A $6.3 Billion Crypto Heist 🚨

Welcome back to the Day Trading newsletter 📈

It was the week that was: the S&P 500 slipped 0.6% to 7,580.07 as a Friday selloff, led by Intel's collapse and the biggest crypto hack ever, dragged stocks lower.

Let’s get into it 👇️ 

📆 Monday 11/2 — ISM Manufacturing PMI (10 a.m. ET): A monthly survey of factory activity, where a reading above 50 means expansion. Last month's was 54.5, so watch the prices-paid gauge, which was 77.9 and shows how much oil is squeezing costs.

📆 Monday 11/2 — Apple earnings (after the close, 4:30 p.m. ET): Apple reports its fiscal fourth quarter, the one that includes launch-week iPhone 18 Pro sales. It guided to 9% to 11% revenue growth, so watch for commentary on memory costs and supply constraints heading into the holidays.

📆 Tuesday 11/3 — U.S. midterm elections (all day): Voters decide whether Democrats take control of Congress. Markets will be watching for any shift in the policy outlook.
 
📆 Tuesday 11/3 — AMD earnings (after the close, call at 5 p.m. ET): The chipmaker reports just days after a brutal week for semiconductors. Its AI chip outlook will show whether the Friday selloff was a one-off or a broader reset.

📆 Friday 11/6 — October jobs report (8:30 a.m. ET): September payrolls rose just 29,000, below expectations, and unemployment was 4.2%. A weak number could ease pressure on the Fed, while a hot one adds to December rate-hike bets.

🔻 Intel stock collapsed 28.6% Friday after the chipmaker gave a fourth-quarter outlook far below Wall Street's. It guided to earnings of 25 cents a share versus the 43 cents analysts expected, and warned about cash burn. The plunge helped drive Friday's chip rout.

📉 The Nasdaq fell 2.9% Friday, its worst day since June, as semiconductor stocks got hammered. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped 7.2% and tech was the weakest sector, down nearly 5%. The S&P 500 lost 1.8% to 7,580.07, though the average S&P stock held up better than the big names.

📦️ Amazon missed Wall Street's revenue target and the stock slipped Friday as investors balked at its spending. Sales rose about 12%, and AWS, its cloud arm, grew at a high-30s percent pace. But free cash flow over the past year was negative $42.4 billion, and Amazon is sticking with $220 billion of 2026 capital spending.

🛢️ Oil rose again Friday after a tanker attack in the Strait of Hormuz. January Brent crude gained 2.4% to settle at $113.43 a barrel, while U.S. crude rose 2.1% to $104.12. Oil has stayed elevated throughout the U.S. war with Iran, which keeps pressure on inflation and on the Fed.

🔼 Exxon Mobil touched a record high Friday after beating Wall Street's earnings estimates. The stock gained about 2.2%, and Chevron also rose about 1%. Energy was the best-performing S&P 500 sector Friday, up 1.9%, as high oil prices fed straight into profits.

🔽 Crypto-linked stocks tumbled Friday after the Binance hack. Coinbase fell 10.6%, Strategy dropped 7.8%, and Robinhood slid 7.2%. Bitcoin finished the week near $76,700, down about 5.4%. Investors are worried that a record theft could shake confidence in trading platforms, even as Binance pledges to cover its users' losses.

Late Thursday, hackers drained about $6.3 billion in crypto from Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, reportedly within about 20 minutes, and Binance suspended withdrawals.

On Saturday the FBI blamed TraderTraitor, a North Korean state-sponsored hacking unit, which it says is the same group behind the $1.5 billion Bybit hack in 2025.

That makes this more than four times larger than the previous record.

The FBI says the group is mostly converting the loot into Ether and will likely try to launder it through decentralized finance (DeFi) apps and instant swap services.

Binance said late Saturday it has replaced roughly 95% of the stolen tokens and promised to cover the losses itself rather than pass them on to customers.

Withdrawals began coming back Sunday, starting with Bitcoin.

Binance holds customer money, so a theft this size tests whether an exchange can actually make its users whole, and so far Binance is saying it can.

The market read the news as a confidence hit: Bitcoin ended Friday near $76,700, down about 5% on the week, and crypto-linked stocks sank, with Coinbase down 10.6%.

It also shows how much of crypto's biggest risk is theft by state-backed hackers, not market swings.

What to watch:

• Watch how quickly Binance restores withdrawals beyond Bitcoin, since the rest of its roughly 5% shortfall sits in less liquid tokens that take longer to buy.

• Also watch the money trail: analytics firms like TRM Labs say the funds can be tracked in real time, and the FBI has asked exchanges to block transactions tied to the hackers' addresses.

• A rush of customer withdrawals as more assets come back online would signal that trust hasn't fully returned.
  

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⚠️ Disclaimer: Not financial advice. Do your research before making any trades.