After two stellar Mag 7 earnings (TSLA and GOOGL) in the past week to kick of Q3 megacap tech reports, investors were hoping that the streak would continue when MSFT and META reported after the close (preview here). And while MSFT appears to have succeeded in also beating estimates (its stock is rising modestly after the close), it was buyside darling META that was the focus of attention today, although as UBS said, with a positioning score of 9.5/10, that “question what will be the incremental positive learning coming out of the print.” It turns out the answer is nothing, and the stock is dropping despite reporting relatively solid results while raising capex expectations higher.

Here is the breakdown for Q3:

• Revenue $40.59 billion, +19% y/y, beating estimates of $40.25 billion
  • Advertising rev. $39.89 billion, +19% y/y, beating estimates of $39.71 billion
  • Family of Apps revenue $40.32 billion, +19% y/y, beating estimates of $39.92 billion
  • Reality Labs revenue $270 million, +29% y/y, missing estimates of $312.8 million
  • Other revenue $434 million, +48% y/y, beating estimates of $395.5 million
• Operating income $17.35 billion, +26% y/y, beating estimates of $16.24 billion
  • Family of Apps operating income $21.78 billion, +25% y/y, beating estimates of $20.47 billion
  • Reality Labs operating loss $4.43 billion, +18% y/y, beating estimates of loss $4.66 billion
• Operating margin 43% vs. 40% y/y, beating estimates of 39.6%
• EPS $6.03 vs. $4.39 y/y, beating estimates of $5.25

The ad revenue breakdown by geography shows that as usual the bulk of revenue came from the US and Canada, with Europe and Asia following.

Curiously while the total number of ad impressions both slowed and missed estimates for the second quarter in a row, the amount Meta charged per impression not only rose double digits and reversed last year’s decline, but came in almost double the expected. Good luck keeping those rates up in the recession, to wit:

• Ad impression growth declined from 10% in Q2 (when it missed estimates of 13%) to +7%, also missing estimates of +10.8%.
• Average price per ad rose 11%, vs a 6% drop a year ago, and above the 6.8% estimate

In brief remarks accompanying the earnings release, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that “we had a good quarter driven by AI progress across our apps and business… We also have strong momentum with Meta AI, Llama adoption, and AI-powered glasses.”

Looking ahead, the CFO made the following forecasts:

• Expect Q4 total revenue to be in the range of $45-48 billion, vs sellside estimates of $46 billion
• Expect full-year 2024 total expenses to be in the range of $96-98 billion, up from the prior range of $96-99 billion. For Reality Labs, expects 2024 operating losses to increase meaningfully year-over-year due to ongoing product development efforts and investments to further scale our ecosystem.
• Expect full-year 2024 capital expenditures will be in the range of $38-40 billion, up from the prior range of $37-40 billion. The company expects significant capital expenditures growth in 2025: “Given this, along with the back-end weighted nature of our 2024 capital expenditures, we expect a significant acceleration in infrastructure expense growth next year as we recognize higher growth in depreciation and operating expenses of our expanded infrastructure fleet.”
• Expect Q4 tax rate to be in the low-teens

The company which no longer disclosed DAUs is also investing in large language models, the technology behind AI chatbots. It recently unveiled its largest model to date, which Zuckerberg said cost hundreds of millions of dollars in computing power to train. And while investors have been looking for signs of a positive impact on the business from all the spending, especially after Meta poured billions into another Zuckerberg passion project — the infamous metaverse — without generating much return, so far ad impression growth is sucking wind.

Turning to actual users, Facebook – which no longer reports Daily and Monthly Active Users since both have plateaued and are in the case of US and Europe decreasing – reported that its Family Daily Active People (or DAP, a made up category which the company can massage however it wants), rose to 3.29 billion, up 4.8%, and beating estimates of 3.25 billion. That’s right: we are supposed to believe that somehow half the world logs into Facebook every single day

Yet while user metrics are easy to fudge, one place where META missed again was Capex, which in Q3 rose to $9.2 billion from $8.2 billion in Q2, and $6.8 billion a year ago, far below consensus of $11.0 billion, and another strong hint that spending on all those H100 or whatever Nvidia chips is starting to cool despite the company’s always cheerful guidance.

