Morning Watchlist: Saturday Edition
The Week in Review A quick note from Behind the Markets
It's Saturday morning, and the most valuable company in the world is looking for a chief executive.
The week built to it like a courtroom drama. Sunday, Jensen Huang told Nvidia's employees he had been unfaithful to his wife. Wednesday, The New York Times reported a second affair — this one with an executive who reports to him — and by evening The Wall Street Journal said the board was preparing to remove him. Thursday morning, just before nine, it ended: Huang resigned, effective immediately, after 33 years — the third-longest CEO tenure in the S&P 500. CFO Colette Kress stepped in as interim chief. The stock fell 14% at the open, shed roughly $440 billion by lunchtime, and Nvidia — a five-trillion-dollar company as recently as October — slipped below $4 trillion, to third place behind Apple and Microsoft.
Now the part worth framing on your wall: by midday Thursday, the S&P 500 was green.
In between, the Fed's last inflation report before December ran hot, the ten-year Treasury crossed 5%, and the quietest stock in America touched a record high. Our standing press note: we go to press Thursday midday. Thursday's close, Cisco's report card, Friday's producer prices, and Friday night's rocket belong to you, not to us — they lead your Monday checklist below.
Nineteen calls this week. Four stops on the tour.
Let's get into it.
1) The Grocery Store Lost Its Grocer
On Tuesday we called the Nvidia affair a market story, not a tabloid story, and declined to referee it — we'd rather own who gets paid however it ends. Thursday morning, the ending arrived. Oppenheimer pulled its rating before the open; Bernstein settled at Market Perform with a $200 target; the president suggested Tim Cook for the job, and Kress told employees she believes "deeply in the company." Nvidia reports earnings Tuesday — the first print of the Kress era.
Taiwan Semiconductor, Tuesday's Buy at about $375, spent the week proving why we own the printing press instead of the author. This week it posted record October sales — NT$586.9 billion, about $17.9 billion, up nearly 60% from a year earlier. That's the monthly receipt Taiwan requires and few American companies dare to offer. By Wednesday's close the stock had climbed about 10% from our flag, to $413, before handing back roughly 5% in Thursday's early trading when the chair emptied. Whoever runs Nvidia — and whoever gains if Nvidia stumbles — the chips still get fabbed in the same place. Still Buy.
Marvell is a day old, so we'll grade the setup, not the stock. Yesterday's note flagged the tailor at about $169 while the board was still behind closed doors; within hours the thesis got its catalyst — the key man is gone, and every giant's case for a second source of custom silicon just got louder. The stock fell about 4% Thursday anyway, to near $159, marked down with the whole complex. We'd rather have the catalyst confirmed and the price cheaper than the reverse. The risks we named — the dilution, a Lumentum close that waits on Beijing until 2028 — haven't moved; the company did add three independent directors ahead of the deal. Still Buy.
Dell owes you a housekeeping note. Thursday's edition flagged the lumberyard at about $335 — but we write a day ahead, and Wednesday's session ran away from the print: CoreWeave's monster report sent Dell up nearly 12%, to $374, before you ever read the page. Thursday it gave back about 3%, to near $361 — call it 8% above a flag that was a day stale, and we'd rather tell you that than let the scoreboard flatter us. The entrance hasn't changed: the late-November report, and backlog turning into actual cash. Still Watch.
And CoreWeave itself — October 16th's Sell at $65.78 — had the most instructive week in the market. Tuesday night it reported the blowout: revenue up 168%, a $132.5 billion backlog. Wednesday the stock jumped 24.7%, to $60.77. Thursday it fell about 15%, to near $52 — because when Nvidia wobbled, the market remembered Yahoo Finance's count of roughly $530 billion in Nvidia commitments and guarantees holding up the neocloud complex, and sold its most leveraged tenant first. A stock that moves 25% on good news and 15% on someone else's scandal is not an investment yet; it's a weather vane. Still about 21% below our flag. Sell stands for holders.
2) Five Percent, and the Places It Pays
Tuesday at 8:30, the coin we refused to flip landed hot: October CPI up 0.4%, core up 0.3% for the second straight month — the threshold Governor Waller had named for putting a half-point December hike on the table. The two-year jumped, Tuesday's ten-year auction drew the weakest demand since June at a high yield of 5.020%, and when the bond market returned from Veterans Day on Thursday, the ten-year sat at about 5.08%. December's hike is priced near 90%.
