Sector Update: Energy

Last week, retail investors poured $6.1 billion into 3x leveraged chip ETFs, but suffered a 20.5% single-day plunge this Thursday, almost perfectly coinciding with the start of the rapid downturn. The cumulative decline in October has exceeded 43%, far surpassing the 15.9% loss of non-leveraged products during the same period. The root cause lies in the market’s skepticism toward AI investment returns. The most significant uncertainty is whether aggressive spending by tech giants will actually deliver on profit expectations, while the use of leverage has exponentially magnified the cost of this misjudgment.

The payment platform Opay Ltd., which focuses on the Nigerian market, plans to raise up to 336 million dollars through an initial public offering (IPO).

Western Digital's CFO expressed strong support for AI storage demand, stating that hyperscale cloud providers are continuously increasing capital expenditures and have engaged in discussions regarding supply needs through 2030 to 2031. Although the company's quarterly results exceeded expectations and profit guidance was raised, capital expenditure more than doubled compared to the same period last year, putting pressure on free cash flow. This has sparked concerns in the market about the sustainability of returns on AI data center investments. The stock closed down by about 3% on Friday.