Bottom line: META capex has missed bigly for the second quarter in a row, and instead of investing in H100s or whatever, the company is instead aggressively buying back stock to push its price higher (and perhaps has little faith in the AI tech which it is supposed to be spending a ton of cash on). Either that, or somehow META will spend a record $13 billion – give or take – on capex in Q4.

The bottom line is that after surging to all time highs earlier this month, and with literally everyone, everywhere long the company (it is the Mag7 name with the heaviest concentration across at both Goldman and UBS), there was little META could say to surprise to the upside, and as a result, the stock is lower modestly after hours.

Microsoft shares are rising after hours after beating top-and bottom-lines in Q1 earnings:

• Revenue was $65.6 billion and increased 16%, estimate $64.51 billion

• Diluted earnings per share was $3.30 and increased 10%, estimate $3.11

Breaking down the revenue lines, it was (almost) a beat across the board with only personal computing disappointing…

• Microsoft Cloud revenue $38.9 billion, BEAT estimate $38.11 billion

• Intelligent Cloud revenue $24.09 billion, BEAT estimate $26.74 billion

• Azure and other cloud services revenue Ex-FX +34%, BEAT estimate +30.4% (slowing slightly from the 35% last quarter).

• Productivity and Business Processes revenue $28.32 billion, BEAT estimate $22.88 billion

• More Personal Computing revenue $13.18 billion, MISSED estimate $14.23 billion

AI reportedly contributed 12pts to Azure revenue growth in Q1:

“Strong execution by our sales teams and partners delivered a solid start to our fiscal year with Microsoft Cloud revenue of $38.9 billion, up 22% year-over-year,” said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft.

MSFT also beat on operating income and its CapEx was higher than expected…

• Operating income $30.55 billion (up 14%), BEAT estimate $29.21 billion

• Capital expenditure $14.92 billion, BEAT estimate $14.55 billion

Satya is all bulled up:

“AI-driven transformation is changing work, work artifacts, and workflow across every role, function, and business process,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft.

“We are expanding our opportunity and winning new customers as we help them apply our AI platforms and tools to drive new growth and operating leverage.”

The market’s reaction was insane to be frank – an initial puke was followed by a surge which was quickly sold for a modest 2%-ish gain as we write…

For such a big beat, this is not the kind of reaction we would expect (unless of course everyone and their pet rabbit is already long).

“People are shifting from just talking about artificial intelligence and testing and piloting artificial intelligence to actually putting it into production,” said Jackson Ader, an analyst at Keybanc.

Ahead of the earnings report, Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives said investors are looking for signs of adoption of Microsoft’s Copilot AI services.

“Investor sentiment around the Microsoft story over the last few months has shifted more neutral/cautious with shares underperforming the Nasdaq 100, with concerns around the pace of Copilot adoption and increasing competition in the AI ecosystem from other Big Tech players,” he said in a client note Tuesday.

He added, “This is a ‘gut check quarter’ for Microsoft with many on the Street starting to grow skeptical of the pace of this AI/cloud growth story in Redmond.”

MSFT share are now back to unchanged after hours ahead of the earnings call.

Micro topped macro on the day, according to Goldman Sachs trading desk, as volumes exploded but bear in mind that there is month-end pension rebalance with $11BN of equities for sale through tomorrow.

• Internet names (GSTMTINT Index +100bps) outperformed after GOOGL, SNAP, RDDT results;

• Semis broadly weaker (GSTMTSEM Index -280bps) after misses from both AMD & QRVO.

• Obesity / GLP-1 names another big focus off LLY blowup this morning (stock is a max long for fast money community. (GSHLCGLP Index -170bps).

