Called $NVDA bullish on Oct 27, 2023: $NVDA rose 133% in 5 months.
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Founder of Niles Investment Management, Tech Nerd, Bad Tennis Player, Proud Dad. Posts are for information purposes only & never investment advice.
accuracy score 53.9 on AAPL over 57 AAPL calls · 950 days of data · rank 15 of 21 AAPL analysts (top 71.4%) · v20r-multi-sparsepen-strong-ss12m-20261012, computed Nov 11, 2026 · Methodology →
Cite asCryptoQuant has tracked 57 directional calls on AAPL by @DanielTNiles on X since Jan 2018: ranked #15 of 21 analysts scored on AAPL by accuracy (as of Nov 11, 2026).
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Called $NVDA bullish on Oct 27, 2023: $NVDA rose 133% in 5 months.
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Last wk, earnings had elements of all the AI issues I feared in my preview. $GOOGL – AI disintermediation fear for search and big FCF miss. $MSFT – neocloud partner pushing out capacity and 1st new fundraising bonds since 2017. $AMZN – AI growth miss in AWS and FCF miss. Tech took a beating last week with Nasdaq -2.0% and Mag7 -2.4% but with S&P down only 0.6%. However, the nine non-tech related sub sectors (out of the eleven total) were strong and up 1.0-3.1%. As a result, the equal weighted S&P was up 0.8%. The above three names all declined last week with Google down 12.6%, Amazon -3.1% and Microsoft -0.5%. The historic 28.6% stock decline by $INTC on Friday (-24.4% for the week) did not help. This helped drive the SOX Index down 7.2% on Friday though the weekly decline was only 0.8%. With all the hyperscalers now having reported, here are my current thoughts: 1) Microsoft has committed to staying FCF positive (with $18.6B in FCF in CQ3) and is the only name in this list that has committed to do so. M365 is likely to become the default option for enterprises that want AI in a safe environment through use of Co-Pilot. 2) Meta is using AI to improve the efficiency of their business as seen in their ad revenues compared to Google. Also Muse has been a hit with consumers for Agentic AI while they are appealing to enterprises with their strong open-weight models. An 18x CY27 PE for 28% revenue growth is appealing. Their major blemish is the future negative FCF expected with a $2.1B burn in Q3 driving them to raise ~$95B in equity financing following earnings results. S&P Global Ratings on cash flow concerns and AI spending revised their credit rating today from AA- stable to AA- negative. 3) Amazon despite missing buyside AWS expectations of ~42% y/y growth with 39% reported (official sellside consensus of 38%) expects 40% revenue growth for AWS in CY27 and CY28 despite being the largest public cloud vendor. Also their LTM FCF burn of $42.4B in Q3 vs $7.6B in June helped lead to a $80B supplier financing arrangement facility post-earnings. Also physical AI should benefit their e-commerce business. Both e-commerce and AWS were guided to be $1 trillion revenue businesses within the next 5-10 years. 4) Google’s new LLM model is back at the frontier with a low cost per token. However this miss in search revenues for the 2nd quarter in a row and first miss in both total revenues and EPS for the first time since late 2022 raises AI disintermediation fears. FCF burn of $9.1B was also more than expectations. But total search queries are at the highest levels in five years. As a result, as ad coverage and loads increase on their AI queries, these fears should pass much like in late 2025. Ultimately, I believe Google will be a winner in consumer AI through their distribution through Android phones. As for Intel, I did not see this coming. On October 20th, $SMCI (purely enterprise related revenues) pre-announced 27% revenue upside along with a raise to gross margins guidance to 12-12.5% from 10.4%-10.8% for their CQ3. I am not a fan of SuperMicro to be clear. For the processor vendors, I thought upside in server revenues due to Agentic AI would offset the downside in their PC business due to memory related price increases lowering demand. $AMD, which is gaining share, reports earnings on Tuesday. This will help investors understand whether this is an Intel specific issue or industry issue. I would note that Microsoft’s guidance for their Windows OEM & Devices business was down ~35% y/y for December vs -22% in September and -7% in June. Longer-term, I believe Intel will become a force in the foundry industry but in the near-term it may take some time for the valuation to reset lower due to their current microprocessor business. Looking forward, $AAPL reports on Monday after the close. The stock has been a beneficiary of investors looking to avoid AI companies with huge FCF burns. However, I would be wary into earnings that are likely to provide lower than expected guidance for the December quarter from a combination of higher currency impact, margin compression from semiconductor price increases, iPhone unit pressure from higher ASPs, a slowdown in services revenues and less than expected high margin TAC revenue from Google. Ultimately, I believe Apple will be a winner in consumer AI through their distribution through iPhones. I also believe their new foldable phone will drive a large upgrade cycle in 2027. But in the near-term I believe it is prudent to remove Apple (up 27% ytd) from my Top5 Picks that I put out when 2026 started. As a reminder this is meant to be a buy and hold list for the entire year for those that do not have time to be managing things daily which is what I do. I believe Apple is likely to be a Top 5 Pick at the start of 2027. We are now entering the seasonally strongest month of the year. Since 1957, which is the inception of the modern day S&P500, November is up +1.8% and tied for the best hit rate with April & December at up 71% of the time. This compares to an average return of 0.7% and hit rate of 61% for all months. Surprisingly, the returns for November in mid-term election years is even better with an average of 2.6% and hit rate of 82%. This might have to do with the ytd annual return being lower going into the elections at -1.8% through October with a hit rate of 53% so there is a relief rally on the other side. In summary, this earnings season has been more trick than treat for technology investors. Being more discerning and trading around positions has been the correct tactic. I think will continue to be the case. Let us hope November gives us something to be thankful for. All the best in the week ahead.
