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 51.5 on CL over 10 CL calls · 274 days of data · rank 12 of 14 CL analysts (top 85.7%) · v20r-multi-sparsepen-strong-ss12m-20261012, computed Nov 11, 2026 · Methodology →
Cite asCryptoQuant has tracked 10 directional calls on CL by @DanielTNiles on X since Jan 2018: ranked #12 of 14 analysts scored on CL by accuracy (as of Nov 11, 2026).
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Relative view by default: fewer than 30 CL calls or days on record.
Sentiment timeline shows relative sentiment within this analyst's history. A perma-bull showing 8 bullish : 2 bearish in a bear market sets that as their baseline. If you notice any errors, claim @DanielTNiles to submit corrections.
Called $NVDA bullish on Oct 27, 2023: $NVDA rose 133% in 5 months.
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On @WilfredFrost podcast on Tuesday, I said I was “terrified of what happens on the other side of mid-terms.” Post election, 40%+ of incremental datacenter capacity is now at risk. For the wk, SOX/SPX/Nas -12.1%/-2.7/-3.4%. The good news is oil prices should continue to come down. Comments by the AI industry that included: 1) AI could wipe out 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within the next one to five years and 2) AI having a 10% probability of wiping out humanity, justifies the public backlash against datacenters. My belief remains that those AI related companies that have other lines of business supporting their investments in AI will be the ultimate winners. I see the neo-clouds and pure LLM labs like Anthropic and OpenAI being in an even worse position post mid-terms. But the existing capacity at the big hyperscalers has become more valuable and they are likely to face less competition from the neo-clouds. Due to the regulatory friction and moderation of semiconductor price increases, hyperscaler capex spend in 2027 is also likely to be less which should help their cash flows. The big 3 public cloud hyperscalers all gained last week: $AMZN +7.9% (they also benefit from lower oil prices), $GOOGL +1.8%, $MSFT +1.7%. But the coast is not all clear given growth rates at AWS, Azure and GCP are likely to be negatively impacted at the start of 2027 by this regulatory friction. $META lost only 0.8% last week. They do not have a public cloud but 1) social media is not likely to get disintermediated by AI, 2) Muse has been a hit in Agentic AI and 3) AI is helping the monetization of their ad business. As for semiconductors, the SOX was down 12.1% last week. Physical space in datacenters to put these chips was already an issue before the mid-terms. It is worse now. Even on Wednesday when the S&P was up 1.6%, the SOX was down 3.1% with an even bigger 12.2% decline on Thursday when the S&P fell 4.4%. This brings me to my point that good portfolio risk management is critical, especially around AI related stocks. This is true even if bullish due to the nascent nature of Agentic AI (my view) because one of these times, if not already on 6/22, will be THE TOP. That is why I warned of an AI “speed bump” on 6/20 and posted on 10/4 “Finally, the current bi-partisan (amazing they agree on anything) pushback on datacenters could get worse after November 3rd mid-terms if there is a blue wave which is what the current polling data leans towards.” This year, from its all-time peak on 6/22 to the Situational Awareness driven low on 7/29, the SOX declined 29%. It then rallied 27% before the recent 32% decline from 10/6-11/5. These recent declines are also close to the 8 average declines of 34% during the dotcom bust. The SOX is now down 36% from its all-time highs with 14 of its 30 constituents down 50%+. But even during the dotcom meltdown over 2 ½ years, the SOX had 7 rallies that averaged 28% while losing 83% from peak to trough. The good news is I think oil prices are likely to head much lower by year-end now that mid-terms are over. An excerpt of Iran’s response by the Speaker of their Parliament was “Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message.” As a reminder, the Iran hostages after being held for 444 days were released just minutes after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated This followed his crushing defeat of President Jimmy Carter. I think a deal with Iran is coming soon. Given my view on oil, I believe we will see the usual seasonal strength in the non-AI side of the stock market through year-end. Five of the eleven sub-sectors of the S&P that are not as closely related to AI or energy were up over 1% last week: consumer staples, consumer discretionary, financials, real estate, and telecom services. In summary, I think those sectors that would benefit from lower oil prices should perform well through year-end. As for AI, related stocks reached their most oversold levels on Thursday since the tariff lows in April of 2025 before bouncing on Friday. But unfortunately, my S&P quant model had only 25% of my technical metrics indicating that Thursday was a short-term bottom vs the average of ~50%. The anemic 0.3% S&P advance on Friday following the 4.4% decline on Thursday also is not encouraging looking back at historical data. Therefore, stock selection, daily risk management and seeing how the market reacts to incoming data will remain key given these conflicting factors. Best of luck in what is likely to be a volatile environment through year-end.
