AVGO is a peculiar stock for this year. For being such a huge company with a wide moat and expertise in custom silicon, the stock shows absolutely no resilience. Hock Tan says the future AI revenue is heavily linked with the biggest customer expected to be Anthropic by 2028.

They have guaranteed the repurchase of the leased chips in case Anthropic and OpenAI cannot pay their obligations. That is a very bullish stance on AI to work out (or a very calculated move for their financing to work out before shit hits the fan).

What's likely for the stock performance over the next 12 months? I think they will beat their expected EPS and set up for a better Q1 earnings but it does smell that the markets give no shits to grace them with any fortune. Instead, any negative news hits them worse than any other semi.

Position: 1000 shares $357, 7 $260 calls expiring 1/28

just looking for a discussion, not complaining about the pullback.

I've been having trouble finding a good source on this one way or the other. I remember everyone sounding the alarms that it was gonna get rug pulled once it was added to the NASDAQ, but I never heard a follow up saying it had actually happened. Upon Googling, I see that some people saying it did, and no one saying it didn't, but when I check the valuation, it's higher than it was upon launch. What's going on here? Was it rug pulled or not?

Link

Highlights

• MS is one of Nscale's two largest customers, recently terminated its agreement for the data center in Loughton, Essex, Telegraph reports
• report said Nscale had faced repeated delays with the project. National power grid officials had told Nscale they did not expect a power supply for the data center until the 2030s.
• Nscale filed for ​an ipo in the ⁠US last month, with Microsoft and Anthropic expected to be its major customers
• its S-1 for a U.S. IPO seeking a target valuation of up to $35 billion (with initial guidance ranging between $30B – $35B).

I have a feeling MS is just using this power delay as an excuse to cut its AI spend. MS' free cash flow is reaching negative from its massive ai spend, and OpenAI simply doesn't generate enough net income to cover the rent.

Demand for AI is not there

By now, you should have read about Broadcom CEO's "gambling" statement regarding AI investors. He was completely misquoted. In fact, he warned against the exact thing that Financial Times and Bloomberg tried to do.

Bloomberg quoted Broadcom's CEO, Hock Tan, in the most hypocritical way possible. Bloomberg did exactly what Hock Tan was warning about.

Here is what Hock Tan actually stated:

'Addressing OpenAI’s recent weak operational data, which triggered a sharp sell-off in related shares, Hock Tan stated bluntly that the market has misread the company. Given its strong underlying fundamentals, he remarked that investors selling off shares based on a single short-term metric are "no different from gambling in a casino."'

Hock Tan warned the market has become very short-term sighted taking every news outlet headline as a reliable indicator to make trades, pertaining to FT's inaccurate initial headline.

This is in response to Financial Times's inaccurate article about OpenAI:

FT initially disregarded OpenAI's $70B gross rev, making it seem OpenAI was $20B short of estimates. This information was later updated by FT themselves that estimates of $70B were actually met.

The lesson here is that there are a crap ton of people in the media trying to stoke the AI bears because fear sells. Watch the fundamentals instead. Listen to TSMC's earnings call. Listen to ASML's earnings call. Listen to Micron's earnings call.

tldr: FT was wrong about OpenAI missing $20b revenue, Hock Tan told an audience that selling based on FT's article is like gambling, Bloomberg misquoted Tan by saying he AI investors are gamblers. You can't make this shit up.

Link attached at the bottom, but what I’ve been seeing with regards to low market breadth, AI and neo cloud stocks under pressure, and now DeepSeek challenging US tech once again, it seems like we’re primed for another dip. Coupled with the Fed rate decision coming up on October 27th or so, things seem jittery.

It’s good for competition of course, for different models to run more efficiently and provide cheaper prices- but there has also been questions as to whether DeepSeek is even as accurate as the US models, and also whether DeepSeek would ever truly be allowed to compete in the US market given government oversight and the national security implications.

Realistically I see US based firms acting out of self interest alongside the US government and another wave of funding will likely keep the US firms pushing forward, because no one wants to lose the AI arms race to China.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/deepseek-releases-ai-model-opens-150410432.html

Was this a clever idea, since with how France is now I’m concerned plus with its issue of being able to pay back its debt effecting the economy. Could the French stock market go down and French bonds be worthless. Or should I wait for the French stock to go down and then buy to hold long term once it calms down ?

