Good morning! It's been a slow start of the week with no major global events. It's good to have a breather when it comes to analysis frenzy, but it hardly means we have no volatility on the markets - it's only the niches that changed.
So today we launch our midterms coverage. Besides key races and swings we also focused on finance with acquisitions and IPOs, the impact of the new Anthropic Claude Opus 4.6 and Thai politics after parliamentary election.
Stay ahead of the game with out forward-looking morning brief!
Top Movers
#1 Overreactions
There's been a lot of volatility on the Texas Republican Senate Primary market where Ken Paxton dropped from almost 70% chances to win, down to 45%, only to rebound to 59% hours later.
The culprit here is an obscure poll that once again put Paxton firmly in the lead, while discounting Wesley Hunt's chances of bridging the gap. We will feature more midterms races from now on as the campaigning heats up.
#2 (Not That) Easy Choices
The Thai election was surprisingly won by the party of an incumbent prime minister, but the market has tempered expectations of a quick government forming.
Thailand is notorious for an extremely slow process when it comes to government creation (and even election certification which can take up to 60 days). People's Party not winning the election makes the whole process easier, but we shouldn't mistake easy for quick.
#3 Pizza Hut Is Up For Grabs?
The market became bullish briefly for a Pizza Hut acquisition after it was announced that the chain will close 250 locations in the US soon.
The chances of an acquisition were already high as the owner of the chain, Yum Brands!, has already announced back in November that it would perform a strategic review of Pizza Hut as part of its quick service restaurant (QSR) portfolio.
However, we are a long way from a proper acquisition as the chain is not even rumored to be offered and these processes tend to take at least a few months, with bigger acquisition usually taking a lot longer.
#4 IPO Frenzy
The chances of a SpaceX IPO rose on the news that Grimes is back in Morgan Stanley.
The banker is known for his relentlessness in pursuing clients. He handled Musk's businesses before and supposedly has a good relationship developed with him. Not only that, markets are also bullish on Anthropic IPO since the news broke out. Seems like a one rainmaker can make all the difference.
#5 The New Leader
The recent release of Claude 4.6 from Anthropic made quite a lot of waves in the media. But it also cleared some key thresholds in the benchmarks.
LLMs are getting more and more sophisticated. But in our opinion there is a lot of misunderstanding there. AI bulls on X are preaching AGI is coming soon, while the reality on the ground shows that most businesses still didn't adopt the most groundbreaking solutions like Claude Code. Most likely, we are still years from anytihng significant like an autonomous coder. But it doesn't mean we are in for disruption in the coming months and years.
Wrap up
That’s all for today - did you catch any of the moves? See you tomorrow for another Morning Brief!
This is not official investment or life advice. Do your own research. This are only my opinions and I encourage anyone to do their own research before putting any money anywhere.