"Musk Says "SoftBank Is Defaulting On Turbine Orders"" (GEV)

Once again we see why the turbine manufacturers refused to invest big money into plant, property, and equipment.*

From ZeroHedge:

Last week's turmoil in hyperscaler and neocloud stocks suggests investors increasingly see Democrats' push to regulate data center buildouts as a possible precursor to broader moratoriums early next year. Democrats spent much of the midterm election cycle supporting nationwide construction pauses and tighter AI oversight, while Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's AI doom warnings reinforced that political narrative. 

By the end of the week, that uncertainty weighed heavily on AI stocks as unpleasant developments for bulls emerged. 

We reported Friday afternoon that Microsoft was winding down its agreement to rent AI cloud capacity from Oracle. A separate report Thursday said ING was seeking to sell roughly $500 million in data center loans, while The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI was discussing revisions to its 2027 capacity plans.

Friday morning also brought another ominous signal that expectations and forward estimates were about to be tampered down. Bloomberg reported that the pre-IPO valuations for Anthropic's big market debut next week had been lowered to between $1.2 trillion and $1.3 trillion, with a figure as low as $1.1 trillion. 

The biggest threat to the AI buildout, as we have outlined, is on the state level: 41% of planned data center development is concentrated in states and localities shifting toward Democratic control. 

That threat of tighter permitting requirements and construction moratoriums jeopardizes the buildout phase, as more unraveling may be nearing. 

Early Friday, Musk claimed on X that "SoftBank is defaulting on their turbine orders," adding to even more AI bubble concerns surrounding the Japanese conglomerate led by CEO Masayoshi Son. However, Musk provided no evidence of a default.

https://t.co/Ok0qtzvBos

— Katie Miller (@KatieMiller) November 6, 2026

SoftBank's planned Ohio data-center buildout includes 9.2 gigawatts of new natural gas-fired power generation. In May, an SB Energy spokesperson said SoftBank had reserved enough turbines from multiple suppliers, including GE Vernova....

[also here: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2118590598324318415] 

....MORE
*If interested see the outro from November 5's "Wind Finally Turned Profitable For GE Vernova And Now It's Being Branded As A Data Center Play (GEV)" 

Also:

March 26 - "SoftBank Obtains $40B Bridge Facility for Additional OpenAI Investment"

Of all the possible weak links in the daisy-chain, and there are a few, SoftBank's increasingly central role is the most concerning.

Mr. Son's history, going back to the time he briefly held the title of world's richest person, is leveraged beta. No great technological insight (largest investor in WeWork) no fancy risk mitigation, just leverage in all its forms and like Sam Insull, at every level of the organization.

Throw in the fact that OpenAI and their ChatGPT may not be the ultimate winner of this unprecedented build-out and there are reasons to be hyper-aware. Stay tuned. 

That said, this loan should be okay (barring a depression where it can't be re-financed, à la Insull) it's all the other borrowings and what Mr. Son will do in the next couple years, that could cause worldwide problems.

June 9 - "SoftBank’s Attempt to Get $6 Billion OpenAI Margin Loan Stalls"

Good. I'm not kidding when I say Mr. Son's penchant for leveraged beta could be a threat not just to the AI players but to the world economy. If the largest domino starts dropping it's hard to see it stopping short of a coordinated international bailout.

Keep an eye on 9984 - Tokyo Stock Exchange...

October 9 -"Masa Passes The Hat: SoftBank Seeks $100 Billion From The Gulf After Maxing Out Junk Bonds, Margin Loans And Japanese Retail"
Someone may have to do an intervention, or at minimum a welfare check, on Mr. Son.

And on Son in Ohio, August 17 -   "Nvidia Rows Back on $250 Billion OpenAI Pledge and the Stock Rises" (NVDA)

For some reason I keep thinking of this from January 2025:

Climateer Line Of The Day: Microsoft CEO Edition (MSFT; ORCL; ARM; ELON)

Comparing Stargate with financing for his own AI infrastructure buildout plans:

“Look, all I know is, I’m good for my $80 billion,” said Nadella, laughing.

And this from August 2026

"Why Microsoft’s boss is reading up on the 1873 financial crash"

Finally, as can be seen in the simplified flowchart from "Reformatting flow diagrams for explaining complex processes," it all boils down to money:

 

"The new Congress must fix the $40 trillion debt—and soon"

From Barron's November 6:

Voters have spoken, and Congress has flipped blue, to counter a Republican White House. Which side will get its way? Increasingly, neither, and not just because of gridlock. America’s debt will write more of the rules from here.

The amount owed recently eclipsed the size of the economy, you might have heard. That happened once before, during World War II, when the primary driver was temporary, and kind of a biggie: converting the world’s largest economy into a global war machine deployed across two oceans to help free humanity from fascism. We’ll top that peak soon, probably by the end of the decade, only now the money is spent mostly on autopilot old-age programs and compounding interest.

Interest almost single-handedly explains why massive and growing deficits, or amounts added to the debt each year, are the new normal. This year’s deficit is pegged at $2 trillion, or 6% of the economy, an unprecedented high during a peacetime economic expansion. The interest bill is likely to be $1.1 trillion, or more than half of the deficit. A decade from now, it will be $2.1 trillion, or 69% of the deficit, which will itself have risen to 7% of the economy. That projection comes from the Congressional Budget Office, and it is almost certainly too optimistic, because Treasury bond yields recently jumped above levels the CBO used in its math.

The unbothered fellow shown above doesn’t literally owe $40 trillion, we’re happy to report. For one thing, that’s gross debt. If we subtract amounts owed by one part of the government to another, debt held by the public is closer to $32 trillion, slightly ahead of gross domestic product. By 2050, when today’s youngest are out of college, debt will have swelled to 150% of GDP, the CBO reckons. Barron’s, using projections from the Census and Internal Revenue Service, estimates that by then, the amount owed per taxpaying household will total $1.3 million, or discounted back to today’s purchasing power, about $700,000. That will be like entering the workforce with a hefty mortgage, but not the house it bought.

