Stocks closed mostly higher yesterday in uneven trade. The Dow, once again, led the gainers with 0.68%, and making another new all-time high in the process. The Nasdaq and small-cap Russell 2000 were the decliners giving up -0.26% and -0.30% respectively.

Advanced Micro Devices surged higher yesterday gaining 9.00%. The day before, AMD CEO Lisa Su, characterized the demand for AI as "insatiable," and said her company could grow revenue by 35% a year for the next 3-5 years because of that. In fact, she said the AI market is "faster than anything we've seen before." And she predicted the AI data center market could grow to "$1 trillion" by 2030.

A resounding outlook for the scale of AI. And it's just the latest comment to underscore that the AI trade is alive and well!

Earnings season continues. After the close yesterday, Cisco posted a positive EPS surprise of 2.04%, and a positive sales surprise of 0.71%. That translated to a quarterly EPS growth rate of 9.89% vs. this time last year, and a sales growth of 7.51%. They raised next quarter's guidance for both earnings and sales by 1% and 0.90% above the consensus, and guided full-year 2026 in line with estimates. CEO Chuck Robbins cited AI as a key contributor, and said "I don't feel like AI's a fleeting trend." They were up 3.14% in the regular session before earnings, and were up by more than 7% in after-hours trade following earnings.

Today we'll hear from another 529 companies on deck to report, including Disney before the open, and Applied Materials after the close.

In other news, yesterday's MBA Mortgage Applications rose by 0.6% w/w vs. last week's -1.9% pace. Purchases were up 5.8%, while refi's were down -3.4%.

Today we were supposed to get Weekly Jobless Claims, and the Consumer Price Index (CPI ? retail inflation) report. But due to the government shutdown, those will once again be delayed.

Gladly, the shutdown is finally coming to an end. The Senate's revised bill made it through the House last night, and with the President's signature, the shutdown comes to an end.

Yesterday marked day 43. It will go down in the history books as the longest government shutdown on record. Let's hope that never gets broken.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that the shutdown could end up reducing Q4 GDP by as much as half. But, most economists would agree, that in general, much of that missed growth is just deferred until the government opens back up. And we should see a substantial rebound in Q1.

As for air travel, which suffered widespread cancellations due to the shutdown, it will take some time to get back to normal. It's estimated it could take 3-5 days or so to iron things out. But that means we could very well be back to normal by this time next week, if not sooner.

With 2 more days left in the week, all of the major indexes are up for the week.

Although, only half are in the green for the month. But with Q4 being the best quarter of the year for stocks, not to mention that in post-election years, there's a 72.2% likelihood of November ending higher, I'm expecting the month to finish strong.

BTW, I'm also expecting a strong showing for December. Since 1950, in post-election years, both November and December have a high probability of finishing in the plus column with a 72.2% likelihood for November and a 77.8% likelihood for December.

See you tomorrow,