This Week in Barrons: 11.9.2025

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•   As OpenAI’s CFO Sarah Friar was asking for a gov’t bail-out … OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman was saying that they will NOT be seeking a gov’t bailout for their debts.  Sam’s remarks came as OpenAI desperately tried to walk back Ms. Friar’s comments asking for governmental help financing the development of AI chips and infrastructure.  Later, Trump AI czar David Sacks reiterated: “There will be no federal bailouts for AI companies.”

• Former Meta employees launched  Sandbar (an AI wearables startup) … with their first product: Stream Ring.  Stream Ring ($249) is a smart ring that writes notes as you speak and provides thoughtful, real-time commentary.  It also connects to any pair of headphones and lets you control your music.  Pre-orders start now, and shipping starts in the summer of 2026.  See how it works here.

• ‘I’ve got your back’ … is not a promise to be made lightly.  It puts you on the hook, without any excuses for non-performance.  Per S. Godin: “It’s a powerful promise, a commitment that can change the life of both parties.”  Don’t do it lightly but Just Do It – because it’s worth it.

• Musk got shareholder approval for his $1T Tesla pay package. Investors backed the largest corporate pay package in history, endorsing the morphing of the automaker into an AI / Robotics powerhouse.  Musk predicts around 80% of the company’s value will come from future Optimus humanoid robot sales.  [FYI: It better - they just announced a steep monthly decline in their auto sales.]

• ISM’s U.S. manufacturing report for October … dropped and remained in contraction territory.  J. Kicklighter said: “In the past 3 years, manufacturing has only been in expansion territory 5% of the time.”

• Apple is finalizing plans to deploy … a custom version of Google's Gemini model for its long-delayed Siri overhaul. The model will run on Apple’s Private Cloud to protect user privacy and is expected to launch in March 2026.

• Per J. Cox, “The latest Challenger job cuts … for October totaled 153,074, a 183% surge from September, and 175% higher YoY.  It was the highest level of job cuts for any October since 2003.  And this has been the worst year for layoffs since 2009.”

• Google removed Gemma from its Al studio … after Gemma began manufacturing criminal allegations such as the sexual misconduct accusations posted against Sen. Marsha Blackburn.

• Amazon expanded their “Rufus” AI shopping assistant … Rufus answers product questions, compares features, and gives tailored recommendations using chat-based prompts.  This cements Amazon’s push into conversational commerce / AI-assisted shopping.

• Warren Buffett still believes that our market is too expensive … and Berkshire is backing up that belief with a $381B cash stockpile.

• OpenAI has signed a $38B, 7-year partnership with AWS … that grants them use of "hundreds" of Nvidia GPUs for AI model training.

• Anthropic projects $70B revenue and $17B in cash flow by 2028 … The AI startup is on track to hit $9B in annual recurring revenue by EOY.  Its main growth driver is an aggressive B2B strategy that's helped it land partnerships with Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Deloitte, and Cognizant.

• IBM will cut thousands of jobs this quarter. 

• “Big Short” investor Michael Burry … is betting strongly AGAINST Palantir and Nvidia.

• Per C. Bilello: “With 70% of companies having reported … S&P 500 operating earnings are up 19% YoY – the 11th straight positive quarter and highest growth rate since Q4 2021.”

•  If you subscribe to ‘Elliott Wave Theory’ … Bitcoin displayed 5 sell signals at its most recent top of Wave 5.  The bottom of Wave 1 was around $85k.  The top of Wave Il was around $100k.  Then Wave Ill went down to ~$30k.  Tip #1: The next support to watch for on BTC is $96k. If we break $96k, then we’re going down to $85k, and from there down to ~$30k around the end of 2026.  [FYI: If that volatility worries you, sell BTC and wait until it makes a new all-time high before diving back in.]

• Bitcoin is threatening critical support … with minimal short interest to cushion the fall.  Unlike stocks where shorts provide liquidity cushions, Bitcoin lacks that safety net.  When everyone rushes for the exit simultaneously, the drops become violent and systematic.  This latest 3-week-old liquidity crisis dropped some crypto products 60% and was the warning nobody heeded.  Ether fell almost 15% last week, and Bitcoin is now only up +10% this year.  Bitcoin whales have sold ~$45B worth of Bitcoin in the past month.

• Chinese startup Moonshot AI just released Kimi K2 Thinking … an open-source reasoning model that matches or exceeds GPT-5 and Claude 4.5 Sonnet across a series of benchmarks at much lower cost. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang said just days ago that China is ‘nanoseconds’ behind in AI, and this certainly speaks to that sentiment.  K2 Thinking is the closest that the Chinese have been to the frontier, with pricing that makes it a very serious alternative to top closed options.