So the bench did its job. M/I Homes was a Watch with one named entrance — a cold core print — and the print came in hot. No trade, as promised, and the stock slid to about $127 by Thursday, roughly 8% below our flag. The cheapest trade of the week was the one we pre-committed to skipping. The entrance stays the same weather report. Still Watch.
The rate collectors got paid on schedule. Interactive Brokers — Wednesday's parking garage, flagged at about $80 — rose 6.3% the very day the note published, closing at $82.49. Still Buy. Tradeweb, the court stenographer, closed Wednesday at $130.60 — up 23% from our September 6th flag — with the Fed and the bond market now arguing on the record through at least two more hikes, if Dallas Fed's Logan gets her way. Still Buy.
The haven kept havening. Berkshire touched a record $586.45 on Tuesday and was trading near $591 Thursday — up about 3.5% from our flag in three days — while the AI aisle bled; one widely passed-around stat had Berkshire beating the S&P by its widest monthly margin in about 16 years. The filings even showed a new roughly $600 million stake in homebuilder Lennar — Omaha keeps shopping the housing aisle it already bought Taylor Morrison from. Still Buy.
And the arcade stayed cold. Bitcoin broke below $73,000 on Thursday — its first visit since August, down about 8% this month — and Coinbase, Wednesday's Sell near $136, closed Tuesday at $132 and opened lower Thursday. The honest other side showed up too: the OCC granted Coinbase's national trust charter on Monday, a real long-term win. But our flip signals were American buyers returning or a Washington thaw, and neither printed — the discount persists and the index committees are now removing crypto proxies, not adding them. Still Sell for holders.
3) Monday Night, Four Report Cards
Monday after the close, three of our names took exams at once — and one tripwire fired.
Start with the stadium. Take-Two missed on revenue but confirmed the only number that matters: Grand Theft Auto VI arrives Thursday the 19th, on schedule, with pre-orders the CEO called "far in excess of our initial expectations." The stock climbed from $207 Monday to about $231 by Wednesday. Our seat was never Take-Two — it was Sony, the tollbooth on 97.9 million consoles, flagged Sunday at about $25. Thursday morning it traded at $26.92, up roughly 8% in under a week, with the on-ramp still five days from opening. Still Buy.
Now the tripwire. We put Hims & Hers on Watch — not Buy — because the options market was pricing a 17% move and we don't buy lottery tickets the morning of the drawing. Monday night the numbers came: revenue up 49% but gross margin collapsed to 57% from 74% a year ago, subscribers fell by 100,000 in the quarter, fourth-quarter revenue was guided about 7% below the Street, and the full-year profit outlook was cut. That is nearly word for word the kill we named — a guide-down saying the storefront traded its best margin for the window display. When a tripwire we set goes off, we don't renegotiate with it. The stock sits near $20, about 17% below where we benched it. Watch closed. No entrance at any price until the branded math proves out in print.
Then the fish that got away. Rocket Lab reported record revenue, up 73% — and a wider loss than hoped, with Neutron now "no earlier than 2027," no quarter named, and the sticker price raised to $70 million. The crowd read the other half of the ledger — eight Neutron missions and more than $515 million booked, total backlog $3.57 billion — and bought hard: the stock hit about $66 Thursday, up roughly 43% from our flag. Our entrance was a timeline that holds or a washout that resets the multiple; neither printed. The stock just left without us. That's the tuition discipline charges some weeks: the rocket priced for a maiden flight got pricier, still without flying. We'd make the same call again — and we'd rather admit the sting than pretend we don't feel it. Still Watch.
Argan gets the honesty column's second entry. Sunday's note flagged it at about $410, labeled as a stale September print — the freshest we could verify. It was too stale: the live quote Thursday was about $322, and the correction belongs in the same place as the error. The Watch itself cost nothing — no entrance ever printed — and Monday's landlord earnings explained why: Constellation crushed estimates and raised guidance, with roughly 4,560 megawatts of long-term deals signed last quarter — Amazon and Google among the buyers — but those are nuclear agreements; NRG beat and is selling 4.9 gigawatts of gas plants outright. The buildings are full, and the new leases are nuclear — the gas builder's awards drawer stayed shut another week. Still Watch, with sharper eyes on our own quote sheet.
