THE LEAD

Employers added 165,000 jobs in October, far more than forecasters expected, per three outlets, and Vistra rose 6.93% after its results. Every light here still comes from Thursday’s completed bar, where the market-risk light reads red.

Micron began Thursday as the best stock on our roster this year, a memory maker riding a shortage that only lasts while the data centers keep going up. On Thursday it fell 17.46% to $656.39, and Marathon Petroleum, a refiner, took over first place. The trigger was the election: Democrats’ wins raised fears of tighter rules on data centers and a slower build-out, per two outlets, and one outlet reported a Citi note flagging a new risk to those buildings. Micron lost $138.84 a share in one session.

The selling ran the length of the AI supply chain. Advanced Micro Devices fell 17.26% two days after a quarter that beat on earnings, Broadcom fell 10.43% and Nvidia 9.26%. Iron Mountain, which runs data centers alongside its storage business, fell 11.09%, and we haven’t found a source that explains it. We started following who pays for the AI build-out on October 16. On November 4 the bill looked negotiable from the spender’s side; on Thursday the market started asking whether the suppliers’ order books are as long as their stock prices said.

Underneath the chips, the crowd quit. Only five of our sixty-seven companies rose, led by Costco and Newmont, and breadth fell from forty-five to thirty-eight in one bar. The bill for a day like this lands on the household that owns an index fund that holds the AI giants at their full weight: those savers took a 4.41% loss without ever choosing a chip stock, because the biggest companies get the biggest share of every dollar.

The fear traveled overnight. Japan’s main index fell into bear-market territory, per two outlets, and money-market funds took in a surge of cash on caution over the midterms and AI spending, per one wire service. The volatility fund jumped 30.13%. Treasuries were the place to hide: the ten-year yield fell 6 basis points to 4.84%.

The case against our red got stronger by mid-morning. The chip fund is up 3.01% at 10:31 ET and Micron 4.26%, one floor trader called Thursday an overreaction, per one outlet, and a one-day rout after a one-day rally is two data points, not a trend. As far as we’ve found, Thursday’s selling came on a policy worry and not on a profit warning from any company that fell hardest.

We’d take the red at its word, and we’d want breadth back before we believed a bounce. The market-risk light fell two rungs, from green to red, one session after it turned green. One sector is still green, and it’s Communication Services, the fund with the worst year on the board. I’d rather be early to a red light than late to it, and on Wednesday I was early to a green one that didn’t last.

All seven fell, and the memory and processor makers fell hardest: Micron 17.46%, Advanced Micro Devices 17.26%, Broadcom 10.43% and Nvidia 9.26%. The gauge dropped to minus 227.32 from minus 120.52, under its average of minus 105.54, so yellow turns red. The fund lost 8.00% to $162.38, the worst of the eleven, and sits 14.05% under its fifty-day.

Apple and Microsoft are still the only two of seven above their trend lines. The fund is fifth of eleven on the year at plus 11.50%, which tells you how far it had come before Thursday.

Oracle’s holders need a 71.5% gain to get back to January. The fund is up 1.45% at 10:31 ET against its new red, past our three-quarter-point line, and Micron is up 4.26%.

One bar of green, then red. All six fell, Gilead by 3.96%, Eli Lilly 3.76% and UnitedHealth 3.34%. The gauge slipped to plus 132.20 from plus 154.97 and under its average of plus 140.79. The fund lost 2.50% to $184.91.

All six still sit above their trend lines and the fund sits 6.81% above its fifty-day, second of eleven on the year at plus 19.40%. A red with every name above trend is momentum turning before price does.

Intuitive Surgical’s holders need a 21.0% gain to get back to January. The fund is down 0.10% at 10:31 ET.

Goldman Sachs fell 6.36%, JPMorgan 4.19% and Bank of America 3.62%, and all six fell. The gauge dropped to plus 165.34 from plus 222.94; it’s still well over its average of plus 105.40, so green becomes yellow. The fund lost 2.87% to $57.50 and sits 2.81% above its fifty-day.

JPMorgan slipped back under its trend line, leaving Berkshire Hathaway, Mastercard and Visa as the three of six above it. Berkshire reports Saturday, per our feed.

Bank of America’s holders need a 10.6% gain to get back to January. The fund is up 0.01% at 10:31 ET.

Tesla fell 10.77%, Starbucks 3.23% and Nike 2.30%, and all six fell. The gauge dropped to plus 144.42 from plus 253.43 and holds over its average of plus 125.24, so green becomes yellow. The fund lost 3.83% to $117.64.

Tesla crossed under its trend line, so five of six sit above it, and the fund sits 3.81% above its fifty-day. Early Friday Elon Musk said Tesla will wind down Cybertruck production at its Texas plant next year to make room for its robotaxi, per two outlets.

