US stocks rose yesterday on a chip stocks rebound as investors digested more tech earnings ahead of the midterm elections

China corporate bond yields soared 10 bps WTD in its worst selloff in two years after a local conglomerate missed payments and plunged into distress 

Dollar rose 0.3% by the most in one month 

AMD beat Q3 earnings and revenue estimates with data center sales nearly doubling YoY as it pivots to data center-first status (CNBC)

Supermicro issue a Q3 beat-and-raise on AI-fueled server demand (BBG)

Apollo missed Q3 estimates but posted record fee-related earnings driven by a record $114B in originations as opportunities arise in AI; AUM also hit a record $1.07T (WSJ)

Shopify beat Q3 earnings estimates but missed on revenue on poor subscription gross profit and gross merchandise volume, partly due to high compute costs (CNBC)

What we're watching this week:  

Full calendar here

There's still time to hedge your votes on the midterms. It's not like our states know how to count ballots in one night anyway

Get a $25 bonus with code LIT when you trade this market on the Polymarket app

Republicans got cooked (CNBC)

US has no immediate plan to strike Iran (FT)

US manufacturing activity rose on the strongest growth in five years (BBG)

Hedge funds sold every AI stock they bought since 2025 (BIC)

Major hedge funds mostly lose in 'nowhere to hide' October (BBG)

Activist Elliott warns of FOGO: Fear of Getting Obliterated in the market (WSJ)

Marvell's record deal hands Wall Street multiple M&A milestones (BBG)

Seventeen firms sold high grade bonds in pre-midterms rush (BBG) 

China halted IPOs in bid to boost struggling stock market (FT)

Hong Kong ECM boom slows with most abandoned IPOs since 2008 (BBG)

Election trading stagnates on prediction markets after 2024 boom (BBG)

Nvidia ordered data center clients to reduce China exposure (FT)

Demand for forward-deployed engineers is leading to $1.5M paychecks (WSJ)

OpenAI employees warned about operational security lapses for years (RT)

Polymarket wins industry group's approval to be futures broker (RT)

Former Weil partners lawyer up over firm's wind-down (FT)

Developers eye golf courses for data center projects (BBG)

Venezuela moves to unwind hate speech law that jailed thousands (BBG)

TWG Global, Mark Walter's financial holding company, explored a sale of $70B AUM insurer Delaware Life after TWG came under federal investigation

A consortium led by Todd Boehly's Eldridge Industries is preparing a ​securities swap to acquire sanctioned Russian oil major Lukoil's international assets at a potential $22B valuation

Dubai's Emaar Properties is considering fully buying out its $15B-listed to take over its listed construction arm Emaar Development

Icahn Enterprises-owned oil refiner CVR Energy agreed to buy two fuel-making plants and a related marketing from Marathon Petroleum for $4.2B, with commodities giant Trafigura purchasing $800M of CVR stock to help fund the deal

Brookfield and Qatar's SWF QIA agreed to invest $3.35B in a data center project with UK power generator Drax Group

Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com won EU approval for its $2.5B acquisition of German electronics retailer Ceconomy

XRG, the investment arm of Abu Dhabi's state oil giant ADNOC, will buy Shell's stake in an Australian LNG project for $1.45B

Restaurant operator Foodtastic launched a $700M hostile bid for Canadian franchisor MTY Food Group offering a 33% premium after two previous offers were rejected

EQT-owned satellite ground services platform SatPort Infrastructure acquired the ground stations unit of Speedcast for $300M

KSL Capital Partners is exploring a $100M sale of the Marram Montauk hotel

Indian telecom Jio Platforms held talks with Comcast and Charter Communications about ​licensing its wireless broadband technology in exchange for equity

Turkey's SWF TWF will buy a 35% stake in EV maker Togg from shareholders Vestel and Anadolu Group at a $900M valuation; TWF-backed Turkcell will separately buy another 11% from Anadolu

Defense startup Shield AI plans to raise more than $1B to fund M&A and production of its autonomous fighter jet 

Fal, an AI inference startup that hosts and runs AI video, image, and audio models, raised a $1.3B Series F at a $16B valuation led by Bessemer Venture Partners

Consumer AI model startup Hark raised a $700M Series A at a $6B valuation from Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm and others

Traversal, an AI-driven production reliability and incident troubleshooting startup, raised a $120M Series B at a $1B valuation led by Kleiner Perkins, Redpoint, and Khosla Ventures  

Corridian, a developer of ultra-large autonomous underwater vehicles, raised a $38M seed round with backing from Harpoon

Guava, a developer platform for building voice agents, raised a $12.5M seed round led by Acrew Capital

Journify, an ad signal infrastructure company, raised a $12M Series A at four times its previous valuation led by Al Mada Ventures 

LO:TECH, a UK crypto market maker and execution services provider, raised a $12M Series A led by MMC

Syncere, a home robotics platform provider, raised an $11M pre-seed round led by a16z Speedrun

e2e, an agent testing framework startup (formerly TesterArmy), raised an $8M seed round from CredoVentures, KAYA, Point Nine Capital, and others

$115B-listed CVS Health will split into two companies, separating its retail pharmacy chain from ​its insurance and pharmacy benefit unit

Oracle raised $9.9B in a share sale priced at an 11% discount

Kunlunxin, the AI chip unit of China's Baidu, may delay its $2B Hong Kong IPO to next year

Argentine energy companies Genneia and YPF Luz paused plans for US IPOs due to market turmoil

AI voice startup ElevenLabs may IPO in 2028

Mahanadi Coalfields, a unit of state-run Coal India, is seeking to raise $1B at a $10B valuation in an India IPO

Meta raised $15B in a dollar bond sale

Saudi SWF PIF raised $3B ​from ‌Italy's export credit agency

Morgan Stanley kicked off a $2.3B debt deal to help finance family office DFO Management and Sequence Holdings' $7.7B acquisition of Baldwin Insurance Group

UK PE firm Cinven is seeking $1.7B in bank debt to finance its $2.9B acquisition of women's specialty pharma company Theramex from Carlyle and PAI Partners

Banks pulled a $615M loan refinancing for Asterion Industrial Partners-backed European energy infrastructure firm Iqony amid market turmoil

Banks pulled a loan deal meant to finance Partners Group's purchase of French beauty firm Aroma-Zone

Sound Point Capital avoided being defrauded by iron ore trader Radiant World by snubbing a deal after Radiant World refused to let it verify invoices by talking to customers

Paraguay regulators seized control of digital lender Ueno Bank over solvency problems

Private markets investor StepStone raised $7.4B for its fifth PE secondaries fund

Indian investment firm Spark Capital raised $174M for its second late-stage PE fund

CitSec-backed group sued CFTC over single stock 'perps'

Binance hackers used fake interviews and social media profiles in $6.3B heist

North Korean hackers may take months to launder stolen Binance crypto

Bitcoin miners who pivoted to AI are facing even more volatility

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Bloomberg published an interesting piece on how China bets are finally paying off for Wall Street banks.

Even more interesting: quant pioneer D.E. Shaw is changing the way it does business, with some inspiration from late Jim Simons and his legendary hedge fund RenTech.