DHUnplugged #731: Stacking $$$

Big - Run - Crypto Pops and Drops
Stacking the Admin with $$$ Peeps
HUGE Baseball Deal
Equifax Class Action - Finally a payout?
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Warm-Up
- Big - Run - Crypto Pops and Drops
- Stacking the Admin with $$$ Peeps
- Baseball Deal
- Equifax Class Action - Finally a payout?
Markets
- Employment Report
- This week's CPI and PPI Data
- Santa Rally - Could be just be a couple weeks away
- - Trump Limericks (AI)
ANNOUNCING the CTP Contestants for 2024 CTP Cup
Michael Bowling
Kirk Saathoff
Eric Harvey
Chad Laajala
Tim Dewey
Paul Kinder
Anson Brady (2023 CTP Cup Winner)
---Emails have gone out...
Regarding AMD
- BofA Securities downgraded Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to Neutral from Buy, lower CY25/26 pf-EPS by 6%/8%ta $4.43/55.51, about -13%/-23% below consensus 55.09/57.11. Two factors:
1) Higher competitive risks in Al against best-of-breed NVDA's dominance, and growing cloud preference for custom chips from MRVL/AVGO. limiting AMD's market share gain potential, and
2) Potential for 1H'25E PC processor correction, after ~4O% HoH surge in AMD's 2H'24E client PC sales.  Shares are down 3%.
Oracle Earnings
- Oracle (ORCL -8%) is lower following its Q2 (Nov) earnings report last night.
- The company reported a slight EPS miss, its second miss in the past three quarters.
- Revenue rose 8.6% yr/yr to $14.06 bln, but that was also a bit light of analyst expectations.
- The Q3 (Feb) adjusted EPS guidance of $1.47-1.51 was also lower than expected.
- Oracle guided to Q3 revs of +7-9% (+9-11% CC), which we compute as $14.21-14.48 bln, which was also light, partly due to FX.
Google Chip
- Releases the Willow quantum computing chip
- Google has unveiled a new chip which it claims takes five minutes to solve a problem that would currently take the world's fastest super computers ten septillion – or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years – to complete.
- However experts say Willow is, for now, a largely experimental device, meaning a quantum computer powerful enough to solve a wide range of real-world problems is still years - and billions of dollars - away.
MLB Deal
- The Mets on Sunday agreed to sign Juan Soto to a 15-year, $765 million contract, multiple sources said, by far the largest pact in Major League Baseball history.
- The deal, which the Mets have not confirmed because it’s pending a physical, contains a $75 million signing bonus, an opt-out after five seasons and no deferred money.
- The Mets will have the ability to void Soto’s opt-out clause after the 2029 season if they boost the average annual value of the final 10 years of his deal from $51 million to $55 million, according to a source.
- In that case, the overall deal would be for 15 years and $805 million
- Right and Left Fielder - with .288 Batting average
- In 2024, he hit 41 homers and had 129 walks. It was his fourth season with at least 25 home runs and 125 walks. That's fourth-most in MLB history, behind only Barry Bonds (10 such seasons), Babe Ruth (10) and Ted Williams (eight).
China - Back in the Spotlight
- Disinflation again and profits slowing - China's inflation drops
- China's producer price index declined for the 26th month. Producer inflation fell by 2.5% year on year in November...
- Sunday announcement - China's leaders on Monday pledged "more proactive" fiscal measures and "moderately" looser monetary policy next year to boost domestic consumption, according to an official readout of a key policy meeting that outlined upcoming economic priorities.