• And SMCI shit the bed over its auditor quitting

But macro was not to be ignored…

ADP jobs soared (doubling expectations… definitely not dovish), GDP missed expectations (but nobody wanted to think about that because consumption soared), Core PCE hotter than expected (but also, no one wanted to think about that because it was down QoQ), Pending Home Sales soared (but mortgage rates have exploded higher since the data).

US Macro Surprise data continues to charge higher…

Source: Bloomberg

Forgive us but that does not look like ‘Goldilocks’ – it looks like ‘animal spirits’ ignited by a desperately dovish Fed’s 50bps cut prompting excessively easy financial conditions…

Source: Bloomberg

In fact, the market is day-by-day erasing the dovishness priced in after The Fed cut with 2025 expectations now down to less than 3 cuts (72.5bps)…

Source: Bloomberg

Goldilocks or not – Gold was bid again, hitting another new record nominal high…

Source: Bloomberg

On the day, all the US majors shot higher on the (Goldilocks) GDP data… but that didn’t last as reality set in and by the close, everything was red (even Small Caps which had spiked over 1% at the open). Nasdaq was the biggest loser…

The S&P continues to tread water near the highs while VIX remains notably elevated into next week…

Source: Bloomberg

A chaotic day in bond-land that ended with yields very mixed as the long-end dramatically outperformed (30Y -1bps, 2Y +8bps). The belly is the big laggard this week as bonds seems to think The Fed made a policy error…

Source: Bloomberg

Which drove the yield curve (2s30s) down near recent lows…

Source: Bloomberg

…and something big is building up behind the scenes…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar broke down from its coiling flag pattern yesterday, but chopped around again today…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin came off record highs but found support around $72,000…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices managed gains on the day but remain well down from before the “peace is here” collapse on Monday…

Source: Bloomberg

And finally, The Trump Trade continued to accelerate (hitting a record spread to Kamala)…

Source: Bloomberg

Running out of time for an October Surprise to actually bring “hitler” down? Or did Biden just self-immolate with his ‘garbage’ gobbledygook?

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has admitted that split-ticket voters using Dominion ICX Voter Assist Terminals (VAT) should be prepared for ‘programming issues’ on election day. A VAT is a special type of device which people with disabilities may use to mark their ballot, which the machine then prints and puts through the tabulator.

Michigan Secretary of State, Democrat Jocelyn Benson admits there’s a nationwide issue with Dominion terminals that prevents voters from making certain selections while voting. They call this a “programming issue”. You know what doesn’t have programming issues? Paper ballots. pic.twitter.com/rcVoCAOEcd

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) October 30, 2024

According to Benson, the machine has issues properly processing certain types of ballots.

“Yeah, this is a nationwide issue with Dominion voter access terminals in, in the counties that use them in the voter access terminals,” Benson said. “Of course, not all the machines, just the ones that are accessible, have an issue. With the straight-party voting and a programming issue, that’s again affected the machines nationwide.”

Voters using a VAT this Election Day will have to either vote straight-ticket or manually split their ballot—unlike how Michigan voters usually have the option to select the straight party option and then override their party selection for certain races.

Benson also says this issue has frustrated officials in places where these machines are used. –WLNS

But wait, there’s more!

1,000 miles away in Colorado, the Secretary of State’s office “improperly” posted a spreadsheet to its public website that included passwords to some of the state’s voting system.

On Tuesday morning, Colorado Republican Party Vice Chair Hope Scheppelman shared the hidden tab discovery in a mass email, along with an affidavit from someone who says the downloaded the Excel file & discovered the tab by clicking “unhide,” 9NEWS reports.

Over 600 passwords for machines in 63 of the state’s 64 counties were posted for any and all to see.

“BIOS passwords are highly confidential, allowing broad access for knowledgeable users to fundamentally manipulate systems and data and to remove any trace of doing so. Due to the sensitivity surrounding BIOS passwords, Colorado election regulation (8 CCR 1505-1), Rule 20.5.2(c)(11), requires limited access to a select few at the Colorado Department of State; neither county clerks nor commissioners have access to these files,” said the Colorado GOP.

Here’s a full copy of the affidavit.

Jena Griswold’s office confirmed that it did happen and that “the Department is working to remedy this situation where necessary.”

“The Department took immediate action as soon as it was aware of this and informed the Cybersecurity and… pic.twitter.com/UsZeFcnqns

— George (@BehizyTweets) October 29, 2024

“There are two unique passwords for every election equipment component, which are kept in separate places and held by different parties. Passwords can only be used with physical in-person access to a voting system,” a spokesperson for the SoS’ office said.

“To be very clear, we do not see this as a full security threat to the state. This is not a security threat,” Democrat Secretary of State Jena Griswold told 9NEWS.

JUST IN: Democratic Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold tried to cover up how her office leaked passwords for voting systems until she was called out.

This is the same person who:

-Sent voter registration mailers to 30,000 non-citizens
-Messaged voters to vote after they… pic.twitter.com/J62oUqq8oI

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 30, 2024

Good thing they’ve got several days after the election to sort this all out, right?

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

A news station in Pennsylvania was forced to apologize for flashing up the US presidential election results in the state as part of a “test” that wasn’t supposed to be seen by viewers.

WNEP, an ABC affiliate, flashed up the results for Pennsylvania during its broadcast of the Formula 1 race in Mexico City and they were on screen for several minutes.

You’ll never guess who “won”.

Kamala Harris, of course, beating Trump by 52 per cent to 47 per cent of the vote.

A local PA news station did a system “test” for election results this weekend. You’ll never guess what the “results” were. pic.twitter.com/CwGDy4tMau

— Andrew Torba (@BasedTorba) October 30, 2024

According to the test run, Kamala received 3,293,712 votes compared to Trump’s 2,997,793.

After viewers expressed confusion at what they were witnessing, the news station was forced to explain what happened.

“Those numbers should not have appeared on the screen, and it was an error by WNEP that they did,” said the station.

“The numbers seen on the screen were randomly generated test results sent out to help news organizations make sure their equipment is working properly in advance of election night.”

“WNEP regrets the error and apologizes for any confusion. We have taken steps to ensure that it does not happen again.”

No votes are actually counted in Pennsylvania until after 8pm on election day.

WNEP is owned by Tegna Inc., the chairman of which is Howard D. Elias, a longtime Democrat donor.

Its President and CEO is Mike Steib, who donated to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020 and has also donated to several Democrat PACs.

Don’t worry though, it was just a test!

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Ahead of today’s UK budget announcement, much of its content had already been leaked including the biggest novelty item: redefining the concept of debt, to allow the UK – which already exceeds the 90% debt-to-GDP threshold that Reinhart and Rogoff estimated to be the point at which the Keynesian multiplier falls below one and which means that for every extra dollar that the government spends GDP increases by less than one dollar – to borrow an additional $90 billion in debt, a gimmick which only a politician could possibly have though was a good idea (and the US of course, but at least the US still has the reserve currency, something which the UK enjoyed a century ago until it lost it).

And while there were indeed no major surprises, the market clearly was not impressed with what it saw and has sent gilt yields soaring, sparking some concerns that another Sept 2022 “minibudget” crisis may be on the horizon.

But first, here is a snapshot of what we learned:

As Bloomberg reports, UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves unveiled £40 billion ($51.8 billion) of tax hikes, the most in decades, and massively ramped up borrowing (largely thanks to the new debt definition), both seismic moves designed to meet Labour’s pledge to “rebuild” the UK that still yielded only modest projected boosts to growth and public spending.