Nike’s holders need a 61.8% gain to get back to January and Tesla’s 33.2%. Tesla is up 4.46% at 10:31 ET and the fund 0.84%.

The fund lost just 0.59% to $104.34, the best of eleven on a day none rose. AT&T slipped 0.05% and Verizon 0.11%, while Meta fell 3.96%. The gauge edged up to minus 29.96 from minus 39.80 and now sits 100.01 points over its average of minus 129.97.

The only green on the board belongs to the fund with the worst year: last of eleven at minus 11.70%, 5.10% under its fifty-day, with only Disney of six above trend. Momentum can turn up from a deep hole, and this one has three sessions of it.

Netflix’s holders need a 43.6% gain to get back to January. The fund is up 0.65% at 10:31 ET.

Caterpillar fell 6.37% and Honeywell 5.55%, and all six fell. The gauge dropped to minus 170.89 from plus 74.41, under its average of minus 45.87, so yellow turns red. The fund lost 4.12% to $162.47 and sits 4.31% under its fifty-day.

Deere crossed under its trend line, leaving UPS, Union Pacific and Honeywell as the three of six above it. Caterpillar has now dropped two days running, and we still haven’t found a source that explains either one.

Boeing’s holders need a 26.5% gain to get back to January. Caterpillar is up 0.98% and the fund 0.40% at 10:31 ET.

Oil bounced and the drillers didn’t. The crude fund rose 1.93%, while Phillips 66 fell 4.85%, Marathon Petroleum 3.91% and Exxon 2.35%; all six fell. The gauge slid to minus 246.17 from minus 202.19, far under its average of plus 71.71. The fund lost 2.98% to $61.63.

ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Exxon crossed under their trend lines, so none of six sit above one, and the fund sits 5.31% under its fifty-day. It’s still first of eleven on the year at plus 37.81%, and the crude fund is up 116.59% since January.

Marathon Petroleum now leads our whole roster on the year at plus 131.70%. The fund is up 0.40% at 10:31 ET and the crude fund down 0.49%.

The grocery aisle held up best. Costco rose 1.83% and PepsiCo 0.20%, Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble barely moved, and Philip Morris fell 4.63%. The fund lost 0.75% to $91.25. The gauge eased to plus 161.90 from plus 163.47, a hair under its prior and still over its average of plus 129.03, so green becomes yellow.

All six sit above trend and the fund sits 7.43% above its fifty-day. Procter & Gamble slipped 0.13% on a day the chip fund lost 11.21%, so the soap held its ground while the silicon fell through the floor.

PepsiCo’s holders need a 0.4% gain to get back to January. The fund is down 0.79% at 10:31 ET.

Vistra fell 6.15% and NRG 3.24% on top of Wednesday’s losses, while Duke and Southern edged higher. The fund lost 0.71% to $43.30. The gauge slipped to plus 101.86 from plus 103.38 and sits 6.60 points under its average of plus 108.46, a wider gap than Wednesday’s.

Four of six sit above trend, all but Vistra and NRG, and the fund sits 3.65% above its fifty-day. Vistra filed its third-quarter results this morning, per its filing with the SEC, and NRG reports Monday, per our feed.

NRG’s holders need a 100.6% gain to get back to January and Vistra’s 45.2%. Vistra is up 6.93% and NRG 6.02% at 10:31 ET; the fund is up 0.06%.

Copper took the hit. Freeport-McMoRan fell 7.51% as the copper fund lost 3.19%, and Sherwin-Williams fell 3.99%. Newmont rose 1.35% with gold. The gauge dropped to plus 103.02 from plus 156.02 and under its average of plus 109.39, so green goes straight to red. The fund lost 2.91% to $52.33.

Newmont crossed over its trend line, so five of six sit above it, Freeport-McMoRan the exception, and the fund sits 2.70% above its fifty-day.

The fund is up 0.07% at 10:31 ET.

The data-center landlords fell hardest. Iron Mountain lost 11.09% and Equinix 5.38%, while American Tower slipped 0.45%. The gauge dropped to plus 183.49 from plus 239.92 and stays well over its average of plus 99.27, so green becomes yellow. The fund lost 1.82% to $44.30.

Iron Mountain and Equinix crossed under their trend lines, leaving three of six above, and the fund sits 4.07% above its fifty-day. Iron Mountain’s results show in our feed only.

Iron Mountain is down 1.01% and the fund up 0.15% at 10:31 ET.

