The boardroom rollercoaster at ChatGPT-developer OpenAI, meantime, continued to hog front pages – even if it was in danger of turning into high farce. Sam Altman is now set to return as CEO just days after his ouster, capping frenzied discussions about the future of the startup at the center of the AI craze.
The darker reaches of the tech world were also unnerving as Binance chief Changpeng Zhao stepped down and pleaded guilty to breaking U.S. anti-money laundering laws as part of a $4.3 billion settlement resolving a years-long probe into the world’s largest crypto exchange.
But for all the frenetic news flow, markets appear to have settled into holiday mode. Wall St stocks ended marginally in the red on Tuesday and futures held steady overnight.
Most remarkable running into yearend has been the dissipation of implied volatility, with the VIX ‘fear index’ dropping to 13 – its lowest since mid September. Bond volatility has also fallen to two-month lows, while currency market ‘vol’ is plumbing 20-month lows.
With Nvidia the last mega cap to report in the Q3 earnings season, scorecards show the aggregate annual profit growth through the quarter running at more than 6% – more than four times consensus forecasts just six weeks ago and with more than 80% of firms beating the Street. Revenue growth of 1.5% is almost twice pre-season consensus.
Treasury yields were also on the backfoot, with the Federal Reserve’s latest meeting minutes offering little new and with the committee blaming October’s bond squeeze largely on a jump in the ‘term premium’ demand by investors anxious about rising debt supply.
However, even the term premia has evaporated again and the New York Fed’s gauge has slipped back into negative territory after resurfacing for just two months.
