And the pressure isn't fading. WTI crude is back above $101 this morning

The last time a streak got this long, it turned into a 30 year inflation era. Every month above 2% makes it harder for the Fed to ease, and with oil over $100 this streak has a real shot at running well into 2027

Source: StockMarket.News

$American Express(AXP.US) just posted a record Q3 and raised its full year guide, but shares are slipping premarket

Adj. EPS $4.68 vs $4.49 expected, up 13% y/y

Revenue $20.06B vs $20.12B expected, up 9% y/y and the best Q3 in company history

Billed business $454B vs $456.9B expected, up 8%

Credit loss provision fell 23% to $985M as $American Express(AXP.US) released reserves, and the net write-off rate improved to 1.8% from 1.9%

2026 adj. EPS guide raised to $17.60 to $17.90, or 14% to 16% growth

Shares are down 1.6% premarket near $319.87

The credit side is the quiet headline here. Premium cardholders are still spending and still paying their bills, even with oil this high. The market wanted a bigger spending number, but this is a consumer that hasn't cracked yet

Source: StockMarket.News

South Korea's KOSPI is now down 40% from its record high

The index peaked at 9,115 on June 22. It's trading near 5,416 on Friday, per Yahoo Finance data

The KOSPI fell as much as 4.1% to 5,306 at the lows today, its weakest level since late July, as Wall Street's AI selloff spread to Seoul

Samsung Electronics dropped nearly 4% and SK Hynix slid more than 3% early on, even after SK Hynix scrapped plans for a US listing of its Solidigm unit, per The Herald Business

Foreign investors dumped a net 256.5 billion won of KOSPI shares in early trading, per Aju Press

The index has now lost 23% in a single month, from 7,081 on Sept 23

Overnight the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index sank 6.7% and the Nasdaq fell 2.6%, its worst day since June, after $Meta Platforms(META.US)'s $2.12 billion free cash flow deficit reignited fears about AI spending

Korea was the purest AI memory trade on the planet this year, which is exactly why it's unwinding the fastest. Even after this crash the KOSPI is still up 41% from a year ago, a reminder of how much froth got priced in on the run to 9,000

Source: StockMarket.News

Investors are on pace to pour a record $1.3 trillion into global stock funds in 2026, the biggest annual intake ever, per BofA

That would smash the previous record set in 2021, which came in under $1 trillion, based on EPFR fund flow data in BofA's latest Flow Show

US equity funds are on a record $636 billion pace, and tech funds are on track for a record $196 billion

In the week through Oct 14 alone, $64.5 billion flowed into stock funds while $53.1 billion left cash funds

Now that money is getting tested. The Nasdaq 100 fell 2.9% on Thursday, its worst day since June 23, and $SOXL dropped 20.5%

South Korea's KOSPI is down another 2.6% early Friday

Record inflows mean a lot of fresh money bought in near the highs. Even BofA's Michael Hartnett says he's leaning risk-off for the next 3-4 weeks while the cash keeps pouring in, and days like today show how fast crowded trades can unwind

Source: StockMarket.News

Trump just invoked the Defense Production Act for oil

A presidential memo signed Thursday declares US petroleum production, refining, pipelines, storage and marine terminals "essential to the national defense," per the White House

It directs the Secretary of War to make purchases, commitments and financial support to expand that capacity, and waives the usual DPA requirements

That replaces an April 20 order that had put the Energy Secretary in charge

Brent crude is near $112.87, up 3.7% today and about 56% above its $72.48 close before the US-Israel strikes on Iran in late February, per Yahoo Finance data

Last week Vance said the DPA would be used to expand a $Delek US(DK.US) refinery in Texas, and Congress set aside $1 billion in DPA money for energy projects last year, per Reuters

The midterms are 12 days away, and only 36% of Americans approve of Trump's handling of the economy in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll

Handing oil to the Pentagon shows Washington now treats fuel as a wartime supply problem, not a market one. But new wells, pipelines and refinery capacity take years to build, so this does little for $113 Brent before Nov 3

Source: StockMarket.News

SpaceX wants access to at least 80,000 US cell towers to build a 4th national wireless carrier, per Bloomberg

$SpaceX(SPCX.US) is in talks with at least one major tower owner, including $Crown Castle(CCI.US), and the deals could be worth billions of dollars

Tower stocks ripped after hours. $Crown Castle(CCI.US) is up 9.7%, $SBA Communications(SBAC.US) 7.1% and $American Tower(AMT.US) 4.6%, per Yahoo Finance data

The carriers went the other way. $AT & T(T.US)-Mobile US(TMUS.US) is down 4.3%, $Verizon(VZ.US) 3.6% and $AT & T(T.US) 3.3%

SpaceX recently bought low-band spectrum and has FCC approval for 15,000 direct-to-phone satellites. Musk said on this week's earnings call that Starlink Mobile is on a path to become a major US carrier

Pairing satellites with ground towers is how SpaceX gets real indoor coverage, and that is a direct threat to the big three. Tower owners win either way because they rent space to everyone, which is why the market is paying them first and asking questions later

Source: StockMarket.News

Iran just threatened to strike data centers, AI facilities and undersea internet cables across the Gulf

Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said oil facilities, cables, data centers and AI sites in as many as seven Gulf countries could be hit if the US and Israel attack again, per The Guardian

He told Iran's state-run Press TV that more than $2 trillion of US-linked tech infrastructure in the region could be at risk, per Al Arabiya

"We have not yet included these assets among our targets. But if war breaks out, many of these cables, data centers, artificial intelligence facilities, and numerous other sites will be destroyed," Rezaei said

US media report a target list for a new joint US-Israel strike has been drawn up for after the November 3 midterms, per The Guardian

