Good morning, investors. Stocks finished mixed on Election Day but chip stocks saw a particular bounce, a reassuring sign for the bulls after last week’s sell off.
Separate from the political headlines, though, the news of the day came from AI legend Lisa Su.
AMD just gave semiconductor bulls the earnings report they’ve been looking for.
The chipmaker reported record third-quarter revenue of nearly $13.4 billion after the bell Tuesday, beating expectations for $13.09 billion.
Adjusted earnings came in at $2.09 a share, above the $1.95 estimate
Revenue grew nearly 45% from a year earlier
Data center sales nearly doubled to a record $8.5 billion
AMD guided fourth-quarter revenue to about $17 billion, ahead of the $16.2 billion consensus
The midpoint of that forecast implies about 66% growth from a year earlier, according to the company.
The stock was up more than 6% after-hours shortly after earnings published.
AMD had closed at $649.42 on October 6, its high for the year, and then fell 25% through Tuesday. That weakness was part of the broader chip declines last week following mixed reports from Alphabet, Amazon and Intel.
Even so, the stock has more than doubled this year, crushing the likes of Nvidia and the S&P 500.
And, in another encouraging sign that the AI trade is still not over, data centers are doing most of the work for AMD.
The segment, which sells AI chips and server processors, made up nearly 64% of AMD’s revenue last quarter, up from nearly 47% a year earlier.
To be sure, gaming revenue did drop 40% from a year earlier.
Meanwhile, free cash flow dropped to $554 million from $1.53 billion while inventories climbed to $11.4 billion from $7.9 billion at the end of last year.
AMD stock has moved 8.8% on average the session after its last eight reports, and a beat hasn’t always meant a gain.
In February, shares tumbled 17% the day after a beat and an outlook above estimates.
A bigger forecast doesn’t guarantee a better Wednesday, but it gives AMD firmer footing than it had a week ago.
Elsewhere
📊 Job openings rose to 7.52 million in September. That beat the 7.15 million economists expected, and the number of workers quitting their jobs rose to its highest level since March 2025. (CNBC)
🤖 Meta sought to raise as much as $25 billion via a bond sale to fund its AI buildout. The news comes days after S&P Global Ratings revised Meta’s outlook to negative, citing uncertainty about its capex and negative free cash flow. (CNBC)
📉 Shopify shares fell nearly 9% after its gross merchandise volume missed estimates. GMV came in at $119.15 billion versus the $120.03 billion analysts expected, even though adjusted earnings topped forecasts. (CNBC)
Full Signal
Jordi Visser is a veteran macro investor. We sat down to discuss how AI is driving rates and the broader macro picture, what Microsoft’s buyouts mean for labor and capital, his bullish case for Eli Lilly and Micron, and his investment outlook for the year ahead.
Tune in on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.
Rapid-fire
Disney is planning to cut several thousand jobs, according to people familiar with the matter (CNBC)
Fiserv has cut 3,000 jobs under its new CEO and its stock jumped more than 12% (Investing.com)
JetBlue raised its checked-bag fees for the third time in less than a year (CNBC)
Bill Ackman said “casino-type markets” are leading to massive stock moves (CNBC)
CrowdStrike launched an AI kill switch to shut down rogue AI agents (CNBC)
S&P 500 tech and communication services ETFs fell more than 8% in October (Opening Bell Daily)
Apollo’s assets under management reached $1.07 trillion on $53 billion of third-quarter inflows (Investing.com)
On this day
🗓 November 4, 2008: The Dow rose 305 points, or more than 3%, in its biggest Election Day rally on record. The S&P 500 gained more than 4% as voters elected Barack Obama president.
Last thing
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