Oaktree Alpha
This weekNo. XVI · Week of November 9, 2026
Oaktree Alpha · No. XVI · Monday, November 9, 2026
Not a Florida story. A Florida habit: this is where much of the state’s money is working.
Illustration, Old Florida Money for Oaktree Alpha
Thursday’s sell-off was forced selling
On Thursday, November 5, the S&P 500 had its worst day since the April 2025 tariff shock, and the headlines blamed an AI bubble; Jordi Visser, the macro investor whose weekly class Oaktree Alpha follows, called it a forced selling event. Oaktree Alpha still reads the AI bottleneck trade as intact, because CoreWeave’s last reported figures, from June 30, showed more power contracted than switched on. Bitcoin stays on the list too: it fell 1.88% for the week, less than the chip and power stocks beside it, and JPMorgan’s reported forced-selling estimate covered stock exposure.
Funds sold because their rules made them. Here is how it worked. Trend-following funds sell what is falling, and leveraged ETFs have to rebalance every day, so a weak open forces both to sell more. JPMorgan estimated the two together cut more than $70 billion of stock exposure within 90 minutes of the open, and most of the leveraged-ETF selling hit technology funds. NVIDIA was the heaviest drag on the S&P 500 that day. CoreWeave, which rents out AI computing power, had contracted more than twice as much power as it had switched on: 3.7 gigawatts against 1.5 gigawatts. Those last reported figures predate the rout.
Three things would change this view. JPMorgan’s model expected about $50 billion more selling still to come from volatility-targeting funds, which cut stock exposure when prices swing more; if the AI names keep falling once that clears, the market is saying something about demand. A backlog that stops growing in CoreWeave’s report on Tuesday would weaken the AI view. The Bitcoin view changes if the coin starts falling with stocks after the forced selling ends, because then the selling is about the coin itself.
The Score
The published list lost 9.3% last week as Micron and Marvell had the steepest losses on the list, against a 4.98% drop for QQQ, a fund tracking the Nasdaq 100. The published list overlaps with the wider AI bottleneck book Oaktree follows and invests in. Since Issue I (Jul 20), the wider book, nine stocks and no coins, is down 25.5%; the published list is down 7.4%, including Bitcoin and Ether, and its six stocks alone are down 15.4%; QQQ is down 5.74% (the two books are equal-weight price returns).
| Company | Price | 1W | 1M | QTD | YTD | 1Y |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eli Lilly LLY | $1,354.00 | -4.5% | +17.0% | +17.0% | +26.0% | +44.4% |
| Alphabet GOOGL | $284.78 | +1.8% | -18.1% | -17.2% | -9.0% | +0.0% |
| NVIDIA NVDA | $186.64 | -8.8% | -22.0% | -18.3% | +0.1% | -0.8% |
| Micron MU | $690.00 | -22.0% | -34.0% | -35.2% | +142% | +190% |
| Marvell MRVL | $141.20 | -28.1% | -50.8% | -46.6% | +66.2% | +51.3% |
| Caterpillar CAT | $558.63 | -10.3% | -35.3% | -31.1% | -2.5% | -2.0% |
| Bitcoin BTC | $75,731 | -1.9% | -11.5% | -9.4% | -13.4% | -25.2% |
| Ether ETH | $2,235.37 | -0.3% | -17.1% | -16.7% | -24.6% | -32.5% |
Closes 2026-11-06 (Bitcoin and Ether: UTC day close). Price returns. Sources: Nasdaq, Coinbase.
Next Week
Monday, November 9: Constellation Energy and NRG before the open, the first read on power demand since the rout. Tuesday, November 10: October CPI at 8:30 a.m. ET, CoreWeave after the close. Thursday, November 12: Applied Materials, Cisco and Cerebras after the close. Friday, November 13: October PPI at 8:30 a.m. ET. Watch Caterpillar against Monday’s Constellation Energy and NRG numbers.
Full issue, the watch list and the track record
Opinion, not investment advice. Oaktree Reserve and Wesley Todd may hold positions in names discussed.
Also watched
| Company | Price | 1W | 1M | QTD | YTD | 1Y |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intel INTC | $56.28 | -14.4% | -50.0% | -53.2% | +52.5% | +51.1% |
| Corning GLW | $106.13 | -13.9% | -37.2% | -31.0% | +21.2% | +20.8% |
Closes 2026-11-06 (Bitcoin and Ether: UTC day close). Price returns. Sources: Nasdaq, Coinbase.
Last Week
On Thursday, November 5, the S&P 500 fell 4.4% to 7,353.73. The Nasdaq Composite fell 5.5%. The Dow fell 3.4%.
The news story was AI fear: higher borrowing costs slowing data-center construction, bubble talk, and election results that raised the chance of forced pauses in data-center building. The bond market did not back the borrowing-cost part. The 10-year Treasury yield fell to 4.84% that day, from 4.90% the night before.
The selling was mechanical. JPMorgan estimated leveraged ETFs alone sold more than $60 billion of stock exposure before the close. About 90% of that was in technology products. Trend-following funds sold about $11 billion of S&P 500 futures in the first hour and a half.