View original →Last wk, Muse from $Meta (+12.9%) & co-Pilot overhaul by $MSFT (+4.5%) drove AI infrastructure strength (SOX Index +6.3%) led by processor vendors, $INTC/$AMD/$ARM all +13%. Agentic AI flips GPU:CPU ratio from ~8:1 to ~1:4. SOX+Meta+Microsoft was all the S&P gain. WTI dropped 7.9% last wk while Brent was +0.4% but bond yields surged 10-17 bps across the 3m/30yr curve hitting levels not seen since July-2007 for the 10 year and June-2004 for the 30 year. Yield drivers included: 1) multiple Fed governors messaging higher-for-longer, 2) strong economic data like PMI & capital goods, 3) AI financing concerns following $ORCL (-7% last week) invoking force majeure for their New Mexico datacenter for OpenAI, and 5) weak treasury auction. One of the big use cases for Muse seems to be in cutting monthly bills. This renewed disruption fear for businesses with friction or inertia including telecom $VZ ( -2% last week), insurance $KIE -4%, banking $KBWB -2%, wealth management $SCHW -6%, shopping comparison platforms $AMZN -2% and banned Muse, travel $BKNG -2%, ride-share $UBER -1%, fitness memberships $PLNT -14%, ticket resale $STUB -8% and digital advertising- $GOOGL -2%. These names above have a median return of -1% year-to-date with half of them down ytd. In the disruption fears category above, Google is the one that I am most bullish on. I believe they are very close to launching a new model that will challenge the frontier leaders of Anthropic and OpenAI. In addition I believe all LLM companies will launch their own competitor to Meta Muse including Google. OpenAI DevDay 2026, is taking place on Tuesday. I ultimately believe that consumers will use an AI agent sitting on their smartphone from $AAPL or the Android ecosystem from Google while enterprises will default to the "safety" of co-Pilot on M365 from Microsoft. I believe the AI agent will pick the underlying LLM most suited for the task and commoditize that layer with the value accruing to the infrastructure layer. On a fundamental basis, CQ3 earnings appear solid, especially for AI infrastructure companies. Implied S&P revenue/EPS for Q3 remains strong at 14%/35% y/y with the Atlanta Fed GDPNow forecast at 5%. The question will be how companies react to widely expected beat and raise quarters. Q2 results were not taken well with the Nasdaq -3% and Semi Index -21% during the month of July. The stock reaction to widely expected strong quarterly results/guidance from $MU on Wednesday should give us some clues. From a bigger picture standpoint, the R2K, which is the most sensitive to rates, was down 0.8% last week. While I am impressed by the S&P, the gains were narrow and powered by the AI infrastructure names I am particularly bullish on: microprocessors within semiconductors on the advent of Agentic AI (see initial post on 3/31) and Meta (see initial post on 9/7.) Microsoft which I posted about last Sunday is also a favored name as a “safe” way for corporations to access AI though their 27% OpenAI ownership concerns me. Looking back at history, 20% or greater drawdowns in the S&P have been preceded by or accompanied by the combination of 1) surging bond yields, 2) surging oil prices and 3) Fed tightening cycle. This includes: 1) 1973–1974 OPEC Oil Embargo and Stagflation, 2) 1980–1982 Volcker Rate Shock, 3) 1990 Gulf War, 4) 2007–2009 Global Financial Crisis, and 5) 2022 Post-Pandemic Inflation Crisis. It is possible that the massive AI infrastructure spend & resultant S&P EPS growth of 35% y/y can offset this. It certainly has so far. However, the three middle episodes above had the following positive technological developments as well: 1) the PC revolution started in the late 1970s, 2) the Internet in the mid-1990s and 3) smartphones in the late 2000s. As a result, until bond yields stop their surge, I am remaining very selective on the individual names & sectors I favor. I am therefore watching closely the datacenter pushouts, the developments in Iran and the impact on oil prices. All the best in the week ahead.
