October 30, 2025
Macro backdrop
September CPI rose 3.0% year over year, up from 2.9% in August but below the 3.1% economist estimate. Core inflation also came in at 3.0%. Markets expected the Federal Reserve to cut rates by 25 basis points at its October 28-29 meeting, taking the federal funds range to 3.75% to 4.00%.
Investors still showed caution. The 10-year Treasury yield fell below 4% for the first time in more than a year and was around 3.96% on October 21, while the two-year was around 3.45%. Gold remained up more than 50% year to date even after a one-day drop of more than 6%. Silver fell 8.7% in the same selloff but was still up more than 44% for the year.
AWS outage
Amazon Web Services had a major outage on October 20 after a faulty DNS update misrouted traffic for DynamoDB. The disruption began after midnight on the East Coast and affected schools, banks, airlines, technology platforms, and financial services.
Alexa devices went offline, Slack and Zoom were disrupted, financial transactions were delayed, and Amazon logistics systems froze. More than 4,000 flights were delayed by 3 a.m. Cryptocurrency exchanges including Coinbase and Robinhood were unable to process trades. AWS controls roughly one-third of the global cloud computing market, so the outage highlighted concentration risk across digital infrastructure. Estimated losses across finance, retail, and other industries ran into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
AI infrastructure financing
Meta arranged $27 billion of private-debt financing for Hyperion, a Louisiana AI data center. The project is structured as a joint venture with Blue Owl Capital. Meta owns 20%, while Blue Owl owns 80%. BlackRock bought more than $3 billion of bonds, and Pimco bought about $18 billion of the offering.
The bonds were arranged by Morgan Stanley and received an A+ rating from S&P Global Ratings. The debt carried a 6.58% yield, was issued at 100 cents on the dollar, and quickly rose to 110 cents. Google and Anthropic were also reportedly discussing a cloud deal worth tens of billions of dollars. Google had already committed roughly $3 billion to Anthropic, while Amazon had pledged roughly $8 billion. Anthropic reached a $183 billion valuation after a $13 billion round led by Iconiq Capital.
M&A activity
Blackstone and TPG announced an $18.3 billion deal to take Hologic private. Shareholders are set to receive $76 per share in cash plus a $3 contingent payment, representing a 46% premium to the pre-offer price. The transaction is expected to use a $12 billion debt package from Citi and Bank of America.
Kering also agreed to sell its beauty division to L'Oréal for about $4.7 billion. The deal gives L'Oréal 50-year rights to develop fragrances and cosmetics for brands including Gucci, Balenciaga, and Bottega Veneta, while helping Kering reduce debt of roughly $11 billion.