ServiceNow's Record Plunge, Intel's $128 Billion Wipeout, and Inflation Hits 3.6%

Welcome to Signal to Alpha, your essential market briefing. I'm Lady Muriel, cutting through the noise to deliver what moves markets today. Let's get you your alpha before the opening bell. Here's your rundown for Friday, October thirtieth. Inflation just reaccelerated to three point six percent, tech earnings are a bloodbath, and crypto investors are nursing a six point three billion dollar headache. Let's dig in. Start with the macro backdrop, because it colors everything else this morning. The latest PCE inflation reading, the Fed's preferred gauge, came in at three point six percent year over year, up from last month and running hotter than hoped. This lands just two days after the Fed paused rate hikes, and MarketWatch is openly asking whether that pause was a mistake. The silver lining: GDP came in stronger than expected, powered largely by A I infrastructure spending, and Treasury may help bail out the Fed by trimming long-term debt issuance next week to pull yields lower. Consumer spending rose too, but mostly on gas and transportation, not exactly a broad-based growth story. Now, earnings carnage. ServiceNow is set for its worst trading day ever, down nearly eighteen percent premarket, after beating on revenue but missing on earnings. JPMorgan still likes the stock long-term, so this may be an overreaction worth watching. Intel is right behind it, sinking toward its worst day in two years and erasing roughly one hundred twenty-eight billion dollars in value. Fourth-quarter guidance of fifteen to sixteen billion dollars fell well short of the seventeen-billion-dollar consensus, with weak PC demand and rising memory chip prices to blame, even as Intel's data-center and foundry businesses posted strong growth. And Amazon shares slid after hours too, as mounting A I spending weighed on the outlook, even with CEO Andy Jassy touting the grocery business as a growth differentiator. One more chip story: Marvell is reportedly closing in on an acquisition of Lumentum. Marvell shares dropped twelve percent premarket while Lumentum popped five and a half percent, the classic buyer-pays-a-premium reaction, though analysts still call the deal strategically sound. Quick crypto check. Binance says it's on track to restore withdrawals within forty-five hours following what's believed to be the largest exchange hack ever, six point three billion dollars. Bitcoin and crypto-linked stocks tumbled on the news. Bitcoin is trading around seventy-seven thousand three hundred four dollars, Ethereum near two thousand two hundred thirty-one dollars, both under pressure. And here's your line to carry into the day: remember when you decided that ordinary wasn't for you? That's still true today, now go prove it. That's your Signal to Alpha for today. Subscribe for tomorrow's essential market briefing. Trade smart, stay informed - check us out at capital copilot dot io.