Hey traders,
Nvidia spent the weekend announcing an investigation into its own CEO, and the stock sits about 5% lower premarket.
Cable will chew on Jensen Huang’s personal life until the closing bell.
I’ll give it one sentence: the CEO of the most important company in the market just handed his board a reason to question his judgment, and that stays a Nvidia story until someone proves otherwise.
That’s what Mark will cover this morning on State of the Market at 10 AM ET. And he’s hosting Frank.
Now look at everything else on the screen.
Dow futures up more than 500 points.
S&P futures up close to 1%.
Crude down more than 4% on Iran peace talk.
Nasdaq futures clawed back to green with Nvidia hanging off them like a cinder block, and the other chip names didn’t follow it lower.
One week after the S&P’s worst stretch since April 2025, with the Nasdaq touching correction on Thursday, buyers walked in Monday morning and bought the index with Nvidia tied behind their back.
I’ve never had much use for the loud take, and the loud take this morning says the AI trade broke. I don’t buy that from one CEO’s bad weekend. CPI prints this week, CoreWeave, Cisco and Applied Materials all report, and the Fed got a jobs number Friday that reads like a hike.
Whether this pop survives all of that, you’ll find out at 10.
And what makes today even better? The crew is going through the stock they love and the one they hate from last week.
Andrew hates a Brazilian bank that most of Wall Street rates a buy, and loves a company that printed a one-year low two weeks ago and sells tickets to grown men hitting each other.
Licia hates a neocloud that Nvidia owns a slice of, and loves something that hasn’t reported earnings in five thousand years.
Mark hates one chip stock and loves another, so he’s taking a side inside the sector on the morning its biggest name can’t get out of its own way.
Tim hates a healthcare giant five days after its earnings call, and loves a company that gave up nearly 4% Friday and hasn’t made anyone money in years.
Hans hates a bitcoin miner that rebuilt itself as an AI data center landlord, with bitcoin near $74,000 this morning, and loves the biggest IPO of the year.
Five traders, ten names, and at least three of those calls look wrong on the surface. Which ones hold up under a question or two from me, you’ll have to watch.
One more thing: Mark’s first Cycle 11 trade goes out this morning around 11 ET, about an hour before the Ticker Highlight Show play.
He built Cycle 11: The Post-Election Playbook for the stretch between now and the new Congress sitting down in January, and the opening trade lands on a name none of the five traders above put on their list.
I’ve seen the ticker.
I won’t type it here.