The Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.84% Monday stateside as technology stocks were under pressure, with Apple, Meta and Oracle retreating more than 1% each.

Artificial intelligence lynchpin Nvidia performed worse, losing almost 2%. CEO Jensen Huang in October said the chipmaker had “half a trillion dollars” of business on the books for 2025 and 2026. When Nvidia reports its third-quarter earnings Wednesday stateside, investors will be combing through Huang’s comments for signs of strong 2026 growth, as suggested by that data point.

The problem with promises or expectations, especially for a company that is one of the two around which the artificial intelligence universe orbits (OpenAI being the other), is that any disappointment will be disproportionately painful.

“If they offer any even slightly muted guidance or forecast for demand for their chips, the market would take that poorly,” Baird investment strategist Ross Mayfield said.

Despite the recent sell-off in tech over concerns about high valuations and capital expenditure, some analysts think we could still end the year with a rally.

 “We continue to see a balance of bullish and bearish signals heading into year-end, but our stance remains that a year-end rally is likely,” Michael Graham, analyst at Canaccord Genuity, wrote in a Monday note.

Likewise, HSBC’s chief multi-asset strategist Max Kettner on Monday said the bank thinks “the probability of a melt-up into year-end – particularly in equities – is much greater” than a potential AI bubble popping.

If their predictions prove true, investors will have much to celebrate during the festive season — and we can worry about AI in the new year.

The rich are ‘renting’ out their idle gold bars for income as prices remain at historic highs

Gold prices have been smashing new records this year, and a growing cadre of wealthy investors and family offices are no longer content to let their gold bars sit idle in vaults. They are leasing their bullion to refiners, jewelers, and fabricators for interest, defying gold’s reputation as a non-yielding asset.

Industry veterans whom CNBC spoke to said the appeal is intuitive: investors who already plan to hold gold can earn yields paid in gold through lease payments, while jewelers and fabricators use those leases to fund the gold they need for day-to-day production. 

— Lee Ying Shan

The Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.84% Monday stateside as technology stocks were under pressure, with Apple, Meta and Oracle retreating more than 1% each.

Artificial intelligence lynchpin Nvidia performed worse, losing almost 2%. CEO Jensen Huang in October said the chipmaker had “half a trillion dollars” of business on the books for 2025 and 2026. When Nvidia reports its third-quarter earnings Wednesday stateside, investors will be combing through Huang’s comments for signs of strong 2026 growth, as suggested by that data point.

The problem with promises or expectations, especially for a company that is one of the two around which the artificial intelligence universe orbits (OpenAI being the other), is that any disappointment will be disproportionately painful.

“If they offer any even slightly muted guidance or forecast for demand for their chips, the market would take that poorly,” Baird investment strategist Ross Mayfield said.

Despite the recent sell-off in tech over concerns about high valuations and capital expenditure, some analysts think we could still end the year with a rally.

 “We continue to see a balance of bullish and bearish signals heading into year-end, but our stance remains that a year-end rally is likely,” Michael Graham, analyst at Canaccord Genuity, wrote in a Monday note.

Likewise, HSBC’s chief multi-asset strategist Max Kettner on Monday said the bank thinks “the probability of a melt-up into year-end – particularly in equities – is much greater” than a potential AI bubble popping.

If their predictions prove true, investors will have much to celebrate during the festive season — and we can worry about AI in the new year.

Major U.S. indexes fall Monday stateside. Investors sold off technology names, furthering their downward trajectory. Alphabet shares, however, bucked the trend on news that Berkshire Hathaway has taken a stake in it. The pan-European Stoxx 600 lost 0.54%.

‘Half a trillion dollars’ of business for Nvidia. CEO Jensen Huang said in October that the chipmaker has $500 billion in orders for 2025 and 2026 combined. Analysts think Huang is signaling a strong forecast for 2026 sales.

Divided outlook on a December rate cut. In prepared remarks on Monday, Fed Governor Christopher Waller said he is focused on the labor market “after months of weakening.” But Vice Chair Philip Jefferson said there is a “need to proceed slowly.”

India announces energy deal with the U.S. Nearly 10% of New Delhi’s liquified petroleum gas will be imported from the U.S., said Hardeep Singh Puri, Indian union minister of petroleum and natural gas, on Monday. It’s a move to shore up ties with the White House.

[PRO] Bitcoin’s downward trend could portend trouble. The price of the cryptocurrency, which has been under pressure, is a “leading indicator” for U.S. stocks, an analyst told CNBC. But others think bitcoin still has tailwinds behind it even in the near term.

Arm on Monday said that central processing units based on its technology will be able to integrate with AI chips using Nvidia’s NVLink Fusion technology.

The move will make it easier for customers of both companies who prefer a custom approach to their infrastructure — namely hyperscalers —to pair Arm-based Neoverse CPUs with Nvidia’s dominant graphics processing units.

It’s the latest example of Nvidia using dealmaking to partner with nearly every major technology company as it finds itself at the center of the AI industry. The announcement signals that Nvidia is opening up its NVLink platform to integrate with a wide variety of custom chips, instead of forcing customers to use its CPUs.

Nvidia currently sells an AI product called Grace Blackwell that pairs multiple GPUs with an Nvidia-branded Arm-based CPU. Other configurations include servers that use CPus from Intel or Advanced Micro Devices.

But Microsoft, Amazon and Google are all developing or deploying Arm-based CPUs in their clouds to give them more control over the set ups and reduce their costs.

Arm doesn’t make CPUs but it licenses its instruction set technology that those chips need. The company also sells designs that allow partners to more quickly build Arm-based chips.

As part of Monday’s announcement, Arm said that custom Neoverse chips will include a new protocol that’ll allow them to move data seamlessly with GPUs.

The CPU has historically been the most important part in a server. But generative AI infrastructure is based around the AI accelerator chip, which in most cases is an Nvidia GPU. As many as eight GPUs can be paird with a CPU in an AI server.

In September, Nvidia said it would invest $5 billion into Intel, the leading CPU maker. A key part of the deal was to enable Intel CPUs to integrate into AI servers using Nvidia’s NVLink technology.

Nvidia reached an agreement to buy Arm for $40 billion in 2020, but the deal failed in 2022 because of regulatory issues in the U.S. and U.K. Nvidia had a small stake in Arm, which is majority-owned by Softbank, as of February.

Meanwhile, Softbank liquidated its entire stake in Nvidia earlier this month and Softbank is backing the OpenAI Stargate project, which plans to use Arm technology in addition to chips from Nvidia and AMD.

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