Quick grades on the rest: Virtu, the register that rings either way, cashed the week we described — $59.51 at Wednesday's close, up about 10% from Sunday's flag and now above the original September price too. Still Buy. Sportradar drifted to $13.06 on no news we could verify — about 7% against us. Auctions with two bidders don't resolve in a week. Still Buy.
4) The Peace Tape, the Register, and the Rocket
The war premium kept leaking, noisily. Monday, Qatar's prime minister visited the White House while Secretary Rubio called Iran's reopening demands "outrageous and ridiculous"; Thursday, the president posted that America doesn't need a deal at all — "We've got their Strait" — and oil bounced on it, Brent near $93 and WTI in the high $80s. Delta, Tuesday's refund ticket at about $87, reached $92.20 by Tuesday's close — up 6%. Chop was always the deal; the refund thesis rides the trend, and the kill stays a Gulf weekend that re-spikes the barrel. Still Buy. Cummins rose 3.6% Monday — the day the Anthropic-buys-generators story ran — to $466, about flat to our flag, with reports of data-center power orders now stretching to 2028. Still Buy. Dollar General sat at $137 Tuesday, flat to a day-old flag, with December 3rd as the exam. Still Buy.
Cisco, Thursday's coin flip, got graded after we went to press Thursday night — your checklist has it. Still Watch.
And the two spectacles share a calendar. Anthropic set its range Tuesday — $70 to $78 a share, valuing the company near a trillion dollars before the extras — with pricing expected Wednesday and a Nasdaq debut Thursday, November 19th. The same Thursday GTA VI launches. The biggest IPO in history and the biggest entertainment launch in history, double-booked on one morning. Our seats remain the toll collectors: Virtu, Goldman, Nasdaq.
As for the rocket: SpaceX rose about 3% Thursday to near $144 — partly, wonderfully, because Elon Musk said it would be "an honor" to hire Jensen Huang. Flight 15's window opened Friday evening, pending the FAA license that hadn't been confirmed by our press time. If the ship flew last night, its tower-catch attempt — the half of history nobody has done — comes this afternoon. For once the weekend reader gets the live show, and we'll be watching with you. Just not buying tickets at 33 times sales. Still Watch.
Before You Go
The scoreboard. Nineteen calls this week — eleven Buys, seven Watches, one Sell. Through the freshest tape we could verify by Thursday midday: Virtu +10%, TSMC +10% to Wednesday's close before Thursday's give-back, Sony +8%, Delta +6%, Berkshire +3.5% at a record, Interactive Brokers +3%, Tradeweb +2%. Against us: Sportradar -7%, Marvell -6% on day one, and Coinbase's Sell moving our way. The not-chased column earned its keep: Hims sits 17% below the bench, M/I Homes 8% below the entrance that never opened, and Cisco's coin flip resolved after press instead of in our hands. The tuition column has one line, in bold: Rocket Lab ran 43% above our refusal. Some weeks discipline pays you; some weeks you pay it.
Your Monday checklist, in order. First, Thursday night's double exam: Cisco against the margin bar we set — a stumble was our named entrance — and Applied Materials grading the equipment aisle where our Lam Research and FormFactor positions sit. Second, Friday's session: October PPI at 8:30, Nvidia's first full day of the Kress era, and Thursday afternoon's 30-year auction result — with the ten-year at 5.08%, every auction is a referendum. Third, the rocket: if Friday's launch flew and Saturday's catch came off, the upgrade trigger we named for SpaceX — caught and then reflown — is half printed; grade the stock's Monday open against a $1.9 trillion sticker. Fourth, Nvidia reports Tuesday and Anthropic prices Wednesday to trade Thursday — Virtu, Goldman, and Nasdaq are our seats at that table, and Huang has reportedly agreed to testify before Thanksgiving. Fifth, Thursday the 19th: GTA VI ships, and Sony's tollbooth opens.
Have a wonderful weekend.
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Written by Behind The Markets