Is Apple Back?

Is Apple Back?

Ahead of next week’s Q4 earnings, and following last month’s launch of the iPhone17, Wedbush analysts led by Dan Ives have maintained their ‘outperform’ rating on Apple [AAPL] stock. “With Apple on the doorstep of joining Nvidia [NVDA] in the $4trn market cap club it’s clear to us that [the firm] has finally found success”, they wrote, as reported by Seeking Alpha, adding that the stock could beat the top-line estimate of about $102bn.

Anthropic Doubles Down on Life Sciences

Artificial intelligence (AI) startup Anthropic is adapting its Claude chatbot for researchers and life sciences firms, integrating it with lab management, genomic analysis and biomedical databases. The $170bn-valued company said Novo Nordisk [NVO] cut clinical study documentation from 10 weeks to 10 minutes using Claude, while Sanofi [SNY] reports daily use by most employees, according to the Financial Times.

AWS Outage: What Will the Fallout Be?

A major outage on the part of Amazon’s [AMZN] AWS on October 20 disrupted more than 1,000 businesses worldwide. According to the BBC, the outage might lead to calls for other countries to develop their own cloud infrastructure, while Sherwood News observed that “investors largely shrugged off the outages; the stock briefly dipped a little over 1%, but it’s since bounced back and finished the day up 1.6%.”

Is This Chip Stock Too Exposed to China?

Lam Research [LRCX] is a California-based supplier of wafer fabrication equipment (WFE) to the semiconductor industry. The WFE market is forecast to grow to a valuation of $184bn by 2030; Lam is one of five companies that controlled 70% of the market last year. The problem for Lam, as OPTO details on Foresight this week, is its high revenue exposure to China, leaving it vulnerable to geopolitical vicissitudes. 

PayPal Expands European Footprint

PayPal [PYPL] will boost its stake in German e-commerce platform Shopware to about 41% from 11%, after acquiring Carlyle Group’s [CG] share in the company, Bloomberg reported. The two firms had jointly invested $100m in Shopware in 2022. The move signals PayPal’s deepening bet on Europe’s digital commerce infrastructure amid growing competition from Stripe and Adyen [ADYEY]. 

“Takaichi Trade”: A New Record in Tokyo

Japan has elected Sanae Takaichi as its first-ever female prime minister, with Tokyo stocks hitting record highs on optimism over her policies. Takaichi won 237 of 465 lower house votes and formed a cabinet including the country’s first female finance minister and rivals from her party leadership race. Her government is expected to raise defense spending, cut taxes and restart nuclear plants, the Financial Times detailed.

Three Rare Earth Stocks to Watch Amid Sino-US Trade Tensions

“We’re in one now,” declared US President Donald Trump on October 15, when asked by a reporter if the country would enter a “sustained trade war” with China. The statement came after China imposed new export controls on rare earths. In response, the Trump administration has made boosting domestic rare earth production a national priority. OPTO unpacks the investment case for three non-China rare earth stocks.