Is France still safe all my energy, resources, AI French stock have now been sold was this clever what to do with France and how will it effect the EU market

I was looking for a good opportunity to buy into both of these positions. I had not held any in the past. Perhaps I was naive.

But watching and learning more about where Tesla is heading, especially with their Optimus robot, made me begin a position the other day at $353 per share. I was going to buy it earlier in the month, but it hit my target Friday. I started a position with 500 shares. I realize that there’s earnings coming up and I’m believing that it’s going to be OK long-term, perhaps holding for five or more years.

Regarding SpaceX, I should’ve bought it originally when it had its first dip after the IPO. So I also initiated a 500 share position on Friday because again it hit my target price. I am intrigued about where they are heading and whether or not they are going to have a competitive phone system to compete with Verizon, T-Mobile, and SBC. I’ve held Verizon stock for more than 15 years, and it took a hit last week when Elon said that he was buying phone spectrum.
So there are just too many good reasons to own this company. One of them is not the PE ratio as it’s absurd to even buy at this price.

Would like to hear from both believers and detractors if I made a good decision. Typically, when I buy a position, I intend to hold more than five years.

So much speculation about both companies merging together. I don’t see that happening in the short term. Perhaps in the long term.

TL;DR: A bit philosophical and potentially preachy at times, but an examination of how an ABS can never really fail, the holders have no real rights and are really the underlying mechanics of betting on an economic future which was profit-maximized in a steady state condition.

There have been a few excellent suggestions from Part 1. I'll try to attack each in a careful and hopefully correct way. And, this post may be more economically theoretical / philosophical than one expects as I'm setting up the testing. Just be prepared.

I'd like to not lose the lead from the hooks. To repeat, Carvana is nominally in the business of selling used cars but makes most of their profit from selling Asset-Backed Securities (ABS). In the past year or two stresses in the used car markets and inflation have made the news. Inflation and collapsing used car markets immediately impact both the Carvana consumer and Carvana. These stresses can be observed each month when the ABS EE EX-102 files are published or when a new shelf offering is posted.

Around month 52 in the 2020-P1, 2021-P1, 2021-P2 and 2021-P4 trusts, weakness may have appeared in the N-tranches before self resolving. The N-Tranches interest or principal payments have not been at risk, but they were the closest they've ever come to being at risk. And, it may be happening now.

I am trying to determine if this is structural to the bonds or a reflection of economic conditions. If Carvana experiences another downturn like in 2022/2023, I believe it will be the result of employment and economically stressed borrowers which exceed Carvana's risk mitigation in the 2022 bonds. This will bleed over into future sales of the company. If the credit deterioration in the ABS are real-time, they may be predictive of the companies future performance, potentially exploitable.

There are several hypothesis I don't have the answers to which I would like to answer by the time this series is done, now that I have more than 10k lines of code recreating the waterfall.

One hypothesis I will be testing is that the cushions in the most recent Prime ABS have been upgraded as a reflection of the performance of the 2020/2021 Prime ABS. I haven't looked at 2022 and beyond due to computational intensity.

Another hypothesis is when, in the seasoning of an ABS, Carvana "switches" from repossessions to extraordinary (high touch) servicing interventions. Has this changed from the 2020 Prime issue to the 2026 Prime issues? Is it after a certian period of seasoning or after a new set of issues?

As an aside, I'll note that Carvana has not issued public N-issue since 2021. Failure to act may be an extraordinary indicator of the quality of the Carvana's non-prime assets. Given this, I may, at some point, dive into the Sub-Prime/Non-Prime loans but it is very much worth pointing out that one of Gotham City Research's questions is where these go or who is purchasing the securitized non-prime loans? That is a very large and opaque part of their business which disappears into undisclosed purchasers. The allegation, which I cannot prove or disprove, is that one or more of the counter-parties may be undisclosed related parties. Ally, which was the counter-party target of Hindenburg Research report, purchases higher quality near-prime loans. Since 2023 Ally reduced their maximum purchasing commitments from $5B to $4B. Had Ally reduced or failed to renew the purchase commitments around January 2025 after the Hindeburg report the result would most likely have been devastating to Carvana. But Ally did not reduce their 2025 exposure. The 2021-N series performance may, in part, be demonstrative of whatever credit deterioration that Ally observed and/or experienced. And we expressly do not know the terms of the flow-through design features. Carvana may have sweetened the pot, increased overcollateralization, held more exposure with residuals. This renders the headline numbers slightly problematic and more propaganda than not.