ROTATION

Leaders and laggards in the roster. Marathon Petroleum now leads at plus 131.70%, then Micron at plus 122.41%, Phillips 66 at plus 91.50%, Advanced Micro Devices at plus 84.74% and ConocoPhillips at plus 44.71%. The bottom three are NRG at minus 50.15%, Oracle at minus 41.68% and Nike at minus 38.19%. Micron gave up first place.

Above and below the fifty-day. Thirty-eight of the sixty-seven companies close above their own fifty-day average, down from forty-five. Newmont crossed up; ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Deere, Equinix, Iron Mountain, JPMorgan, Tesla and Exxon crossed down. By sector: Health Care six of six, Consumer Staples six of six, Consumer Discretionary five of six, Materials five of six, Utilities four of six, Financials three of six, Industrials three of six, Real Estate three of six, Technology two of seven, Communication Services one of six, Energy none of six. Seven of the eleven sector funds close above their own fifty-day, unchanged; Technology, Communication Services, Industrials and Energy stay under. The index proxy closes 4.36% under its own, from 0.03%.

Relative strength callouts. Micron beats its own sector fund by 111 points on the year and Advanced Micro Devices by 73, while Oracle trails it by 53. Marathon Petroleum beats Energy by 94 points and Phillips 66 by 54. Deere beats Industrials by 38 points and Equinix beats Real Estate by 20. The worst relative performers against their own sectors are Oracle at minus 53, NRG at minus 51, Intuitive Surgical at minus 37 and Nike at minus 36.

One line on the consensus. The easy headline this morning is an AI meltdown. Our count adds that the damage didn’t stay in AI: fifty-eight of the sixty-two companies that fell sit outside the chip business.

EARNINGS CALENDAR

Three roster names report inside the next seven calendar days, from Vistra this morning through NRG on Monday. Vistra’s date and before-the-open timing come from our feed and one outlet; the other two come from our feed only, and we don’t assert their timing.

ECONOMIC CALENDAR

Thursday’s jobless claims came in at 189,000 against 196,000 expected and third-quarter productivity rose 3.6%, per our feed; we haven’t seen either figure confirmed elsewhere. This morning’s report showed employers added 165,000 jobs in October, far more than forecasters expected, per three outlets, with unemployment at 4.1%, per two. October consumer prices land Tuesday.

LEADERS AND LAGGARDS

Every figure is measured from the January 2 opening price, for every company and every fund. The index proxy sits at plus 6.90% on the same basis, down from plus 11.83% on Wednesday.

NRG’s holders now need a 100.6% gain to get back to January, more than doubling their money just to break even, and Oracle’s need 71.5%. Micron’s holders who bought in January are still up 122.41%, but anyone who bought in the last two weeks is looking at a very different number. None of these is a recommendation and none is a forecast.

FINAL WORD

The board reads one green, four yellow and six red under a red market-risk light. Nine lights changed on Thursday’s bar, counting the market-risk light, and not one moved up. Three fell two rungs at once: the market-risk light, Health Care and Materials.

A word on how a green can sit next to a fund that fell. Our gauge compares where a fund is today with its own recent path. Consumer Staples dropped from green to yellow on a reading that slipped by 1.57 points, while Communication Services stayed green on a day it fell 0.59%, because its gauge still rose from a much deeper hole. The light reads direction of momentum, not the size of the day.

Our breadth test, set October 30, fired on its final session, and we’ve said so above. The new test runs through next Friday: if forty-five or more of our sixty-seven companies close above their own fifty-day average on any completed session through Friday, November 13, Thursday’s break was a shakeout and not the start of something broader, and we’ll say so here. Micron against the Technology fund is one ratio chart in the Sector Risk tab on the Golden Terminal.

Down here some of the old-timers keep a storm glass on the windowsill, and it does about as well as the weather radio, and nobody pretends to know why the crystals grow. Thursday the market’s crystals all grew at once. The one thing a Florida trader learns from hurricane season is that the second day of a storm tells you more than the first. Payrolls came in strong and the chips came back green, and I still want tonight’s bar before I decide what Thursday was.

Three roster names report inside the next seven calendar days, from Vistra this morning through NRG on Monday. Our desk keeps a separate counter on these names ahead of each print, and nothing in it has fired for this group.

FOR THE PROS

Every figure in this issue, checked against the market data it came from. Prices are Thursday’s completed daily bars, Treasury yields come from the Treasury’s own daily curve, and where two sources disagree we show both and say which one the body follows.

The Daily Update is published by Golden Cycles Research for informational and educational purposes only. It isn’t personalized advice and it isn’t a recommendation to buy or sell anything. Figures come from third-party data providers and government releases and can be revised. Past performance doesn’t predict future results.

The Daily Update · Golden Terminal · Vol. III, No. 232 · Friday, November 6, 2026