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Wednesday, October 14, 2026

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October 2026 Random Ramblings

October 2026 market commentary covers SOLS’s cancelled merger, a hypothetical Starbucks-Chipotle deal, Russell 2000 weakness and AI premiums for Oura and home builders.

SBUX $109BCMG $39B
Yet Another Value Podcast 87 clicks

From X

@convequity

Convequity on X

Kirin 9050 Pro is the first Tau Scaling chip. The bigger story is Ascend. Huawei just put LogicFolding in the Mate XT 2. First commercial SoC on the Tau (τ) law He Tingbo laid out in May / updated in July. Not a surprise if you read that paper. Still a real jump: DUV + SAQP + logic stacking took density from 155 → 238 MTr/mm² on the same SMIC N+3 node. +55% in one gen. Power went down, not up. That’s N3-class equivalent density. Headline number matches Intel 18A HD (238) and sits next to Samsung SF2 (~231). TSMC N2 HD is still ahead (~313). Caveat: 238 is Huawei’s LogicFolding equivalent, not a planar N3 shrink. Same device node as 9030 Pro. Some analysts put the industry-formula read closer to ~175. Mobile scoreboard vs last-gen trifold / 9030 Pro: • Device +42% • CPU ST +24% / MT +52% • P-core 3.1 GHz (was 2.75) • CPU / GPU / NPU iso-perf power −41% / −58% / −66% • GPU render +142% • On-device 30B-total-param MoE Multi-core still trails $QCOM’s latest. The gap is no longer multi-generation. Next Tau Kirin can catch, maybe pass, a leading-edge mobile SoC. The packaging tell is sharper than the phone benches. 1.4–1.5μm hybrid-bond pitch. ~50M vertical interconnects. Western HVM hybrid bonding is still ~6μm (TSMC SoIC) to ~9μm (Intel Foveros Direct). If 1.4μm holds, that is SOTA vs Western leading-edge bonding — not the Geekbench print. Phone catch-up is the demo. AI silicon is the payoff. Apply the same fold to Ascend and the process-density gap vs $NVDA peers compresses from the lithography side over the next few quarters. Remaining bottlenecks: domestic DUV tool volume, HBM, packaging, software. I wouldn’t assume they outproduce ASML on DUV. I also wouldn’t fade the direction. Mature DUV + stacking + almost-unlimited power is enough to put China in the token-factory fight vs the US. Tables below. 🧵
@convequity

Convequity on X

GPT-6 Astra: scaling still works. Algo is the larger remaining gap. Astra shows both scaling laws and algorithms are still progressing. It is reportedly distilled from a 10T+ teacher named Bel. Maybe with $NVDA Vera Rubin and the next compute generation coming online, 10T+ becomes the new standard and performance keeps compounding. That means continued — even accelerating — demand for AI infra. The more interesting signal is algo. IMO we are still just touching the surface of how algorithms can improve. There is still a large gap between SOTA perf/watt and the human brain. GPT-6’s recurrent depth is the part that stuck with me. CoT / test-time reasoning lets the model write intermediate steps out as tokens, then produce a better final answer than a direct reply. Recurrent depth is different. It lets the model think longer and harder in hidden space before any word is emitted. Not just write the thinking out. Think harder on each next bit of the word. I am perplexed this arrived so late in GPT-6. Stable Diffusion introduced and spread this kind of latent iterative method in image generation ~5 years ago. The main reason it came so late: hidden thinking is harder to safety-check and monitor than explicit CoT. That constraint is real. It is also more human-like. People do not narrate every step. Plenty of global-max algorithms are still unimplemented for similar reasons. Models only get stronger from here.

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My 2028 numbers

ASML’s €11.7 billion quarter benefited from €3.3 billion in installed-base sales and operating leverage, while the MATCH Act threatens…

ASML $631B
Best Anchor Stocks 26 clicks

Lennar, Part One: The Story

Lennar grew from a Miami builder into one of America’s two largest homebuilders, controlling land largely through options and land banks…

LEN $17B
Latticework by MOI Global 15 clicks

Lennar, Part Two: The Deep Dive

Lennar’s second audio program examines the homebuilder’s business for professional investors and housing analysts.

LEN $17B
Latticework by MOI Global 13 clicks

ASML Q3 FY12/26 Earnings Review

ASML reported Q3 sales of €11.7 billion, up 55% year over year, and guided Q4 sales to €14.2 billion to €15.2 billion amid capacity…

ASML $631B
Cestrian Capital Research 9 clicks

Insider activity September 2026

Asian insider buying rose 19% to US$2.4 billion across 930 September transactions, led by Grab CEO Anthony Tan’s US$30 million purchase…

GRAB $12B
Asian Century Stocks 7 clicks
WDC · long

Western Digital CORP

Western Digital, a hard-disk manufacturer, is pitched as a long after significant share-price moves deter investors.

WDC $124B
Value Investors Club 7 clicks

Expert Call | Corning

Corning’s NVIDIA-backed 10x fiber expansion, enterprise connector demand and carrier capacity plans frame its optical communications…

GLW $115B
P Equity Research 38 clicks

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