Voters have heard similar warnings for more than 30 years, and the math grows ever worse while the consequences never seem to arrive. But look around. The 30-year mortgage rate has jumped a point in a year, to 7.2%, paralyzing buyers and sellers. It might be only the beginning. Inflation, recently 3.7%, hasn’t been below the Federal Reserve’s 2% target for more than five years. For the past two years, the Fed had been lowering its core federal-funds target rate, but in September it shifted to a quarter-point hike, to 4%. Torsten Sløk, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, recently calculated that the Fed would have to keep hiking all the way to 6.75% by the end of next year to bring inflation down to its target. Get ready for 10% mortgages, or else a lot more growth in the cost of living.

Watch out for wilder stock swings, too. Investors in recent decades have gotten used to speedy rescues from market downturns in the form of slashed interest rates and lavish government spending. But what if high inflation and a cranky bond market don’t allow for these interventions? Deutsche Bank macro strategist Henry Allen calls it the end of the safety net. “People should prepare for a world in which volatility of the kind we haven’t seen in many years is kind of normalized again,” he says.

Your reporter writes a debt scolding once or twice a decade. He has taken pains over the years to express equal disdain for both political parties, neither of which has wrapped itself in fiscal glory. If the Democratic takeover says anything about the nation’s budgetary mood, it might have little to do with Democrats. In what has somehow become a forgotten footnote to this election, a sitting president offered $5,000 checks as a perk if his party won, but voters went in a different direction. They probably didn’t take the offer seriously. Or maybe they’re just tired of debt-funded gimmicks.

Let’s turn now to possible paths from here. What does it mean to inflate the debt away, and is that feasible? Is a grand political bargain out of the question? What’s Japanification, and what role might bond vigilantes play? Could an artificial-intelligence growth miracle bring the debt back in line? Read on for thoughts on each of these, and how investors should prepare.

The ‘Inflate It Away’ Fantasy
In a recent Deutsche Bank survey that asked how the U.S. will ultimately deal with its debt, respondents overwhelmingly chose political cowardice. That is, they favored paths that don’t require Congress to act. The top prediction is that America will run inflation hot, which we’ll look at now. A close second was that it will muddle through indefinitely, which we’ll come to.

By 1946, America and its allies had prevailed in war, but U.S. debt was left at 106% of GDP—still the record, for a little while longer. The government then allowed most prices to soar, which flattered economic growth, and by 1960, debt was back to 60% of a much higher GDP. Easy peasy? Let’s dig deeper.

The Fed, which back then worked for the Treasury, had capped bond yields starting in 1942, just after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The short stuff paid 0.375%, and the long, 2.5%. Patriotic savers, flush from wartime rationing, had lined up for 10-year war bonds, while institutions bought 20- and 25-year paper. As soldiers returned to factories, inflation roared, hitting 8%, then 14%, then 8% over three years ended in 1948. Unrest boiled over. In 1946 alone, more than four million workers walked off their jobs during nearly 5,000 strikes. President Harry Truman at one point threatened to draft railroad workers into the military to force them back to work.

Inflation is a kitchen table issue, and an electoral one. The 1946 midterms were called the Beefsteak Election. To appease angry workers, Truman kept many wartime price caps in place, including for beef. Ranchers, rather than sell at losses, put their cattle out to pasture. Pork ran short, too. Big city butcher shops hung cardboard signs, “No Meat Today.” High-end restaurants paid dearly for black market cuts, while ordinary families ate macaroni and beans. Hospitals appealed for emergency meat allotments to feed the anemic, and at least two resorted to serving horse. Truman briefly considered sending the military to seize pasturing cattle. Weeks before the midterms, he lifted price controls on meat. Republicans nonetheless swept Truman’s Democrats from control in the House and Senate.

Caps on yields remained in place for years. Return on investment for those 10-year war bonds was, well, freedom from tyranny on one hand. But on the other hand, it was negative 20% to 30% after inflation.

Could the same playbook work today, minus maybe the missing beef? Unlikely. After WW II, military spending plummeted from about 40% of GDP to under 5%, but today, there’s no end in sight to government spending, because most of it is for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest. And let’s not get hung up on “waste, fraud, and abuse,” that half-century chestnut of American political rhetoric. There is squander in the spending, to be sure, much of it concentrated in Medicare and Medicaid. But the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office estimates all “improper payments,” including fraud and errors, at $175 billion to $235 billion a year. That amount should burn voters’ biscuits, but we’ll need to capture 10 times as much yearly savings just to keep from sinking deeper into the debt hole.

Last year, recall, Elon Musk raised his hand to slash government spending via a move-fast, break-things squad named for a parody crypto coin, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Musk started with a $2 trillion savings goal, but eventually lowered it to $150 billion. When DOGE closed in July, it claimed $215 billion in cuts, but auditors failed to verify anything remotely close. According to BAD-FAIL, or the Barron’s Analysis of DOGE Finding Absolutely Itty-Bitty Largess, it had no chance, because it took military spending and entitlements off the table to start, and targeted civilian discretionary agencies, which are less than 15% of spending, with brash firings of federal workers, who are less than 5% of spending. We’re all for government efficiency, but you simply can’t fix the math we’re talking about by storming the Department of Peanuts and canning everyone.

Back to the inflate-it-away fantasy. If deficits are 6% of the economy and rising, and you wish to rerun the post–WW II playbook, you need to run inflation significantly higher than 6%, which isn’t going to be popular. Then, you somehow need to convince bond investors that you’re not actually doing the thing that you’re definitely doing, or else they’ll send long yields soaring, while the Fed, which today no longer works for the Treasury and is legally obligated to fight inflation, jacks up short yields. And we’re not talking about war bonds anymore. The adjusted weighted duration on America’s debt today is just 4.5 years, according to Kent Smetters, director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model. We doubt you’d like the rates come refinancing time.

