It appears Netanyahu’s reported “gift” of a Lebanon ceasefire in the wake of Trump’s election victory is coming to fruition. Reuters and other international outlets are reporting that agreement on a US-proposed ceasefire has been reached.

“Lebanon and Hezbollah have agreed to a U.S. proposal for a ceasefire with Israel with some comments on the content, a top Lebanese official told Reuters on Monday, describing the effort as the most serious yet to end to the fighting.”

A Lebanese source, Ali Hassan Khalil, an aide to Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, has said “Lebanon had delivered its written response to the U.S. ambassador in Lebanon on Monday, and White House envoy Amos Hochstein was travelling to Beirut to continue talks,” Reuters writes late in the day Monday.

Israel has yet to issue official comment, and much remains to be seen on whether it will actually take effect or hold:

“Lebanon presented its comments on the paper in a positive atmosphere,” Khalil said, declining to give further details. “All the comments that we presented affirm the precise adherence to (U.N.) Resolution 1701 with all its provisions,” he said.

It comes as a bit of a surprise, given how violent the past 24 hours have been on both sides of the border. 

At least five Lebanese were killed Monday due to an Israeli strike on the Zuqaq al-Blat area, with casualty figures expected to increase amid an emergency response. Over 30 were injured in the attack, others remain missing.

On the Israeli side of the war-ravaged border area, Israeli sources are saying a number of Hezbollah missiles scored direct hits on civilian areas:

A woman was killed and at least 17 people were wounded in several rocket barrages fired by Hezbollah on Monday, as the terror group launched more than 100 rockets at northern Israel and one missile at the country’s center throughout the day.

The woman, identified as Safaa Awad, 41, was killed and dozens of others wounded in the evening by a rocket that hit a three-story building in the northern town of Shfar’am after Hezbollah fired five projectiles at the Galilee.

Among the wounded victims were a woman aged 41 and a 4-year-old boy in serious condition, Rambam Hospital in Haifa said.

The medical center said a total of 56 victims were brought for treatment, mostly for acute anxiety. Among the victims were 18 children, the hospital adds.

There was also a major Hezbollah missile strike on Tel Aviv Monday:

⚡️Impact on terrorists in Tel Aviv pic.twitter.com/68GYokrfHG

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) November 18, 2024

Israeli media has also picked up on the breaking report of the ceasefire deal, also emphasizing there’s been no initial comment from the Israeli government:

Its terms require Hezbollah to have no armed presence in the area between the Lebanese-Israeli border and the Litani River, which runs some 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of the frontier — clauses the terror group violated from the get-go.

Khalil claims the success of the initiative now depended on Israel, saying if Israel did not want a solution, “it could make 100 problems.

Lebanese officials are now saying the ball is in Israel’s court. Currently an Israeli ground offensive is still active, and Beirut has been heavily pummeled by Israel’s aerial offensive, which has also reached into central and northeastern Lebanon of late, especially the Bekaa Valley.

Like with Ukraine, President-elect Trump is pledging to quickly bring to an end wars which have Washington involvement; however, in a phone call last month he told PM Netanyahu to “do what you have to do” against Hezbollah and Hamas.

One career US diplomat in the Middle East region was cited in WaPo as saying “Netanyahu has no loyalty to Biden and will be focused entirely on currying favor with Trump.”

Ahead of Nvidia’s earnings report on Wednesday after the bell, a new report from The Information reveals that the world’s most valuable company has requested suppliers to redesign the racks for new Blackwell graphics cards to address overheating issues. 

According to the report…

In recent months, Nvidia has asked its suppliers to change the design of the racks several times as it has tried to overcome the overheating problems, according to Nvidia employees who have been working on the issue, as well as several customers and suppliers with knowledge of it. Word of the repeated design changes has sparked anxiety among customers about a potential delay in when they will be able to use the racks.

In August, Bloomberg reported that Nvidia’s highly anticipated Blackwell series of AI chips encountered “engineering snags,” which signifies the mounting challenges of meeting customer demand for its AI GPUs. 

Here’s more from The Information: 

Now, though, some big customers are concerned. While Nvidia often changes its server designs before launch, changes to the Blackwell racks have come late in the production process, according to several customers and suppliers. However, Nvidia may still be able to deliver the racks to customers by the end of the first half next year, in line with its original schedule, and it hasn’t notified customers of a delay.

Meta Platforms, Elon Musk’s xAI, and Microsoft are some of Nvidia’s largest customers. Next year (likely in the second half), Nvidia will deliver new Blackwell racks to server farms.