• Tip #2: Buy the dip in Gold. That’s the recommendation of UBS analysts after the recent correction in the gold price.  After peaking near $4,400/oz., gold was hammered lower, falling to below $4,000.  Since then, price seems to have consolidated around $4,000, but volatility continues to dominate the market with significant daily price swings.  It’s important to put the recent sell-off in perspective.  Even with the recent dip, gold is still up over 50% on the year and has essentially doubled since the beginning of 2024.  UBS analysts believe the pullback is temporary and they still like gold in the $4,200 ounce range.  In a research note, UBS analysts said, “The much-anticipated correction has taken a breather,” noting that they don’t see any fundamental reason for the downturn.  UBS Global Wealth Management strategist Sagar Khandelwal said he sees an upside of $4,700 in Q1 of 2026 due to falling real interest rates, a weaker dollar, rising government debt, and continued geopolitical uncertainty.  Khandelwal said with our FED committed to a looser monetary policy, real interest rates could even turn negative.

• Issues:

  o Federal interest payments are going parabolic while the Fed keeps adding liquidity, creating the exact conditions that preceded major market resets.

  o The difference between our FED stimulating into recession versus stimulating into a bubble is a +25% correction to the downside.

  o Credit card delinquency rates just hit 12.41% - the highest since 2011.  The government shutdown is bleeding $15B weekly from GDP.

  o Expensive stocks don't just pause, they reprice violently (dropping 50 to 80%) when fundamentals finally matter again.

• Mag-7 experienced serious selling last week … as liquidity concentration reached dangerous new extremes.  Factually last week: (a) Nvidia made a two standard deviation move to the downside, (b) Tesla hit the lower edge of its expected move, and (c) Microsoft, Broadcom, and Meta moved outside their expected moves.  Retail has concentrated trading activity into fewer products than any time in recent memory.  Nvidia and Tesla dominate option flow while former mainstays like Apple and Amazon see liquidity evaporate.  When market making firms point all their server capacity at one or two products – the market structure becomes fragile fast.  This current concentration has retail running scared despite markets sitting near all-time highs.

• There is NO sign of correlation … as volatility refuses to cooperate with surface calm.  Volatility remained elevated while markets drifted further away from their all-time highs, and as the advanced / decline line remained neutral.  With 3 stocks controlling the indices it’s a warning that when correlation does return to this market – there will be: ‘Nowhere to run to, and Nowhere to hide’.

• Crypto blinked and the selling could continue … but first I believe: Tip #3: Bitcoin rallies back to ~$108,000, and from there we test the $95,000 support level.  

• Are bonds our ‘Safe Space’?  For the past 2 weeks, bonds have flat lined.  They’ve moved around a little bit but are completely indecisive.  Tip #4: Bonds will fall, and the 10-Year will hit 4.2% in the next couple of weeks.

• Be careful when the government re-opens … because everyone believes that’s the solution to a scary market.  But when it repoens, it'll just inject liquidity, spend more, and interest rates could very well explode in our faces.

• Expected Move levels create mathematical pressure points … Last week, markets traded right into the lower edge of their expected move before finding support.  When price action adheres this precisely to mathematical boundaries, that means algorithmic hedging is driving every trade rather than genuine capital allocation.  Any break below expected move levels will cause algorithmic selling to accelerate as every firm on the street hedges into weakness simultaneously.

• SPX Expected Move:

  o Last Week = $106 – and (at one point) we moved almost 2 standard deviations to the downside.

  o Next Week = $130 – put on your ‘Big Boy Pants’.  Until we see correlation, the real selling has yet to begin. 

• Factually: (a) Bitcoin is rolling over: a warning sign for teetering tech stocks. (b) Investors of all types are increasingly all-in on the AI trade. (c) The AI race is heating up as an AI credit boom kicks-off. And (d) Investor sentiment is euphoric across numerous metrics while consumer confidence is slumping.  Overall, per Callum Thomas: the AI bubble continues to simmer away as investors increasingly pile into the only game in town.  This has all the hallmarks of a late-cycle market, with sentiment riding high and big bets being placed.  The mid-October volatility spike continues to show that we’re in an environment where the slightest post, nudge ‘n sneeze can send shudders through an otherwise complacent market place.

   

  HODLs: (Hold-On for Dear Life)

  -  IBIT – Blackrock’s Spot Bitcoin ETF ($58.88 / in at $24)

  - (-) ETHA – Ethereum ETF ($26.1 / in at $13)

  - (+) Physical Commodities = Gold @ $4,007/oz. & Silver @ $48.2/oz.

  - Bitcoin (BTC = $104,100 / in at $4,310)

  - Ethereum (ETH = 3,400 / in at $310)

  - (+) GLD – Gold ETF ($367.9 / in at $212)

  - (+) SLV (silver ETF) == ($43.9 / in at $27)

   

  More ‘De-Gen’ Economy holdings:

  - AAVE (crypto) == ($202 / in at $254)

  - (+) GDX (gold miners) == ($72.5/ in at $52)

   

  AI / Agent / Data-Center basket:

  - NVDA ($188.1 / in at $168)

   

  Please be safe out there!

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