IN THIS ISSUE (23) - 09 November 2026
🗳️ Bitcoin shrugged at the midterms
🏗️ Data centres are the AI trade under scrutiny
🔮 A columnist backs Ether for 2027
THE WEEK IN MARKETS
Washington changed hands and Wall Street cheered, then split. Democrats won both chambers on 3 November, election uncertainty cleared, and the Dow rose 3% the next day while the S&P 500 added 1.6% and the Nasdaq 1.4%. The gains were not shared evenly.
Investors read the result as a threat to the AI buildout and bought the companies funding it, not the ones constructing it. The result sparked a $750 billion Big Tech rally as investors bet curbs on new data centres would protect scarce computing power and ease strain on cash flows. Microsoft rose 6.7%, Amazon 6.1% and Alphabet 3.2%, a sharp reversal for the same hyperscalers pouring billions into data centres that had spent earnings season explaining the bill. The builders went the other way. Data centre operators and the utilities supplying them fell: CoreWeave dropped 9.9%, Vertiv 12.9% and GE Vernova 9.3%.
The trigger was geography. Democrats who oppose new data centres won in Texas and Georgia, two of the industry’s biggest hubs. Analysts doubt any law could meaningfully stall construction, so the realistic risk is hearings and investigations, which is still enough to reprice the physical layer of the AI investment stack.
🔥 WHAT’S UP: Microsoft | +6.7% | 1 day
💧 WHAT’S DOWN: Vertiv | -12.9% | 1 day
Data correct as at 4 November 2026.
ALPHA CHECK
Got your answer? Read on to see if you nailed it.
THE BIG READ
The most priced in event of the year
Democrats won both chambers on 3 November, flipping seven Senate seats and securing the 218 House seats needed for a majority, a week after a record $6.3 billion exchange theft. Bitcoin still traded above $80,000. It fell to about $75,600 as the Senate was called, then recovered past $80,000 the next day.
The headline said political shift. The price said priced in.
How crypto reacted
Bitcoin closed 4 November at about $80,400, up 4% on the day. Ether led, gaining 6.6% to about $2,420. The rest of the board followed in order: Cardano added 3.8%, Solana 2.8%, Dogecoin 2.3% and XRP 2.1%. Traders caught on the wrong side of the dip likely helped the bounce along. The whole round trip took less than a day.
Why the shrug
Three things did the work, and none of them were on the ballot:
Priced in: Analysts said the result was largely in the price before election night.
The Fed: it held rates at 3.75% to 4% with two votes for a hike, and December remains the lean.
Flows: spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $215 million in net withdrawals in October, so the buyers that matter were already voting with funds.
Beyond Bitcoin
Ether outrunning Bitcoin is what a higher beta asset does when risk comes back. A broad lift is not the same as a rotation, and one relief day does not settle it.
What differs by corner of the market is how much rides on Washington. Stablecoins have their rulebook, because the OCC finalised its GENIUS Act rule for stablecoins on 21 October. Issuers still cannot pay holders yield directly, and the OCC gave existing rewards programmes no safe harbour. Newer products such as tokenised assets and yield accounts could face slower launches or added safeguards under the next Congress.
The takeaway
The market priced the election before the votes were counted, which is the least dramatic way to treat a dramatic result. The next catalysts are December rates and flows, and neither is on a ballot.
QUICK TAKES
🔮 History says Ether. History is cheap.
A Motley Fool columnist says the top performing crypto of 2027 won’t be Hyperliquid, up more than 225% this year, or Zcash, up 150%, but Ether. The case is its 53% share of DeFi and a rerun of 2020 to 2021. The counterweights sit in the same piece: Ether is down about 18% this year, ETF outflows continue and treasury companies are backing off. The author holds Ether. Read more
💰 AppLovin beats, and the bar was on the floor
AppLovin ran up 11% into its results, then delivered: revenue up 55% to $2.18 billion, about $100 million above the top of its guidance, with $1.4 billion in free cash flow and a $3.2 billion bigger buyback. The stock is still down about 60% this year, and Q4 guidance implies slower sequential growth than the 14% just posted. Beating guidance is the easy part. Convincing the market it mispriced the year is the job. Read more
🍽️ Google is eating its own lunch
Google’s AI answers are working, which is the problem. Queries are growing at the fastest rate in five years, but paid clicks grew only 8%, down from 13% a quarter earlier, and management said AI Mode earns less per query than classic search. The stock fell about 13% the next day. Google is not losing Search to AI. It is swapping a page of ads for an answer with fewer of them. Read more
ALPHA CHECK - REVEALED
PROBABLY SOMETHING
Tom Lee called the midterm result bullish for stocks, with Washington forced to negotiate and less political pressure on the Fed. The Dow rose 3%, so that part held. His call on the hardest hit names did not: he expected memory, semis, data centres and neoclouds to bounce, even those selling off that morning, and potentially reverse by the end of the day. Watch here.