View original →Last wk, oil +9% & ylds +11-26 bps across 2/30 curve w/ S&P/Nas/R2K -0.3%/-0.7%/-2.4%. This wk, I am watching reaction to 1) oil/rates, 2) calls to slow down AI development & 3) Fed on 9/16. I remain on the cautious side till US mid-terms on 11/3. This weekend, the CEO of Anthropic called for a slowing of frontier model development over safety concerns. This follows comments along similar lines by the CEO of OpenAI to employees last week if other companies were willing to do the same thing. The fundamental issues I have with this is 1) foreign adversaries would welcome the US slowing down AI development, 2) I view this as an attempt to slow down open-weight model development which would help the market dominance of OpenAI and Anthropic which are currently in the lead and 3) I do not see other companies agreeing to anything that slows down progress catching up to these two market leaders. Having said that, I could see 3rd party evaluators to limit liability risk going forward and some sort of executive order from the White House. But I hope the longer-term result of these actions is broadly distributed personal AI capabilities for all individuals versus having it become concentrated in the hands of a few companies. Along this vein of AI competition, after releasing their paid API of Muse Spark 1.3 two weeks ago with open-weight versions coming later, $Meta launched their personal AI agent Muse last week with the stock gaining 5%. With 3.6 billion daily active users, a hit product could yield large results. Meta is increasingly showing other ways they can monetize their AI capex spend. This should help the stock to re-rate from a 17x CY27 PE to a multiple closer to peers trading in the low 20s. Meta Connect on September 23–24 is another potential catalyst given their leading frontier model Watermelon should be coming at the latest by October. On the front of broadly distributed AI capabilities, $AAPL stock gained 4% last week on their new product launch. The foldable Duo will provide a personalized AI agent in your pocket with a 50% larger screen than a Pro Max. I continue to see a big upgrade cycle next year. The change from a 4” screen to 5.5” screen with the iPhone 6 drove revenue growth from 7% in FY14 to 28% in FY15. The Android ecosystem has had a foldable Samsung phone since 2019. As for the Fed on Wednesday, I believe Warsh will raise by 25 bps and echo his hawkish statements from Jackson Hole on August 28th that “Price stability is not self-executing… 65 months of sustained, elevated inflation sits squarely with the Central Bank.” The ECB statement last week when they hiked might provide some hints: “For inflation excluding energy and food, the baseline foresees 2.5% in 2026, 2.6% in 2027 and 2.3% in 2028. Compared with June, the baseline projection for inflation in 2026 is unchanged, while it has been revised up for 2027 and 2028… The outlook remains highly uncertain, with risks to the upside for inflation and to the downside for economic growth.” In summary, my caution between now and the US mid-terms on 11/3 remains for reasons I have fleshed out in prior posts including: 1. Don’t fight the Fed: The market historically under-performs during a hiking cycle with the bond market discounting 2 raises by year-end and 3.5 raises by mid-June of 2027. 2. Seasonal headwinds: September is down -0.5% on average and up only 48% of the time since 1957. 3. Historical volatility: S&P drawdowns of 10% between 7/31 and 11/9 have occurred in the lead-up to mid-terms since 1990. 4. Regulatory friction: There is bipartisan pushback against datacenter expansion that could hurt the AI buildout in the near-term. 5. Geopolitical risk: Despite US efforts to de-escalate, I believe Iran drags out hostilities at least through the 11/3 US mid-terms, keeping oil prices elevated. 6. Macroeconomic pressure: Long-term government bond yields are hitting multi-decade highs for several countries, slowing down growth and providing a reasonable alternative to stocks. I believe in not fighting the Fed, the bond market or seasonality. I like the odds stacked in my favor which should improve at least seasonally following the mid-terms.