The Information’s report comes ahead of a major earnings catalyst for the world’s most valuable company on Wednesday after the bell. 

Goldman’s Toshiya Hari recently published a note on Nvidia, indicating “GS Research is bullish here…” 

• GS Research is bullish here as Toshi models $34.3bn (+14% qoq, +90% yoy) in revenue, 75.4% in non-GAAP gross margin (excl. SBC) and $0.79 in non-GAAP EPS (excl. SBC) – all above cons. The magnitude of Nvidia’s revenue beats have narrowed over the last few quarters, but could expand again in CY2025 driven by Blackwell. Though Toshiya expects FY1Q to be the true ‘break out’ quarter in which the ramp of Blackwell coupled with improved supply-side conditions drives meaningful positive EPS revisions, he expects FY3Q guidance and management commentary on the earnings call to support his constructive thesis. Four of Nvidia’s largest customers (GOOGL, META, MSFT and AMZN) reported earnings with GOOGL, MSFT and AMZN explicitly stating or implying that supply, not demand, remains a constraining factor.

• Investor sentiment skews positive into results on Nov 20th (desk thinks sentiment = 9 out of 10, up from last qtr) with investors focused on the upcoming Blackwell product ramp as well as broader commentary around visibility and ROIs / use-cases for GenAI (think: Agents / Assistants, robotaxis, etc). Into CY25, key debates on the stock are around linearity of spending as LLMs continue to scale, customer diversification (think: Enterprise, Sovereigns) and margins (GMs/mix + Opex/R&D). Hedge funds have net bought AI stocks since October, and investors for the most part plan to maintain long positions.

In recent sessions, some of Nvidia’s most active options have been calls linked to shares soaring to $155 and $162.50 after earnings. Nvidia shares closed Friday at $141.98. Shares are up 187% on the year. About 1% of the float is short.

Shares are about 2% lower in premarket trading.

Meanwhile, insiders have been dumping shares…

All eyes will be on Nvidia ER on Wednesday. 

ViaGreg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Renowned Attorney Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch and later Freedom Watch, has been fighting government corruption and winning for decades. 

Today, the fight has turned into an all-out war and fight to the death.  Klayman explains, “Bottom line is we have been in a war, but now we are at red alert…”

”  The fact that Donald Trump has been reelected the 47th President of the United States with the popular vote and an overwhelming landslide in the Electoral College, the Left is on the run, but it’s stung.  It’s like a wounded tiger.  It’s vicious.  It will fight back…

You are going to see the Left in the streets, ultimately.  It will probably be in days, if not weeks.  You are going to see a repeat of what we saw with Black Lives Matter, ANTIFA, radical Palestinians and others.  They are going to be coming for us.  

Frankly, and this sounds extreme, we saw the assassination attempts… and Kamala Harris and Biden calling Trump Hitler, calling them garbage and calling us garbage, they want us dead.  Let me repeat that.  They want us dead…They are like rats leaving the ship. 

The time to peacefully and legally crush them is now.”

Klayman also sees that things may not stay peaceful. 

Klayman points out, “It’s only a matter of time because they are whipping up the hatred right now against all of us garbage men…”

”  It’s only a matter of time that he (President Trump) may have to declare martial law to reestablish order here.  I hope it doesn’t get to that.  But he (the President) has that authority as well. 

So, I want people to realize that there may be a calm in the storm right now, but the communists, the atheists, the radicals and the Left are coalescing.  They are plotting, and they are planning. 

This is like the ‘Force’ in ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Darth Vader.’  They intend to come back anyway they can. 

If they can’t do it peacefully and legally, which they can’t, they are going to get violent, and we better be prepared for that.”

Klayman also points out that President Trump cannot turn America around without the help of millions of patriots.  Klayman says,

“He needs us to back him.  We need to fight for him if necessary.  Here’s the scary thing.  God forbid, but I don’t think this is the last assassination attempt.  I think there will be more. . . . This kid that took a crack at Trump in Butler, we don’t know what his motive was today. . . . We’ve never gotten the truth about anything. 

We don’t know who killed John F. Kennedy.  Even Bobby Kennedy Jr. does not believe that Sirhan Sirhan killed his father. 

Martin Luther King’s family does not believe that James Earl Ray was the assassin of Martin Luther King.  It was probably Edgar Hoover the FBI Director. . . .

We don’t know anything about the two people that tried to assassinate Donald Trump because our government is corrupt to the core, and that is why the Left is going to resist.  Our government needs to be reconstituted.  Embedded in government is the Deep State, and it is more powerful than the President.”

