Last month's hardest-hit stocks led the market Tuesday afternoon. High-beta stocks, the ones most sensitive to market moves, were up about 5% by 3 p.m., led by AI, chip and data-center names, though that is only a small dent in a steep monthlong slide. The semiconductor fund SMH rose about 2% after losing about 20% over the past month. The crypto-miner fund WGMI jumped about 10%, driven by bitcoin miners that also host AI data centers, while bitcoin itself rose only about 1%. Chipmaker AMD gained 4% ahead of its results after the close, where data-center revenue is expected near $8 billion. October's winners gave ground: the consumer staples fund XLP fell about 2% after a 12% run over the past month, and the homebuilder fund ITB dropped about 3%. Short sellers buying back stock weren't behind the rebound, since the most heavily shorted stocks lagged. A FactorPulse gauge of hedge-fund losses has won back only about a tenth of its drop since early October, a month Goldman Sachs's prime brokerage called the fastest pullback in risk-taking since March.
Tech giant Apple fell 2.5%, erasing about $120 billion in market value, after its holiday-quarter margin guidance. MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett pointed to rising memory costs and slowing services growth. Online-commerce platform Shopify sank about 8% after revenue of about $3.7 billion narrowly missed estimates and the value of merchandise sold through it came in at about $119 billion, short of the $120 billion forecast. Software maker Palantir slipped 2% as growth in its U.S. commercial bookings slowed. Big rallies on earnings have been scarce this season. Weighted by size, only about a fifth of reporting companies have jumped sharply on their own news, compared with about a third at this point in each of the past eight seasons. About 100 reactions are still trading today, so the count isn't final.
Stronger-than-expected job data pushed bond yields higher. September job openings rose to about 7.5 million, well above the 7.1 million median forecast, and the 10-year Treasury yield climbed 5 basis points to 4.95%. The long-term bond fund TLT fell 0.7%. Meanwhile, tech giant Meta is selling up to $25 billion of bonds, about two-thirds in dollars and one-third in euros. On Friday, S&P Global Ratings turned the outlook on Meta's AA- rating negative after the company reported about $2 billion of negative free cash flow for the third quarter. The investment-grade bond fund LQD was flat despite higher yields, so the extra yield on corporate bonds over Treasuries narrowed slightly today after widening for a month. Final pricing on the Meta deal is due this afternoon.
Beta is at +1.41% (z=+1.5), and the highest-beta stocks are up 5.3%, led by AI, chip and data-center names. That is one session against a 20-session loss of 13.38% (z=-3.1). Beta is still down 3.84% over five sessions, so today goes against the trend without breaking it.
Most of the rebound came through beta, with chip exposure adding a smaller layer on top. Last month's losers did the work: 20-day momentum (Medium-Term Momentum in the table) is at -0.57% (z=-2.0), with the worst performers up 1.1% on average, and the high-beta momentum group is up 2.77% while the rest of the market is down 0.42%. AMD shows the split: of its 4.0% gain ahead of tonight's report, 2.9% comes from its style exposures, mostly beta, and only 0.8% is the stock's own move. The Semiconductors factor adds 0.86% (z=+1.4) on top of Beta.
