Dear Trader,
The people closest to the money sound a little jumpy this morning.
Jamie Dimon’s bank cleared $15.3 billion in a single quarter, and he still used the earnings release to list everything that could go sideways.
Over in Singapore, Broadcom’s CEO said a lot of AI investors might as well be sitting at a casino table.
That’s coming from a guy who gets paid every time somebody builds a data center.
Then there’s Seoul.
One design announcement from a Chinese chipmaker knocked Korea’s market down more than 5% and dragged Micron along for the ride. Memory stocks spent the summer as the AI trade’s favorite kids, and it took one headline to show how thin the buyers’ patience had gotten.
Today, Andrew Giovinazzi is hosting the State of the Market live room, and he’s bringing on Tim Colby.
They’ll dig into the bank numbers, the AI spending debate and all three stories below. I want to hear what Tim, who tracks where money rotates between sectors, makes of a morning when the folks running these companies keep reaching for the brakes.
Grab your seat using the link above.
This link adds State of the Market to your calendar.
The Daily News Breakdown
SIGN: Broadcom (AVGO) CEO Hock Tan says plenty of AI investors have no idea what they actually own. Speaking in Singapore, he compared their expectations to a casino, which lands a little differently coming from a guy who sells chips to the house.
He’s still bullish. He also worries the industry could run out of capital, and he thinks a lot of businesses may be wasting money on AI. Yahoo’s Ethan Wolff-Mann ties it to Warren Buffett’s circle of competence (only invest in what you understand). Since AI props up a huge chunk of the S&P 500, you’ve got chips on this table whether you meant to sit down or not.
SIREN: JPMorgan Chase (JPM) made $15.3 billion last quarter and somehow disappointed Wall Street. Earnings came in at $5.57 a share against the $5.90 analysts penciled in, though $658 million in paper losses on securities did a lot of the damage. Trading revenue jumped 15% to $10.3 billion and still landed a hair light.
Then Jamie Dimon did what Jamie Dimon does and listed everything that could go wrong: big deficits, sticky inflation, pricey assets, rising rates and geopolitics, all shifting “under the surface.” He figures it’s probably manageable, but he’s bracing for a wide range of outcomes. When the guy running the country’s biggest bank keeps his rain jacket on through a profitable quarter, I’d check the forecast.
SNEAKER: South Korea’s KOSPI (the country’s version of the S&P 500) dropped more than 5% overnight, and memory chip stocks rode the elevator down with it. SK Hynix lost 10% in Seoul and Samsung lost 7%, the fifth straight red day for both. Those two make up more than half the Korean market, so when they bleed, the whole index bleeds with them.
Micron (MU) slid 4% premarket in sympathy. The trigger: Chinese memory maker CXMT says it’s made progress on a new cell design that packs more storage into less space, with a server product targeted for the end of 2026. Samsung just posted a preliminary record $80 billion quarterly profit, and Micron’s up about 240% this year. Turns out that kind of run doesn’t need much bad news to find sellers.