Market News: GOOGL, Rate Cut Odds, DELL

November 17, 2025

Fed Rate Cuts

The odds of a December rate cut are now down to 39% (versus over 70% a couple weeks ago).  We discussed this last week after the WSJ article about the current disagreement among Fed members about what to do next.  

It’s going to come down to the data over the next couple weeks.  The govn is reopen.  So we’ll get our regular jobs and inflation data.   But we’ll also get some catch-up data from the shutdown.  We’ll have to wait patiently to see what this says.   As a reminder, the market (usually) loves rate cuts.  So weaker economic data (but not too weak) would be a positive for the market overall.

Google

Google may seem like “old tech” in the world of AI.  (I remember in spring having conversations with someone about whether Google is in secular decline!)  But they are rebounding with vigor.  GOOGL is up 35% over the past 3 months, outperforming nearly every other large cap tech stock.   They are up +4% today on news that Berkshire Hathaway has taken a position. I wouldnt be surprised if Warren got interested in Google.  But this decision is almost certainly from his replacement, Todd Combs.  Just today, I used the “Gemini AI” tab in my Chrome browser for the first time.  Will this replace ChatGPT for me?  We’ll see.

Dell

Dell stock got a rare “double-downgrade” today (from buy to sell) from Morgan Stanley.   They’re not concerned about demand for Dell’s products.  But they are concerned about the cost of “memory” that Dell needs to install it its product.  Spiking cost of memory (up 50% in the last six months) could put a crimp on Dell profit margins when they report next week.