| Factor | Return | Z-Score | 5d Z | 20d Z | 63d Z | Category | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beta | +1.41% | +1.5 | -1.8 | -3.1 | -1.3 | Style-Risk | High-beta beat low-beta |
| Medium-Term Momentum | -0.57% | -2.0 | -0.2 | -1.1 | -0.7 | Style-Momentum | Last month's losers beat winners |
| Semiconductors | +0.86% | +1.4 | -0.6 | -1.8 | -0.6 | Thematic | Chip-exposed names outperformed |
| Short-Sale Activity | -0.18% | -1.6 | +0.6 | +0.3 | +1.0 | Style-Flow | Barely short-sold names beat heavily short-sold |
| Short Interest | -0.23% | -1.4 | +0.0 | +1.4 | -0.6 | Style-Positioning | Most-shorted names lagged |
| One-Day Momentum | -0.36% | -1.3 | +1.7 | +0.9 | -1.2 | Style-Momentum | Yesterday's losers beat yesterday's winners |
| Treasury (Duration) | -0.41% | -1.3 | +1.1 | +1.7 | -0.6 | Thematic | Bond-sensitive names lagged |
| Hedge-Fund Ownership | +0.09% | +0.8 | +0.5 | +0.0 | -0.6 | Style-Positioning | Hedge-fund-heavy names slightly ahead |
| Bucket | Avg Ret Pct |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1.10 |
| 2 | 0.50 |
| 3 | 0.87 |
| 4 | 1.31 |
| 5 | 0.50 |
| 6 | 0.71 |
| 7 | 1.07 |
| 8 | 1.06 |
| 9 | 0.25 |
| 10 | 0.32 |
| 11 | 0.11 |
| 12 | 0.12 |
| 13 | -0.17 |
| 14 | -0.27 |
| 15 | 0.07 |
| 16 | -0.10 |
| 17 | 0.51 |
| 18 | -0.02 |
| 19 | -0.60 |
| 20 | -0.50 |
The month's biggest losers are bouncing hardest. Staples, materials and homebuilders, which rallied through October, are giving ground. Bitcoin miners that also host AI data centers are up most, and that is part of the AI trade, not a crypto move: WGMI is up 9.9% while bitcoin is only 0.9% higher at $77,509 at 2:51 PM ET. CNBC
| ETF | Theme | Today | 1d Ago | 5d Ago | 20d Ago | 63d Ago |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WGMI | crypto miners | +9.9% | -7.0% | -8.7% | -40.4% | -49.9% |
| AIPO | AI power infrastructure | +3.9% | -1.8% | -1.1% | -16.4% | -20.0% |
| DRAM | memory chips & storage | +2.2% | -3.5% | -4.2% | -24.9% | -15.6% |
| SMH | semiconductors | +1.7% | -2.7% | -6.2% | -19.8% | -11.7% |
| MTUM | momentum | +1.0% | -3.2% | -6.6% | -14.9% | -12.0% |
| TLT | long-term bonds | -0.7% | +0.3% | +0.5% | +6.4% | -0.1% |
| XLP | consumer staples | -1.9% | +1.6% | +3.3% | +12.1% | +7.1% |
| XLB | materials | -2.0% | +1.8% | +4.5% | +8.4% | +3.7% |
| ITB | homebuilders | -3.3% | +4.6% | +7.9% | +13.3% | -1.7% |
Both sides of a typical hedge-fund book worked today. Their longs rose: stocks heavily owned by hedge funds gained 0.22% (z=+1.5), though most of that came from their lean toward high-beta stocks and last year's winners, and 0.09% remains once those tilts are removed. Their shorts lagged: the most heavily shorted stocks trailed the least shorted by 0.23% (Short Interest, z=-1.4), and yesterday's most heavily short-sold names trailed by 0.18% (Short-Sale Activity, z=-1.6). With shorts falling behind as longs rise, this bounce is not a short squeeze; it is the pattern of funds adding risk after a de-risking month.
Today's relief is small next to October's damage. Our HF de-risking score has no leg firing so far today, but over the past 10 and 20 sessions it sits at the 95th and 96th percentiles since 2020, and Goldman Sachs's prime brokerage called October the fastest de-risking since March. The hedge-fund pain index is 10.3 daily standard deviations below its October 6 peak, the 6th-deepest of 32 such episodes since 2020, and since Monday's low it has won back only about a tenth of what it lost. Three of its eight legs have turned up (beta, volatility and short-sale P&L), the beta leg four sessions before the index made that low. The VIX, at 20.73, is still near the top of its 20-session range.