The Tech Miracle vs. the Grand Bargain
There is a budgeting model called the debt sustainability hypothesis, or the Blanchard free lunch, named for a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, who wrote a 2019 paper on the matter but today no longer likes the idea. So long as the average government borrowing cost is lower than the nominal economic growth rate, or r < g on the chalkboard, governments can watch their debt/GDP levels shrink without the unpleasant work of spending less than they take in. If you’ve ever heard that debt-fueled stimulus will pay for itself with higher growth and tax receipts, those notions are almost twin siblings, like Tweedledum and Tweedledummer....

....MUCH MORE 

There was a reason the outro from early  a.m. November 4's "Democrats won control of Congress. Their economic agenda is set to target healthcare, tariffs, and Trump's allies" was:

Also at Yahoo Finance:

Over the next decade, the U.S. Treasury will spend $20 trillion in interest on the national debt—$200 billion a month by 2036

"The Arctic vortex could break down by 21 November"

The models mentioned here, from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, are very accurate in forecasting Atlantic hurricanes, exhibiting what the modelers call "skill."

We'll see how they do up north.

From Polar Vortex Earth, November 7:

50 of 50 ECMWF ensemble forecasts turn the winds around the pole from westerly to easterly by 21 November. In 1991–2020 that happened by this date in 0 of 30 years.

• No major warming since the record began in 1959 has come before 28 November (1968 and 2025).
• The forecast stretches the vortex into an oval 1.9 times as long as it is wide around 16 November. That is more stretched than in 95% of 1991–2020 years on the date.

100% chance the winds reverse by 21 November
50 of 50 ECMWF forecasts. Normal for the date: 0% (0 of 30 years)

Updated 13:22 UTC, 7 Nov. ECMWF run of 7 Nov 00Z. 

....MUCH MORE, maps, discussion, graphs, amaze your friends 

If interested see also November 1 - "Europe's Natural Gas Prices Soar to Four-Year High as Winter Looms" 

Gasoline Price: "National Average Falls 12 Cents in One Week"

It's a mid-term miracle!

And this is only to yesterday.

From the American Automobile Association:

November 05,2026

WASHINGTON, DC (November 5, 2026) – The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline is down 12 cents from last week to $4.10. Gas prices have been going down for nearly two weeks, as crude oil has dipped back into the high $80 – low $90 per barrel range. But pump prices remain the highest they’ve ever been during this time of year. Before 2026, the national average had never gone above $4 per gallon during the month of November. Currently, the national average is more than one dollar higher than it was a year ago. 

Today’s National Average: $4.1003 

One Week Ago: $4.2258 

One Month Ago: $4.3653 

One Year Ago: $3.0790 

 

....MUCH MORE 

Diesel  is down to $6.2305 from $6.3204 the previous week

"'A blowout': US added 165,000 jobs in October, trouncing expectations"

From Yahoo Finance, November 6:

The US added 165,000 jobs in October, blowing past economists' expectations, as the labor market showed strength despite the Federal Reserve's recent rate hikes.

The unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1% amid a slight increase in labor force participation. September's underwhelming jobs report of 29,000 additions was also revised upward to 60,000 jobs.

"Consistent with prior, more partial indicators of the US labor market, the October Jobs Report came in very strong, across the board," economist Mohamed El-Erain posted on X.

 

Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, deemed the results "a blowout," in a post on X.

Economists surveyed by Bloomberg projected a gain of about 70,000 jobs in October and saw the unemployment rate holding steady.

Wage growth increased 0.4% from September, better than expectations for 0.3% month-over-month growth. Annual earnings rose 3.1%, beating expectations, but likely still lower than the current rate of inflation....

....MUCH MORE 

"Germans are unironically nostalgic for the golden days of 1950s debt forgiveness"

Using Bastiat's observation as our starting point:

“Government is the great fiction through which everybody 
endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.” 

—The State, Frédéric Bastiat, 1848 

You can bet that over the next five years, U.S. cities like Chicago and states like New Jersey or Connecticut will be clamoring for either debt restructuring/forgiveness or their preferred wealth transfer: a Federal bailout.  

From Quartz, July 21, 2022:

Couples in voluminous A-line skirts, high-waisted pants with suspenders and liberally applied hair gel swing each other across the stage, Elvis’s Blue Suede Shoes echoing throughout the square.

It feels as if Danny Zuko will roll up in his hot rod any minute, but this isn’t a scene out of Grease. The dancers are in the otherwise sleepy German city of Wettenberg, whose half-timbered houses and cobblestone streets accommodated an estimated 70,000 visitors last weekend. They came for the “Golden Oldies” festival, which celebrates “the lifestyle and luxury” of the 1950s and 1960s, often thought of as a golden age that followed West Germany’s wartime devastation.

Held on July 25 and 26, it’s the one weekend of the year when Wettenberg’s medieval castle is not the main attraction. Among the largest of its kind in Europe, the annual fete captures the zippy ambience of Germany’s “Wirtschaftswunder”—the “economic miracle” that rekindled hope for many. After enduring years of price controls and Nazi-imposed rationing, new disposable income of the period suddenly allowed Germans to purchase cars, ovens, washing machines—modern status symbols that grew fashionable as West Germany became one of the richest countries in the world.

“People had the feeling things were improving; that they could achieve something,” said Thomas Brunner, the mayor of Wettenberg and a key organizer of the event, told Quartz. “People found joy in life again.” 

 The festival’s nostalgia for this era of burgeoning wealth holds particular resonance in today’s tense economic milieu. While Germans go retro to commemorate their own mid 20th century emergence from economic desolation, a “miracle” buoyed by debt cancellation, Greeks are standing in line for cash allowances, food, clothing and medicine.

[n.b. things have revered in four years]

Starting in the late 1940s just following the end of World War II, the West German Wirtschaftswunder ran approximately until the early 1970s. “Germans like this time because things were looking up,” Brunner said. “The people had done it—they had managed to leave behind the damage and backwards step of the war.” 

Morale certainly helped, but the international community’s 1953 forgiveness of half of Germany’s foreign debt following World War II underpinned the nation’s revitalization.

This relief facilitated then-finance minister Ludwig Erhard’s orchestration of the German economic recovery. Debt forgiveness meant Germans could turn their attention to building up the country, fueling the economy with both hard work and spending....

