Market Snapshot

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📉 Banana Bits

• October CPI rose 0.4%, a tick above the 0.3% forecast. Core landed at 0.3% for the third month running

• Fed Governor Chris Waller said a half-point December hike "should be considered" if inflation ran hot. It ran hot

• CoreWeave posted $3.66B in Q3 revenue and raised its 2026 guide. Shares jumped as much as 7% after hours

• SoftBank swung to a $7B quarterly loss, including a $3.7B charge on power equipment for U.S. AI data centers

• Brent briefly dipped under $90, a first since August, as Middle East tensions eased Market News

Market News

Waller Drew a Line at 0.3. CPI Stepped Right On It.

Monday was the S&P 500's best day since April. Tuesday made it to about 8:30 a.m. October CPI came in hot, yields skyrocketed, and the S&P slipped 0.38% to 7,520.93. The Dow lost 157.86 points to close at 52,231.89. The Nasdaq fell 0.74% to 25,065.88.

Headline CPI rose 0.4% on the month against a 0.3% forecast, and core came in at 0.3% when the Street wanted 0.2%. That's three straight months of 0.3% core. The one mercy was energy, which rose just 0.7% after September's 5.2% spike, but shelter and food picked up the slack. There's also no year-over-year number, because last fall's government shutdown wiped out the October 2025 data. That leaves everyone stuck interpreting inflation off of monthly prints, not the prettiest picture. 

And the timing could not have been worse for anyone hoping the Fed stays cool. A few hours earlier in London, Fed Governor Chris Waller said he's leaning toward a quarter-point hike in December, but that a half-point "should be considered" if core landed around 0.3% or higher. Core landed at exactly 0.3%. Traders now have a quarter-point fully priced for the Dec. 8-9 meeting and put the odds of a half-point at 13.6%, per CME FedWatch. On Monday that number was basically zero.

The bond market did not like any of this. The 2-year yield jumped about 19 basis points to around 4.74%, and the 10-year poked back above 5% before settling a hair under. Don’t expect a rebuttal from rates today by the way. The Treasury market is closed for Veterans Day while stocks trade like normal. 

Meanwhile, the AI trade continued to drag into today as well. Nvidia fell another 5.5% and was the heaviest single drag on the index (more on that below, again). SoftBank's $3.7B write-down on data center power gear sent GE Vernova down nearly 10% at the open before it clawed back to a 3.9% loss. Microsoft shed 2.2% after Anthropic announced workplace tools for Claude that could compete with Office.

Overall, the S&P was down about 1% at its low and closed with less than half of that. The equal-weighted version of the index was off only about 0.2% around midday, meaning most stocks didn’t gain or lose much at all. 

Peel Take: The CPI print got all the spotlight, but the real story was the 2-year surging 19 bps in a single session. Three straight 0.3% core prints annualize out to roughly 3.7%, which is nowhere near the Fed's 2% target, and the bond market is already pricing in what comes after December. Still, stocks held up surprisingly well. Most of Tuesday's drag came from Nvidia and a few beat-up data center names, while the rest of the market largely shrugged it off.

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What's Ripe

Take-Two Interactive ($TTWO) 8.31% 

• Take-Two closed at $224.64 after CEO Strauss Zelnick said Grand Theft Auto VI pre-orders are "tracking far in excess of our initial expectations." The game finally ships Nov. 19.

• The quarter itself was rough. Net bookings fell 18% to $1.6B and revenue dropped about 15% to $1.5B. Take-Two nudged its full-year revenue outlook up to $7.98B-$8.18B anyway.

• Peel Take: It's crazy that Take-Two was still down nearly 20% on the year just ten days out from one of the biggest video game launch in history. Zelnick basically recycled the same pre-order hype line he used back in August, only this time there aren't any more delays standing between the hype and actual numbers. Once GTA VI finally drops next week, we'll find out pretty quickly if initial sales justify the 8% pop, and why half your office suddenly called in sick on the 19th.