But, back to the point I'm directly working towards an analysis of how close Carvana's Prime N-Tranche comes to experiencing principal payment deferments and the effects of high-touch or extraordinary recoveries. One cannot determine if this is meaningful without understanding the ABS, the counter parties and the risk. The juice may turn out not to be worth the squeeze.

One other thing. Humans suck. We're bad at judging risk. We're bad at dealing with deprivation. However, I will assume that obligors are rational individuals. Once a car goes to zeroBalanceCode 4 it is recorded on a credit report and damage starts accruing. Yes, a savvy borrower can reverse this at times. But I will assume that the base condition is the most economically rational for the obligor.

But, let's get into the meat of today's post. Understanding the counter-party risk in Carvana's ABS.

The Meat and Potatoes:

I've mentioned that Carvana's ABS are built not to fail. Technically the can't. The waterfall pays the highest tranches with the lowest interest rates and the fastest amortization schedule. Understand that the interest rates are not reflective of today's interest rates but reflective of the time the loans were packaged. An overarching fair and balanced question is did the purchasers of Carvana's ABS accept a lower interest rate than they should have, given the risk the bonds reflected at completion. Or differently, how much of the performance degradation is structural by design or economic? A little shop called "Abelian Analysis" started an excellent, but mildly flawed, examination of that question.

Let's look at two different issues:

Issue: 2020-P1

Closed: 01/07/2026

Sampling Date: 11/30/2025

Prospectus Original Pool Balance: 405000000

EX 99.1 Original Pool Balance: 405000000.11

EX99.1 Original Asset Count: 20351

Current Pool Balance: 18133400.22

Active Asset Count: 5198

Overcollateralization Percent: 1.5

Note Sizes

A-1: 56000000

A-2: 120000000

A-3: 115000000

A-4: 75930000

B: 13365000

C: 17212000

D: 7493000

N: 15000000

Note Interest Rates

A-1: 0.18822%

A-2: 0.28%

A-3: 0.44%

A-4: 0.61%

B: 0.92%

C: 1.32%

D: 1.82%

N: 2.84%

Then:

Issue: 2026-P3

Open

Sampling Date: 09/30/2026

Prospectus Original Pool Balance: 1550308000

EX 99.1 Original Pool Balance: 1550309023.48

EX99.1 Original Asset Count: 52339

Current Pool Balance: 50665

Active Asset Count: 1464858350.30

Overcollateralization Percent: 1

Note Sizes

A-1: 167430000

A-2: 457590000

A-3: 457590000

A-4: 301820000

B: 60460000

C: 72090000

D: 333288000

N: 20930000

Note Interest Rates

A-1: 4.052%

A-2: 4.53%

A-3: 4.76%

A-4: 5%

B: 5.23%

C: 5.7%

D: 6.08%

N: 5.51%

The interest rates are therefore reflective of the economic time of the issue. Sometime in 2022, I believe, interest rates started increasing. There are also 3 additional accounts that I am ignoring: Overcollateralization, Reserve Account and the Class N Reserve Account. These are where weakness would be.

Intuitively, you should see why Carvana, in a way, needs to claim infinite growth on their conference calls. Their interest rates are going up, substantially, and the only way to grow profit isn't by squeezing XS (explained a little later) or increasing interest rates on stressed borrowers. In fact, the best days for Carvana may well be very, very behind it.

So, while we briefly ran through what a ABS waterfall was, let's run through with a slightly more depth.

