Hala,
🥧🚨 Police recovered a stolen van with 2,500 pies, but alas — they were too smashed to eat! Michelin-star chef Tommy Banks, who pleaded for the thieves to “do the right thing,” summed it up: “It’s just rubbish.”(1) Guess this tart-breaking tale isn’t getting a sweet ending. 😢🍴
amana’s Take
- Markets took a hit as South Korea’s brief martial law declaration and the ensuing political drama spooked investors. The Kospi Index tumbled 2.3%, and calls for President Yoon’s impeachment added fuel to the fire. While the won clawed back some overnight losses, the Bank of Korea stepped in with promises to steady the ship.
- Broader worries about China’s economic slowdown linger, while Donald Trump’s looming political resurgence stirred fresh unease in global markets. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index slipped 0.3%, reflecting jitters across the region as uncertainty reigned supreme.
- US equity futures bucked the trend, ticking higher as traders placed bets on Fed Chair Powell’s upcoming speech and key payroll data for clues on potential December rate cuts. Meanwhile, oil steadied, gold shone as a safe haven, and the yuan found support from Beijing’s central bank moves. Stay tuned — volatility’s not taking a holiday.
Stock Market Update
📈📉 US stocks played hopscotch on Tuesday, landing mixed while eyeing Friday’s job report for Fed cues. The S&P 500 gained 0.05% to a record 6,049.88, the Dow added 0.17% to 44,705.53(2), while the Nasdaq 100 nailed a record 21,229.32, up 0.31%, thanks to Palantir’s 6% cloud-fueled surge(3). In Wall Street’s game, the Nasdaq 100 stuck the landing. 🎯🤸
📊📶 Gulf markets mirrored the mood, buoyed by rising oil prices and OPEC+ chatter. Saudi Arabia rose 0.7% to 11,816, but Qatar stayed flat at 10,389.(4) ↗️↘️
🏋️♀️📡 Amazon Shows Off Its AI Gains!
Amazon just hit the gym with its AI strategy, flexing some serious tech muscles at its annual re:Invent conference. The retail and cloud titan unveiled Project Rainier, a colossal “Ultracluster” AI supercomputer powered by its homegrown Trainium chips.(5) Add to that a brand-new Ultraserver that’s beefing up AI processing speeds, and Amazon’s message is clear: It’s bench-pressing its way into the AI arms race, aiming to give Nvidia a run for its money. 💪🔧
🧩🔬 Key Metrics to Keep You Buzzing:
- Supercomputer Swag: Project Rainier will pack hundreds of thousands of chips, ready by 2025 to rank among the largest AI training clusters globally.
- Server Gains: The new Ultraserver combines 64 Trainium chips into one beastly unit, offering 83.2 petaflops of power — 10x Nvidia’s standard setup.
- Market Moves: AI chip sales soared to $117.5 billion in 2024, and by 2027, expect a pump to $193.3 billion. Nvidia still dominates, controlling 95% of the market.
- Customer Savings: Apple and startups like Poolside report up to 50% savings using Amazon’s chips, though the trade-off involves more time spent on optimization. 🧑💻💰
🚀🦾 Amazon’s Road Ahead
Amazon isn’t skipping leg day in its AI training routine. Project Rainier, built with partner Anthropic, is five times larger than its predecessor, making it one of the world’s most powerful AI tools. With its chip lab in Austin, Texas, producing next-gen Trainium processors and Ultraservers, Amazon is ensuring it’s future-proofed against global supply chain risks. 📈🔥
Closer to Home
- 🫅 Almarai, Saudi’s dairy king, is diving into seafood and red meat, investing SAR 18B ($4.8B) to satisfy growing demand and drive food self-reliance in the Kingdom. Talk about beefing up operations — literally.(6) 💪
- 💸 MENA’s debt hit a record $443B in 2023, up 23% since 2020, as low and middle-income countries shelled out $1.4T on repayments. MENA’s credit game is hitting new highs (and wallets).(7) 📈
- 🏘️ Abu Dhabi’s biggest developer Aldar Properties just snapped up a 40-floor Dubai tower in DIFC for AED 2.3B ($626M). Call it skyscraper shopping, Aldar style!(8) 🛍️
What Else Is Trending
- ⚖️ Microsoft’s in hot water, facing a £1B lawsuit for allegedly overcharging users of rival cloud companies like AWS, Google, or Alibaba. Looks like the “cloud wars” just got a stormy twist.(9) 🌪️
- 🤖 Salesforce smashed Q3 estimates ($9.44B vs. $9.35B), boosted its forecast, and saw shares climb 8% — riding on sky-high demand for its enterprise cloud tools. Call it a cloud-powered victory lap.(10) 🤑💹
- 🛢️ Meanwhile, oil prices jumped 2% on Tuesday, with Brent adding 2.49% to $73.62 and WTI climbing 2.7% to $69.94 as investors braced for OPEC+ to set the stage at Thursday’s meeting.(11) ⛽
💬Quote of the Day
“Today, there’s really only one choice on the GPU side, and it’s just Nvidia. We think that customers would appreciate having multiple choices.” — Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services
Build your plan: https://amana.app/campaigns/amanainvest
Source:(1) AP News, (2) (9) (11) CNBC, (3) Nasdaq, (4) (10) Reuters, (5) The Wall Street Journal, (6) Gulf News, (7) The National, (8) Zawya
