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Max Knoblauch10/22/25

Carvana plunges as investors respond to another subprime lender’s bankruptcy filing

Used car retailer Carvana is plunging on Wednesday, with the stock on pace for its worst day since auto tariffs took effect in April.

Likely spooking investors is a fresh bankruptcy filing by PrimaLend, which specializes in financing for dealerships focused on subprime borrowers (customers with lower credit scores, typically below 600, as defined by Experian). The news follows last month’s bankruptcy filing by another subprime auto lender, Tricolor Holdings.

Carvana doesn’t appear to work directly with PrimaLend, but it does likely have significant exposure to subprime loans. According to a January report by Hindenburg Research, which was shorting Carvana, 44% of the loans Carvana packages into asset-backed securities (ABS) are classified as nonprime (601-660 credit scores). More than 80% of its recent nonprime ABS deals had average FICO scores in the “deep subprime” range, or the riskiest levels, according to the report. Carvana at the time called the report “intentionally misleading and inaccurate.”

Carvana has massive growth goals, saying earlier this year that it aims to sell 3 million retail units per year within 5 to 10 years. (Wall Street expects it to sell about 580,000 units this year.) Lower-income buyers could be a significant part of that growth.

Following Tricolor’s implosion last month, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said: “When you see one cockroach, there are probably more. Everyone should be forewarned on this one.” With investors pouring out of Carvana on Tuesday, it seems Wall Street isn’t taking that warning lightly.

There is likely also some momentum pullback baked into Carvana’s drop: the stock, which has been a favorite among retail traders, is still up 58% this year, even after Wednesday’s drop.

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Matt Phillips2h

The buy-the-dip bid from retail traders has been a massive market theme throughout 2025, and analysts at Jefferies have tried to quantify just how big of a footprint individual traders now have in US markets.

In a note published Tuesday, they wrote (emphasis added):

“Retail investors have become an increasingly relevant component of the US trading ecosystem, representing >20% of volume — and even higher among names <$5. Growth in accounts, assets, and activity is reflected in the growth of Robinhood, Interactive Brokers, Charles Schwab, etc. A burgeoning product suite, expanded trading hours, and increased investor education support continued growth. Retail interest is here to stay; institutional investors should adjust their strategies accordingly.”

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)

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JPMorgan said Marvell’s management told them their Microsoft and Amazon custom chip business is on track, contradicting other reports

The latest release from the Marvell Chipematic Universe is out:

JPMorgan analyst Harlan Sur hosted a meeting with Marvell Technology President and COO Chris Koopmans and Senior VP of Investor Relations Ashish Saran on Monday amid reports that the chip company was poised to lose business from its two biggest hyperscaler custom chip clients: Amazon and Microsoft.

Benchmark downgraded the company on Monday, citing a loss of Trainium3 and 4 business, while The Information said on Friday the latter was planning on shifting its business to Broadcom. Shares tumbled 7% on Monday, erasing all of its post-earnings bounce, and are down again on Tuesday.

The message communicated to Sur from Marvell is, in short, one of Vince Vaughn’s quotable lines in “Wedding Crashers”: “Erroneous! Erroneous on both counts!”

“At our meeting yesterday, the Marvell team reiterated securing purchase orders for all of CY26 for the next-gen Trainium 3 XPU ASIC program at AWS and that the Microsoft 3 nanometer Maia AI XPU ASIC program remains on track to ramp back-half of calendar year 2026 and into calendar year 2027,” Sur wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday. “Moreover, the team reiterated that they are already working on next-gen 2 nanometer XPU programs for both customers.”

The analyst maintained a $92 price target and “overweight” rating on the shares.

Sur added that Marvell’s management “remains perplexed/frustrated at all of the ‘noise’ in the market.”

This whole thing is starting to have the feel of a three- to four-episode subplot arc from HBO’s “Billions.”

Apple’s stock is behaving differently from the rest of BATMMAAN because its AI strategy is nowhere

Apple is so bad at AI that its stock is increasingly detached from the rest of Big Tech. Some days that’s a blessing; on others, it’s a curse.

Parakeet among pigeons on cobblestone sidewalk

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Accenture rises after announcing partnership with Anthropic, adding to its recent series of AI collaborations

Accenture is rising after the consulting giant announced a multiyear partnership with Anthropic to become “a premier AI partner for coding with Claude Code.” This includes a joint offering for AI-enabled software development with a focus on regulated industries including finance, healthcare, life sciences, and the public sector.

It comes on the heels of Accenture’s partnership with OpenAI earlier this month to utilize ChatGPT Enterprise in its consulting work. It’s also recently invested in AI-powered customer research platform WEVO and expanded its collaboration with cloud-based data company Snowflake to better utilize data using AI tools.

As Sherwood News’ Hyunsoo Rim recently flagged, the consulting business has hit an AI-shaped wall, with employment in the industry peaking shortly after the launch of ChatGPT.

Charitably, Accenture’s management is eagerly embracing how the consulting business may be radically altered in a world where corporate AI adoption is ubiquitous, and reacting accordingly. Uncharitably, it’s the best “training your replacements” company out there.

The emphasis on regulated industries as potential customers for this partnership is noteworthy. Jordi Visser of 22V Research recently discussed at length how GenAI tools that enable “vibe coding” reduce barriers to entry for software development, prompting a need to focus on industries where quality and safety are paramount.

“Where software is mostly a polished UI on CRUD, vibe coding is existential,” he wrote. “Where software is inseparable from life, safety, or regulated liability, AI deepens the moat.”

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CoreWeave boosts size of convertible note offering

CoreWeave’s stock and bonds are well off their highs of the year, but investors seem to have a healthy appetite for its convertible notes.

The neocloud company said Tuesday morning that its $2 billion convertible note offering announced on Monday has been upsized to $2.25 billion. The boosted deal has the potential to be upsized further by another $337.5 million.

These notes, which mature on December 1, 2031, have a coupon of 1.75% and a conversion price of about $107.80 a share.

That’s around 25% above where it ended on Monday and 41% below its peak closing price, but also a level where the stock has traded within the past month.

Shares sank as much as 9.2% at their lows yesterday, but recovered to finish down 2.4%.

The company plans to spend about 13% of the proceeds (or a little less than $300 million) to enter into capped call transactions that limit any potential dilutive impact of this offering, with the remainder to be used for general corporate purposes.

CoreWeave arguably never took advantage of its very lofty equity price from June through October to raise money via equity, though one could argue that its failed bid to acquire Core Scientific in an all-stock deal was just that. So now, it’s raising more money through debt that could turn into equity.

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