View original →Last wk, S&P +1.2% & hit new ATH. 10/30yr ylds down 2-3bps despite WTI +1%. Impressive given semis -4% w/ $MU -4% despite solid earnings. Negatives were OAI actual ARR rev of $50B vs prior $70B belief & pulling of $NVDA backed Firmus neocloud IPO. USD +$0.23. Breadth remained poor with just 35% of the S&P above its 50dma (though this was up from 25% at the end of the prior week.) The heavy weight Magnificent 7 did their part up 1.6% on average during the week. But their small cap brethren in the R2K declined 0.9%. Different asset classes and different segments of the equity markets are sending mixed messages. On the positive side, the 10-year auction cleared at a lower 5.30% than the 5.32% it was trading at right before it closed. Dealers took only 2.5%. There was real demand at this rate which makes me more bullish on the sectors of the market that reached oversold levels earlier in October on the move higher in yields. This brings me to bank earnings that start on Tuesday morning. The $KBWB (Bank ETF) is down 12.1% since its closing peak on August 14th. This is a very different message compared to the S&P up slightly (+0.3%) over that time. I am a big believer that credit is the lifeblood of the economy. Any further sell-off despite trading at oversold levels last week would not be a great sign. For those that believe strong upcoming AI related earnings results will continue to drive the market higher, the 4% decline in Micron Technology last week is a strong counterpoint. As for the AI trade, $GOOGL is finally getting themselves back into the conversation. This belief is why I wrote optimistically on the stock in late September. After roughly 10 months without releasing a new frontier model, two weeks ago they announced Argon which put them back into the frontier LLM conversation. Then last week Google announced the Gemini agent, a "single, universal agent for work." Google’s stock gained 2.4% this past week despite this being more of an enterprise product. Given Google already has 14 products with over 1B users each, a personal assistant product that competes with Muse from $Meta is what I am really waiting for. I continue to like Google in anticipation of such an event. I also continue to like NVidia in semiconductors, especially when paired with shorts in the space. The stock declined 2.0% last week but this was far better than the 4.3% decline in the semiconductor index. Nvidia believes that given access to power is becoming a bigger issue, their higher token production per watt will enable them to gain share going forward. The market, however, is anticipating further share loss to ASICs which is partly why the stock has a 15x CY27 PE. It would not take much of a sentiment shift to see the multiple expand much like with Meta in September. I continue to see Nvidia's stock outperforming the overall semiconductor sector between now and their earnings release on November 19th. For the overall market, an optimist could say that the bond market was not priced correctly and now has closed that gap given the solid 10 year treasury auction to end the week. There is a rule of thumb that over the medium term, when there is no financial manipulation (for example QE), that 10 year bond yields (currently 5.25%) should equal nominal GDP. With real Q2 GDP at 2.2% plus recent core PCE at 3.0%, 10 year bond yields after their recent rise could finally be at appropriate levels. While trailing PE multiples are high, so is S&P earnings growth at roughly 35% y/y for Q3. I broached the possibility last week that this could be the new normal for bond yields vs the stock market PE and US dollar. While I am not there yet, I have to respect the new all-time record high set in the S&P last week in the face of rising bond yields and a rising dollar with a backdrop of high oil prices. Is this the new normal or the calm before the equity storm? I look forward to the market reaction to bank earnings this upcoming week to add more facts to the equation. As John Maynard Keynes once said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” In summary, I prefer to remain circumspect at the portfolio level given what I view as mixed messages on a shorter-term basis. That means being more selective in stock selection (such as AI infrastructure), having smaller position sizes and a greater than normal amount of cash. Playing for at least some short-term reversion to the mean in stocks that were hurt by rising bond yields is also interesting.
View original →Last wk, oil fell 1% w/ lower than expected JOLTS, PCE & NFP. But bonds sold off even more driving 10/30yr ylds to 2002 levels. Equity mkts though were flattish driven by AI infrastructure w/ SOX +3.7%. Breadth worsened to just 25% of the S&P above the 50dma. The market action on Friday bothered me. Non-farm payrolls came in at 29K vs 90K expected. Bonds initially rallied from oversold levels at the open but ended the day down across the curve from the 3-month to 30 year driving yields higher. The dollar did close lower by $0.16 on Friday but it was still up $0.96 during the week. The USD has surged by over $3 in less than a month and broke above $102 on Thursday. As I wrote about in my post last Sunday, I am concerned that the Fed is raising, while inflation has remained higher than target with oil prices remaining high. There have been five episodes of ~20%-50% S&P sell-offs since the early 1970s on this combination. I can now add to that list of concerns a sovereign debt crisis like in 2010 or an LTCM event like in 1998 driven by the combination of a strengthening US dollar and global bond market sell-off. On the positive side, the AI infrastructure trade added more demand drivers last week. OpenAI introduced their Muse by $META competitor called Dots. $GOOGL previewed their new LLM model Argon that ranks higher than Anthropic and OpenAI on most benchmarks. At the company level, $NVDA, sounded great during their marketing in NYC. The stock trades at a 15x CY27 PE for guided 70% revenue growth which I think could be revised higher when they report results in mid-November. To me, Nvidia is the best risk adjusted AI trade in the market now that Meta gained 27% in September. In this vein, while the SOX Index is down 10% from 6/22 which was the peak of the momentum trade, Nvidia is up 12%. On the negative side, I have been watching the Ramp Index of total token spend by businesses for some time to make sure that token growth is outpacing the ASP decline. But after increasing by 9.1x year-to-date through August 2nd, it has been roughly flat to down since then. There has been a 11% combined decline in Anthropic plus OpenAI spend from 8/2-9/27. Meanwhile on a token basis, there was a 11x year-to-date increase through August 2nd with a further 28% increase from Anthropic plus OpenAI since then. Is this the impact of open-weight model pricing? Finally, the current bi-partisan (amazing they agree on anything) pushback on datacenters could get worse after November 3rd mid-terms if there is a blue wave which is what the current polling data leans towards. On July 29th, I turned bullish again: “In summary, my view is that we could have seen at least a short-term bottom today with a strong rally ahead of us in the sectors most caught in the latest speedbump.” On August 23rd, I started to get more cautious again on the overall market with my post, James Carville: “as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.” But since then, despite a 54 bps surge in 10yr bond yields, the Fed resuming hiking after 3 years, a 3.2% increase in the USD, the equal-weighted S&P down 5.4% and breadth returning to levels last seen in March, the overall S&P has gained 0.6%. In summary, I feel like either the bond market (and now the currency markets) are not priced correctly or the stock market isn’t. As a result, I believe in extra prudence. That means being more selective (such as AI infrastructure), having smaller position sizes and a greater than normal amount of cash. Maybe this is the new normal for bond yields vs the stock market PE, but that is not my base case. Best of luck 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.
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