Good morning. Here's what happened overnight and what you need to know today.
1.
Margin squeeze: Wall Street’s rally stalled as technology stocks led a pullback and investor optimism showed signs of cooling. The S&P 500 was down 0.41% and the Nasdaq off 0.67% in late afternoon trading. Oracle shares were 3% lower after The Information reported that its cloud business had razor-thin margins, with internal documents showing just 14% gross profit on USD900 million ($1.37 billion) in Nvidia-powered server rentals for the three months ending in August, and a nearly USD100 million loss on Blackwell chips. Dell Technologies nearly doubled its profit growth target and lifted its annual revenue growth forecast to 7-9% through fiscal 2030, citing strong demand for AI servers. And Tesla unveiled a lower-cost version of its top-selling Model Y SUV, priced from USD39,990. Meanwhile, some investors and analysts raised concerns that valuations have become disconnected from fundamentals, with comparisons to the dot-com bubble re-emerging. Gold surged past USD4,000 a troy ounce. (Bloomberg)(WSJ)(Reuters)(Dell)(The Information)
2.
Pay day: Ex-Macquarie VPs Daniel and Will Roberts banked USD72 million apiece ($109 million) during the last financial year, new documents filed with the SEC show, making the IREN co-CEOs the best-paid executives leading any Australian company. Though listed on the Nasdaq, IREN and a fifth of its employees are headquartered in Sydney. The Bitcoin miner and data centre company's revenue jumped 260% to USD501 million during the last financial year, while a USD29 million loss in 2024 turned into a USD87 million profit. The overwhelming majority of the brothers' pay, USD69.6 million each, came from stock grants, according to a proxy statement filed on Tuesday morning. IREN's board last July instituted a reward plan that, like Elon Musk at Tesla, grants the co-founders extra share allocations if IREN's stock hits certain benchmarks. With its share price up nearly 900% over the last six months, sitting at USD57, each tranche was smashed. (Capital Brief)
