"Everything Bad, Everywhere, All At Once... Except Stocks": Jensen Quits, Inflation Hits, & Market Splits

Tl;dr: A week after the midterms crashed the AI trade, everything that should have finished it off happened: Jensen Huang resigned from Nvidia after a spy-linked affair and a second one (and third one) with his own executives, CPI ran hot for a third straight month, Waller floated a 50bp Dec hike, and Friday's PPI showed producer prices rising the most since 2022. And despite some weakness today, stocks rallied anyway, because there was no one left to sell. Hedge funds had just cut gross by the most since COVID, so the S&P rose 2% and the SOX jumped 10%, its best week since April, as money moved from Nvidia into AMD and Broadcom. Bonds took the hit instead. The 2Y jumped 35bps, its worst week since October 2024, all three coupon auctions tailed, and the 10Y pushed above 5.15%. The dollar hit an 18-month high, the yen touched 160, gold tumbled below $3,900 and bitcoin puked under $70,000. Brent broke below $90, then jumped to $96 when Trump said "we don't need a deal" (but ended lower on the week). Equity funds drew $51 billion, the most in seven weeks, with a record-since-2021 $35 billion into Europe. Next: Nvidia's first earnings without Jensen, and Anthropic's IPO.

Nvidia lost the only CEO it has ever had, and the semiconductor index had its best week since April. The Fed got a third hot core CPI, a governor floating 50bp and producer prices at a four-year high, and the 2-year had its biggest week since 2024. Two markets looked at the same week and saw two different worlds: the stock market priced the positioning, the bond market priced the Fed, and only one of them gets paid on December 9.