14 Charts: Nvidia's Blow, Meta's Muse, Anthropic IPO Review
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We watched the Anthropic IPO roadshow, the Nvidia news is historic, and so much more.
Big Picture
What a week. I have a lot to break down today, from Nvidia to credit, Meta's Muse, Anthropic's roadshow that we watched, inflation and the consumer.
Let me start with the Nvidia news, because it's top of mind for literally everybody. The internet broke. I made one tweet and it got 1 million views.
In one week Nvidia went from a report that a Singapore customer tied to Jensen Huang may be a Chinese intelligence asset, to Huang admitting the relationship, to the FBI looking into it, to Huang resigning on Thursday with CFO Colette Kress stepping in as interim CEO. The stock fell 4.3% Monday, about $193B of market value, and another 5.5% Tuesday. This was a major blow to the AI space.
People are quick to rush in with the "buy it" idea. I get it. We have a price point where we would step in too. But ask the harder question first: what if the spy story is true?
If it is true, did they take information? Did anyone inside Nvidia knowingly support it? Was any part of the Nvidia stack infiltrated? The Information reported about $7.5B of Nvidia chips reached China through that network. And if any of that holds up, will Nvidia's customers care, or will they keep buying because there's no real alternative at scale?
The board says it has "no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised." That's a good starting point, not the conclusion yet. There's a lot we don't know, so a margin of safety is required to bake in the unknown. We will stay disciplined in that. Earnings are Tuesday after the close…
I'll be breaking it down live on Schwab Network's Nvidia earnings panel Wednesday, Nov 18 at 11:45 AM ET.
Watch on YouTube: Schwab Network Live
Watch on Schwab Network: schwabnetwork.com
Step back from Nvidia and the economy still looks firm. The Weekly Economic Index we track here is running at 3.29 for the week, still nicely above multi year trends… like we talked about last week during the tech selloff, credit isn't panicking yet so stay the course, and my top AI pick is gaining real users… That's some of the path for this week.
We are investors, not traders. Let's get into the details and data!
[ 1 ] Credit isn't panicking.
Let’s start here. Playing off last week.
CDX (credit default swaps) high-yield spreads closed at 345bp on Nov 9. That's up from the 283bp low in January, but well below the 475bp tariff shock in April 2025 and the 402bp Iran war spike in March.
Quick explainer for the casual reader: a credit default swap is basically insurance against a company not paying back its debt. CDX HY bundles that insurance across about 100 junk-rated companies, so when the spread rises, investors are paying more to protect against defaults. Parts of the equity market are worried, but the credit market isn't sending the same signal. Important stuff.
[ 2 ] Muse is the #1 app in 3 of the 5 countries where it's live.
I keep saying Meta is our number one AI investment, and this is why. Muse is live in five countries and it's #1 on the App Store in Canada, Mexico and Japan, #2 in the U.S. and #3 in Singapore. ChatGPT is behind it in all five.
More countries are expected to launch. Meta is becoming a leading consumer AI app, and I think its distribution advantage is still being underestimated. STILL.
Watch the next launches… don’t fight the Zuck.
[ 3 ] ChatGPT's web traffic share is climbing again.
This one is interesting…
ChatGPT's share of Gen AI website visits bottomed at about 50.5% in May and is back to about 54% in October.
Gemini has slipped to 24% from 28%, and Claude is up to 11.5%.
Quick note on Muse: it's an app-based agent, so it doesn't show up in web traffic rankings. On the web, ChatGPT is holding its lead and even gaining a bit…
[ 4 ] Anthropic has the top model on the Intelligence Index.
Claude Fable 5.2 scores 65 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, ahead of Gemini 4 Carbon at 60 and Claude Opus 5.5 at 59. Anthropic has 3 of the top 6, and the top 8 all come from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI or Meta. That's the backdrop for the roadshow we watched this week… let me share some details on what we saw.
[ 5 ] The stack is collapsing.
So two slides from the Anthropic IPO roadshow stood out.
First, they run on everyone's chips: Trainium, TPUs, Nvidia and AMD, with Nvidia still the biggest block.
Second is the big one. They called it Anthropic Direct.
Renting cloud capacity means signing the full five-year deal about 18 months ahead. With Anthropic Direct, they sign a data center lease about 12 months ahead, with lower total commitments at +1 year.
That's a model provider moving down into infrastructure, and it's real signal the stack is collapsing.
Again we predicted model providers would go up into applications and down into infrastructure. Both are happening. So I feel good about that view.
Of the two I think they're more likely to win in infrastructure, since that mostly takes capital, while winning every application means changing how enterprises work.
What it means really is lower end hyperscalers and neoclouds face margin risk as their biggest tenants own more of the stack.
This is key because it feels as though the neoclouds are looking more and more like traditional co-location providers, where the biggest value add is the land, power and shell, and less margin is being extracted from having chip availability.
[ 6 ] Anthropic did $17B of revenue last quarter.
Now to some of the numbers they shared.
Revenue went from about $0.4B in Q1'25 to $17.0B in Q3'26, roughly a $68B run rate.
Growth was +47% Q/Q in Q3'26, down from +144% in Q2, and still 12x Y/Y.
Slowing Q/Q is normal at this size. The curve bent once coding and agents took off…
Nothing much more to say there other than it’s a fast growing company.
[ 7 ] Anthropic is targeting a 35%+ operating margin.