In order of priority, there are the following "tranches": XS, A-1, A-2, A-3, A-4, B, C, D, N, Reserve Account, Overcollateralization, Class N Reserve Account.  The XS is not a note but is extremely valuable and either held or sold but does not bear any interest.  XS is a fixed portion of the gross spread between the interest rates of the loans and the interest rates in the ABS.  If you have an loan package with, say, an average weighted interest rate (technical, the Average Weighted Coupon or WAC, because Finance Bros need a language to justify their existence) of 20% but the WAC of the bonds is 5%, each month collections support a gross spread of 15%.  The XS tranche receives a portion of that, let's say 10% of the interest paid (or less) as an immediate cash disbursement.  XS is not held in reserve.  The overall interest rate of the pool can remain the same but cash conditions can deteriorate, the "real" collections of interest of the active pool drops, from say 20% to 15% and XS would drop to 5% of the collected interest.  If collections drop further to 10%, then XS receives no money.  And if the collections drop enough to consume Overcollateralization, then the reserve accounts are consumed to pay tranches A-D.

Class N would bear the brunt of a cash collections failure. But it is possible that the economic losses of an ABS consume the overcollateralization and XS but the N-tranche still has a buffer in the minimum expected principal payments. This is the "interesting" spot.

There's a bit to wrap one's head around and the difference between the interest rates and the incoming cash is easily ignored. The bond describes things in terms of assets and interest rates, which is perfectly intuitive. But the waterfall distributes the realized cash collections each month. Servicing is the space in-between where the WAC is not affected but the cash collections vary greatly. A 20% interest rate loan is still a 20% interest rate loan until written off. But 90 or 120 days before cash collections stop.

I've mentioned before that the bonds can't fail, they can only slow. And this is another important metric that is very often overlooked for the strength of an issue: How much longer after the initially modeled end point the ABS lasts. The clean-up call can only occur when about $20m in assets is reached, which is somewhere around 1% - 5% of the pool, size dependent. Carvana seems to keep this number fixed around $20m across the board.

That was a clever lie. Technically, bonds can fail. They default under a very, very specific set of conditions which will never, ever occur, given the structure of waterfall. It will literally take nuclear war to have a Carvana ABS hit the rapid amortization triggers. A bond fails when default in the payment of any interest on any of the Controlling Class (the most senior note which hasn't been retired excluding XS and Class N notes) when the same becomes due and payable, and such default shall continue for a period of five (5) Business Days, final payment of outstanding principal in full on the last day on any class of notes by the final schedule distribution date, a violation of covenants by Carvana after a grace period of 60 or 90 days, and some representation or warranty not corrected by Carvana which is not cured or remedied within 60 or 90 days.

Basically, a list of near impossible conditions to meet given the structure of the waterfall and the issuer's ability to simply say "oops" publicly.

There are some rights that a note-holder does have, these ABS do include meaningful triggers. Like the delinquency triggers. If, say the delinquency triggers, which are controlled by the related party Bridgecrest with extensive servicing discretion, is somehow tripped in a month, then if 5% of the noteholders get together and request it, Carvana will have it's Asset Representation Reviewer look at the paperwork, if Carvana allows, but strictly excluded from forensically examining the underwriting standards. If all of the paperwork, after being examined for being present, is present, Carvana will let you know all the paperwork is there. And trigger resolved. I'm of the mind Abelian Analysis may not have looked at this part of the prospectus before jumping into an excellent set of introductory work.

So, this is how the ABS can be structured "never" to fail. As long as the cushions are "chunky" enough they'll absorb any blows to the overall ABS if....eh hem....if the expected future economic conditions under which the minimization / maximization optimization model is correct about the future.

In a bit of English, you can distill all the criteria to determine the amount of profit you wish to generate from any pool of borrowers from the maximum, most profit highest risk, to the minimum profit minimum risk by running a computer program against a set of assets and projected future economic conditions. And that is the important bit.

To maximize your profit, you need to predict future economic conditions. The buffers are built against a theoretical steady state. This is why the bonds will deteriorate as economic conditions worsen. Because the cushions were designed for a different set of conditions. This is why Carvana nearly went bankrupt before - they didn't anticipate future economic conditions which weren't so rosy as the pre-COVID and early COVID years. Once they shifted, the buffers were insufficient.

