AI and Everything Else
Fresh AI deals for Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI... Data centers everywhere... As for everything else... Plenty of uncertainty from Uncle Sam... Gold set for a reboot?... Three quick and easy ways to play it...
The AI deals just keep on coming...
This morning, OpenAI announced another deal with a mega-cap tech company. This time, and for the first time, it's with Amazon (AMZN). OpenAI will get access to the Amazon Web Services ("AWS") cloud platform "starting immediately" in a new seven-year, $38 billion agreement.
OpenAI will begin by using existing AWS data centers. For a later phase of their agreement, Amazon committed to building out more computing capacity for OpenAI in the years ahead. Shares of Amazon gained 4% today to a fresh all-time high.
OpenAI will get access to "hundreds of thousands of state-of-the-art NVIDIA GPUs, with the ability to expand to tens of millions of CPUs to rapidly scale agentic workloads," according to the deal's formal announcement.
In other words, OpenAI is growing its capacity to train and run its AI models, using some infrastructure that already exists (a good thing for the whole AI ecosystem)... and it's using Nvidia (NVDA) chips to boot.
Not that Nvidia seems to need help at this point...
NVDA shares were also higher today, by about 2%, returning its market cap to just above $5 trillion. This comes after the Trump administration allowed Microsoft (MSFT) to ship 60,000 Nvidia chips into the United Arab Emirates, where Microsoft will spend $5.5 billion on data centers.
According to a Microsoft statement, "We're using these GPUs to provide access to advanced AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, open-source providers, and Microsoft itself."
The AI build-out is far from stopping... and seemingly will go on wherever companies can build data centers.
As we reported last week after their earnings calls, Microsoft, Alphabet (GOOGL), and Meta Platforms (META) have pledged to significantly increase their AI-related spending in 2026. Amazon did the same on Thursday. Those four have now promised to spend more than $500 billion next year on AI, which is more than 30% greater than their 2025 investments.
We remain cautious about all this spending paying off as intended or envisioned... And I (Corey McLaughlin) have my eyes peeled for cracks in the AI boom. But that doesn't mean the money won't keep flowing – and can't drive related stocks higher for as long as this boom lasts.
It happened again today. Tech stocks lifted an otherwise lukewarm market. About 320 of the S&P 500 stocks were lower, but the benchmark U.S. index finished slightly higher near a new all-time high. And the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index was up about 0.5%.
As for everything else...
There's plenty of uncertainty to go around...
The economy has shrugged off the first full month of a federal government shutdown. We're at the start of a second now. And if the shutdown continues past Tuesday night, it will become the longest in American history (surpassing the 35-day record set in 2018 and 2019).
The longer this thing goes on, the more uncertainty and unpredictability can permeate the markets...
Aside from questions about how the economy will function without its usual dose of government spending, a disrupted flow of information could rattle investors. Recall that last week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell alluded to the shutdown's blackout on economic data.
Powell said not having recent official data (on the labor market) was like "driving in a fog"... "What do you do if you're driving in a fog? You slow down," Powell said.
In other words... the central bank might pause the rate cuts that the market wants so badly.
At the moment, futures traders still expect a 25-basis-point cut to the federal-funds rate range next month. But they're giving it 67% odds, down from more than 90% this time a week ago.
Another economic issue will come before the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
The court will hear the case of the legality of Trump's "reciprocal" tariffs. The dispute is whether the president can unilaterally establish or revise tariffs by declaring a national emergency (in this case, about trade deficits).
We could be months from any decision, but oral arguments can give us a sense of which way the court is leaning...
If the court rules that the president has overstepped his authority, it could result in his tariffs getting rescinded. Our trading partners may renegotiate deals – without the threat of sudden, massive increases in their import duties... And the U.S. government would need to refund tens of billions of tariff levies it already collected from the world's businesses (good for them, but not for U.S. debt).
Uncertainty of this type tends to breed volatility in the market. Don't be caught off guard.
A gold reboot?...
We commonly call precious metals a "chaos hedge." Given the questions we just discussed, and having reviewed some analysis from my Stansberry Research colleagues, I'm left thinking about a reboot of gold's recent bull run...
Gold hit an all-time high around $4,350 an ounce during our annual Stansberry Research conference in Las Vegas two weeks ago. Since then, gold has pulled back to around $4,000. But this could just be a breather in a bull run that has yet to end.
That's according to Ten Stock Trader editor Greg Diamond, who shared the details with subscribers in his Weekly Market Outlook today. Still, Greg explained what short-term technical signals he wants to see from gold (and silver) before getting aggressive with bullish trades.
On a similar point, our Director of Research Matt Weinschenk made gold (and a possible restart of its bull run) the subject of his This Week on Wall Street video and essay on Friday. You can access the video below...
As Matt wrote, some of the investing crowd thinks the latest pullback in gold "marks the top." But bigger picture, Matt says we haven't seen gold "mania" levels that you would expect to see if that were the case...
As I said last week, gold still isn't on the average investor's radar. CNBC isn't flashing 24-hour gold tickers. All the gold dealers we talk to tell us that gold sellers still outnumber buyers.
There's no mania... And that's bullish. It means the frenzy isn't here yet.
In this case, it isn't really about numbers. Instead, it's about psychology. In every bull market, there are three emotional phases:
- Disbelief: when everyone calls the move temporary or just "noise." (This is where the smart money accumulates.)
- Acceptance: when the public notices.
- Euphoria: when everyone's (This signals the top.)
Right now, we're still in the disbelief stage.
The smartest investors – central banks, hedge funds, and investors who understand the long-term implications – see the bullish action in gold. And they're loading up quietly.
Meanwhile, novice investors are sitting out, afraid they "missed it."
Every major bull run ends the same way – when disbelief turns into acceptance and eventually euphoria.
Right now, we're nowhere near that.
With this in mind, Matt shared three quick and easy ways to take advantage of gold's run in your portfolio. You can read about that here, or watch his analysis on This Week on Wall Street on our YouTube page here.
New 52-week highs (as of 10/31/25): Altius Minerals (ALS.TO), Amazon (AMZN), Alpha Architect 1-3 Month Box Fund (BOXX), Ciena (CIEN), Cisco Systems (CSCO), Donaldson (DCI), EnerSys (ENS), iShares MSCI South Korea Fund (EWY), Fanuc (FANUY), Futu Holdings (FUTU), Grail (GRAL), iShares Biotechnology Fund (IBB), iRhythm Technologies (IRTC), Mueller Industries (MLI), Nuveen California Quality Municipal Income Fund (NAC), Roivant Sciences (ROIV), Roku (ROKU), and Vale (VALE).
In today's mailbag, some feedback on Dan Ferris' Friday essay... and what a rise in gold's price really means... Do you have a comment or question? As always, e-mail us at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.
"Far too many people get caught in the trap of saying gold is going higher. Gold is a constant. It does not go up and down. Currencies not backed by gold go up and down. The really sad thing is we pay taxes on the increase when we sell gold. The government creates inflation by printing more money and we pay taxes on the sale of inflated assets." – Subscriber Bob M.
"This article was hyper focused on the price of gold rather than the purchasing power of gold. The purchasing power of gold compared to the purchasing power of the dollar is not even close. So even as people are making money in the dollar, most people don't realize that their investments have been losing value over time... the purchasing power of the dollar has been dropping like a rock and continues to drop like a rock. The purchasing power of gold is rising and rising rapidly." – Subscriber John S.
All the best,
Corey McLaughlin with Nick Koziol
Baltimore, Maryland
November 3, 2025