Background: our research note Factor Fingerprints of Hedge Fund Deleveraging Events compares October with 31 hedge-fund deleveraging events since 2020.
| Date | Sigma Vs Peak |
|---|---|
| 20260924 | -1.05 |
| 20260925 | -0.40 |
| 20260928 | -0.97 |
| 20260929 | -0.52 |
| 20260930 | -0.98 |
| 20261001 | -0.37 |
| 20261002 | -0.03 |
| 20261005 | -0.47 |
| 20261006 | 0.00 |
| 20261007 | -0.18 |
| 20261008 | -0.86 |
| 20261009 | -0.62 |
| 20261012 | -1.47 |
| 20261013 | -1.46 |
| 20261014 | -2.82 |
| 20261015 | -4.07 |
| 20261016 | -4.86 |
| 20261019 | -4.55 |
| 20261020 | -5.45 |
| 20261021 | -4.86 |
| 20261022 | -9.42 |
| 20261023 | -9.29 |
| 20261026 | -8.57 |
| 20261027 | -7.57 |
| 20261028 | -6.98 |
| 20261029 | -7.52 |
| 20261030 | -9.36 |
| 20261102 | -11.38 |
| 20261103 | -10.26 |
Earnings reactions so far todayReporters worth over $100 billion, or moving more than 10% with a value above $5 billion
| Company | Move | Stock-specific | Market cap | Revenue YoY | Margin YoY | What drove it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gartner IT | -13.6% | -10.7% | $15B | — | — | — |
| Shopify SHOP | -7.8% | -7.8% | $201B | — | — | Revenue and merchandise volume missed estimates, according to Morningstar. |
| Vertex Pharmaceuticals VRTX | -3.7% | -3.2% | $140B | +12% | -4.0 pts adj. operating | EPS missed as operating expenses jumped |
| Apple AAPL | -2.5% | -2.4% | $4.9T | +12% | -0.5 pts operating | Memory costs weighed on margin guidance Bloomberg |
| Palantir Technologies PLTR | -2.0% | -2.1% | $429B | +96% | +13.6 pts operating | US commercial bookings growth slowed |
| Pfizer PFE | -2.0% light volume | -0.7% | $175B | -0.4% | +0.4 pts pre-tax | — |
| Marathon Petroleum MPC | -0.7% light volume | -0.6% | $121B | +58%† | +10.9 pts† operating | — |
| Eaton ETN | +6.9% light volume | +4.7% | $142B | +28% | +0.3 pts adj. operating | Record backlog, guidance raised on data-center demand |
| Lattice Semiconductor LSCC | +11.4% | +7.6% | $14B | — | — | — |
| Fiserv FISV | +13.9% | +14.8% | $28B | — | — | Earnings beat, cost-savings target doubled Economic Times |
| Fabrinet FN | +16.2% | +11.7% | $11B | — | — | — |
| Xometry XMTR | +18.0% | +15.8% | $6B | — | — | — |
Stock-specific: the part of a stock's move not explained by the market, style or thematic (industry and theme) factors in the FactorPulse risk model.
Revenue and margin from the company's earnings release, year over year; margin change in percentage points; — where the release is not parsed or the figures failed checks.
† The company's year-ago figure differs from the one originally filed, usually a restatement; growth is on its current basis.
Light volume: the company's earnings filing confirms the report, but trading volume has not caught up yet, so the move is an early read.
Of the 500 largest companies, 316 have reported (70% of market cap), on day 24 of the season.