If economic conditions change, these idealized buffers may prove to be grossly insufficient, which will affect Carvana's retained interest on their books. Carvana controls these marks.

Bridgecrest, the servicer, is a related party which also controls the servicing. And Carvana's servicing can be oddly "lumpy".

The only way to get money into an ABS after it's creation is (1) add new cars - which it can't do (2) regularly scheduled payments (3) zeroBalanceCode 4 recoveries or extended forbearance.

Lumpy and strange recoveries along with a servicer with full contractual discretion and an ABS designed for different, idealized economic conditions? This... seems interesting. And I've gone into strange but I haven't done lumpy yet.

Does the N-tranche ever get close to requiring recoveries to complete principal payments? Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. But the N-tranche hasn't failed, yet.

As for 5% retained interest, yeah, it's just 5% of everything that not XS or N. I haven't looked to see if it's anywhere that Carvana sells the XS tranche to a private equity firm, that's an interesting question.

More to follow if the Mods allow, although there may be a slowdown. The next bit will be data and processing intensive.

TL;DR: Aduro is a $355M company with a modular process that turns the plastic waste nobody else can recycle into refinery-grade oil. Pilot yields hit 88–91%. The oil ran through a European steam cracker with zero pretreatment. Shell and TotalEnergies validated the chemistry. A global commodities trader signed an offtake LOI with a committed first FOAK parcel. The company holds C$65.75M cash with zero debt, and its last raise had no warrants attached. PepsiCo came asking for a closer look. The stock is down 40%+ from its June high and sits under its January price. I think the selling is closer to exhausted than most realize. Not financial advice.

Why I'm posting this

Long time Holder of Aduro (largest single-stock position), so read everything below with that bias and check the filings yourself: SEDAR+, Q1 FY2027 interim statements + MD&A, filed Oct 15.

My thinking in short: this is a pre-revenue tech company with an unusual profile and a unique, modular solution to a global problem. It's got cash. It's spending that cash on engineering instead of promotion. And the list of giants engaging with the technology reads like a petrochemical conference guest list. The stock has been cut nearly in half from its high. That disconnect is what I'm writing about.

What they do

Aduro Clean Technologies (TSX: ACT / Nasdaq: ADUR / FSE: 9D5, roughly $355M market cap) built a process called Hydrochemolytic (HCT). Feedstock: waste plastics nobody else wants. Mixed polyolefins, contaminated film, PEX pipe waste, synthetic turf. Output: liquid hydrocarbons clean enough to go straight into a steam cracker. The company calls it Hydrochemolytic oil, a naphtha-range product.

The model is licensing. They're building one First-of-a-Kind plant at Chemelot in the Netherlands (~10,000 tonnes/year) as the proof plant. After that, the plan is to stamp out replicated modules rather than building ever-bigger reactors. Saipem (~€9B) is doing the engineering. If it works, they sell the blueprint.

The tech edge

Last November, an independent company that designs steam crackers ran Aduro's oil through a European pilot cracker as produced. No dilution, no hydrotreatment. Steam crackers are brutally picky about feedstock quality. Skipping pretreatment entirely is the strongest product-quality data point in the space.

Then September's pilot campaign: 75 hours continuous, 88.8–90.8% yield across three different feeds, recovering to steady state two hours faster than the previous run. It works. It works repeatedly. It handles different garbage. 11 patents (7 granted, 4 pending), no hydrogenation step, cheap single-use catalyst.

Their cash position

For a pre-revenue company, this balance sheet is genuinely unusual. C$65.75M in cash. Zero real debt. In June they raised C$28.93M at US$15.20 and C$21.20, with no warrants attached. Warrants are what desperate companies throw in to sweeten a deal. Aduro didn't need to.

The raise price ladder tells the story: US$8.44 → US$11.50 → US$15.20. Raising into strength each time. Quarterly burn is flat at ~C$2.58M and costs are down 29% year over year. The cash pile itself earns ~C$450K a quarter in interest. Management guides roughly two years of runway, with FOAK construction targeting early 2028. They'll raise again eventually. That's pre-revenue life. But if the milestones keep landing, it'll be on their terms.

