In May, #AMD# announced more than $ 10bn of investment across Taiwan’s ecosystem, with an unusually strong emphasis on advanced packaging. The company identified ASE Technology and SPIL as partners developing and qualifying next-generation wafer-based Elevated Fanout Bridge, or EFB, technology. EFB is intended to provide high-bandwidth die-to-die interconnection while improving power efficiency.

According to Meritz Securities’ analysis, planned HBM demand by company in 2028 is as follows: Broadcom: 35–40bn Gb NVIDIA: 30bn Gb Google: 20bn Gb AMD: 10bn Gb What stands out is Broadcom potentially surpassing NVIDIA in HBM demand, as well as Google massively ramping up its own HBM procurement.

A few fresh Warsh thoughts here.. 1) In July, Warsh kind of hinted that we were waiting for a new inflation measure. He took that off the table (for now) by being strict about the PCE. That was probably to satisfy the committee, and that is what the market takes as hawkish. Warsh famously doesn’t give forward guidance, but if he did, he would have just signalled a September hike. (From Dario Perkins, my friend at TS Lombard.) I have to agree, even if I think we may be overreading it. The best guess is still that Warsh is trying to buy himself time until the committees / task forces are done. 2) The one part of the Trump mandate that he is very explicit about delivering on is trying to communicate that the market should trade everything BUT the Fed. Not sure it will be an easy task, but he is at least trying every single time. Trump has been very vocal about that as well: good data should be good news for equities, rather than “good data = rate hikes = sell everything.” 3) He didn’t really deliver the productivity speech I had hoped for, but I still hold on to the view that he has that whole mindset installed in him. So if we get a hike in September or October, I think it is to satisfy the “groupthink” at the Fed now, to be able to deliver on the productivity side later, once he has some committee’s word for it. That is also what a blue chip CEO does: pay McKinsey to deliver a predecided conclusion, so he can use that “external input” as the reason to make a new strategy. 4) Warsh just made life worse for Bessent. One could argue that being hawkish brings long bond yields down, so it is not crystal clear that he makes it worse. But from a liquidity standpoint, Bessent needs to buy back more next week at the first opportunity. Would be fun if Bessent bought, say, 10bn worth of long bonds (he has stated at least 4bn), and I actually think he will do it. The TGA has plenty of firepower for that. 5) I am not giving up on the short USD trade that I otherwise timed very well in early July and until now. But Warsh didn’t make that trade’s life easier. He handed the specs long USD a lifeboat here. And bottom line is that I didn’t get my preview of this speech particularly right, but we are talking about forecasting a human with a very mixed incentive scheme. Not easy here.

LRCX: Is the pain too raw, can we give it another chance so soon? Lam guided 3Q well above the Street on revenue and margins. Revenue was guided to $8.10 bn at the midpoint, which is well above GS at $7.32 bn and the Street at $7.13 bn. Operating margin was guided to 39.5%, well above GS at 37.0% and the Street at 37.1%. Non-GAAP EPS guidance of $2.00-$2.20 (midpoint of $2.15) was well above GS at $1.85 and the Street at $1.83.