How earnings reactions split, day 24 of the seasonThe 500 largest US companies with a confirmed earnings reaction so far (297), vs the same day in the past eight seasons and in four-season stretches back to mid-2020
| Season | ≤ −5σ | −5 to −2σ | −2 to 0σ | 0 to 2σ | 2 to 5σ | ≥ 5σ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| This season | 8% | 17% | 29% | 24% | 18% | 4% |
| Past 8 seasons | 16% | 19% | 17% | 16% | 17% | 15% |
| Q2 2026 | 15% | 20% | 16% | 16% | 19% | 15% |
| Q1 2026 | 12% | 20% | 13% | 19% | 19% | 16% |
| Q4 2025 | 18% | 17% | 20% | 12% | 18% | 15% |
| Q3 2025 | 11% | 19% | 19% | 19% | 16% | 17% |
| Q2 2025 | 15% | 22% | 16% | 16% | 15% | 17% |
| Q1 2025 | 21% | 15% | 16% | 20% | 19% | 9% |
| Q4 2024 | 19% | 17% | 18% | 18% | 15% | 14% |
| Q3 2024 | 16% | 20% | 16% | 12% | 19% | 17% |
| Q3 '23–Q2 '24 | 16% | 18% | 15% | 15% | 19% | 16% |
| Q3 '22–Q2 '23 | 12% | 20% | 18% | 17% | 21% | 11% |
| Q3 '21–Q2 '22 | 13% | 19% | 14% | 18% | 24% | 12% |
| Q3 '20–Q2 '21 | 7% | 20% | 29% | 23% | 17% | 4% |
σ: a stock's earnings-day stock-specific move divided by its typical daily stock-specific move over the past year. Each bar is cut at the same business day of the season; companies weighted by the square root of market cap.
Apple is down 2.5% after its holiday-quarter margin guidance. MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett pointed to rising memory costs and slowing services growth as pressure on the stock's valuation. Bloomberg Shopify is down 7.8% after revenue of $3.74 billion narrowly missed estimates and merchandise volume came in at $119.1 billion against a $120.1 billion forecast, according to Morningstar.
Stronger-than-expected September job openings pushed yields up, most at the long end. The 10-year Treasury yield is at 4.95%, up 5 basis points, CNBC while the 2-year is up 3 basis points at 4.61%. CNBC Stocks that trade like bonds fell with them: the Treasury factor is at -0.41% (z=-1.3), and consumer staples (XLP) are giving back 1.9% after a 12.1% gain over the 20 sessions through Monday, a top-1% 20-day run since 2019.
Over the past 20 sessions, chip stocks have moved with yields, the opposite of their pattern in the 20 sessions before. Over the past 10 sessions, SMH fell about 7% while the 10-year yield fell about 24 basis points. The 20-session link is stronger than 97% of 20-session stretches since 2019. Chips moving with yields reads as the market pricing growth, and today both rose.
| Sym | Fund | Group | Today Pct | Past Year Pct | Tlt Sensitivity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ITB | Home construction | moved most with Treasuries | -3.30 | -1.90 | 1.53 |
| XHB | Homebuilders | moved most with Treasuries | -2.46 | 1.10 | 1.30 |
| XLU | Utilities | moved most with Treasuries | -0.24 | 0.10 | 0.63 |
| XBI | Biotech | moved most with Treasuries | 1.90 | 36.40 | 0.55 |
| IYR | US real estate | moved most with Treasuries | -0.21 | 9.50 | 0.54 |
| VNQ | REITs | moved most with Treasuries | -0.17 | 10.90 | 0.54 |
| XLRE | Real estate sector | moved most with Treasuries | -0.15 | 10.50 | 0.52 |
| XLP | Staples | moved most with Treasuries | -1.78 | 22.00 | 0.50 |
| LQD | Corporate bonds | moved most with Treasuries | -0.00 | -2.30 | 0.49 |
| XLV | Health care | moved most with Treasuries | -0.14 | 30.00 | 0.48 |
| IGV | Software | moved most against Treasuries | 0.47 | -10.60 | -0.20 |
| MTUM | Momentum stocks | moved most against Treasuries | 0.94 | 9.20 | -0.28 |
| AIPO | AI & power | moved most against Treasuries | 3.80 | -3.60 | -0.30 |
| XLK | Technology | moved most against Treasuries | 0.95 | 16.60 | -0.34 |
| SMH | Chips | moved most against Treasuries | 1.54 | 40.20 | -0.43 |
| BITO | Bitcoin futures | moved most against Treasuries | 1.32 | -30.40 | -0.52 |
| XLE | Energy | moved most against Treasuries | -0.51 | 58.10 | -0.60 |
| WGMI | Bitcoin miners | moved most against Treasuries | 9.38 | -53.40 | -0.67 |
| XOP | Oil producers | moved most against Treasuries | -0.55 | 56.90 | -0.92 |
| USO | Crude oil | moved most against Treasuries | 0.89 | 118.80 | -1.65 |
Corporate credit took on a large bond sale and still tightened. Meta is seeking $20 billion to $25 billion in a bond sale, about two-thirds in dollars and one-third in euros, with final pricing due this afternoon. CNBC On Friday, S&P Global Ratings moved Meta's AA- outlook to negative after the company reported negative third-quarter free cash flow of $2.12 billion. CNBC The investment-grade fund LQD is flat even though Treasury yields at its maturity rose 5 basis points, so investment-grade spreads narrowed slightly; the high-yield fund HYG held up the same way. Judging by the same fund prices, investment-grade spreads widened roughly 20 basis points and high-yield spreads roughly 40 over the month through Monday.
The JOLTS report, released at 10:00 AM ET, showed September job openings up 333,000 to 7.52 million, well above the 7.1 million median estimate BLS. The quit rate rose to 2.1%, a one-year high, and layoffs fell to 1.64 million, the lowest since March 2025.
Variance decomposition: live intraday — 20261103 session, bracketed against its trailing-year range. Factor returns are trailing through last close. Total cross-sectional dispersion: 47%ile of the past year.
Variance mix — % of total, today vs 1d ago vs 1-yr avg
market 15%ile style 72%ile thematic 69%ile idiosyncratic 47%ile
Variance explained — today vs. factor's trailing-year range
Marker = the factor's share of today's total variance, placed in its own trailing-year range (box 25–75%ile, ticks 90%ile and max). Amber marker = unusually load-bearing today (≥90%ile of its own year). Factor name green = up today / red = down.
Correlation & dispersion — realized vs implied
Pairwise realized correlation (20d): 7.53% 2.4%ile since 2020 · 9.5%ile 3m most extreme since 2026-09-08
Top-500 pairwise: 7.59% 3.9%ile since 2020 · 16%ile 3m · implied (Cboe COR1M): 16.10 14%ile since 2006 (gap -8.5pp)
Realized 20d vol (ann. pts): all stocks 46 vs VIXEQ 43 · index 11 vs VIX 21 · style factors 27 90.5%ile
20-day window (19 completed days + today); percentiles vs model history since 2020; '3m' tokens rank vs the trailing 63 trading days; definitions in Terms below. Implied prints (Cboe) are delayed ~15 min. as of 14:58 ET
High-beta momentum cohort (eq-wt, since-2020 rank): +2.8% 90%ile · rest of market -0.4%
HF de-risking score (since-2020 rank so far today): 0.0%ile today · 78%ile 5-day · HF pain index 10.3σ below peak (6th-deepest of 32 since 2020), 10% won back
| Factor | Today | 1d | 5d | 20d | 60d |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Style-Risk | |||||
| Beta | +1.41% z+1.5 | -1.60% | -3.84% | -13.38% | -9.25% |
| International | -0.37% z-1.2 | +0.00% | -0.58% | -1.59% | -0.96% |
| Residual Volatility | +0.17% z+0.4 | -1.12% | -1.22% | -1.58% | +0.76% |
| Style | |||||
| Dividend Yield | -0.17% z-1.0 | -0.41% | -0.56% | -0.29% | -0.04% |
| Profitability | -0.18% z-0.9 | +0.58% | +0.68% | +1.17% | +1.47% |
| Growth | +0.20% z+0.8 | -0.26% | -0.13% | -0.83% | -0.49% |
| Value | -0.14% z-0.6 | +0.34% | +0.46% | +0.11% | +0.33% |
| Liquidity | +0.12% z+0.4 | -0.89% | -0.86% | -1.18% | +1.48% |
| Size | -0.12% z-0.4 | -0.31% | -1.26% | -1.59% | +1.53% |
| Leverage | +0.00% z+0.0 | -0.11% | +0.85% | +0.03% | -1.40% |
| Style-Momentum | |||||
| Medium-Term Momentum | -0.57% z-2.0 | +0.23% | -0.13% | -1.40% | -1.90% |
| One-Day Momentum | -0.36% z-1.3 | +0.67% | +1.04% | +1.16% | -2.28% |
| Long-Term Momentum | +0.20% z+0.3 | -2.00% | -2.60% | -4.42% | -1.12% |
| Short-Term Momentum | -0.03% z-0.1 | +0.19% | +0.17% | +1.80% | +0.04% |
| Style-Positioning | |||||
| Short Interest | -0.23% z-1.4 | +0.12% | +0.00% | +1.02% | -0.77% |
| Hedge-Fund Ownership | +0.09% z+0.8 | +0.07% | +0.13% | +0.01% | -0.37% |
| Style-Flow | |||||
| Short-Sale Activity | -0.18% z-1.6 | +0.12% | +0.14% | +0.14% | +0.98% |
