Will Nvidia Save Your Bags?
501: BlackRock Crypto Activity, Michigan Protests
Good morning lords and savages.
Big day.
We have a print from NVDA 0.00%↑ that might end up determining how this week finishes in traditional markets as well as crypto (which could use a huge pump right now).
I think delivery of yesterday’s note was impacted by the Cloudflare outage, so if you missed the 500th Arb Letter post yesterday you can find it below — it’s a good refresher on everything we cover in Arb Letter and where the world is headed.
What I’ve Learned About Markets, Life, and the World
Everyone’s looking for something right now. Bears want continued validation that we are entering a sustained bloody period for markets and bulls are praying for some sort of savior or miracle to right the ship.
Personally I will be looking for some sort of bottom for crypto as we are at an important junction right now heading into year end. Make sure you catch the latest episode Risk On with Adam Kobeissi of the Kobeissi Letter, we discuss market expectations for the end of the year, where crypto is headed, and what he thinks is going to play out in 2026.
Market Updates
Markets were up slightly in the green today as investors, traders, and institutions brace for the big print after hours (though that is now reversing).
Yesterday morning, a major Cloudflare malfunction briefly knocked out huge swaths of the internet. A core configuration file inside their threat-monitoring system ballooned past its expected size and crashed a key traffic-handling component. Because Cloudflare NET 0.00%↑ sits in front of a massive share of global web traffic, the ripple effect was immediate: ChatGPT, X, Canva, and dozens of other platforms all went sideways at once.
It was a reminder of how centralized and fragile the modern internet has become. When a single infrastructure provider stumbles, the failure propagates outward into everything, communication apps, business software, AI tools, and even parts of the digital economy that most people assume are bulletproof. Thankfully the worst of it for me was a lack of access to X, but what happens if something like that lasts for a week?
Japan’s 40 Year Government Bond Yield surges to 3.697%, its highest level in history, as markets prepare for more stimulus (Kobeissi Letter)
Mohammed bin Salman mentioned a Polymarket bet live at the White House dinner with Trump
Treasury cash balances fell to ~$925 bn from ~$959 bn, a meaningful drawdown in their account at the Fed
Fed officials leaned more hawkish this week, dampening market expectations for a December rate cut
Elon Musk and Jensen Huang announce that xAI and Saudi Arabia are working on a 500 megawatt project with Nvidia (Kobeissi Letter)
At a recent Saudi Investment Forum Elon Musk said AI and humanoid robots will “eliminate poverty” and “make everyone wealthy”
Google GOOG 0.00%↑ rolled out Gemini 3, and it’s the biggest step they’ve taken in the AI race since the original model launch. This isn’t just a smarter chatbot, Google baked the entire thing directly into Search, Workspace, and their developer stack. The stock just hit a new all time high of $302 in trading today.
The launch forces the whole AI landscape to reprice itself. When Google turns its search engine into an AI-first platform, it changes where value flows:
Companies selling “AI wrappers” around basic models just got their clocks cleaned
The competition bar definitely just moved higher for Microsoft, OpenAI, and Amazon
The line between “search,” “productivity,” and “automation” gets blurred
Nvidia Print
The entire market is acting like one company’s conference call is the FOMC, Treasury, and Bureau of Labor Statistics rolled into one. This is the most important earnings print of Q4, not because NVDA is a stock, but because it has become the heartbeat of the 2025 market regime and AI bull market (that most of you have printed on).
Traders aren’t waiting for guidance, they’re waiting for confirmation of a worldview ahead of a pivotal Fed meeting.
Is the AI supercycle still vertical—or are we finally hitting the part of the parabola where gravity starts to matter?
Will our bags be saved or banished to the depths of wagie hell today?
You can check out the live odds that $NVDA beats HERE on Polymarket. Will be interesting to see how this changes closer to market close.
For NVDA:
Every datapoint today feeds into bigger questions:
• Are hyperscaler capex budgets still expanding at an unsustainable, GDP-sized pace?
• Is the Blackwell rollout hitting friction?
• Do margins stay god-tier as competition finally emerges?
• Does NVDA reaffirm the “AI carry trade” thesis… or does it quietly acknowledge that the pace must slow?
This print isn’t just about fancy chips powering defense, AI, and tech. It’s about liquidity, risk appetite, and the story everyone has been trading since 2023. With crypto slipping today and stocks looking uneasy this is going to be explosive lol.
If NVDA blows the doors off we will probably see the following: