To The Moon

BK Trading — Weekly Market Preview

Week of Monday 2 – Friday 6 November 2026

The week in short. Rates are still going up — the Fed held at 3.75–4.00% but December is near-certain; keep rate-sensitive bets small. America votes Tuesday — don’t trade the night; the calmer days after the count are the better moment. Palantir reports Monday evening — our teaching case in a stock priced for perfection.

Confidence: high on the schedule (confirmed dates); medium on the Australia/UK rate rises (~90% priced, not promised); low on anything marked as an estimate — flagged at the end.

1 · Economic Calendar

The Fed held and called it a decision, not a pause. Warsh kept the rate at 3.75–4.00% in a 10–2 vote; Cook and Hammack wanted a rise now. When officials dissent that way, the next move is more likely up than down. The Fed can afford to wait because the job market is cooling on its own — September added just 29,000 jobs against 90,000 expected, unemployment is 4.2%, wages grew 0.1% on the month. The inflation problem is oil above US$100 from the Iran conflict, not pay packets. So the Fed waits for December and lets the data work. Every economist polled expects the hike on 9 December.

Times in SGT. Clocks changed in the US on Sunday 1 Nov, so SGT now = ET + 13h. The calendar capture below is GMT+9 — subtract one hour for SGT.

Monday. China’s Caixin/RatingDog manufacturing PMI prints at 09:45 SGT — September’s 52.1 was the year’s best, and above 50 means expansion. In the US evening, ISM manufacturing lands at 23:00 SGT; last time 54.5, with a hot 77.9 on prices — the line to watch with oil above US$100. Our ~55 estimate is an outside guess; the capture showed no consensus.

Tuesday. The RBA decides at 11:30 SGT — markets price about 90% odds of a fifth hike this year, to 4.85%; watch the Australian dollar. Then America votes — don’t trade the night. At 23:00 SGT, JOLTS shows September job openings (7.08 million in August); a falling number confirms the cooling trend.

Wednesday. ADP’s private-jobs estimate at 21:15 SGT (last +90k) and ISM services at 23:00 SGT (last 54.9) together say whether weak hiring was a blip — two days before the official report.

Thursday. The Bank of England decides at 20:00 SGT — about 90% odds of a hike to 4.00%, with UK inflation at 3.5%. If Australia and the UK both raise while America holds, the rate gap supporting the US dollar narrows a little. Also: weekly jobless claims (last 194k) and oil inventories (last draw 1.9M barrels).

Friday — the main event. US October payrolls at 21:30 SGT. Last month: +29k jobs, 4.2% unemployment, no consensus yet on the capture. September’s lesson: forecast +90k, result +29k — when the guesses spread that wide, the reaction matters more than the number.

Figure 2 — Economic calendar (times GMT+9). Source: Investing.com, 31 Oct 2026.

2 · Earnings Calendar

Monday is heaviest by value — about US$6.3 trillion of market cap reports after the close, US$5 trillion of it Apple (US$1.98 expected; call 06:00 Tuesday SGT). Palantir reports in the same slot — see the Muse. Check Point, Estée Lauder and Marriott go before the open.

Tuesday brings Shopify, Pfizer and Marathon Petroleum in the morning; after the close, AMD (US$1.68 versus US$0.97 a year ago — the cleanest read on AI-chip demand), plus Super Micro, Arista, Booking and Amgen.

Wednesday is busiest by count (240 names): Uber, McDonald’s, Novo Nordisk, CVS and Datadog before the open; Arm, Qualcomm, AppLovin, CAVA and Dutch Bros after.

Thursday brings Cigna and Molson Coors in the morning; Airbnb, Cloudflare and Atlassian at night.

Friday brings Moderna, Humana, Oklo, Charter and Under Armour.

Figure 3 — Earnings calendar, week of 2 Nov 2026. Source: Nasdaq via StockTitan, 30 Oct 2026.

A trap to avoid. Uber is expected to earn US$0.94 versus US$3.11 a year ago. That is not a collapse — last year’s figure carried a one-off US$4.9 billion tax benefit. Headlines about a 70% profit fall will be arithmetic illiteracy, not analysis.

Berkshire Hathaway is pencilled by Nasdaq for Friday, unconfirmed — last quarter it announced three days ahead, on a Saturday. Treat as unconfirmed until it’s on the sheet.

3 · Technical Analysis — S&P 500

The index closed Friday at 7,580, down 1.8%, finishing below its 50-day average (7,704) for the first time in months while holding well above its 200-day (7,280). Plain reading: the short-term trend has turned cautious; the long-term trend is intact. A yellow light, not a red one.