....MUCH MORE 

Hop in your Straßenkreuzer:

 

1948 Buick Roadmaster Convertible - SOLD at JP Frazier 

And life could be a dream, sweetheart. 

Capital Markets: "US Jobs Report Competes with the Unsettled Equity Market to Drive the Greenback"

From Marc Chandler at Bannockburn Global Forex:

The US dollar is broadly stronger.  Against many G10 pairs, it is at its best level since Tuesday’s midterm elections.  Ahead of the US jobs report, the euro and sterling are holding on to small gains for the week. The Antipodean currencies and the Norwegian krona are off 1.5%-2.25% this week.

The sharp equity losses in recent days, reflecting, in part, questions over the AI meme, and the sharp drop in oil prices this week (December WTI is off 12.6%, even after yesterday’s 2.7% recovery and firmer prices today) are important drivers this week.  Ten-year yields in the G10 are off 2-14 bp this week, with nearly 14 bp decline in JGBs coming today. The 10-year Gilt yield eased the least—a little more than two basis points. A poor US jobs report can still roil the markets.  Ahead of the report, the Fed funds futures are discounting a little less than a 70% chance of a December Fed hike, which is the lower end of where it has been since early September....

....Data

•The focus is squarely on the US employment report. The median forecast in Bloomberg’s survey is for a 65k increase after 29k in September. The three-month moving average is 51k. The year-over-year pace of hourly earnings may dip...

 ....MUCH MORE

U.N. "FAO Food Price Index edges down in October, with commodity price indices easing except for sugar and vegetable oils"

From the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, November 6:

» The FAO Food Price Index (FFPI)* averaged 133.9 points in October 2026, down 1.6 points (1.2 percent) from its revised September level. Price indices for cereals, dairy and meat products decreased from the previous month, while the vegetable oil price index increased only marginally and the sugar price index rose markedly. Compared to a year earlier, the FFPI stood 7.5 points (5.9 percent) higher but remained 26.3 points (16.4 percent) below its March 2022 peak. 

» The FAO Cereal Price Index averaged 116.8 points in October, down 5.5 points (4.5 percent) from September and 13.1 points (12.6 percent) below its October 2025 level. World wheat prices declined following four consecutive monthly increases, largely reflecting subdued international demand and an improving production outlook, particularly in Argentina. Expectations of easing constraints on Black Sea export flows added to the downward pressure on prices, although continued disruptions to Black Sea logistics limited the decline. International maize quotations also eased after reaching a three-year high in September, weighed down by harvest-related pressure in the United States of America, expectations of ample supplies in major exporting countries in South America, and renewed prospects for an easing of tensions in the Black Sea region. Among other coarse grains, barley and sorghum quotations declined in tandem with wheat and maize, with favourable crop prospects in Australia exerting further downward pressure on barley prices. By contrast, the FAO All Rice Price Index increased by 1.6 percent in October 2026, as harvest delays in some rice exporting countries added to the upward price pressure exerted by adverse weather conditions and rising costs.

» The FAO Vegetable Oil Price Index averaged 199.2 points in October, up slightly by 0.6 points (0.3 percent) from September. The marginal rise in the index was mainly driven by higher soybean and sunflower oil quotations, which more than offset lower rapeseed oil prices, while palm oil prices remained virtually unchanged. World soybean oil quotations rose to their highest levels since late 2022, supported by continued firm demand from the biofuel sector and seasonally declining supplies from South America, while sunflower oil quotations rebounded from multi-month lows, underpinned by persistently tight export availabilities from the Black Sea region amid ongoing logistical disruptions. Meanwhile, international palm oil prices fluctuated only slightly in October but remained well above their year-earlier levels, supported by firm global import demand, amid improved price competitiveness relative to other vegetable oils, and expectations for lower production in the 2026/27 season across major Southeast Asian producing countries in. By contrast, global rapeseed oil prices declined amid seasonally increasing supplies and lower-than-expected demand for biodiesel feedstocks, particularly in the European Union.

» The FAO Meat Price Index averaged 125.5 points in October, down 1.6 points (1.2 percent) from September, while remaining slightly above its year-earlier level. Quotations declined for pig, ovine and bovine meat, while poultry meat prices remained broadly stable. Pig meat prices decreased, led by lower quotations in the European Union, where abundant supplies and limited export opportunities continued to weigh on the market amid subdued international demand. Ovine meat prices retreated further from record highs, as larger seasonal supplies in Australia exerted downward pressure, reinforced by currency movements. Nevertheless, overall export availability remained tight, keeping quotations well above year-earlier levels. Bovine meat prices eased slightly, reflecting lower Australian quotations amid intensified competition in global markets, although reduced market offerings, as widespread rainfall encouraged cattle retention, provided some support to prices. Meanwhile, Brazilian quotations remained broadly stable, as tighter export availabilities and stronger demand from the United States of America offset weaker buying interest from China. Poultry meat prices were little changed, with steady international demand balancing ample global supplies. In Brazil, export quotations were largely unchanged despite import restrictions imposed by some trading partners following Newcastle disease outbreaks first detected in the state of Santa Catarina on 18 October, with regionalization arrangements with major trading partners helping to limit trade disruptions.

» The FAO Dairy Price Index averaged 117.8 points in October, down 1.3 points (1.1 percent) from September, following the marginal decline recorded in the previous month. The index stood 16.9 percent below its year-earlier level, with skim milk powder (SMP) quotations 45.8 percent higher than in October 2025, butter and cheese prices 31.1 and 29.3 percent lower, respectively, and whole milk powder (WMP) prices broadly unchanged. The October decrease was driven by declines in international butter and cheese quotations, which more than offset further increases in milk powder prices. Butter and cheese markets weakened amid ample supplies and subdued buying interest, particularly in the European Union, where elevated butter stocks and ample cheese supplies continued to weigh on prices despite signs of slowing growth in milk production. Competitive export supplies from the United States of America exerted additional downward pressure on prices. By contrast, SMP prices rose markedly across major exporting regions, supported by sustained import demand and limited supplies available for prompt delivery. In the United States of America, strong demand for nonfat dry milk, coupled with competition for milk solids from higher-value dairy protein products, tightened powder availability despite overall ample milk supplies. WMP quotations edged higher, as firmer prices in Oceania more than offset a marginal price decline in Europe....