The budget was a make-or-break moment for both Reeves and Prime Minister Keir Starmer that will define their government. The scale was eye-watering, from the extra £142 billion of borrowing over the Parliament to tax rises that were the most in at least 30 years, when former Tory Chancellor Norman Lamont was also trying to restore economic stability. Labour’s inheritance from the Conservatives dominated Reeves’ narrative that offered a glimpse of the likely battle lines ahead of the next election still five years away.

Reeves put the tax burden on course for a postwar high with hikes impacting businesses and the wealthy in particular, insisting she had no choice but to fill a fiscal hole left by her Conservative predecessors if Labour was to deliver on its election pledge to begin a decade of national renewal. To bolster the impression that mostly wealthy people would bear the brunt, Reeves also decided to freeze fuel duty, increased the minimum wage and unexpectedly ended a freeze on income tax thresholds introduced by the Conservatives.

Despite the staggering tax hikes targeting the rich, which will inevitably lead to a scramble of rich expats fleeing the UK for low or no tax regimes such as the UAE, Reeves’ intervention still risked leaving voters unsatisfied. Estimates by the Office for Budget Responsibility appeared to fall short of Labour’s manifesto pledge to have the highest growth in the Group of Seven, and day-to-day public spending will rise just 1.5% per year, with several government departments facing real terms cuts. The question of whether the numbers justify a backlash especially from businesses will dominate the coming weeks.

In her statement, Reeves took aim at the Conservatives and especially former Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt sitting across from her: “The scale and seriousness of the situation that we have inherited cannot be underestimated,” said Reeves, the first female chancellor to deliver a budget in the 800-year history of the role. “Any chancellor standing here today would face this reality, and any responsible chancellor would take action.”

This was duly followed by a slashing of GDP growth estimates, which were cut for the nearby years, offset by the now traditionally increase in outer years, which of course will never happen.

More worrisome is the inflation forecastL while the BoE’s mandate is reconfirmed as 2.0%, the OBR doesn’t see that occurring until well beyond the end of the BoE’s forecast horizon; in fact, the OBR has CPI at 2.0% in 2029.

• 2024: CPI 2.5%
• 2025: CPI 2.6%
• 2026: CPI 2.3%
• 2027: CPI 2.1%
• 2028: CPI 2.1%
• 2029: CPI 2.0%

Of course, the risk is that this is very much incorrect and that UK inflation will not only not drop after 2025 but continue rising, crushing the budgeted model, and forcing the BOE to hike far sooner than expected.

And yes, as we previewed, Reeves also changed the debt measure targeted by the government for its other fiscal rule –  which requires debt to be falling as a share of the economy –  to give herself space to borrow for investment. The government will now target public sector net financial liabilities instead of public sector net debt excluding the Bank of England, she announced. Here is how UBS described the debt switcheroo:

[Reeves] confirmed the measure of debt will switch to net financial liability. In doing so she is able to pull in a number of assets to the calculation. She said the net financial debt rule will require the measure to be lower in the final year of the horizon relative to the year before. She will reduce the time horizon to three years from five years in 2026/27, and then roll onwards such that debt must be lower in each consecutive year from 28/29 onwards.

But while the public takes its time to assess the social impact of the Labour budget, the market’s reaction was swift and brutal as UK gilt yields soared as traders digested the long-term ramifications of taking on so much debt with a smaller than expected fiscal cushion. After earlier dropping as low as 4.20%, the 10Y Gilt surged over 20bps higher, and briefly touching 4.411%, the highest level since last November.

Curiously, markets were relatively muted while Reeves was speaking, and in fact there was an oddity in the market reaction: the yield low point during the budget speech was achieved at the moment Reeves reported tax hikes would total £40 bn. The market narrative at that moment was on the downside growth consequences. But right after that, bond yields soared as investors balked at the prospect of historically high debt issuance and fiscal stimulus that could mean interest rates stay higher for longer. The Debt Management Office said it will issue £297 billion of government bonds in the fiscal year 2024 to 2025, broadly matching the £293 billion estimated by 16 bond dealers in a Bloomberg survey. Of note, the DMO added £22.2 bn to its funding requirement for the current fiscal year, with the increase funded by additional Gilt sales of £19.2 bn, taking planned total Gilt sales in 2024-25 to £297 bn; and an increase in net (cash) sales of Treasury bills for debt management purposes of £3.0 bn, taking the planned net contribution to financing from such bills in 2024-2025 from zero to £3.0 bn.

