More Bullish Tech Headlines

Avatar photo NeilSethi on October 21, 2026

In addition to the well-received SpaceX ($SPCX) headlines detailed last night (SpaceX Climbs as Musk Floats Tesla Merger), some other stories are boosting Tech shares this morning:

Shares of server maker Super Micro Computer ($SMCI) are up over 12% premarket after the firm released preliminary quarterly numbers for the period ending September 30, saying it expects revenue of $18.5 billion to $19.5 billion for the quarter. That compares with its earlier forecast of $14.5 billion to $15.5 billion and an average analyst estimate of about $15 billion. The company also raised its gross margin forecast to 12% to 12.5%, from 10.4% to 10.8%

In addition, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Anthropic’s draft prospectus signals coming spending on computer and power of as much as $750 billion in coming years, with $111 billion on contracts with Alphabet’s Google Cloud ($GOOGL), $110 billion with Amazon Web Services ($AMZN) and $31 billion with Microsoft ($MSFT) “regardless of actual usage.”

Anthropic also agreed to spend up to $86 billion renting Nvidia ($NVDA) chips from smaller AI cloud providers Nscale and Lambda.

And sales are growing at a blistering pace. The Journal reported revenues had grown to $16.3 billion in the six months ended June 30, up from $1.1 billion in the year-earlier period. That outpaced the nearly $9 billion on computing capacity and infrastructure, up from $2.3 billion.

Still it recorded a net loss of $80.7 billion, the vast majority ($72 billion) “tied to changes in the value of convertible notes and other instruments the company issued to raise funding.”

Wall Street Journal

And finally, several Asian countries with large tech exposure (South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, etc.) are reporting strong export numbers led by semiconductor and other Tech shipments.

  • Bloomberg reports that South Korea’s exports the first 20 days of October, adjusted for working-day differences, rose 65.9% from a year earlier. While down from the 89.8% increase during the same period in September, it is otherwise a record. Semiconductors surged 222.5% from a year, while products increased 68.3%, and automobile exports almost 41%.
Bloomberg
  • Also from Bloomberg, Japan’s September export growth rose 16.7% from a year earlier. While it missed expectations for a 21.2% increase, shipments of semiconductors and chip-making equipment surged 49.4% and 43.9% respectively (autos were +15.1%). Shipments to the US gained 22.9%. Those to China and the European Union advanced 8.6% and 10.5%, respectively.
  • Reuters reports that Taiwan’s export orders jumped 62.4% in September to a record $114.21 billion “credited to strong demand for AI, high-performance computing and cloud services applications.” The Ministry of Economic Affairs forecast October as rising between 62% and 67%. “Taiwan’s orders ​in September for telecoms products were up 87.3% from ​a ⁠year earlier, while those for electronic products jumped 71.0%.”

A Look at Wednesday

Avatar photo NeilSethi on October 21, 2026

From my evening update:

US economic data is light Wednesday, with only weekly mortgage applications and EIA petroleum inventories.

The Fed remains in its blackout period ahead of next week’s October 27–28 FOMC meeting.

Non-Bill (>1yr in maturity) US Treasury auctions resume with a $13B 20-year bond reopening.

Q3 earnings season continues with 26 S&P 500 components including a number of AI-related names: Meta Platforms ($META), Tesla ($TSLA), Lam Research ($LRCX), Philip Morris ($PM), Thermo Fisher Scientific ($TMO), Texas Instruments ($TXN), IBM ($IBM), Abbott Laboratories ($ABT), NextEra Energy ($NEE), Danaher ($DHR), AT&T ($T), CME Group ($CME), Elevance Health ($ELV), CSX ($CSX), Moody’s ($MCO), Kinder Morgan ($KMI), United Rentals ($URI), Wabtec ($WAB), Crown Castle ($CCI), Northern Trust ($NTRS), Teledyne Technologies ($TDY), Las Vegas Sands ($LVS), Packaging Corp. of America ($PKG), Southwest Airlines ($LUV), Rollins ($ROL) and Globe Life ($GL).

Ex-US highlights are UK September CPI, PPI, RPI, public finances, August house price index, Japan September trade balance, New Zealand Q3 CPI.

SpaceX Climbs as Musk Floats Tesla Merger

Avatar photo NeilSethi on October 20, 2026

SpaceX ($SPCX) shares rose nearly 8% after hours following an earnings call packed with bullish forecasts:

  • CFO Bret Johnsen said SpaceX’s revenue would reach $33 billion to $37 billion in the first quarter of next year, well above the $22.2 billion analyst estimate, per LSEG. CEO Elon Musk went further, saying he expects the company to reach an annual revenue run rate of $500 billion to $1 trillion by the end of 2027. Analysts project full-year 2027 revenue of about $110 billion, according to LSEG, which would be more than double this year’s, per CNBC.
  • On its next launch, SpaceX aims to recover not only the booster but also the ship itself. “It will be the first time an orbital launch vehicle has been totally recovered,” Musk said. “We expect the Starship to fly weekly in the first half of next year,” he later added.
  • On its Terafab project, Musk said the company has seen “some significant potential breakthroughs in chip fabrication, but I don’t think I should discuss that on an earnings call.”
  • SpaceX currently has 1.7 gigawatts of compute, up from 0.6 gigawatts a year earlier. Musk expects 2.5 to 3 gigawatts this year and is aiming for 13 gigawatts by the end of next year.
  • Musk said he expects to launch rockets from a planned “Starbase Louisiana” site in less than three years.
  • Musk said SpaceX would keep investing heavily in more powerful Starlink satellites while building out “terrestrial networks” to help the business “become a major mobile carrier” in the U.S.
  • SpaceX has been piloting its Grok Bot with a few trusted enterprise partners and expects wide deployment within a few weeks, Musk said.
  • The company is targeting an orbital refueling mission early next year, a key step toward a Mars mission.