Charter Communications ($CHTR) 10.61% 

• Charter jumped to $134.06 after launching cash tender offers to buy back up to $1.5B of its own long-dated bonds. Citi also lifted its price target to $150 from $140 and kept a Buy rating.

• The notes in question pay 3.5% to 4.8% and don't mature until 2041 to 2062, so they trade well below face value. Every dollar Charter spends retires more than a dollar of debt.

• Peel Take: The one silver lining of surging rates is being able to buy back your old, low-coupon debt at a steep discount. It's a smart move by Charter's treasury team, but retiring $1.5B out of a $108.6B debt stack is a drop in the bucket. Fundamentally, nothing has changed since Friday, so we’re gonna wanna see Charter pair these balance-sheet wins with a rebound in subscriber numbers over the coming quarters. 

What's Rotten

Nvidia ($NVDA) 5.47%

• Nvidia closed at $168.89, a level it last saw in March, and briefly dipped under a $4 trillion market cap before finishing just above it. The stock is down roughly 30% from its Oct. 6 record.

• It was the second straight drop since the board opened an independent investigation into CEO Jensen Huang on Sunday, according to The New York Times.

• Peel Take: Anyone publishing price targets right now is just guessing on how this probe wraps up, though the stock has already priced in plenty of pain. Shedding $1.7 trillion since October pushed Nvidia's RSI down to 23, its most oversold level since 2019 and a big reason Goldman still has it as a top pick. The real headache here is key-man risk, since Jensen has run the show for 33 years with no clear successor on deck. When earnings drop Nov. 17, GPU demand might actually take a backseat during the Q&A.

Skydance ($SKYD) 7.59%

• Skydance fell to $8.04 and gave back nearly all of Monday's 8.6% pop. It was the first session after the company's first earnings report since closing the Warner Bros. Discovery deal on Oct. 6.

• Adjusted EPS of $0.45 beat estimates, but the CFO warned that a weak Warner Bros. film slate will take about $200M out of fourth-quarter EBITDA. The company is carrying $87B in gross debt against roughly $10B in cash.

• Peel Take: Since the Warner deal didn't close until October, third-quarter results were really just a look in the rearview mirror at old Paramount. The stock pulled back Tuesday because a quieter winter box office slate is going to take a bite out of fourth-quarter earnings right out of the gate. Management is asking investors to look past a noisy transition quarter and focus on the long game, where they plan to trim $6B in costs and hit $10B in free cash flow by 2030.

🧠 Technical Trip

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🦈 Deal Dispatch

M&A, IPOs, And Other Notable Transactions

• Anthropic set terms for its IPO at $70 to $78 a share, which would raise up to about $64.4B at a valuation near $1.4T

• GFL Environmental's board tossed a roughly $22B take-private bid from Blackstone, KKR and Energy Capital Partners, sending the trash hauler's stock down 7.6%

• Mitsui Chemicals agreed to buy JSR, a key chip-materials maker, for ¥1.84T ($11.6B), nearly triple Mitsui's own market cap

• Argenx is buying Unnatural Products, a peptide drug-discovery startup, for up to $1.15B

• Strathcona Resources is acquiring Greenfire in a Canadian oil sands tie-up worth up to C$2.9B (about US$2.06B)

📊The Daily Poll

Previous Poll:

What's the biggest threat to stocks heading into year-end?

Sticky inflation and more Fed hikes: 42.50% // Another AI stock selloff: 45.00% // Disappointing corporate earnings: 12.50%

Student Success Corner

Banana Brain Teaser

Previous

You have two identical eggs and a 100-floor building. There is a certain floor above which an egg will break when dropped, and below which it will survive. What is the minimum number of drops needed to guarantee finding the highest safe floor in the worst case?

Answer: 14 drops

Today

You have 100 coins on a table, exactly 20 showing heads. You're blindfolded and cannot distinguish heads from tails by touch. How can you divide the coins into two groups containing exactly the same number of heads?

How Would You Rate Today's Peel?

Happy Investing,
Elie, Mitchell, Fernanda, Nick, & Patrick

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