| Morning Activity | -0.13% z-1.1 | -0.27% | -0.48% | -0.67% | -0.57% |
| Thematic | |||||
| Semiconductors | +0.86% z+1.4 | -1.51% | -0.85% | -4.83% | -2.77% |
| Treasury (Duration) | -0.41% z-1.3 | +0.24% | +0.77% | +2.45% | -1.33% |
| Gold | -0.14% z-0.4 | +0.12% | -0.24% | -1.18% | -0.27% |
| China | +0.17% z+0.4 | -0.38% | -0.52% | -0.97% | -1.31% |
| Bitcoin / Crypto | -0.12% z-0.4 | -0.58% | -2.21% | -1.80% | +0.20% |
| Oil | +0.04% z+0.1 | -2.21% | -2.44% | -2.64% | +1.43% |
5/20/60d windows include today's session; 1d is the previous session.
Pairwise realized correlation. Index variance net of the weighted idiosyncratic diagonal, over the cross terms — the estimator used for implied-correlation indices. 20-day window unless noted; history since 2020.
Market variance share. The fraction of cross-sectional variance explained by the market factor — the attribution companion to pairwise correlation, not a substitute for it.
Factor z-score. Today's factor return divided by its daily-return standard deviation over ~1,600 trading days.
Conditional importance. A factor's relative share of what a tree-based fit of today's stock returns explains; sums to 100% across factors.
High-beta momentum cohort. US names above $2B market cap in the top quintile of both raw beta and 12-month momentum; membership frozen at each month's first business day. “Top 50” = the 50 strongest by combined rank.
HF de-risking score. A FactorPulse measure of de-risking in factor returns: the average of four legs, each in its own daily-volatility units and counted only when it moves in the de-risking direction. They are the most-shorted names rising, 12-month momentum winners falling, names crowded in hedge-fund 13F filings falling net of their beta and momentum, and last week's relative moves continuing instead of reverting (counted only alongside another leg). A leg counts as firing at half its daily volatility or more, so a leg can show a small value without firing. Types: A, covering and selling together; B, selling only; C, covering only. Ranked against every session since January 2020. It reads factor returns only, never positions.
Dispersion (realized). Total cross-sectional volatility net of the market component; high dispersion is the flip side of low correlation.
Stock-specific (idiosyncratic) return. The part of a stock's move not explained by the market, style or thematic (industry and theme) factors in the FactorPulse risk model.
VIXEQ / DSPX / COR1M. Cboe implied indices: single-stock volatility, dispersion, and 1-month implied correlation (top-50 S&P names). Quotes delayed ~15 minutes.
Data compiled by FactorPulse AI; edited and verified by Jeff Klein. For informational purposes only. Does not constitute financial advice, an investment recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any securities. Always consult a qualified financial professional before making investment decisions.
For more on factor construction methodology, see www.factorpulse.com/glossary.
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