Potential clients

• TotalEnergies (~$200B): R&D collaboration since 2024, funding plus technical support on the nastiest contaminated feedstocks. Now in its final stage, before a potential deal.

• Shell** (~$300B): Aduro graduated the GameChanger accelerator in December after a multi-year technical evaluation, 80%+ liquid yields. Technical validation from Shell's engineers.

• Offtake LOI (March 2026): signed with a leading independent international commodities trader. Non-binding, but it includes a committed purchase of the first production parcel from the FOAK plant. First commercial offtake signal in company history.

• PepsiCo (~$180B): one of 10 companies invited to present at their Sustainability Innovation Hub in September, directly to LATAM/global packaging teams. They're evaluating the tech for flexible-film packaging. A foot in the door with one of the world's biggest plastic buyers.

• ECOCE (Mexico's plastics industry association): multi-year deal. Phase one done, mapped 1.5M tonnes/year of flexible packaging streams. Now lab-testing Aduro's process on them.

• AstroTurf (private): end-of-life synthetic turf MOU. | GF Building Flow Solutions Americas, the building-tech arm of Georg Fischer (~CHF 4.8B):PEX pipe waste MOU. | Ortessa (private Dutch waste group): FOAK feedstock logistics at Chemelot.

• Their chief revenue officer was just elected to the board of Chemical Recycling Europe, the body shaping EU rules as recycled-content mandates land in 2030.

No binding commercial agreements yet. But a signed offtake LOI plus this many giants evaluating the process is exactly what the 12–18 months before licensing revenue looks like.

Second business nobody's pricing in

Aduro's roots are in heavy oil and bitumen upgrading. Plastics came later. This month they confirmed a dedicated continuous-flow test unit for paraffinic crude, secured Uinta Basin wax feedstocks for longer test runs, and presented the program at a refining conference in Houston. The oil side is simpler and might get to revenue faster.

The plastics track is the bigger prize, but it's the harder build. Diverse feedstocks, collection and sorting, new offtake categories to establish. The oil track skips most of that. Uniform feedstock from established producers. Buyers are refineries that already buy crude and already know how to price it.

Smaller units, existing customers, faster path to cash. The CEO said recently it could be ready around the same time as the plastics track.

The chart

Down more than 40% from the June high. October alone took 20% off. The stock sits around $9.95, under the ~$10.74 level it started the year at. Every year from 2021 through 2025 finished green. 2026 needs to close above roughly $10.36, about 4% from here, to keep that streak alive.

Here's how I read it. Friday was the first session in a week and a half where the pace of the selling visibly eased. That's what exhaustion starts looking like. Sellers still in charge, but running out of steam. October washed out the weak hands, as it tends to do. November opens the seasonally strong half of the year.

A 40%+ drawdown while the company keeps hitting milestones is a very different setup from one where something broke. I think this is closer to a bottom than a breakdown.

What I'm watching next

Whatever TotalEnergies does next. Whether the offtake LOI advances toward binding terms. Saipem moving from Early Works into the next engineering phase, the big binary. Paraffinic program results. Chemelot permitting progress. Any one of those landing at these levels reprices fast.

Risks

No binding commercial agreements yet. The licensing model is still theory until someone pays. Pre-revenue and they'll raise equity again. The FOAK plant still needs final cost numbers and a final investment decision. Long-duration operating risk isn't fully answered by the pilot. Speculative, so size it like it is.

Not financial advice. Check the filings, make your own call.

Ben Horowitz reveals Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told him its AI compute is sold out beyond 2028, and says that shortage makes this fundamentally different from the dot-com bubble

“This shortage is so bad. You know, I was speaking with Andy Jassy, who runs Amazon, yesterday. And I said, yeah, like, we’re out of everything, you know, till 2028. He’s like, oh, it’s beyond 2028. Like, I don’t think we get stuff back, like, end of 2028, maybe. So everything else is sold out.”

“So he has the advantage of that, he’s got supply in a great shortage, which is extremely different than the internet bubble. The internet bubble, we didn’t have enough demand, because we had to build the internet, people had to get broadband, you know, you needed all this stuff people had to buy, you know, originally, they had to get their browser at price, all this kind of thing.”