View original →Last Sunday, I previewed caution on capex spenders & more optimism on their customers. This past wk, Mag7 (spenders) -5.8%, while Semi Index (customers) +1.2% with S&P -0.6%. This wk, we get earnings from four of the Mag7 for a more complete picture. Last week, WTI +8% and yields across the 2-30 yr curve increased by 9-15 bps, which was also a major issue for equity markets. De-escalation in Iran over the weekend should help both oil prices and yields during the start of this upcoming week. I continue to believe November 3rd mid-terms put a powerful impetus on the US administration to get oil prices down well before then. This is my current framework for AI investing: Positives: 1) The advent of Agentic AI on January 30th with the formalization of OpenClaw will drive 10-100x more token production. 2) Microprocessor vendors benefit in the move from 8 to 1 GPUs per CPU to ~unity in the move to Agentic AI. 3) The current philosophy of the hyperscalers that they cannot afford to lose the AI race keeps me more bullish on the recipients of that capex spend than the spenders. Negatives: 1) AI native revenues will be determined in the near-term by the trade-off between the top 1% of companies focusing on controlling their AI spend vs the ramp of the other 99% given the move from token maximization in March to token minimization by June. 2) Part of that control of AI spend will come at the expense of non-security software companies, IT services and headcount. 3) The cost of money is also more expensive which is a headwind to equity multiples. 11 of the major central banks have gone from cutting rates from roughly 2.7% in July of 2025 to 2.4% by early February to raising them to 2.6% today. At the same time, 10 year treasury yields across the 11 associated countries stayed flattish at roughly 3.2% from July of 2025 through February and has now risen to 3.8%. For megacap earnings this week, my belief is much like last week, ROIC (the interplay between capex and future EPS estimates) is likely to have an outsized impact on the near-term direction in stock prices. $META should have benefitted from increased engagement during the World Cup. But Meta revs grew 27% in Q3:25 vs 22% in Q2:25 creating tough comparisons for the Q3:26 guide. In addition, a potential launch of a public cloud and LLM API may embolden Meta to increase capex spend. Fortunately, valuation in the teens is low vs 22x CY26 PE for the S&P. $MSFT Azure has a high bar given Google GCP revs accelerated from +63% y/y in CQ1 to 82% in CQ2. But I wonder if the focus on AI cost control is an increasing tailwind for Co-Pilot. It operates natively within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem where enterprise work already happens. But Microsoft owns 27% of OpenAI which I remain negative on given they are caught between Google in consumer AI and Anthropic in enterprise. $AMZN AWS rev growth also has a high bar to clear due to GCP. In addition, higher oil prices are likely to be pressuring the logistics cost of their e-commerce business as well as consumer purchasing power. The shift of their 4 day Prime event to late June from early July should benefit Q2 but at the expense of Q3 guide. $AAPL is benefitting from the AI capex spend of others, especially their partner, Google. But I believe CQ3/CQ4 estimates are too high for both revenues and margins (due to rising semiconductor prices) and valuation at a 37x PE is expensive. From a longer-term perspective, I remain bullish on the potential upgrade cycle from a foldable phone with AI enabled Siri. Best of luck in the week ahead.
View original →Last Saturday, I posted my “speedbump” concerns. This past wk, the negative news flow escalated quickly. The Semi Index was -7.9% despite $MU beating EPS by 16% & guiding 21% higher than consensus. Micron finished the wk -0.1% while S&P -2.0%, Nasdaq -4.6% & Mag7 -5.4%. The news flow included: 1) $SPCX $20B bond offering & signing Reflection AI 2) $MSFT potentially hosting lower cost DeepSeek 3) GLM-5.2 being a credible alternative to Anthropic 4) Star AI researchers leaving $GOOG for competitors 5) $AAPL raising prices ~17-25% due to memory prices 6) US restrictions on US LLM model releases 7) Investment ramps from Samsung & Hynix 8) Stock market circuit breakers triggered in S. Korea 9) OpenAI potentially delaying their IPO into 2027 10) Big Private Credit redemptions at $APO $MS $ARES On a positive note: 1) Headline PCE/core of 4.1%/3.4% were roughly inline 2) WTI Oil fell 10% to $69 3) 2/10yr bond yields declined 8 bps each My concern is that equity markets were bad over the past week despite oil declining substantially along with bond yields. But a lot of position unwinding also occurred with the Morgan Stanley Momentum Long Index down 4.2% last week while their Short Index was up 3.2%. This upcoming trading week is shortened with the July 4th holiday with no major earnings reports but several important economic reports could move rates and therefore the market. The JOLTS survey, non-farm payrolls report and to a lesser extent the ISM report could have an outsized impact given lighter than normal trading volumes. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s appearance at the ECB symposium on Wednesday is also likely to be scrutinized for clues around future Fed policy. From a seasonality standpoint, while not as famous as the Santa Claus rally at year-end, statistically we are entering a strong period for stocks. This is probably caused by the inflow of funds into 401K plans at mid-year. The "12-Day Midyear Rally" as talked about by @AlmanacTrader encompasses the last three trading days of June and the first nine trading days of July. Since 1985, Nasdaq has gained 2.5% and has been up a solid 78% of the time. Having said that, it will be interesting to see how the market responds to the flare up in hostilities in Iran this weekend. In summary, my short-term “speedbump” concerns outlined last week in my posts on 6/20 and followed up on 6/22 remain about the upcoming mega-cap tech earnings season that starts in late July due to: 1) Token minimization 2) Competitive low cost open-sourced LLM models 3) Rising semiconductor cost impact on Q3 guidance Longer-term, I am hopeful for a solid finish to 2026 due to: 1) Over 25% EPS growth for the S&P 2) Advent of Agentic AI requiring 10-100x more tokens 3) Torturous winding down of the Iran war 4) Kevin Warsh pushing back on rate hike expectations But a series of short-terms make up the long-term and remaining flexible in thinking is important. All the best in the week ahead and Happy July 4th!
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