Klayman is appealing to the incoming Trump Administration to make him the Czar in charge of picking judicial appointments. 

Klayman says too many RINO judges were put on the bench during Trump’s first Administration.

Klayman is also representing Laura Loomer in a $150 million defamation lawsuit against HBO and Bill Maher.  Klayman is also the lawyer of record on many other groundbreaking cases.  Klayman also talks about the need for donations as the 2024 Election cycle took donations away from FreedomWatchUSA.org.  Klayman makes an appeal for badly needed funds so he can continue his work for “We the People” against government corruption.

There is much more in the one-hour in-depth interview.

Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with renowned lawyer and government corruption fighter, Larry Klayman, founder of FreedomWatchUSA.org as he lays out the evil that criminals on the Left and RINO’s are planning for America.

*  *  *

To Donate to FreedomWatchUSA.org so Larry Klayman can hire more attorneys to fight for the rights of all Americans being attacked by tyrannical dark forces on the Left, click here.

By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

3D Chess or 52-Card Pickup?

3D Chess always makes me think of Star Trek and wonder who the heck thinks that we need a game more complex than chess? 52-Card Pickup is a game most frequently played by siblings, and even then, only once or twice. Typically, the older sibling asks the younger one if they want to play 52-card pickup. Without knowing the game, but excited that their older sibling wants to do anything with them, the younger one instantly agrees. At which point the older sibling throws a deck of cards across the room and yells – there you go, 52-card pickup!

Depending on who you listen to, talk to, or follow, in its first full week, the Trump team is either playing an incredible game of 3D Chess, or is playing the equivalent of 52-Card Pickup with the nation.

It is far too early to say which side is right, and the final answer will likely fall somewhere in the middle. Having said that, there are a few things that have come up consistently in meetings, calls, and interactions with clients.

• There are various processes in place to effectively protect the system. Could they be bypassed by using Recess Appointments? I have to admit that Congress getting recess, like schoolchildren, has always amused me, but recess appointments would be a very aggressive tactic. They allow Trump to bypass the confirmation process (for up to a year) for some positions, presumably the most difficult/contentious ones. For some reason, this is also “part of the system and process,” so someone must have thought that there was a need for this. To me, this, like many things (including the 2+ month timeframe between the election and the inauguration) is likely a function of how difficult it was to travel across the country back in the day. It will be interesting to see how the appointments go, to say the least.

• If you are going to try to radically change D.C., often described as “draining the swamp,” it does make sense that non-traditional candidates would be selected. Yes, there are people with more experience than some of the nominees, but are they too close to the system to try and change it?

• D.O.G.E (the Department of Government Efficiency) has generated a lot of buzz. It seems to be the one thing that everyone is curious about and wants to see how it all plays out (even with a tinge of optimism that some spending can be cut without reducing or hurting services). It is also quite clear that Musk, one of the richest people on the planet, will play a major role in this administration, as a key advisor to President-Elect Trump.

Thinking about this dovetails well with last weekend’s Learning to Speak Trump Again. For better or worse, we should expect D.C. headlines to continue to create volatility for the markets.

Having said that:

• The 10-year Treasury is back to 4.44%, basically where it closed on November 7th. We’ve had some pretty big swings on a daily and even intraday basis, but wound up unchanged. I remain firmly in the camp that the deficit fears (and concerns about inflation from tariffs) are more than priced in right now.

• The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 are both below where they closed on November 7th (for all the “growth” hype, that certainly grabs your attention). Maybe even more surprising, given the attention, is that the Russell 2000 is back to below its November 7th close, having dropped over 5% since it hit a high on Monday (maybe a good reminder that equity markets should shut down along with the bond market on Veterans Day).

• Gold was strong into the election, but has faded hard since then. Copper, which should benefit from growth if the “Dr. Copper” people are correct, is down over 12% since the start of the month. Oil has struggled, but energy stocks have done well, with XLE holding onto its gains. This makes some sense (see “Drill Baby Drill” from Fox Business this summer) as energy production should increase, helping to keep energy prices at bay, but creating some potentially strong profit growth.

• Bitcoin. Bitcoin has been incredibly strong. Yes, some volatility, but it has clung to the idea that a Trump administration will be very positive for crypto in general and Bitcoin (and Dogecoin) in particular. Given how many of the people in Trump’s inner circle are very positive on Bitcoin, it makes sense. On the other hand, Trump doesn’t control Bitcoin at all, and he does seem to like to control things, which may tarnish his current love affair over time. Also, for all the chatter about the U.S. government building up a “Bitcoin reserve” (it is hard to miss it, if you spend any time at all on X), I have not heard from anyone that this is really feasible. Most, which includes me, think that there will be an immense amount of resistance to government adoption (yes on clearer and helpful rules and regulations, but no on adoption by the government). You cannot fight this rally right now and maybe it is 3D Chess being played out, but it has the smell of 52-Card Pickup to me.