“There weren’t enough consumers on the internet to absorb all the bandwidth that had gotten built out. And they had a massive amount of debt, not unlike we’re building today, although not as big. But the lack of demand killed it. We don’t really have a lack of demand in AI. So I think the dynamics will be different.”

Source: Google it. r/stocks won't let me post it.

https://www.euronews.com/2026/10/15/euro-slides-to-fresh-lows-against-us-dollar-and-british-pound-despite-ecb-rate-hikes

The euro slid this week to its weakest level against the US dollar since mid-May 2025 and the British pound since early June 2025, as an energy shock, France’s debt crisis and a resurgent US dollar outweigh two interest rate hikes by the European Central Bank.

The euro traded at roughly $1.111 on Wednesday, its weakest since mid-May 2025 and below the low it first hit earlier this month, before rebounding slightly to around $1.121 in early trading on Thursday.

South Korea's SK Hynix has introduced an "R&D Challenge Compensation Program" that provides upfront funding of up to 50% of early-stage R&D costs to its suppliers, with post-project settlement based on technical achievements and contributions even when development fails or does not lead to actual purchases. Unveiled at the "2026 Partners Day" event on the 28th, the program is part of a customized support framework that divides supplier growth cycles into four stages: technology development, testing and verification, mass production, and sales. The company will offer mass-production-grade process verification environments at its "Trinity Fab" within the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster, slated to open in 2027, and will double its supply payment support fund from 50 billion won (approximately $36.9 million) to 100 billion won (approximately $73.8 million). Approximately 100 suppliers attended the event marking the 25th anniversary of the Win-Win Growth Council, where SK Hynix also delivered a donation of 120 million won (approximately $89,000) to support young people preparing for independent living.

https://finance.biggo.com/news/0c9e9393-f24f-45d4-88fa-63de14aa6db4

Today is the anniversary of the 1987 crash. The Dow fell 22.6% in one session and the Fed says stocks got most of it back within 2 sessions.

The Nasdaq in 2000 was the opposite, it fell 78.4% over 31 months and didn't close above its March 2000 high until April 2015.

A 1 day crash is easy to hold through because it's over in days but a slow one gives you months to doubt yourself and sell. I hold a broad index and some cash so the slow one worries me more, especially with so much riding on AI spending paying off.

China’s gallium export restrictions could be a big deal for some semiconductor stocks.

China banned gallium exports to the US in Dec 2024, then suspended the ban until Nov 27, 2026. That deadline is coming up, adn there’s still no confirmation if China will extend it.

Stocks I’m watching: AXTI, AAOI, COHR, LITE, QRVO, MTSI, NXPI, MCHP, OUST and INVZ.

AXTI looks especially exposed because it manufactures semiconductor substrates in China and needs export permits. AAOI, COHR and LITE could also be affected through their optical semiconductor supply chains.

Another thing to watch is the Nov 3 midterm elections. If Republicans lose the House, it could change US trade policy discussions, but Trump would still control the executive branch.

I’m not saying these stocks will crash. Just that we have two important events in November, with alot of uncertainty around trade restrictions adn semiconductor supplies.

Anyone else watching AXTI or AAOI? Curious what you guys think happens if China doesn’t extend the suspension.

Hanwha Aerospace has begun final assembly of a reusable technology demonstrator in partnership with the Korea Aerospace Research Institute and local firms to develop South Korea's first reusable rockets. Standing 12.2 meters tall and powered by a single throttleable engine, the test vehicle is scheduled for a 2028 flight test where it will lift off vertically to an altitude of 500 meters and land back on its feet to verify critical thrust, attitude, and guidance controls.

This initiative mirrors the core reuse technologies of SpaceX's Falcon 9 with the ultimate goal of cutting launch costs and securing a competitive edge in the global space transportation market. Hanwha Aerospace plans to use data from the project to lay the groundwork for reusing the first stage of South Korea's next-generation launch vehicle by the mid-2030s and accelerate the growth of the private national space industry.

https://www.koreajoongangdaily.com/business/hanwhasnbspkorean-spacex-ambitions-grow-as-worknbspbegins-on-reusable-rocket-test-vehiclenbsp/12897399