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Claire Yubin Oh39m

Novo Nordisk sinks after Ozempic’s key ingredient fails to slow down Alzheimer’s in trials

Novo Nordisk is down nearly 9% in trading in Europe, with its US-listed ADRs dropping a similar amount, after the pharma giant shared that oral semaglutide — a key ingedient behind its Ozempic and Wegovy drugs — didn’t slow Alzheimer’s disease in two trials.

Per the company’s press release, oral semaglutide failed to show a statistically significant reduction in early-stage Alzheimer’s disease progression compared to a placebo across two large-scale, late-stage trials. From the release:

The two trials were randomised, double-blinded, enrolled a total of 3808 adults and evaluated the efficacy and safety of oral semaglutide compared to placebo on top of standard of care.

Treatment with semaglutide did result in improvement of some Alzheimer’s disease-related biomarkers, but it “did not translate into a delay of disease progression.”

Noting that the trials were conducted “despite a low likelihood of success” from the start, chief scientific officer Martin Holst Lange commented that, “while semaglutide did not demonstrate efficacy in slowing the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, the extensive body of evidence supporting semaglutide continues to provide benefits for individuals with type 2 diabetes, obesity, and related comorbidities.”

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Michael Burry launches paywalled Substack after de-registering his hedge fund

“The Big Short” investor Michael Burry just launched a new Substack called “Cassandra Unchained,” after recently de-registering Scion Asset Management from the SEC. One of his first posts takes aim at Nvidia and the topic of the wider AI “bubble.”

Earlier this month, Burry teased on X that he’d be “on to much better things” on November 25. Exactly where his Substack — which he unveiled last night with letters recalling his past warnings, from shorting Amazon in 2000, to Greenspan brushing off a housing bubble in 2005 — fits into that remains to be seen.

The post getting the most attention so far lays out why he sees the AI boom as a bubble rooted in “supply-side gluttony,” Business Insider reports. Burry argues that today’s AI cycle mirrors the dot-com period, when markets were also led by highly profitable giants — the so-called “Four Horsemen” (Microsoft, Intel, Dell, Cisco). The problem back then, according to Burry, was “catastrophically overbuilt supply and nowhere near enough demand,” a dynamic that's “just not so different this time,” with Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, Oracle, plus startups like OpenAI — driving massive build-outs that may outstrip real demand.

Burry singles out Nvidia as the modern Cisco, the company at the center of the 2000 dot-com bubble that eventually plunged 78% in the crash. In a recent X post, he also separately accused major tech firms of understating depreciation on their computing hardware, saying it “artificially boosts earnings.”

'Big Short' investor Michael Burry launches a blog, takes aim at Nvidia and 'glorious folly' of AI

'Big Short' investor Michael Burry launches a blog, takes aim at Nvidia and 'glorious folly' of AI

Earlier this month, Burry teased on X that he’d be “on to much better things” on November 25. Exactly where his Substack — which he unveiled last night with letters recalling his past warnings, from shorting Amazon in 2000, to Greenspan brushing off a housing bubble in 2005 — fits into that remains to be seen.

The post getting the most attention so far lays out why he sees the AI boom as a bubble rooted in “supply-side gluttony,” Business Insider reports. Burry argues that today’s AI cycle mirrors the dot-com period, when markets were also led by highly profitable giants — the so-called “Four Horsemen” (Microsoft, Intel, Dell, Cisco). The problem back then, according to Burry, was “catastrophically overbuilt supply and nowhere near enough demand,” a dynamic that's “just not so different this time,” with Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, Oracle, plus startups like OpenAI — driving massive build-outs that may outstrip real demand.

Burry singles out Nvidia as the modern Cisco, the company at the center of the 2000 dot-com bubble that eventually plunged 78% in the crash. In a recent X post, he also separately accused major tech firms of understating depreciation on their computing hardware, saying it “artificially boosts earnings.”

markets

Retail traders have hit the eject button on Sandisk

Souring sentiment on the AI trade has caused retail traders to flee one of the boom’s biggest beneficiaries in recent months.

The masses are voting with their feet by exiting Sandisk en masse in recent sessions, notes JPMorgan analyst Arun Jain.

Sandisk JPM

Shares are down nearly 30% from their peak after soaring more than 450% from the end of August through November 12. Aggressive data center build outs have spurred a need for flash memory chips (provided by companies such as Sandisk) as well as processing memory (offered by the likes of Micron).

markets

Claire Yubin Oh3h

BABA rises after its relaunched AI app Qwen hits over 10 million downloads in one week

Alibaba is trading 3.5% higher in the US premarket after the Chinese e-commerce giant disclosed that its revamped Qwen app was downloaded more than 10 million times in the week since it was relaunched, per Bloomberg.

The impressive download figures follows Alibaba’s decision earlier this month to streamline and consolidate its AI services under the Qwen banner, with plans to add agentic AI features to support its main Taobao business in coming months — a move in line with Alibaba’s recent rebrand as an AI-first business under CEO Eddie Wu. Qwen’s latest results and the company’s wider AI strategy will be in the spotlight during its third-quarter earnings call on Tuesday.

The early user figures for Alibaba’s Qwen followed a similar pattern seen by Chinese peers like Ant Group Co., which saw its new multimodal AI assistant LingGuang downloaded more than a million times in the four days since its launch last week, Bloomberg reported. OpenAI’s ChatGPT is still unavailable in China.

Tasha Matsumoto

Stocks rebound from yesterday’s sell-off but still post weekly losses

The rally was broad-based, with every sector ETF rising.

Chicago Bulls Dennis Rodman (91) and Michael Jordan (23) in action, rebounding vs Charlotte Hornets

How bitcoin’s moves show that the stock market is actually fueled by vibes

Bitcoin has been strongly correlated with the S&P 500; the low-volatility stocks within the S&P 500 have not.

Roller coaster steel car full of riders

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