• Many of the Commercial Real Estate ETFs have done poorly. In some cases, they are much closer to their annual lows than highs, even as stocks in general perform well. I think that this is actually a very interesting opportunity as yield fears are overdone, and Work From Home is really going to struggle next year. More and more companies are limiting work from home as they push for a return to the office. That momentum feeds on itself. Many who were afraid to push for work from office will be emboldened. I cannot see a world where the Department of Government Efficiency (I’m not sure it is an actual department, but that doesn’t really matter given the attention that it’s getting) won’t be looking at getting more government workers back into the office. Everyone has focused on the potential for layoffs dragging down D.C.-focused real estate valuations, but I think that net/net over time, it will turn out to be good for D.C. commercial real estate. I see CRE as where I have the biggest difference of opinion with consensus views right now.

One Chart That I Cannot Stop Thinking About

We included this chart in our NFP reaction, but I feel a sense of urgency to highlight it again. Maybe this is our attempt to play 3D Chess, or maybe we are getting ourselves overly wound up about a non-event. Since we often discuss how dubious the Jobs Available calculation is for the JOLTS report, it may seem weird that the QUIT rate, from that same report, has grabbed our attention. My take on the QUIT rate is that it is “crowd sourced” data. Every individual has a pretty good idea about their own job prospects and that gets reflected in the QUIT rate.

During the financial crisis, the QUIT rate didn’t get this low until May 2008. If I remember correctly, we technically were not in a recession at the time, and only later did the powers that be declare that we actually were in a recession. That fits with my view that this rate is important and may have a predictive element to it.

I certainly think that when anyone and everyone felt like they could quit and get a better job, it was extremely difficult for management to take away work from home. I suspect that plans to offer severance packages to reduce the workforce voluntarily (one idea floated around by DOGE) won’t be that effective when workers don’t see outside opportunities readily available (that is my interpretation of the QUIT rate).

If we see a lot of progress made on the “Make America Great” front, this could change abruptly. There might be plenty of new jobs created. There might be jobs that were being done by undocumented workers becoming available. A lot could happen, but so far, I think the outlook on jobs is following the same path as stocks – initial jubilation has turned into a wariness about what might actually be achievable, let alone accomplished.

Bottom Line

Expect more volatility. We are going to get headlines and announcements that are difficult to interpret. What do they really mean? How likely is it to get accomplished? We know this administration is looking for CHANGE, but exactly what type of change they want is still a bit unclear in many areas. What they can achieve is even more unclear.

There is a clear sense of “urgency” as I cannot recollect any other election winner coming out so quickly with so many announcements!

I think we want to “fade” growth. We can buy dips in Treasuries and sell rips in stocks.

Maybe we will get a clearer picture, but I suspect in the coming days and weeks, the market will have more questions than answers. The fact that the original reaction to the election was so strong (with so many shorts being taken out, and so many newly minted bulls emerging) leaves us with potentially treacherous positioning. While legend has it that Wall Street likes to Climb a Wall of Worry, I don’t think it likes the current level of uncertainty. Maybe it is all 3D Chess, and we are just too naïve to see the master plan, or maybe we are all seeing enough things to question how effective this master plan will be?

While I like being overweight duration and underweight equities, I would not be a very aggressive overweight or underweight. It is more of an attempt to trade the volatility that is likely to continue.

On Bitcoin, if I hear one more $1 million price target, my head might explode, but for now, I can’t think of what will slow this down given the team around Trump, but then again, Trump himself might say something showing that he has had a change of heart (which is what I suspect will happen, but it seems too early for that to occur).

I did not focus on inflation, jobs, or other economic data (except to highlight the QUIT rate). I think that the data of the past few months will likely be irrelevant early next year as policies become clear and we can focus on what those policies will do to the economic data, and not worry about economic data that probably reflects a set of policies that will no longer be relevant.

We do get the most important earnings report for the AI story this week. Everything seems rosy in the space, but it is increasingly difficult to guess what has already been priced in.

Good luck and don’t stray too far from the desk, because you never know what headline might come out next! If you missed our Around the World Podcast from earlier in the week, it is a good listen.