Chips bounce and AMD beats while staples and materials drag the Dow lower

Tuesday, November 3 turned Monday around. The chip ETF, down three sessions in a row, rose about 2.0% as chipmakers bounced into AMD's report, and the Nasdaq proxy closed up about 0.6%. The Dow proxy fell about 0.4% and the equal-weight S&P about 0.3%, so the index rose while the average stock slipped. That gap of about 1.1 points between the Nasdaq proxy and the Dow proxy scores the close Choppy, with the vol proxy down about 1.9%.

The gains were narrow. Tech rose about 1.3%, communication stocks about 1.2% and industrials about 1.0%, but seven of eleven sector groups fell, led by staples and materials at about −2.1% each. Oracle rose about 5.9%, Micron about 2.6%, Nvidia about 2.2% and Amazon about 2.1%. Apple fell about 2.0% and Palantir about 1.6% a day after their reports. Long Treasuries dropped about 0.8% after a hot job openings number, crude added about 0.8%, gold slipped about 0.7% and Bitcoin rose about 1.2%.

Job openings came in at 7.52 million in a street report, well above the calendar's 7.1 million forecast, and factory orders rose 1.8% against a 1.5% forecast. Shopify fell about 8.7% after street-reported revenue of $3.74 billion, a hair under the $3.75 billion estimate, even as earnings of $0.49 a share topped $0.48. After the close, AMD earned $2.09 a share against the calendar's $1.94 on revenue of $13.38 billion, and guided fourth-quarter revenue to about $17 billion against about $16.23 billion expected. Arista earned $1.20 against $1.08 and guided above estimates, all street-reported.

Research

Accounts report AMD's data center revenue nearly doubled to about $8.5 billion, up 97% from a year ago, and that Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and Oracle now run workloads on its first Helios AI racks. Its GAAP results carried a $1.1 billion non-cash charge tied to warrants in its OpenAI and Meta deals. Arista's revenue grew 58.5%, its fastest since listing in 2014. Options had priced a move of about 6.5% for AMD and about 7.9% for Arista.

What X is saying

Posts say this was a bounce in oversold chips rather than a turn, pointing to light volume and a fear gauge still near 20. Others call it rotation inside tech, out of Apple after it guided December-quarter gross margins to 45–46% and into beaten-down chipmakers. Some posts tie the drop in long Treasuries to the job openings beat and say traders now see about a 75% chance of a Fed hike in December.

Insight

After three days of the average stock beating the index, Tuesday flipped it: chips rose and the equal-weight S&P fell. AMD's after-hours jump is the first hard number in a week that the AI spending behind chipmakers is still growing, but a hot job openings report pushed long yields up at the same time. Wednesday's ADP payrolls at 8:15 AM ET and ISM services at 10:00 AM ET have to show whether strong data keeps pressure on bonds, while midterm results arrive overnight.