Nvidia chips piled up, and Micron crashed

Easy version of the November 6 U.S. stock note. This is not investment advice. Later names were left out.

In one line, a report said about 600,000 Nvidia H200 AI chips were waiting in Hong Kong for China approval, and Micron crashed on a stopped factory project plus data center worry. A data center is a large building of computers that runs AI calculations.

Nvidia fell ▼ 9.12% to $181.87. The United States had allowed exports, but Beijing had not approved large imports. Major Chinese internet firms had secured only about 10,000 chips each. An eight-chip H200 server was said to cost more than 6 million yuan, about $900,000, triple the price a year earlier. The same day, AI chip stocks fell together on worry that a Democratic Congress could slow data center construction.

Micron fell ▼ 17.25% to $658.09. It stopped a $4.5 billion new plant in Taoyuan, Taiwan, during a union dispute. The union asked for 15% of operating profit to be shared with workers worldwide. No deal was in place.

AppLovin rose ▲ 31.05% to $356.12. Third-quarter revenue was $2.18 billion, up ▲ 55%, and earnings per share were $4.30. The Street expected $2.08 billion and $4.04. Revenue was also $100 million above the top of the company's own guidance. Fourth-quarter revenue guidance of $2.365 billion to $2.395 billion beat a consensus, the average forecast, of about $2.25 billion. The buyback limit rose to $3.6 billion. A buyback is a company buying its own shares.

Qualcomm fell ▼ 9.52% to $156.71. September-quarter handset-chip revenue fell 26% to $5.1 billion. The midpoint of December-quarter earnings-per-share guidance was $2.25, below a $2.27 consensus in this note. The morning market note used $2.32. I did not check which forecast is right. Auto-chip revenue topped $2 billion for the first time, up ▲ 89%.

Arm fell ▼ 13.13% to $166.61. September-quarter revenue of $1.44 billion, up 27%, was a record second quarter, and data center royalties doubled. Royalty revenue of $670 million still missed hopes. License revenue was $773 million, up 50%.

Snap fell ▼ 14.19% to $5.08. Third-quarter revenue of about $1.72 billion, up 14%, and 495 million daily users slightly missed forecasts of about $1.73 billion and 499 million. Net income of $56 million was a return to profit. Fourth-quarter revenue guidance midpoint of $1.97 billion beat forecasts, but the company said it would switch its main user metric to monthly users, now 977 million, from the first quarter of 2027.

Microsoft fell ▼ 3.57% to $535.96. A report said it would not expand a Texas data center contract with Britain's Nscale. On October 28 it had cut the yearly capital-spending outlook from about $175 billion to about $170 billion. Capital spending is money spent on long-lived things such as servers.

Apple fell ▼ 1.42% to $344.54. A report said a seven-part dollar bond deal, maturing from 2028 to 2036, drew about $31 billion of orders for a roughly $7 billion target, about four times coverage. A corporate bond is a debt note issued by a company.

Sony rose ▲ 6.09% to $27.53. July-to-September operating profit was 622.3 billion yen, up 45%, above the 505 billion yen average forecast. PlayStation 5 sales were 2.6 million units, down from 4.0 million a year earlier.

Cigna fell ▼ 1.26% to $301.56. Third-quarter revenue was $73.68 billion and adjusted earnings per share were $7.98, above forecasts of $72.45 billion and $7.51. The stock was down more than 5% during the day, then cut the loss.

Coherent fell ▼ 13.01% to $169.71 even after fiscal first-quarter revenue of $2.37 billion, up 50%, and non-GAAP earnings per share of $2.09, up from $1.16. A strong report was buried by the chip and optical selloff.

Three lines to keep. China-approval delay and data center rules weighed on chip stocks. A good report was not enough on a sector-selling day. AI advertising, in AppLovin's case, jumped the other way.

Left out: names after Coherent. The two Qualcomm forecast numbers were not reconciled.