Winners. Alphabet was the only stock on the list that rose, up 1.77%. Ether was close to flat, down 0.25%. Bitcoin fell 1.88%. Bitcoin and Ether fell less than five of the six listed stocks; JPMorgan’s estimate covered equity exposure.
Losers. Marvell fell hardest, down 28.11%. Marvell makes the networking chips that move data inside AI data centers. Micron, which makes memory chips, fell 22.01%. Caterpillar, which makes the engines and generators behind data-center power, fell 10.3%. NVIDIA fell 8.8% for the week, after a 9.3% drop on Thursday alone. Eli Lilly fell 4.48% with the market.
Watched names. Intel fell 14.42%. Intel stays watched, not listed: a turnaround whose AI share is still unproven. Corning fell 13.93%. Corning stays watched too: fiber and glass demand from data centers is real but a smaller share of its revenue.
Off the list. Lumentum fell 35.94%. It makes optical lasers, and the networking layer is already on the list through Marvell. Dell fell 22.57%. Dell is a server assembler; the list holds the scarce parts inside the server, NVIDIA’s chips and Micron’s memory, and Dell is followed in the wider book. Vertiv fell 21.35%. Hewlett Packard Enterprise fell 18.73%; it is a server assembler like Dell. Bloom Energy fell 14.73%. It sells on-site power, and the power layer is on the list through Caterpillar. AMD fell 17.3% on Thursday. AMD makes chips, and the compute layer is already on the list through NVIDIA. TSMC fell 7.56%. TSMC is the chip foundry Oaktree Alpha follows as the supply read for the compute layer. Arista Networks rose 1.15%, one of the AI names in this price pack that finished the week higher; it makes network switches, a layer the list holds through Marvell.
The wider book fell 16.6% for the week, harder than the published list.
The Read
The rout followed concerns that AI data-center construction could slow. CoreWeave’s last reported backlog predates the rout: about $104 billion at June 30, plus more than $25 billion of new customer commitments it said came in early in the third quarter.
A backlog is signed work waiting to be delivered. Forced selling does not cancel it.
What to do with it: on Tuesday night, read the backlog line in CoreWeave’s report before you look at the stock price. If the backlog grew, Thursday was positioning. If it shrank, the market saw something first.
Next Week, in full
Monday, November 9: No major US economic releases. NRG Energy reports before the open, call at 8:00 a.m. ET. Constellation Energy is expected to report, call at 9:00 a.m. ET. MARA Holdings, a bitcoin miner, reports after the close. Tuesday, November 10: October CPI at 8:30 a.m. ET. Consensus is +0.3% for the month on the headline and +0.2% on core. BLS will not publish October 2026 year-over-year changes for indexes that lack October 2025 data because of the shutdown. CoreWeave reports after the close, call at 5:00 p.m. ET. Wednesday, November 11: Veterans Day. The bond market is closed; stocks trade. Thursday, November 12: Weekly jobless claims at 8:30 a.m. ET. Nebius Group reports before the open, call at 8:00 a.m. ET. October Treasury budget statement. Cisco reports after the close, call at 4:30 p.m. ET. Applied Materials reports after the close, call at 4:30 p.m. ET. Cerebras Systems reports after the close, call at 5:00 p.m. ET. Friday, November 13: October PPI at 8:30 a.m. ET. Consensus is +0.4% for the month and 6.6% for the year on the headline, +0.3% for the month on core.
Track record
Since Issue I (July 20, 2026), equal-weight price return: the wider AI bottleneck book Oaktree follows and invests in -25.5%; the published list's equities -15.4%; all eight published names -7.4%; the Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) -5.7%. Closes through 2026-11-06.
The earlier frozen index, published in Issues I to V, remains on record: +4.14% against QQQ +1.11% as of August 14, 2026.
Sources
Jordi Visser, "70 Billion in 90 minutes!" (Nov 7, 2026): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elLmdl5kcDk JPMorgan note on CTA and leveraged-ETF selling (Nov 5, 2026), as reported: https://www.kucoin.com/news/flash/quant-and-leveraged-etfs-sell-700b-in-stocks-amid-us-market-crash Ben Emons on leveraged-ETF selling: https://benemons.substack.com/p/long-or-short-equity AP, Nov 5, 2026 market close: https://www.ajc.com/news/2026/11/a-brutal-sell-off-for-ai-stocks-sends-wall-street-reeling-and-the-sp-500-tumbles-44/ CoreWeave Q2 2026 results (Aug 11, 2026): https://investors.coreweave.com/news/news-details/2026/CoreWeave-Reports-Strong-Second-Quarter-2026-Results/default.aspx Week-ahead calendar: https://global-view.com/newsquawk-week-ahead-in-focus-9-13th-november-2026 Earnings calendar, week of Nov 9: https://www.stocktitan.net/articles/earnings-calendar-week-of-november-9-2026 Jobless claims date: https://www.financecalendar.com/event/us-initial-jobless-claims-november-12-2026/ Prices: Nasdaq historical closes and Coinbase daily candles, as of Nov 6, 2026