....MUCH MORE 

"Nasdaq sell-off batters Asian chip stocks as SK Hynix, Samsung, Softbank, TSMC tumble"

[second] worst Guy Fawkes day ever. 

From CNBC, November 5:

Asian technology stocks tumbled Friday, tracking a sharp sell-off on Wall Street overnight that sent the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite into correction territory. 

Asian technology stocks tumbled Friday, tracking a sharp sell-off on Wall Street overnight that sent the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite into correction territory as renewed concerns over artificial intelligence spending rattled investor sentiment.

South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix plunged over 8%, while Samsung Electronics shed 7%. LG Innotek and LG Display fell 10% and 7.7%, respectively, as selling pressure spread across the country’s technology sector.

The rout came as investors worried that Democrats’ sweeping victory in the U.S. midterm elections could lead to tighter restrictions on data-center development, potentially slowing demand for AI chips and related infrastructure.

In Japan, semiconductor-related stocks also fell, with chip-testing equipment maker Advantest plunging 12.2%, while Tokyo Electron slid 7.3%. Technology investment giant SoftBank Group tumbled 11.6%.

Shares of memory chipmaker Kioxia Holdings fell nearly 10%, while Renesas Electronics declined 7.5%.

In Taiwan, semiconductor stocks also came under heavy selling pressure, with contract chipmaker TSMC sliding 9.6%. Electronics manufacturers Hon Hai Precision Industry, also known as Foxconn, and Foxconn Technology fell 9.4% and 9.1%, respectively, as the regional technology rout deepened....

....MORE

CNBC front page 

"Dow Jones Futures Fall; Nasdaq Dives 5.5%, Nvidia, Sandisk, CoreWeave, SpaceX Plunge, But Sell-Off Spreads Beyond AI"

From Investor's Business Daily, November 5:

• Updated 07:19 PM ET 11/05/2026

Dow Jones futures fell overnight, while S&P 500 futures were little changed and Nasdaq futures rose. Atlassian, Cloudflare, Guardant Health and 10X Genomics were among many big earnings moves overnight. The October jobs report is on tap.

The stock market saw sharp, broad losses in a Day 2 election reaction. The Nasdaq plunged below its 200-day line, the S&P 500 tumbled from key resistance, and the Dow Jones index broke below key levels. A chip and AI meltdown hit Sandisk (SNDK), CoreWeave (CRWV), Nvidia (NVDA) and SpaceX (SPCX), but even stronger areas of the market stumbled.

Palomar Holdings (PLMR), Veeva Software (VEEV), CSX (CSX), Apple (AAPL) and ELF Beauty (ELF) are in or near buy zones. But this is a time for investors to be cautious, with minimal exposure.

The market's fear gauge surged, which could be a positive signal but doesn't have to be.

Veeva stock is on the IBD 50. Palomar was Thursday's IBD Stock Of The Day. The video embedded in the article reviews Thursday's ugly market action and analyzes CSX, Veeva Software and ELF stock.

Dow Jones Futures Today 
Dow Jones futures fell 0.2% vs. fair value. S&P 500 futures were little changed, Nasdaq-100 futures rose 0.4%. Futures are moving quickly, continuing the regular session's volatility.

Crude oil prices rose slightly.

The Labor Department will release the October jobs report at 8:30 a.m. ET, with economists expecting nonfarm payrolls to rise by just 62,000 after September's 29,000. That should be enough to keep the jobless rate at 4.2%. Markets still see a December rate hike as likely.

Remember that overnight action in Dow futures and elsewhere doesn't necessarily translate into actual trading in the next regular stock market session.

Earnings

FIGS (FIGS), Cloudflare (NET), Airbnb (ABNB), Atlassian (TEAM) and Affirm (AFRM) reported late Thursday, along with Guardant Health (GH), Natera (NTRA), JFrog (FROG), Halozyme Therapeutics (HALO), Five9 (FIVN), 10X Genomics (TXG) and Dropbox (DBX).

Cloudflare and Airbnb jumped, with the latter signaling a move back above a buy point. Dropbox rose modestly within a base.

But Atlassian, Affirm, Guardant Health, Natera, Five9 and 10X Genomics sold off late. Most were already heavily damaged, but FIVN had been holding up. Halozyme and FIGS tumbled after pulling back solidly from near highs in Thursday's session.

Stock Market Action 
The stock market had a broad sell-off that spread well beyond the AI epicenter.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average sold off 3.5% in Thursday's stock market trading, knifing back below the 50-day after Wednesday's 3% surge. The S&P 500 index plunged 4.35% to a three-month low, retreating from the 50-day line to near the 200-day. The Nasdaq composite dived 5.5%, decisively breaking the 200-day line and almost undercutting its late-July lows. The small-cap Russell 2000 plummeted 4.45%, putting it back below its 50-day and 200-day lines.

The Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP) tumbled 2.9% to its 21-day line after hitting a record high soon after the open.

The chip and AI sell-off turned into a full-blown meltdown Thursday as fears mounted that Democrats' sweeping election wins will end up delaying or blocking many more data centers. Sandisk stock dived 22.3%, Bloom Energy (BE) shed 16.4%, CoreWeave lost 9.8% and Nvidia dropped 9.3%. SpaceX tumbled 9.05% to 123.62, below its $135 IPO price for the first time in months. Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM), with a modest 21-day average true range of 3.3%, plunged 10.8% on Thursday.

Meanwhile, software names sold off. But so did retail, housing, financial and travel stocks. Even superdefensive insurance and staples reversed lower....

....MUCH MORE

Other than that Mrs. Lincoln.... 