But perhaps the biggest news was Musk revealing that both SpaceX and Tesla ($TSLA) have formed special committees to discuss a merger. “Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes,” Musk said. “There’s a lot of merit to combining the companies,” he added. “I think it would be a good idea, but it’s really up to the special committees of both companies.” Tesla is up over 2% in the overnight session.

“There’s no question that Musk wants the merger, and he wants to get it done sooner rather than later,” Gene Munster, founder of Deepwater Asset Management, which has invested in both companies, told Bloomberg. “It was a key question on the call, and Elon said it was a good idea about three times. He’s getting people excited about it, and he wants to bump up the enthusiasm.”

Sources: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-20/spacex-profit-beats-estimates-on-big-jump-in-ai-business-revenue

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/live-blog/2026-10-20/spacex-third-quarter-earnings-live-coverage

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp-500-nasdaq-10-20-2026

Netflix Shares Drop After Cutting Sales Forecast

Avatar photo NeilSethi on October 20, 2026

Netflix ($NFLX) shares are down over 5%, even as it beat on third-quarter earnings, after guiding fourth quarter sales below estimates. That would be a fourth straight quarter of slowing sales growth. If the decline holds, it would put the shares at the lowest levels since August 2024.

The pace of growth has fallen from 17.6% in the final quarter of last year to a projection of 11.5% for this year’s fourth quarter. The company blamed its sales shortfall on the advertising business, which is on pace to deliver $300 million less than the company expected according to Bloomberg.

Bloomberg

SpaceX Rises After Earnings

Avatar photo NeilSethi on October 20, 2026

Shares in SpaceX ($SPCX) are up 2% in the after-hours after reporting 161% revenue growth for the third quarter, driven by the company’s artificial intelligence business and Starlink Subscriber growth.

The company reported net income of $4.4 billion more than double estimates. That’s compared to the net loss of $541 million the company reported last quarter, and Starlink showed growth in consumer subscribers, now at 13.6 million, up from 12 million subscribers in the last quarter according to Bloomberg.

AI operating income was a positive $431 million vs street estimates of a $13.5 million loss. Capex on the AI side was below consensus while total costs and expenses of its Space segment, which includes launch, were up $367 million year-over-year. Still the majority ($16.4 billion) of its $19.59 billion in capex for the quarter was for the AI (now SI) unit.

While notably the SI unit overtook Connectivity (Starlink) in terms of revenues, the connectivity business represented the majority of the company’s profits with $2.37 billion in the latest quarter.

3M Rising on Amazon Deal

Avatar photo NeilSethi on October 20, 2026

3M ($MMM) is up over 5%, on track for its best day since July, and second best since last October, after expanding its relationship with a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. ($AMZN). Under the deal, 3M issued warrants for the purchase of nearly 3.2 million shares of the company over seven years tied to the amount of spending from Amazon on “expanded beam optical ferrules,” which can can connect servers in seconds rather than minutes, taking six months off a data center’s construction time, the company says according to the WSJ.

Eighty-five percent of the warrant shares will vest based on Amazon’s cumulative payments for 3M’s optical connectivity and other data center offerings, with full vesting of that portion once payments reach $6 billion according to TipRanks.

Also helping was a beat on earnings and raise to its full year’s forecast. Adjusted earnings are expected to be $9.10 to $9.15 a share this year, up from a prior range topping out at $8.95. Analysts had anticipated $8.94 a share on average in estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

At Midday

Avatar photo NeilSethi on October 20, 2026

Tech stocks have fallen back into negative territory, but four sectors are up over 1% led by Health Care’s over 2% gain to a fresh record high.

Schwab

Atlanta Fed Q3 GDP Tracker Eases to +3.5%

Avatar photo NeilSethi on October 20, 2026

The Atlanta Fed’s Q3 real GDP tracker slipped to +3.50% as of October 20, the least since it initiated tracking and down from +3.59% on October 8th.

A +0.28% rise in the contribution from consumption (to +2.55% from +2.27%) after the retail sales report was more than offset by three declines: a -0.17% drop in net exports (to -2.86% from -2.69%) after the import and export prices data, and smaller declines in inventories (-0.08%) and residential investment (-0.07%, after this morning’s housing starts).

This continues to be consistent with my ongoing caveat that in both Q1 and Q2 we saw this indicator fall sharply the month before the actual GDP reads (which for Q3 will be next week).

The reading for now remains above the blue chip consensus* of ~+2.5%.

Here’s the breakdown of the components as of October 20 and changes from my last update October 8:

Consumption = +2.55% (+0.28%)

Inventories = +1.90% (-0.08%)

Nonresidential fixed investment (biz spending) = +1.57% (+0.01%)

Gov’t = +0.44% (-0.04%)

Residential investment = -0.10% (-0.07%)

Net exports = -2.86% (-0.17%)

GDPNow Forecast: +3.50% (-0.09%)