The upward move in gilt yields, with shorter-end yields leading, led to a bull flattening indicative of a market reassessing the BOE’s reaction function in the face of greater inflation risks, i.e., not only are the days of rate cuts numbered, but inflation may return much sooner than expected, prompting the next hiking cycle by the BOE.

After the announcement, the UK’s OBR emphasized the fiscal loosening inherent in the budget, continuing the pattern of expansionary government policy in recent years, but the bond market may have had its “lettuce” moment and any incremental debt increases from here on out will only lead to a faster blow out in yields and lead to another debt crisis.

Commenting on the blowout in yields, UBS said that “UK markets opted to focus on the inflationary consequences of tax hikes. The thinking goes that since businesses are doing all the heavy lifting on taxes, that they’ll just pass that on to final selling prices. In that respect, the budget becomes inflationary. The market then talks itself into the idea that the BoE won’t be able to cut rates – they wouldn’t dare say “transitory”, which is what tax effects are on inflation.”

To this UBS counters that the alternative version is one taken from a traditional economic textbook, namely that higher end-prices represent a supply shock that causes spending to slow down; the Swiss bank suggests that the budget should be considered a Gilt twist steepener: “The upfront tax rises causing consumption to slow; the longer-term issuance driving term premium higher. If one wanted to make the link to the BoE, then it would be to buy into the improved long-term growth potential from higher investment in the future.”

Others were less sanguine than UBS, with Bloomberg’s Simon White focusing instead on the overall (catastrophic) fiscal picture that the massive new debt layring will result in; he said that while much focus is on the US’s soaring budget deficit, the UK’s is also egregious. When the current account deficit is added, the US and UK run almost the largest twin deficits in the world.

Indeed, debt has always been the UK’s Achilles’ heel. That’s because while the US has the world’s reserve currency, the UK doesn’t have that privilege, only an ability to print as much of a currency that fewer and fewer people want. That’s potentially very inflationary in the longer term, and that’s precisely why the market is reacting the way it is.

Bottom line, as White puts it, markets are once again waking up to the likelihood that rates in the UK aren’t likely to fall as much previously expected, or the BOE would want, and should the blow out in yields continue, we may be just days away from another emergency QE action by the BOE in the past two years as the world is reminded that the only reason why the US can and continues to borrow like a drunken sailor, is because it still has the world’s reserve currency, although judging by the explosion in gold and bitcoin in recent days, that won’t last long.

Authored by Jay Solomon via The FP.com,

A senior Pentagon official faced scrutiny when her past ties to Iran came to light. Is that why she’s been transferred?

In the weeks leading up to Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Iran this Saturday, someone from inside the U.S. government leaked a cluster of highly sensitive documents outlining the Jewish state’s military deployments. 

We may never know the identity of the leaker—there are probably thousands of bureaucrats across the U.S. government who had access to the documents. But of those masses, a single name has been circulating online: Ariane Tabatabai, who’s served as a senior Defense Department official for the past two years.

There is no evidence we have found that Tabatabai is the leaker, despite the fact that various Arab and Israeli news sites reported as much.

In fact, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin this week all but ruled out the culprit being Tabatabai or anyone else from the Pentagon.

But at the same time, the Defense Department, in recent days, quietly transferred the Iranian American academic out of her Pentagon post, which is among the most sensitive in the entire military: chief of staff in the Office of Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, or SO/LIC. The job has provided Tabatabai unique access to the highest levels of classified intelligence as well as knowledge of virtually all global U.S. special military operations. 

