The daily briefing

31 October 2026 | Information cutoff: 06:44 GMT Morning View Friday’s selloff marked an important narrative change: investors did not dispute that AI demand is strong; they rejected the idea that strong demand automatically produces attractive equity returns. The Nasdaq fell 2.9%, its largest decline since June, while the semiconductor index lost 7.2%. Intel fell 28.6%, Advanced Micro Devices 10.9%, Dell Technologies 10.8% and Nvidia 4.2%. The common denominator was…

30 October 2026 | Information cutoff: 06:50 GMT Morning View The overnight tape sharpened the distinction between AI demand and AI economics. Amazon Web Services accelerated to 39% growth and Amazon projected growth above 40% in both 2027 and 2028, yet the shares fell because a roughly $220bn 2026 capital program has pushed trailing free cash flow deeply negative. Intel delivered a much stronger quarter, but a manufacturing interruption, server-chip…

29 October 2026 | Information cutoff: 06:45 Europe/London Morning View The overnight earnings created a clearer hierarchy inside the AI trade. Microsoft combined 48% Azure growth, a $677bn commercial backlog and $18.6bn of free cash flow, while Alphabet more than doubled Google Cloud revenue but burned $9.07bn of cash and warned that capital expenditure will rise materially again in 2027. The market rewarded Microsoft and punished Alphabet because revenue growth…