Inflection Point: Package Delivery By Drone Is Now Totally Normal

From the Wall Street Journal, November 5:

Zipline Reaches $21.5 Billion Valuation as Drone Delivery Gains Traction
Startup expands partnership with Walmart to launch 300 additional sites

Zipline notched $1.5 billion in fresh funding, more than doubling the drone startup’s valuation from earlier this year to $21.5 billion.

Chief Executive Keller Cliffton, who co-founded Zipline in 2014, said the company’s skyrocketing valuation is a sign that autonomous delivery has finally gained wider acceptance among both investors and commercial partners.

Cliffton likens it to Waymo’s rapid rise in San Francisco. Drones similarly once felt like science fiction, and are now increasingly seen as the backbone of how cities will function, he said.

“It’s an inflection point,” Cliffton said in an interview. “It sort of happened overnight, and suddenly it’s totally normal.”

Zipline got its start delivering blood and medical supplies in Africa, a part of the business that the company says helps save more than 14,000 lives a year, and which is now growing faster than ever, according to Cliffton.

A newer piece of Zipline’s business, its commercial operations in the U.S., has also taken off. Up until just a few months ago, the company was targeting an eventual increase to one million drone deliveries a day, but now it’s seeing interest from three or four customers who each want to buy that kind of volume, Cliffton said.

“I think people have suddenly realized that teleportation-level logistics, where you can get whatever you need in 10 to 15 minutes, is a really big deal,” Cliffton said.

Among the recent customers are Uber Technologies, which signed a deal with Zipline in August to facilitate drone deliveries for takeout, grocery and retail orders on its Uber Eats platform.

And on Thursday, Walmart said it is expanding its existing partnership with Zipline, with the companies working together to launch 300 additional sites as part of a national multi-year agreement.

Zipline, which had a $7.85 billion valuation earlier this year, said it will use its new capital to keep up with the surging demand. It plans to expand its U.S. manufacturing facilities and ramp up hiring as it looks to build a drone-delivery network that spans nationwide. The company currently operates in three U.S. states—Texas, Arkansas and Ohio—with plans to soon launch in Arizona.

As it scales up, the South San Francisco, Calif., company will also continue to focus on upgrading its technology, Cliffton said.

Zipline recently rolled out new capabilities designed for quieter flying. It is also been working to allow its drones to fly higher, and carry heavier orders over longer distances.

“Zipline is an engineering company at its heart,” Cliffton said. “We focus on improving every single part of the service.”

Other players have also made headway in commercial drone delivery. Alphabet’s Wing unit similarly works with a number of restaurant, retail and healthcare partners, and delivery giant DoorDash is developing its own drones, along with related ground infrastructure and digital systems. Amazon also has its own in-house drone division offering delivery in select markets in the U.S.

....MUCH MORE 

Huh, "...teleportation-level logistics" 

Wind Finally Turned Profitable For GE Vernova And Now It's Being Branded As A Data Center Play (GEV)

Actually it is, sort of. As we saw yesterday, around twenty percent of their business is data centers. 

From the earnings call transcript, October 28:

Electrification also posted strong growth, while wind turned profitable in the quarter despite a softer U.S. market

***

Wind guidance was revised to reflect a smaller decline in organic revenue, now expected to be down mid-single digits rather than low double digits. 

*** 

Analysts asked about the wind business as well, and management said it is pleased with the return to profitability but still sees strategic questions ahead for 2027 and beyond. 

***

Wind turned profitable on strong services improvement, and we continue improving execution in offshore as our backlog to complete continues to come down. Across all three businesses and corporate, we have investments in automation and AI with strong use cases that will expand margins over the medium term, but in 3Q in isolation remain a net expense. Point being, we are early in our margin expansion acceleration. 

....MUCH MORE 

It's green, green like Gumby dammit. Jeff Immelt, Al Gore, Ocasio-Cortez, Green New Deal, etc.

And as noted exiting another of our three GE Vernova posts that day: 

GEV has been consciously throttling turbine manufacturing capacity and thus uptake of new orders vs working-down the approaching-$200 billion backlog.

The reason for this is that the industry has been burned, burned big, twice in the last quarter-century by adding capacity that ended up going idle a few years after completion.

GE Vernova could have spent $40 or $50 billion on new plant property and equipment two years ago, with Hitachi and Siemens Energy spending another $10 billion apiece but long memories pointed toward increasing profit margins rather than increasing volume.

Another constraint is a national labor force ill-equipped to learn, much less perform, cutting edge manufacturing. It's the same reason Ford is offering skilled mechanics $150K to start and has thousands of openings unfilled, the workers with the brains and the talents are already employed.

So what's next for GE Vernova? 

We'll probably be hearing a lot more about their transformer and fuel cell and nuclear businesses as the turbine business continues to kick off increasing amounts of cash.

And who knows, maybe wind will get subsidized again, what with the new congress and all. 

Earlier today:

• Earnings: GE Vernova Beats Top And Bottom, Raises; Stock Higher Premarket (GEV)
• GE Vernova Earnings Call Transcript, October 28, 2026 (GEV)

But the market doesn't care. As has been said on Wall Street forever "when they raid the whorehouse they take the good girls with the bad. The stock is changing hands at $769.06 down another $63.77 (−7.66%). It has been a brutal week/month/half year:

TradingView 

Today's low was $750.00 on the screws which may or may not have some quasi-mystical meaning.

They're Celebrating Kristallnacht in Philadelphia This Weekend

Party like it's 1938. 

From City&State Pennsylvania, November 3:

‘These Zionist establishments must go!’ Organizers of upcoming Philly ‘Boycott Ride’ target Jewish-owned eateries
A coalition of pro-Palestinian activists plans to intimidate Jewish-owned businesses on the eve of the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi night of terror that destroyed thousands of Jewish homes and businesses.

As a former two-term Philadelphia City Councilmember and one of the city’s most prominent real estate developers, Allan Domb has been a fixture in Philadelphia’s civic and commercial life for decades.

So he was “surprised,” he told City & State on Tuesday, to discover that one of his businesses – Schlesinger’s, a Center City Jewish deli – had been singled out for harassment by an anti-Israeli and antisemitic movement whose purported aim, according to a now-deleted Instagram post, is to “show these zio business owners that we see them for the disgusting humans they are.”