Figure 1 — S&P 500, one year with 50/200-day averages. Source: Yahoo Finance (capture dated 23 Oct 2026).

S&P levels are from the 23 Oct Yahoo Finance capture — confirm Monday’s open.

4 · News & My Investing Muse

The news that moves prices

● The Fed pauses, December loads. Two officials wanted a hike now; every economist polled expects one on 9 December. Treat the pause as a comma, not a full stop.

● Midterms Tuesday. All 435 House seats, a third of the Senate. The market question is narrow: who writes tax and tariff law for two years. History says divided government suits stocks and the fuss fades within days. Both sides call it existential.

Figure 12 — The midterm stakes as one side frames them (Elon Musk, X, 30 Oct 2026).

● Oil above US$100 is the common thread. Iran’s supply disruption sits behind the expected RBA and BoE hikes and behind the Fed’s two dissenters. Follow the chain to its human end — dearer oil means dearer diesel, fertiliser, freight and food. As Amartya Sen showed, famines are usually about people being priced out of food, not food running out. Watch affordability protests in import-poor countries this winter, not grain silos.

● Binance — reported US$6.3 billion hack. If it holds, the largest theft in crypto history — but the major wires hadn’t confirmed it at the time of writing. File under reported, developing. What matters: does the insurance fund cover customers, and does trust hold. Crypto did not need another 2022.

● Israel (fold in if it moves). Last Tuesday’s vote cost Netanyahu’s bloc its majority (53 / 48 / 19 of 120). Coalition bargaining is live — possibly the first Arab-backed government in Israel’s history. For markets: the shekel and oil. A weakened caretaker mid-conflict with Iran is an escalation risk OPEC cannot schedule.

● China PMI (rests until it prints Monday). September’s 52.1 was the year’s best; October lands Monday 09:45 SGT — the swing factor for Asian mood.

The Muse: the AI boom meets the real world

The money. The companies building AI are on the biggest spending spree in corporate history, and their own cash no longer covers it. Estimates put the industry’s borrowing and share sales near US$1.4 trillion through 2027 — about a third of what the US Treasury will issue in the same window (~US$4.1 trillion). When companies borrow that much, they compete with the government for the same savings, nudging rates up for everyone. Anthropic alone has committed to about US$430 billion of future computing, payable whether or not sales keep pace. Read the figure as direction, not precision — it mixes debt with equity.

Figure 5 — AI borrowing (~US$1.4tn) vs Treasury issuance (~US$4.1tn). Source: All-In Podcast.

Figure 6 — The capital-spending argument in full (Chamath Palihapitiya). Source: All-In Podcast, 31 Oct 2026.

The profits. Anthropic’s S-1 (filed 26 Oct, ticker ANT) is the clearest window we have: H1 revenue of US$16.3 billion — US$4.7 billion in Q1 to US$11.6 billion in Q2 (+147%) — the business turned an operating profit, and the compute cost of each revenue dollar fell from 97 cents to 48 cents. The headline US$80.75 billion loss looks alarming until you read it: US$72.4 billion is non-cash — IOUs to early investors grew more valuable as the company did, and the rules book that as a cost. The lesson travels: read the headline, then read what it’s made of. The caution comes from Steve Eisman, who says Q3 growth slowed from 147% to 45% — still roughly four-fold a year, so some slowdown is arithmetic, not failure. His number is an assertion until Anthropic refreshes the filing before pricing in mid-November. Watch the cost ratio: near 48 cents the model works; climbing, the bears have their case.

Figure 7 — Anthropic revenue and net loss, from the S-1. Source: company filing (26 Oct 2026).

The jobs. Microsoft has reportedly offered buyouts to 60,000 staff (~27% of its workforce) as AI absorbs tasks — alongside cuts at Amex (3,500), Barclays (5,000), eBay (9%) and Netflix (~1,000). A DeepMind paper last week argued AI’s impact would show up in pay and hiring first; the tape suggests “first” has arrived. It reframes Friday’s payrolls — a weak number now reads as automation biting, not just a cooling economy — and the people being automated out are voters, further up the ladder than globalisation’s. Expect the politics to get louder.

Figure 8 — Microsoft’s reported 60,000 buyout offers. Source: Kobeissi Letter, per Bloomberg.

Figure 9 — The fortnight’s AI-related layoffs. Source: ZeroHedge.

