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Luke Kawa1/2/25

Housing IS the business cycle

Monetary policy famously works with “long and variable lags.” It turns out these lags can be so long that, in the case of this cycle, policy tightening delivered in 2022 and 2023 threatens to weigh on employment in a key cyclical sector in 2025, even though the central bank flipped from raising interest rates to lowering them in the meantime.

Employment in residential construction stands at its highest level since the run-up to the global financial crisis. Meanwhile, housing starts have been in retreat in tandem with the number of units under construction. That does not bode well for future output from the sector.

In a world where prospective new buyers are deterred by high long-term interest rates, homebuilders are facing pressure on margins thanks in part to trying to subsidize some of this rate sticker shock, and with management of these firms warning of lower-than-expected deliveries in the first quarter of 2025, employment in residential construction stands out as a clear vulnerability for the US job market.

Given the old maxim “housing is the business cycle,” popularized by a well-timed 2007 paper by Ed Leamer of the same name, that means it’s an important flashpoint for the US economy and financial markets as well.

Homebuilders’ shares have not been holding up well lately, with the iShares US Home Construction ETF down 20% from its mid-October peak to its December trough.

HousingChart1 — Source: Sherwood News

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Nvidia poised to invest $20 billion in OpenAI, per report

Nvidia is close to investing $20 billion in OpenAI’s funding round, per Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter.

That would make its OpenAI stake more than the market value of chip designer’s entire portfolio of publicly traded stocks (a little over $15 billion, assuming no changes since their most recent filings).

Media reports have suggested that Amazon and SoftBank would be contributing even more to this oft-discussed funding round, in which the Sam Altman-led venture is aiming to raise $100 billion.

It’s a fairly happy ending after the two sides traded barbs in the press over the past few days, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had privately questioned the “lack of discipline” in the ChatGPT maker’s business approach, while sources told Reuters that OpenAI was “unsatisfied” by the performance of Nvidia’s AI chips and seeking alternatives.

Super Micro crushes estimates for Q2, offers strong guidance

The AI server company just released its fiscal Q2 results.

Super Micro Server

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J. Edward Moreno12h

Chipotle beats Q4 estimates, but sinks on underwhelming full-year guidance

Chipotle reported earnings results that beat Wall Street estimates, but gave underwhelming full-year guidance.

For the last three months of 2025, Chipotle reported:

Adjusted earnings per share of $0.25, compared to the $0.24 analysts polled by FactSet were expecting.
Revenue of $3 billion, a bit higher than the $2.9 billion the Street was penciling in.
A comparable-store sales decline of 2.5%, less than the 2.9% decline the Street was expecting.

For the full year in 2026, Chipotle expects:

Comparable-store sales to be flat, compared to the 1.7% growth analysts were expecting.

Chipotle has struggled to spark sales over the past year and has previously cited strained consumers as a major headwind. The company fell more than 9% in after-hours trading shortly after the report was released.

markets

Max Knoblauch13h

Take-Two raises its net bookings outlook, reaffirms November release for “Grand Theft Auto 6”

“Grand Theft Auto” and “NBA 2K” maker Take-Two reported results for its fiscal third quarter on Tuesday. Its shares climbed about 4% in after-hours trading.

The company posted net bookings, or the amount customers spent on its products, of $1.76 billion, up 28% from the same quarter last year. Wall Street analysts polled by FactSet expected $1.58 billion. In November, Take-Two guided for Q3 net bookings of between $1.55 billion and $1.6 billion.

Take-Two hiked its full-year bookings outlook to between $6.65 billion and $6.7 billion, up from a range of $6.4 billion to $6.5 billion. The new outlook compares to Wall Street’s $6.47 billion estimate. The gaming giant trimmed its full-year net loss guidance to between $369 million and $338 million (prior guidance: between $414 million and $349 million).

In its last quarter, Take-Two pushed back the planned release date of “Grand Theft Auto 6” from May 2026 to November 19, 2026. The company reaffirmed that date in Tuesday’s report. The game’s last trailer came in May 2025.

Shares of Take-Two and other major gaming companies have been sinking since late last week as investors react to early showcases of Google’s Project Genie, which allows users to generate interactive, “playable” worlds with a text or image prompt. As of Tuesday’s close, Take-Two has shed nearly $6 billion in market cap since Project Genie was released.

Analysts have called the market reaction unjustified, saying that the tool doesn’t allow for meaningful interactivity or replay-ability. According to mBank analyst Piotr Poniatowski, Project Genie is — at the moment — essentially a “one-minute-long walking simulator generator.”

AMD posts big beat in Q4 with sunny Q1 sales guidance

The No. 2 in GPUs just reported its fourth-quarter results.

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