Schlesinger’s is one of a half-dozen restaurants in Philadelphia’s Center City targeted by this Sunday’s pro-Palestinian bike ride apparently called “Boycott Ride” in Rittenhouse Square, which aims to oust Jewish- and Israeli-owned businesses from the city. The others targeted by the rally are Huda Burger; Mac Mart; and Goldie’s, K’far Café and Dizengoff, all of which feature the Israeli cuisine of their acclaimed chef-restaurateur, Michael Solomonov.

Aside from Solomonov, all the other businesses are owned by American Jews, a distinction not evident in the rally flyer, which – in language reminiscent of Nazi propaganda against German Jewish businesses like “Kauf nicht bei Juden!” (“Don’t buy from Jews!”), declares: “No business for Zionists! These Zionist establishments must go! Not in our city!”

Jewish media initially reported that flyers had been circulated by the group Philly Writers Against the War on Gaza, but it appears that the main organizer is Philly Bike On Your Left, an activist group, with Philly Solidarity Calendar and Boycott CookNSolo listed on the Instagram announcement as “collaborators.” The latter group is devoted to organizing against CookNSolo, the Philadelphia restaurant group behind Solomonov’s establishments. None of the organizations listed as being “collaborators” responded to requests for comment.

The date of the action, Nov. 8, is a suggestive choice: It is the eve of the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, a sweeping orgy of state-sponsored anti-Jewish violence across Nazi Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland (part of modern-day Czechia) on Nov. 9-10, 1938, when more than 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed, along with thousands more homes and synagogues, and 30,000 Jewish men were deported to concentration camps....

....MUCH MORE  

I believe the term they are looking for is Judenfrei.

Recession Incoming

We saw how this played out in 2008.

From Fortune, October 16 i.e. pre-midterms:

‘He can’t run again’: MAGA merch sellers are closing shop and cutting prices. One sold $63 million but now she’s closed three stores 

Richard Kligman didn’t set out to sell President Donald Trump and “Make America Great Again” merch. But Kligman spotted a business opportunity in 2016, when customers began asking for MAGA hats and flags at the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina kite shop he ran with his brother. The duo opened their Trump Super Store in the empty storefront next door in 2018 to keep up with the demand. 

“You’d have thought I was selling crack,” Kligman jokingly told Fortune. But now he wants out. 

“You have to read the writing on the wall that as we go into ‘27, it’s definitely going to fall off, and I’d like to be out of it as much as I could be by the end of ‘27,” he said. 

Sales were “going gangbusters,” Kligman said, between the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, and the brothers were putting in seven days a week just to keep up with demand from both locals and visitors from around the country. 

But now, Kligman said sales of Trump-branded merch have since fallen 39% from their 2024 levels. 

“A lot of the Trump merchandise stores across the country are closing because they see that things are going to change a bit, and the demand is not what it once was,” Kligman said. “It’s absolutely gone down, but it had to because he can’t run again.”....

....MUCH MORE (the effects go back through the supply chain) 

And from America's Finest News Source, September 11, 2008 (remember September 2008? No good): 

The sudden drop in demand for "Buck Fush" T-shirts and "Hail to the Chimp" posters could leave millions unemployed. 

 

HT: Harvard's Professor Greg Mankiw

Capital Markets: "BOE Initiates Tightening Cycle with Quarter-Point Hike"

From Marc to Market:

In the initial reaction to the US election results, the dollar and US equities were sold.  The market talk was about the implications for the AI build-out.  The AI meme questioned and the Philadelphia Stock Exchange’s Semiconductor Index (SOX) fell by 3.1%, though the Nasdaq Composite rallied 1.4%.  However, in North America yesterday, the focus shifted a bit. Another implication of the shifting US political landscape was the war in Iran. December WTI dropped by 8.3% yesterday, the largest single day decline since the war began. This helped drive rates lower. 

The dollar fell again in Asia Pacific trading today but is mixed now.  As the North American session gets underway, the dollar is a little firmer against most European currencies, except the Norwegian krone and is slightly softer against the dollar-bloc currencies and Japanese yen.  As widely expected, the Bank of England began its tightening cycle with a quarter-point hike (to 4%), while Norway’s Norges Bank stood pat. Its deposit rate is 4.5%....

....MUCH MORE  

BigLaw (Freshfields) On What To Expect From A Democratic Congress

Although London-based, Freshfields seems to be everywhere. 2700 attorneys.

This piece was published before the election but shows some interesting insight into what's what.

October 13
Tea on the Hill: Navigating the Coming Congressional Currents 

As the midterms approach, congressional Democrats are already deciding where they will look first. If they win the House in November, and they are planning as though they will, the next Congress will open with an oversight agenda that reaches beyond the administration to the companies whose conduct illustrates its policies. Those companies will come from across the economy. 

This is the first in a series on what companies should expect from congressional investigations in 2027. Later installments will provide a sector-by-sector breakdown of the key issues likely to draw scrutiny, the points of exposure, and the strategic considerations unique to each industry. We begin with the investigative playbook itself: the strategy, the mechanics, and the decisions companies need to be making right now. 

A New Investigative Playbook

Democrats have been explicit about their strategy. Rather than solely focusing on the Trump Administration, they intend to use private companies as a lens on administration policies and a platform for their message on affordability, competition, and consumer protection. A number of industries can expect to be under the congressional microscope in the coming year, and we will work through each of them here.   

The timeline is aggressive. Democrats are targeting public hearings as early as spring 2027, and they are prepared to move quickly to subpoenas and contempt votes against companies they view as slow to cooperate. That threat is more credible than in past cycles. The Senate HELP Committee’s bipartisan vote to hold Steward Health Care’s CEO in civil and criminal contempt showed that contempt against a private-sector executive can draw support from both parties. Any criminal referral will still need the Trump Justice Department to act on it. That is less of a safeguard than it appears, because much of Congress’s leverage lies in the process itself, including the vote, the public record, and the reputational cost. Further, House Democrats are already coordinating with state attorneys general on parallel investigations, in a more explicit and broader alignment than in any prior cycle. Companies should assume that what they produce to Congress may reach state enforcers and prepare productions with that audience in mind....