The politics. Days before the midterms, House progressives tabled a “No AI Bailouts” resolution — no federal rescue for bankrupt AI firms. A marker, not a law, but the question in Washington has moved from “is AI real?” to “who holds the risk?” Meanwhile the physical bottlenecks quietly decide whether the borrowing pays off: grids, transformers and turbines now carry multi-year waiting lists, and every new data centre bids up electricity. The AI boom and the cost-of-living crisis share a power cord. On open vs closed models: Anthropic’s quarter shows a closed, paid model doubling revenue while halving costs — the premium holds until open models reach coordination parity, which benchmarks barely measure yet. (Full argument parked for a standalone piece.)

Figure 10 — “No AI Bailouts” resolution. Source: David Dayen, The American Prospect, 28 Oct 2026.

Figure 11 — Coordination as the threshold to watch. Source: Google DeepMind, “Economics of Intelligence”.

Teaching case: Palantir (PLTR) — a great business at an unforgiving price

Palantir reports Monday after the close (call Tuesday 06:00 SGT). It closed Friday at US$184.11 — up only ~3.6% this year after ~165% in 2025, 13.5% below its 52-week high of US$212.94, holding just below its 50-day average of US$186.90. Market value ~US$442 billion. The 28 analysts covering it average a US$212.50 target, with estimates from US$80 to US$265 — when the lowest is less than half the price, the professionals are openly disagreeing.

Figure 4 — Palantir (PLTR) daily, one year to 30 Oct 2026, with 50/200-day averages. Source: Yahoo Finance.

The puzzle this teaches: Palantir’s business has never been better, yet the stock has gone almost nowhere in 2026. A share price is two things multiplied — the profits, and the price investors pay per dollar of profit. Profits tripled; but with the Fed raising rates, investors pay less per profit-dollar. Profits up, valuation down, stock flat. This is multiple compression — the most important force on expensive stocks this year. The counter-case is real: on the Rule of 40 (revenue growth + cash margin; above 40 is healthy) Palantir scores ~128 over the last year — almost no large software firm does that. The argument is entirely about price, not quality.

What to listen for Tuesday: (1) US commercial growth vs government work — the commercial side justifies the price tag; (2) new AI-platform deals; (3) whether full-year guidance rises again — it has every quarter, and the first merely repeated guide reads as a miss; (4) anything on government budgets, with midterm results landing hours later. At this valuation, with a hiking Fed, even a good report can fall.

For education and information only — not financial advice. Do your own research; the author may hold positions in securities mentioned.

Notes

Medium confidence. The PLTR close and YTD (draft $184.11 / +3.6% against live sources near $197 / ~17% on 23–27 Oct — confirm the Friday close and the YTD base); the S&P chart vintage (Figure 1 is a 23 Oct capture, not 31 Oct — confirm 7,580 is the Friday 30 Oct close); the PLTR margin clash (Yahoo 47.1% TTM vs FY2025 31.6% — pick the source); the Microsoft 60k buyouts (single-source, Kobeissi via Bloomberg — verify or attribute tightly); and the AI borrowing ratio (using “about a third” — reconcile against the All-In source).

Low confidence. Payrolls and ISM manufacturing consensus (both blank on the capture; ~55 is our estimate); Berkshire’s Friday date (unconfirmed); and Israel’s certification date (final tally appears already public ~29 Oct — confirm before citing 4 Nov).

References. Fed: CNBC / Yahoo Finance / NPR, FOMC 28 Oct 2026; Motley Fool. Rates: BoE Bank Rate page + Morningstar Q4 preview; RBA 2026 calendar + CommBank note. Jobs: US BLS Employment Situation, Sep 2026; TD Economics. Earnings: StockTitan “Earnings Calendar, week of 2 Nov”; Benzinga / Barchart (PLTR date). Anthropic: Form S-1 (SEC EDGAR, 26 Oct 2026) via Yahoo Finance / The VC Corner; 24/7 Wall St (Eisman). AI capital: All-In Podcast (Chamath); DeepMind “Economics of Intelligence”; Kobeissi Letter (per Bloomberg); David Dayen, The American Prospect. Israel: Jerusalem Post / AP / Times of Israel, 27–29 Oct 2026. Binance: Electronic Payments International / Peltz (awaiting wire confirmation). PLTR data: Yahoo Finance (30 Oct close); 24/7 Wall St; TIKR.

AI cross-validation credits. Drafted with Kimi (Moonshot AI); restructured and fact-checked against live sources by Claude (Anthropic). Figures reconciled against the author’s own captures before publication.