Instead, the Pentagon notified Congress on Friday, October 25 that Tabatabai was “transitioning to her new office” in troop education and training, without specifying the exact date when she left her last post. The new position, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Education and Training, has significantly less access to intelligence and covert military programs, according to former Defense Department officials interviewed by The Free Press. 

The Pentagon press office declined to answer questions provided by The Free Press about Tabatabai’s status or the reasons for her transfer. And her job change is likely to deepen questions from Capitol Hill Republicans who’ve been seeking answers for more than a year about Tabatabai’s past interactions with the Iranian government.

Tabatabai was brought into the Biden administration in 2021 to serve on the State Department negotiating team with Iran. Her initial boss, Special Envoy Robert Malley, however, was stripped of his security clearance in the spring of 2023 and is currently being investigated by the FBI for the mishandling of classified information.

Shortly before Malley’s departure, Tabatabai relocated to the Pentagon and eventually took up her position in SO/LIC.

Tabatabai began facing scrutiny last year after a large tranche of Iranian government emails were obtained by the U.S. media outlet Semafor (where I used to work), and Iran International, a Farsi-language television channel.

Included in the data were communications between Tabatabai and senior Iranian diplomats, beginning in 2014, that showed she had been a leading member of the Iran Experts Initiative, an Iranian Foreign Ministry–led program that sought to amplify Tehran’s positions on key national security issues in Western think tanks and the media. In some of the emails, Tabatabai can be seen seeking guidance from Iranian officials on her foreign travels and appearances before Congress. 

Tabatabai has never publicly disclosed her role in the IEI. 

And a number of Republican members of Congress have been pressing the Pentagon over the past year to strip Tabatabai of her security clearances because of her reported ties to Tehran. The Pentagon declined on Friday to say if her transfer was related to her work with the IEI. 

This month, a conservative government watchdog also sued the Pentagon for what it claims has been the department’s failure to answer questions and provide documents related to the activities of Tabatabai and Malley. 

Tabatabai’s status is particularly sensitive for the Biden-Harris administration. The academic has worked closely in the past with Vice President Harris’s national security adviser, Philip Gordon, as outlined in an August piece in The Free Press. This included co-authoring a string of opinion pieces in the summer of 2020 that called for the U.S. to return to its nuclear diplomacy with Iran, and to soften some of Washington’s economic sanctions on Tehran.

Tabatabai’s switch at the Pentagon, on paper, is a promotion: The UK-educated PhD is now ranked as a deputy assistant secretary of defense rather than a chief of staff. But in reality, a number of former U.S. defense officials told The Free Press, it’s a clear step down. 

“Everyone that is in the know understands that this is not a promotion, right? She wants to be active in the policy space, and going over to education and force training is not,” said Garrett Exner, who served in SO/LIC during the Obama and Trump administrations, and is currently a fellow at the Hudson Institute. 

Exner added: The Biden administration transferred Tabatabai to a department “where she can’t really touch any classified material.”

A second SO/LIC veteran said the Iranian American academic has exited a post that’s among the most secretive in the entire U.S. government. “I cannot underscore: The things SO/LIC. . . are doing are more sensitive than what the CIA is doing.” 

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Ballots that arrive by mail can be counted up to three days after Election Day, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled on Oct. 28.

The state’s top court turned away a challenge to a state law that says ballots that arrive without clear postmarks, provided they’re received no later than 5 p.m. on the third day after the election, shall be counted as having been postmarked on or before Election Day.

Nevada officials have interpreted the law as enabling the counting of ballots without any postmarks.

“A mail ballot that has no visible postmark should be interpreted to have an indeterminate postmark, and therefore should be accepted if it has been received by the clerk by mail not later than 5 p.m. on the third day following the election,” the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office said in guidance to county clerks earlier this year.

Republicans said the fact that the law states ballots must be “postmarked” to be counted and the exception is for ballots for which “the date of the postmark cannot be determined” means postmarks are still required.