....MORE

"OpenAI pledges to pay for data center power after election highlights AI concerns"

Well yeah. 
Now start paying surrounding communities.

From CNBC, November 5:

• OpenAI published a policy blueprint and a series of commitments that it pledged to apply to company-owned and -operated data centers in the future.
• The company said it will solicit community input around the projects, publish construction plans and protect ratepayers.
• Voters issued a stinging rebuke of data centers in the midterms after opposition to the facilities mounted over the summer. 

OpenAI reaffirmed its promise to pay the full cost of powering data centers as part of a series of commitments the company published Thursday, two days after voters at the polls roundly rejected the rapid expansion of AI.

The artificial intelligence company said in its commitments that for data centers it owns and operates, it will solicit community input, publish construction plans and stay away from use of non-disclosure agreements with public officials. Additionally, in a policy blueprint, OpenAI encouraged policymakers to enact similar commitments as laws.

“What we’re doing with this blueprint is really laying out the best lessons that we have learned and committing to applying them as they go forward,” OpenAI Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane told reporters during a Wednesday briefing. “This will help ensure that there is a very high floor in terms of how people move forward.”

On Tuesday, Americans issued a stinging rebuke of data centers at the polls. Out of 41 local ballot measures across 10 states, voters backed restrictions or rejected pro-development measures for all but one, according to an analysis by Ballotpedia and additional results gathered by CNBC on Wednesday.

Opposition to AI data centers mounted swiftly over the summer across both sides of the political aisle. Consumers grappling with inflation, rising grocery prices and stubbornly high prices at the pump grew worried that the facilities could exacerbate environmental harms, raise utility bills and contribute to job loss. For many, they became a physical manifestation of the widespread antipathy and anxiety around AI.

AI companies like OpenAI depend on AI data centers to serve customers and develop new models, and they’re seeking to build out as rapidly as possible to meet demand. In February, OpenAI told investors that it’s targeting $600 billion in total compute spend by 2030, and the company has since announced massive data center projects in Georgia and Ohio....

....MUCH MORE 

"‘We are a threat to Putin’: the small Norwegian news outlet with half its staff on Russia’s wanted list"

From The Guardian, November 4:

Exiled journalists at the Barents Observer face growing intimidation as Moscow seeks to control media beyond its borders 

The official newspaper of the Russian government is an unlikely source of recognition for a European news outlet critical of Vladimir Putin and providing sanctuary to exiled Russian journalists. But in May, two days after Russia tested its new intercontinental ballistic missile system nicknamed “Satan II” by Nato, an article in Rossiyskaya Gazeta prompted celebrations in a remote newsroom in the Arctic.

The story about how “leading global media” reacted to the Sarmat missile test referred to just a handful of outlets including the BBC, Reuters, the Associated Press and France 24. But among them was the Barents Observer, a small, journalist-owned online newspaper publishing in English and Russian about northern Russia and the Euro-Arctic region from a modest office in the north-eastern Norwegian town of Kirkenes.

It was especially surprising given that the publication had been declared an “undesirable organisation” by the office of Russia’s prosecutor general, and half of its staff journalists are on Russia’s wanted list.

Its editor, Thomas Nilsen, said: “We were listed among what the Russian government newspaper itself called ‘leading global media’. That was a very good day at the Barents Observer, because it means we had reached into the inner circle of the Kremlin.”

Last week the Norwegian prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, and the Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, held a call with Putin, marking a rare moment of contact between the Russian president and European leaders. Afterwards, Støre said there were “big differences in views” with Putin.

This certainly applies when it comes to press freedom. A few days later, the Nobel prize-winning independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta was forced to close, citing intolerable pressure from authorities.

A short drive from the Norway-Russia border and the only remaining legal land border crossing from Russia into the European Schengen free travel area, Kirkenes is a place where rising tensions with Moscow are felt acutely. But since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine the town has also become a refuge for Russians who have found themselves targeted by Putin’s regime – some of whom are journalists who have been hired by the Barents Observer....

....MUCH MORE 

We've been linking to the Barents Observer for at least a decade and have found them to be accurate in their reporting. Among many others, this story-in-many-parts was retold in September 2019's "Russia's Spy Whales Now Under Tighter Security":

....Of all the stories that came out after the fishermen saw the whale-wearing-a-harness  and realized it seemed pretty at-ease around people was this from one of the whale watchers who went out to look at the Beluga. First the background from the above mentioned May Barents Observer story:

....The beluga whale wearing a harness with mounts for a GoPro camera that first was spotted by local fishermen on Norway’s Barents Sea coast in late April is still swimming around in the harbor of Hammerfest.

Making big headlines in Norway and around the globe, the locals name him ‘Whaledimir’ (Hvaldimir in Norwegian) after national broadcaster NRK made a poll asking their audience to name the animal. Today the beluga is stripped free from the harness, but is refusing to leave his new life of freedom in Norway. Experts say the whale will likely not survive without being fed by humans....

To which we added:

Hvaldimir? What kind of name is Hvaldimir?
Whaley McWhaleface should have been a lock.

There is some question whether this Beluga returning a woman's dropped phone is Hvaldimar or just some rando phone retrieving cetacean:



Here's the story and video of the retrieval.

Incredible Footage Shows Whale Retrieve Phone Woman Dropped In The Ocean

Vice-President Vance: "End the War, Change our relationship to Israel"

From the Veep's Xitter feed, November 4:

One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up. So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us." Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026. There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true. But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone. Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were: 1) End the war 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation 3) Put America First 4) Change our relationship to Israel Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.) In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you. The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night. If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there. I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.

— JD Vance (@JDVance) November 4, 2026

...MUCH MORE

Continues

....Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:

1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel

Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results.... 

This follows on yesterday's:

"GLOBAL MARKETS-Stocks erase losses, oil tumbles after Trump says US will end $4 billion funding to Israel"