Futures are higher, led by Tech, with RTY1!2,845.9 flat. Mag7 are all higher, with Semis also bid. CN is seeking to buy U.S. wheat for the first time in over a year after last week's trade truce. Trump said CN-X assured him that CN would take no action toward unifying TaaW with the mainland while he is in office. The White House said CN will suspend additional export controls on rare-earth metals and terminate investigations targeting U.S. chip supply chain firms. SCOTUS will hear IEEPA tariff challenges; markets expect those tariffs to be struck down—which could be bullish for equities in the ST—and later replaced by sectoral tariffs.
AI infrastructure spending remains active: Microsoft signed a $9.7bn deal to buy cloud capacity from IREN to access more Nvidia chips; Google plans to raise at least €3bn in a debt offering, another warning sign.
SPX rose 2.3% in October—its sixth straight monthly gain—in line with our Strong September–December thesis. With major indices near ATHs, I think we'll see another leg higher into year-end due to earnings materially above expectations and Trump's Asia trip lowering net effective tariffs and unlocking the rare-earth supply chain. However, as noted repeatedly in recent weeks, major AI players are showing some early warning signs (META725.45 and GOOGL342.93 are raising debt to fund capex); once the narrative changes, it could get ugly very quickly.