The daily briefing

Monday, 2 November 2026. Information cutoff: 06:55 GMT. Morning View The market is no longer treating every layer of the AI buildout as a single duration trade. US technology futures have stabilized after Friday’s rout, but the rebound is selective: Kioxia fell sharply after a strong quarter because its near-term outlook implied that extraordinary memory economics are flattening, while South Korean memory leaders recovered on policy support and continued AI…

1 November 2026 | Information cutoff: 06:47 GMT Morning View The weekend produced the clearest evidence yet that private capital is beginning to apply the same return discipline public markets imposed on AI equities on Friday. OpenAI has reportedly secured about $11bn against an original $30bn fundraising ambition, reduced its maximum target to $20bn and accepted a $1.25tn valuation rather than the $1.4tn it initially sought. Demand for frontier models…

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…