Interestingly they laid out long-term targets:
- Compute and inference around 45-50% of revenue
- Sales and marketing 7-10%
- Other opex 7-10%
All in, that's an adjusted operating margin of 35%+.
Adjusted operating margin was (13)%, 19% and 15% over the last three quarters.
I question that sales and marketing line.
Becoming infrastructure means less consumer-style marketing, but more enterprise reps and partners, and those aren't cheap. I'd want to see S&M hold under 10% as enterprise grows before I believe the 35%.
But look it’s still early and revenue is a freight train.
[ 8 ] Outlook went down.
Everyone knows by now Outlook was down this week, along with Microsoft 365, Teams and Copilot.
My joke: nobody codes anymore themselves, so if AI can't figure out the fix, the humans are probably scrambling, because there's a good chance they didn't write the code from scratch. Half joke but I’m wondering why it took so long to get back up if my half joke isn’t partially true.
[ 9 ] Data center searches are closing in on inflation.
Now this is a unique view.
Google searches for "is AI in a bubble" peaked last December and are at 36 now, with one quick spike to 74 during the late October selloff. The bubble question is fading??
What's replacing it is data centers.
They sat at 1 to 3 on Google's scale for years and are now at 40, right next to inflation at 42.
Public concern is shifting from "is it a bubble" to what the buildout means for power bills, land and prices.
Which brings us to inflation…
[ 10 ] The PCE side of PPI ran cool.
There's a real debate about future inflation from AI power demand, tariffs and a firm economy. Chairman Warsh has said AI is hitting the demand side of the economy before it hits the supply side, so it's adding to inflation today. So actually more AI chaos is probably welcomed by the committee, since a selloff tightens financial conditions and does some of the Fed's work for it. Strange take but I think directionally right.
Now here's what the current data shows on inflation. I waited for this am to get new PPI data.
Headline PPI rose 0.3% in October and is up 6.5% Y/Y, the biggest annual gain since November 2022. That's the hot number. But what matters for the Fed is how much of it flows into PCE.
Nine PCE lines priced off PPI make up 20.4% of core PCE, and their pull on core PCE fell to 0.70pp from 0.82pp in September.
Hospitals (-0.06pp) and airfares (-0.02pp) led it.
Worry about future inflation is fair, but the current data points to a softer core PCE than the PPI headline.
Activity is firm and inflation isn't reaccelerating…
[ 11 ] Card spending has caught up to Census retail sales.
Now to spending… spending per household was up 5.8% Y/Y in October, right in line with Census retail sales at 6.3% in September.
For most of 2025 card data ran well below Census.
Now they're telling the same story, which makes us more confident that the consumer is in good shape.
[ 12 ] Spending is up 4.6% even without gas.
Total card spending was up 5.8% Y/Y in October, and 4.6% ex gas. So this isn't just higher prices at the pump. People are buying more stuff…
[ 13 ] Non-store retailers led October by a wide margin.
Non-store retail was up 13.5%, miscellaneous stores 8.4% and airlines 7.8%, with general merchandise at 4.6%.
Every category on the board is positive. Growth is broadening, and we're not even into peak holiday shopping yet.
[ 14 ] The spending K has closed.
Some people won’t like to hear this.
But low-income households were up 5.9% Y/Y on a 3-month average in October, ahead of middle income at 4.9% and higher income at 4.8% in September. What a narrative violation we’ve heard over the last couple years.
Lower-income consumers are getting a second wind. That's the last thing you'd expect to read if you only followed the headlines…
Net Net
This week had plenty to worry about. Nvidia lost its CEO in a spy scandal, people are asking whether AI is a bubble, and searches for data centers are now about as common as inflation. I'm not stepping into Nvidia without a margin of safety, because there's too much we don't know yet.
But look at the data. Credit spreads are well below prior shocks, the economic index says activity is firm, Meta's Muse is winning on consumer distribution, and the PCE side of PPI ran cool. Despite the worries about AI spending, inflation and the economy, the consumer keeps spending, and the lower end is leading.
That's all for this week!
Sources
1. CNN, Nvidia board investigation coverage, Nov 9, 2026. Link
2. CBS News, Nvidia stock and board investigation, Nov 9, 2026. Link
3. CNBC, Nvidia shares and Huang investigation, Nov 10, 2026. Link
4. Yahoo Finance, citing The Information on chips reaching China, Nov 10, 2026. Link
5. 6abc, Huang resignation coverage, Nov 12, 2026. Link
6. Federal Reserve Bank of New York Weekly Economic Index via FRED. Link
7. irates.today (DTCC trades, daily median) and Bloomberg, CDX NA HY 5Y spread.
8. Apple App Store Top Free (iPhone) rankings, Nov 9, 2026, compiled by @pablomartimar on X.
9. Similarweb, Gen AI website traffic share, worldwide, Nov 2025 to Oct 2026. Values read from chart, approximate.
10. Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. Link
11. Anthropic IPO roadshow presentation, November 2026.
12. Downdetector, "Most reported right now." Link
13. Google Trends, U.S. web searches for "is ai in a bubble," "inflation" and "data centers." Link
14. Avory & Co. using BLS PPI industry indexes and BEA NIPA Table 2.4.5U weights. Link
15. Bank of America Institute, Consumer Checkpoint. Link
16. U.S. Census Bureau retail and food services sales via FRED (RSAFS). Link
17. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Producer Price Indexes, October 2026, Nov 13, 2026. Link
18. Real Investment Advice, Warsh remarks at the IMF annual meetings, Oct 19, 2026. Link
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