BY ANDREW GIOVINAZZI
October 31, 2025
AMZN and AAPL Save Western Civilization
Both Amazon and Apple reported after the bell today, and the earnings were—well, I just have to say it—I’m surprised. Apple earnings: pretty fantastic. Amazon earnings: pretty fantastic.
The downer? That was META, or as I call it, Facebook. I can’t call it Meta anymore, but Facebook was down like 100 bucks because they’re borrowing $20 billion to build out more AI infrastructure. For a company making $100 billion a year in profits, that probably shouldn’t be a big deal. But really, the story was Amazon and Apple both surprised on the upside. That probably will tell us a good story tomorrow.
Xi and Trump Made a Trade Deal
Xi and Trump made a trade deal, and Donald Trump thought it was so good that he called it “12 out of 10.” No more rare earth issues. They’re going to swap some chips. They had a good time together. It went very well between the two titans of the globe—Western Hemisphere and Eastern Hemisphere.
Really though, even though that news came out, one of my favorite indicators didn’t move in the right direction.
VIX Kept a Bid
I don’t know what kind of news traders are looking for. Maybe they were looking for Apple and Amazon to dump. But VIX tried to make a low on Thursday and ended up closing on the highs of the day as stocks sold off about 1%. It was a pretty broad-based selloff. Some weakness out of Microsoft (MSFT) and Facebook/Meta (META) helped, but really, stocks had run so far for so long that volatility needed a breather.
In order for VIX to go down, we need stocks to just not go up for a while. The range up has been so strong and so long that it’s keeping volatility at a higher price.
VIX Should See Lower Numbers Into Thanksgiving
This will be the litmus test for the market: Can VIX actually make lows that were lower than before Xi and Trump had the dust-up?
Even though they’re okay with where the trade deal is, there’s still going to be some tariffs on the Chinese. Apparently Xi can live with them. They’ve come to an arrangement. But we haven’t seen VIX hold below those numbers, even though we’ve had a pretty fierce rally since the lows on October 13th.
30 Day VIX Chart
The Test Ahead
So this is a test. I expect volatility to drift lower if we have the same kind of trading patterns we’ve had over the last few days. But if it doesn’t, I’m going to say batten the hatches—things could get a lot worse.
The Fed has reported, all the big earnings are out, and companies are doing very well. There has to be some kind of shoe to drop if we don’t see lower volatility in the short term.
Near-Term Top
I also think at this point our big upside rally is going to slow down. 7000 on the SPX or 700 on SPY is probably our near-term top.
AG