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Today's Brief: Chips, Interceptors, and a Court

The Homebrew · · Posted · AI-drafted daily brief, synthesized from Left, Center, and Right coverage. Facts may be inaccurate — verify with the cited sources below.

The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.86% on Friday, its worst day since June 5, as earnings from Amazon and Intel renewed worries about the cost of the AI build-out, Yahoo Finance reported. The United States approved the sale of 500 Patriot missiles to Ukraine, though President Volodymyr Zelensky warned deliveries could take "several years," the BBC reported. And riot police were deployed at Poland's Constitutional Court as the government moved to bring criminal charges against the court's two top judges, according to the BBC.

A bad day for AI stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 51,770.31, down 572.25 points, or 1.09%, and Friday's close made October the Nasdaq's worst month since March 2025, Yahoo Finance reported. Brent crude rose to $112 a barrel and WTI reached $104, adding pressure on markets, according to Yahoo Finance.

Intel was down 25% on lackluster revenue guidance, Micron was down 5.5% and Nvidia was down 4% on Friday, CNBC reported, a day after Google had its worst trading day ever following a drop in its core advertising sales. Intel had warned of sluggish PC sales in the current quarter, Yahoo Finance reported, with chief executive Lip-Bu Tan saying, "Our customers began signaling a PC slowdown based on the memory prices and availability." Investors rotated into names like Coca-Cola, Walmart and Eli Lilly, all up more than 1%, according to CNBC.

Binance, a day later. Binance said it had frozen about $3 billion of the $6.3 billion taken in what is believed to be a record heist, and the US Secret Service said it was "working around the clock" to trace and recover the funds, the BBC reported. The exchange said it had "set aside" more than $6.34 billion of company funds to cover the losses, and co-CEO Richard Teng said, "This was not carried out by one person," according to the BBC. Bitcoin was down 5% to $76,800 in Friday afternoon trading in New York and Coinbase fell 12%, the BBC reported.

The blockchain analysis firm Elliptic put the theft at $6.43 billion across 11 blockchains on Oct. 29, more than four times the $1.46 billion stolen from Bybit in 2025. Elliptic said it believes it is likely that North Korea's TraderTraitor hacking group carried out the theft, while noting that no government or law enforcement agency has confirmed attribution. Elliptic said it had verified $2.85 billion of frozen or seized funds.

Patriots for Ukraine. The State Department said the PAC-3 interceptors would cost $2.1 billion and that "no US funds are involved in this sale," with Ukraine paying through donations from Canada, Germany and Norway and national funds financed by a European Union loan, the BBC reported. Lockheed Martin is the principal contractor, and only 600 Patriot missiles are produced a year according to the US Department of Defense, the BBC said. At the G20 foreign ministers' meeting in Atlanta, European diplomats refused to stand for an official photograph with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, according to the BBC.

Poland's court fight. Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek said he had asked to strip the court's president, Bogdan Święczkowski, and vice-president, Bartłomiej Sochański, of their immunity from prosecution, the BBC reported. President Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by the opposition Law and Justice party, cancelled a trip to Senegal mid-air, the BBC said, and has entered the court, according to his chief of staff. The court said in a social media post, "All persons participating in these actions are committing the crime of a coup d'etat," while Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote that restoring the rule of law "requires decisive action," according to the BBC. Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, one of five judges Nawrocki has refused to swear in, has been placed in temporary charge of the court, the BBC reported.

Canada and the EU. Canada and the European Union launched what they called an Alliance for the Future at a summit in Montréal, and said they are working toward Canada becoming the EU's first "Associate Member," the Canadian prime minister's office said. The two sides concluded a Digital Trade Agreement, Canada joined the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking, giving Canadian researchers access to the JUPITER supercomputer, and up to $2.5 billion in financing was announced for Alberta-based De Havilland to expand waterbomber production, according to the release.

Jet-lagged seabirds. Manx shearwaters flying fast eastward can fall out of sync with local time and make predictable errors navigating by the sun, an Oxford-led study published in Science found, using 20 years of GPS data from 1,045 birds and 3,688 foraging trips, Oxford University said. The errors reached about 15 degrees, but a bird returning from 1,000 km away and correcting continuously would travel only around 5 km further, the researchers calculated.

Halloween box office. A24's Elizabeth Holmes documentary "You Can See Everything" and Warner Bros./DC's "Clayface" were each tracking $10 million or more for the weekend, Deadline reported Friday. The documentary's 14-day total of $52.7 million has already passed Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," at $24.1 million, according to Deadline.

Sources used

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