Today’s Market Recap: U.S. Stocks Rebound, Dow Jumps Over 1%, Micron Gains 1.87%, CoreWeave Rallies Nearly 6%

Tracking the Market Trend

TradingKey - On October 15, Eastern Time, U.S. September PPI data posted its largest monthly and annual gains since 2022, prompting investors to shift from AI tech stocks to defensive sectors, which drove U.S. stock markets higher.

Defensive sectors such as consumer and healthcare stocks led the gains, while some tech stocks also rebounded. CoreWeave (CRWV) turned positive, closing up 5.94% at $69.69.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.08% to 52,177.69; the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.08% to 26,713.03; and the S&P 500 increased 0.33% to 7,744.06.

Among memory stocks, Micron Technology (MU) rose 1.87%; Seagate Technology (STX) fell 3.19%, Western Digital (WDC) fell 2.10%, SK Hynix (SKHY) fell 0.98%, and SanDisk (SNDK) fell 0.61%.

Crude Oil: The WTI November contract rose 3.03% to $97.97 per barrel; the Brent December contract fell 0.13% to $105.92 per barrel. U.S. crude oil inventories plummeted by 8.56 million barrels, and combined with production halts due to the hurricane and the ship attack in the Middle East, the spread between the two benchmarks widened further.

Precious Metals: COMEX gold futures rose 2.06% to $4,192.50 per ounce; spot gold rose 1.56% to $4,169.33 per ounce. COMEX silver futures rose 3.09% to $57.605 per ounce; spot silver rose 3.30%. Safe-haven sentiment and a decline in the U.S. dollar jointly drove the rise in precious metals. Bitcoin briefly fell below the $80,000 mark.

Market Headline

U.S. PPI rose 6.3% year-over-year in September, hitting a more than four-year high. This far exceeded the expected 5.4% and marked the highest level since December 2022; month-over-month, it rose 1.3%, the largest single-month increase since March 2022, also far surpassing the expected 0.6%. Core PPI rose 5.0% year-over-year and 0.7% month-over-month, both exceeding expectations. The main driver was a 10.8% month-over-month surge in the energy PPI. On the same day, the New York Fed’s October manufacturing index rose 17.9 points to 25.5.

TSMC’s（TSM） third-quarter net profit surged 69%, setting a profit record for the sixth consecutive quarter. TSMC’s third-quarter net profit was NT$763.1 billion, up 68.7% year-over-year; Revenue reached NT$1.494 trillion, up 50.9% year-over-year, marking a record quarterly profit for the sixth consecutive quarter.

Mass production and shipments of the 2-nanometer process have begun, contributing approximately 8% of wafer sales in the third quarter. High-performance computing accounted for 68% of revenue, while revenue from North American customers accounted for 79%. The gross margin was 66.4%, down from 67.7% in the second quarter but still within the company’s guidance range.

CoreWeave’s probability of default exceeds 60 percent; Jensen Huang states that financing costs are declining. Its five-year CDS spread rose to 1,194.5 basis points at one point, hitting an intraday record high, corresponding to a cumulative probability of default exceeding 60 percent over the next five years. Speaking in Sweden, Jensen Huang stated that the company’s strength is growing daily, its cost of capital is actually declining, and NVIDIA does not need to provide a safety net. Following his remarks, CoreWeave’s stock reversed course from a 9.5% decline to close up 5.9%.

Anthropic reported third-quarter revenue of approximately $16.8 billion, with growth slowing compared to the previous period. According to media reports, Anthropic’s third-quarter revenue was approximately $16.8 billion, up from about $11.6 billion in the second quarter, representing a quarter-over-quarter increase of approximately 45% to 50%. The company also disclosed to potential investors that it achieved adjusted profitability in the third quarter and recorded positive cash flow.

However, Anthropic’s quarterly revenue growth has slowed compared to the rapid growth seen from the first to the second quarter. The market is now more focused on whether its revenue growth can cover the continuously increasing investment in computing power, as well as whether its future IPO valuation will align with its actual commercial progress.

Meta（META） released an open-source model with 816 billion parameters and partnered with Apple to run the large model on Macs. Named Muse Spark Open, the model has a total of 816 billion parameters and 42 billion activations, supports a 1 million-token context, and focuses on programming and agent tasks. Its weights have been made public for developers to deploy on their own. The more powerful Muse Wonder series remains closed-source. Meta has partnered with Apple to run the model on two Mac Studio computers equipped with M5 Ultra chips via the MLX framework.

J.P. Morgan（JPM） notes that the recent sharp pullback in memory chip stocks is creating a medium-term buying opportunity. South Korea’s third-quarter earnings season is set to begin the week of October 19, with the technology and financial sectors expected to be the key drivers of this earnings cycle. Memory stocks have fallen by approximately 6% and 15% over the past month and three months, respectively, while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose by about 10% and fell by about 4% during the same periods. This divergence is providing favorable risk-reward entry points for duration trades.

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