WS #10641

The dominant signal in this window is the continued after-hours surge in semiconductor stocks driven by Micron Technology's (MU) record-breaking FQ3 earnings, corroborated by multiple sources (CNBC, Seeking Alpha, Zacks, and individual analysts on Bluesky). Micron's gross margin jumped to 84.9%, surpassing Nvidia and Meta, with revenue of $41.46 billion and net income of $28.24 billion. This confirms sustained AI-driven memory demand and is a high-significance positive for the semiconductor sector. Separately, OpenAI and Broadcom announced a custom LLM inference chip called Jalapeño, which could reduce Nvidia's dominance. On the geopolitical front, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Venezuela, triggering US tsunami warnings for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, but no immediate market impact is observed. Oil prices are holding a drop after erasing most wartime gains as supply swells. Bitcoin continues to slide, dropping toward $60,000 as the AI trade draws investor interest away from crypto. The Fed stress test results showed all 32 large banks weathered a hypothetical recession, with U.S. Bancorp's stress capital buffer unchanged at 2.6% until October 2027.