Market finished flat yesterday, but breadth continued to improve as the US government shutdown officially ended and furloughed employees began returning to work. The funding bill was signed, though back pay and program reinstatements may take days to weeks.

BABA164.79 is overhauling its main AI app to resemble ChatGPT and adding shopping features as it works toward a full AI agent. The stock price spiked during Asia hours. Data center developers are flooding utilities with inflated power requests, approaching multiple utilities with the same project to secure the lowest priced power. This is creating phantom projects and complicating long term capacity planning. Future earnings misses at utilities could be an early indicator that the bubble is about to pop.

Boston Fed President said there should be a high bar for further easing and policy should likely stay on hold for some time, aligning with Powell. NY Fed's Perli noted it may not be long before the Fed grows its balance sheet again as reserves are no longer abundant. Futures markets still price about a 70% chance of a December rate cut, roughly unchanged from levels after the last FOMC meeting.

AI related equities remain under pressure. We continue to see divergence between NQ1!25585 and SPX6850.92, with Financials and Health Care outperforming when AI is not the market's main focus. The market appears reluctant to lean into AI ahead of NVDA192.51 earnings on November 19th, with options implying about a 6% move. Given unusually harsh reactions to Q4 misses, NVDA could easily fall by more than 10% on a disappointment and NQ could drop around 3%, pulling indices back toward bear territory, while upside on a beat may be more limited. Gold stalled around 4.2k, found support near 4,180 after the funding bill was signed, then broke through resistance and is now about 4% from its all time high. We remain bullish on GC1!4235 as the market will increasingly hear from Trump about his 2k tariff relief, and unless the job market improves meaningfully, GC is well supported by fundamentals with a maximum downside around 3.8 to 3.9k.