Brent crude is up 3.3% to about $113 a barrel today and the Nasdaq 100 is down 3.5%, per Yahoo Finance data

US tech giants have spent the past year pitching the Gulf as the next AI hub, built on cheap power and sovereign money. Tehran is now openly naming that buildout as a target, which adds a war-risk premium to an AI trade the market is already questioning

Source: StockMarket.News

Americans now hold a record 48.2% of their financial assets in stocks

That is the highest share in Federal Reserve data going back to 1945, per the Fed's latest Z.1 Financial Accounts for the second quarter of 2026

The dot-com peak was 38.7% in early 2000. The 2007 peak before the financial crisis was 33.5%

Households held $74.0 trillion in stocks, directly and through funds and retirement accounts, out of $153.5 trillion in total financial assets

The share jumped from 44.7% in the first quarter, and household net worth hit a record $195.9 trillion

That snapshot is from the end of June. Today the S&P 500 fell 1.2% and the Nasdaq 100 dropped 2.9%, its worst day since June 23

Retail ownership is a big reason dips keep getting bought so fast. But with nearly half of household savings riding on equities, a real drawdown now hits consumer spending harder than it did in 2000 or 2008. The next Fed update lands Dec 10

Source: StockMarket.News

$SOXL just crashed 20.5% in a single day, one week after traders poured a record $3.8 billion into it

The 3x leveraged semiconductor ETF closed at $82.11 today, its worst day since June 23, per Yahoo Finance data

The record weekly inflow came during the week of Oct 16, as buyers piled in while the fund was already falling, per Seeking Alpha

$SOXL is now down about 73% from its June 22 high of $300.77

Chips led the whole selloff. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 6.7%, $AMD(AMD.US) dropped 8.1%, $Micron Tech(MU.US) 6.3% and $NVIDIA(NVDA.US) 4.4%

The Nasdaq 100 lost 2.9% for its worst day since June 23, while the Dow finished slightly green and $Apple(AAPL.US) closed at a record high

Leverage cuts both ways. Getting back to the June high would now take a 266% gain, and anyone who bought the dip last week with 3x exposure is already deep underwater

Source: StockMarket.News

$Apple(AAPL.US) is the only Magnificent 7 stock in the green today, and it is trading above its record close

Shares are up about 0.7% near $346, above Wednesday's all-time closing high of $343.99, per Yahoo Finance data

Every other member is red. $Meta Platforms(META.US) is down 8%, $Amazon(AMZN.US) 5%, $NVIDIA(NVDA.US) 4.4%, $Alphabet(GOOGL.US) 3.4%, $Tesla(TSLA.US) 2.6% and $Microsoft(MSFT.US) 2.1%

The Nasdaq 100 is down 3%, on pace for its worst day since June

Per Yahoo Finance, $Apple(AAPL.US), $Eli Lilly(LLY.US) and $Walmart(WMT.US) have added more than $400 billion in market value since chip stocks peaked in early October, while $Meta Platforms(META.US), $Alphabet(GOOGL.US) and $SpaceX(SPCX.US) have lost nearly twice that

The dividing line is AI spending. $Meta Platforms(META.US) just narrowed its capex plan to $135 billion to $145 billion and created a new class of nonvoting shares it can sell to raise money

For two years the knock on $Apple(AAPL.US) was that it was behind in AI. Now that the bill for the buildout is coming due, not spending $100 billion+ a year on data centers is starting to look like the feature, and Apple has become where money hides inside Big Tech

Source: StockMarket.News

$Moderna(MRNA.US) just dropped about 24% after its closely watched cancer vaccine data appeared to leak early

The Phase 3 melanoma results showed up on the medical news site Oncology Central late this morning and were taken down shortly after, per

Source: StockMarket.News

Elon Musk just put about $1 billion into Skydance, and the stock still turned red

Semafor broke the news this morning, citing people familiar with the matter

$Skydance(SKYD.US) jumped as high as $8.46 within minutes, up 7.5% on the day

Then it reversed. Shares are now near $7.74, down 1.7% from Wednesday's $7.87 close, per Yahoo Finance data

The money arrives alongside fresh equity from other Skydance investors, including board member Laurene Powell Jobs, as the company cuts costs after its Warner Bros. Discovery takeover

It also comes full circle. Larry Ellison put $1 billion into Musk's 2022 deal to take X private, and he personally guaranteed more than $40 billion of the equity behind the Warner Bros. deal

Even with the Musk check, $Skydance(SKYD.US) is still about 55% below its 52-week high of $17.16

When a $1 billion vote of confidence from Musk can't hold a pop for 10 minutes, the market is saying it cares more about debt and cost cuts than famous names on the cap table. The real test is whether this cash buys time for the streaming pivot or just plugs a hole

Source: StockMarket.News

$Meta Platforms(META.US) just erased about $245 billion in market value from its post-earnings high

The stock jumped as high as $748.80 after hours Wednesday, up 7.4% on a revenue beat

It is now trading near $653, down 6.4% on the day, per Yahoo Finance data

What changed overnight was the fine print

Meta's 10-Q filed this morning shows about $825 billion in future leases and contracts, much of it tied to AI data centers and cloud capacity, up from nearly $700 billion disclosed in July per Bloomberg

That includes $454.52 billion in non-cancelable commitments, with $121.41 billion due in 2027 alone

Q3 revenue grew 26% to $64.60 billion, but free cash flow was negative $2.12 billion after $34.91 billion of capex

Meta also created a new non-voting Class C stock that it says can be used for future capital raises

The ad business is still growing fast. The market is now pricing what it costs to keep up in AI, and a quarter that looked like a beat at 4 PM turned into a balance sheet question by the morning

Source: StockMarket.News