“That caveat expressly requires the existence of ’the postmark’ in order to apply,” they told the Nevada Supreme Court in an appeal.

In an order in August, Nevada District Court Judge James Russell had ruled that the provision lets mail ballots without postmarks be counted and that Republicans had failed to show it was “in the public’s interest to disenfranchise voters.”

The justices said on Oct. 28 that they assumed Republicans had standing, or a sufficient connection to the guidance, on the basis of competitive injury but that they were upholding the lower court decision because Republicans are not likely to prevail in their case.

The justices said both of the interpretations of the law are reasonable but pointed to how lawmakers, when discussing the bill, had talked about how they thought it would let ballots without postmarks be counted. They also noted that the purpose of the bill was, according to lawmakers, to expand the ways in which people vote and make it easier to vote.

“If a voter properly and timely casts their vote by mailing their ballot before or on the day of the election, and through a post office omission the ballot is not postmarked, it would go against public policy to discount that properly cast vote,” the state’s high court wrote. “Indeed, there is no principled distinction between mail ballots where the postmark is ‘illegible’ or ’smudged’ and those with no postmark.”

In response to the ruling, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee told The Epoch Times that the ruling goes against the state law.

“Requiring ballots to be postmarked on or before election day is a critical election integrity safeguard that ensures ballots mailed after election day are not counted. It is also a requirement of Nevada law,” Claire Zunk wrote in an email.

“By allowing Nevada officials to ignore the law’s postmark requirement, the state’s highest court has undermined the integrity of Nevada’s elections.”

The campaign of former President Donald Trump did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

“This is great news for Nevada,” Athar Haseebullah, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, wrote on social media platform X. “Changing rules a week before the election would have been unconscionable.”

Justice Douglas Herndon said he concurred with his colleagues on Republicans not showing they will suffer irreparable harm absent an injunction but sees the law as unambiguously not allowing the counting of ballots without postmarks.

Justice Kristina Pickering said that Republicans were not arguing that every ballot needed a postmark but only ballots that arrive in the days after the election. She said she shared Herndon’s concern with the majority’s decision but that she was not convinced of the Republican interpretation either. Pickering also said that it would not be in the public interest to reverse the lower court order so close to the election.

Existing home sales slumped (14 year low), but new home sales surged in September, so today’s Pending Home Sales data is the tiebreaker for just what a shitshow the US housing market is.

And the winner is… Pending home sales surged 7.4% MoM (+1.9% exp) in September – that is the biggest MoM jump since the COVID lockdowns (June 2020)…

Source: Bloomberg

This giant jump sent the YoY sales print up 2.16% YoY – the first annual gain since Nov 2021.

“Contract signings rose across all regions of the country as buyers took advantage of the combination of lower mortgage rates in late summer and more inventory choices,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a prepared statement.

“Further gains are expected if the economy continues to add jobs, inventory levels grow and mortgage rates hold steady.”

The total pending home sales index rebounded off record lows…

Source: Bloomberg

September saw mortgage rates decline rapidly back below 7.00%, but since then mortgage applications have collapsed as mortgage rates surged back to 7.25% since The Fed cuts rates (that’s not supposed to happen)…

Source: Bloomberg

Pending sales rose in all regions of the US, increasing 9.8% in the West, 7.1% in the Midwest, 6.7% in the South and 6.5% in the Northeast, NAR data show.

Yun expected slower appreciation in home prices to boost sales over the next couple years.

“After two years of sluggish home sales in 2023 and 2024, existing-home sales are forecasted to rise to 4.47 million in 2025 and more than 5 million in 2026,” Yun said in the release.

“During the next two years, expect a slower rate of growth in home prices that’s roughly in line with the consumer price index because of additional supply reaching the market.”

Finally, as a reminder, pending-homes sales tend to be a leading indicator for previously owned homes, because houses typically go under contract a month or two before they’re sold.