markets

Luke Kawa4/3/25

$22 billion in selling from leveraged ETFs the next shoe to drop for megacap tech stocks

As we await further twists and turns in the tariff saga that’s rocked global markets, the damage that’s already been done promises to cause even more damage.

JPMorgan analyst Bram Kaplan noted that because of today’s rout, ETFs that use leverage to juice their returns are going to be big sellers as we approach the end of the day.

“Levered ETFs need to sell ~$5 billion per 1% market move to rebalance. As such, we estimate these funds have ~$22 billion of equity exposure to sell into the close today, ~75% of which is in tech-related exposures (e.g. NDX, the broad Tech sector, and Semiconductors), based on market levels at mid-day,” he wrote.

Using an expansive definition of “midday,” major indexes are flat to down since Kaplan’s calculations.

Many of the popular ETFs that utilize leverage track major indexes, like SPDR S&P 500 Trust and Invesco QQQ Trust, but some are tied to stocks like Nvidia, Tesla, industry groups like chip stocks, or the tech sector as a whole.

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AWS re:Invent 2024

Amazon soars as 3Q earnings, sales beat Wall Street expectations

Amazon released earnings on Thursday.

Tasha Matsumoto

Big Tech sends stocks lower

Stocks were dragged down by yesterday’s Microsoft and Meta earnings as investors rotated out of Big Tech names.

Polar bear Sprinter bites into a pumpkin carved with Halloween faces in the Adventure Zoo in Hanover, Germany, 22 October 2015.

markets

J. Edward Moreno2h

Moderna soars after STAT reports “a buyout or a large partnership” are on the table

Moderna rose nearly 15% on Thursday after STAT reported that the company has flirted with the idea of tying up with a larger drugmaker.

The Covid vaccine-maker has talked to at least one large drugmaker on a deal "of significant scope" that could either be "a buyout or a large partnership," a source told STAT.

How Moderna, the company that helped save the world, unraveled

How Moderna, the company that helped save the world, unraveled

markets

OpenAI appears to be definitively answering its doubters’ biggest question

The AI boom is power constrained. It’s chip constrained.

But it will not be capital constrained.

That’s the top takeaway from media reports from The Wall Street Journal and Reuters that OpenAI is plotting an IPO.

That message is also corroborated by anecdotal reports that the order book for Meta’s $25 billion bond offering is roughly $125 billion (!), per a source familiar with the situation.

My colleague David Crowther recently wrote that OpenAI would likely need to raise $50 billion to $75 billion to fund its spending ambitions, which are poised to drive $115 billion in cash burn through 2029.

The most common question raised by OpenAI skeptics has been, “Where is OpenAI going to get all this money?”

A mulled IPO might suggest that OpenAI’s ability to raise money from private markets is reaching its limits. But it also tells us the answer to that question is “from literally anyone who wants to.”

And in a world where SPACs are back and speculation is rampant, something we should have known all along is that people want to. The technology and the unit economics of AI will have to prove their failures, or reach a much higher level of saturation, before capital will shy away from an opportunity billed as this transformative.

Per Reuters, OpenAI is looking to raise about $60 billion at a $1 trillion valuation from the offering — significantly reducing any funding needs through 2029 in one fell swoop.

OpenAI has started work on an IPO that could value the company at $1 trillion

OpenAI has started work on an IPO that could value the company at $1 trillion

That message is also corroborated by anecdotal reports that the order book for Meta’s $25 billion bond offering is roughly $125 billion (!), per a source familiar with the situation.

My colleague David Crowther recently wrote that OpenAI would likely need to raise $50 billion to $75 billion to fund its spending ambitions, which are poised to drive $115 billion in cash burn through 2029.

The most common question raised by OpenAI skeptics has been, “Where is OpenAI going to get all this money?”

A mulled IPO might suggest that OpenAI’s ability to raise money from private markets is reaching its limits. But it also tells us the answer to that question is “from literally anyone who wants to.”

And in a world where SPACs are back and speculation is rampant, something we should have known all along is that people want to. The technology and the unit economics of AI will have to prove their failures, or reach a much higher level of saturation, before capital will shy away from an opportunity billed as this transformative.

Per Reuters, OpenAI is looking to raise about $60 billion at a $1 trillion valuation from the offering — significantly reducing any funding needs through 2029 in one fell swoop.

markets

Max Knoblauch5h

Bearish options flow sends Lucid lower

Shares of luxury EV maker Lucid are being dragged down by bearish options trading on Thursday morning, with a put/call ratio of 5.8 as of 11:10 a.m. ET, versus the 1.05 it’s averaged over the prior 20 days.

If sustained, this would be the most bearishly tilted options activity for a single session for Lucid since June 21, 2024.

More than 32,000 put options have changed hands as of 11:10 a.m. ET, already above Lucid’s 30,794 20-day average for a full session. Lucid shares were down about 3% on Thursday morning.

On Wednesday, Lucid and Uber announced that their planned 20,000-robotaxi fleet would begin operations in the autonomously crowded streets of San Francisco starting next year. Earlier this week, Lucid also said it’s partnering with Nvidia to build autonomous vehicles for personal use.

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