November 03, 2026

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Good morning and welcome home to Karl Bushby. The UK native finally made it back to his mother’s house in England yesterday, after completing a 28-year, 31,000-mile walk home from Punta Arenas, Chile. Bushby’s long walk, which started on Nov. 1, 1998, spanned four continents and 30 countries and included swimming across the English Channel. Upon arrival, his mother asked him, “Where have you been?” This is a good story to tell your own mom when she asks why you haven’t bought your ticket home for the holidays yet.

—Abby Rubenstein, Sam Klebanov, Dave Lozo, Molly Liebergall, Matty Merritt, Neal Freyman

In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into:

Today’s midterm elections
A cyberattack on European supermarket fridges
Work being less engaging than it used to be

Markets

Nasdaq

25,164.32

-1.07%

S&P

7,541.4

-0.51%

Dow

51,983.98

+0.41%

10-Year

4.894%

-4.0 bps

Bitcoin

$76,829.45

-1.13%

Sherwin-Williams

$352.37

+5.94%

Data is provided by

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 5:30pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

Markets: If the Nasdaq hoped to leave all the spooky stuff behind in October, the tech-heavy index didn’t get its wish. Instead, it kicked off November by falling yesterday as a morning rebound petered out and investors continued to move away from tech. Meanwhile, the Dow inched up, powered in part by stocks that investors are moving into instead, like Sherwin-Williams and Home Depot.

Don’t forget to vote

What you need to know about the midterms

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Today is the day you get to do something even more American than dipping your pizza into ranch dressing: vote. It’s Election Day, and today’s midterm contests will determine which party controls Congress, shaping the end of President Trump’s second term.

Mission control: Currently, Republicans control both chambers of Congress—but only by narrow margins, with a 218–214 majority in the House and a 53–47 advantage in the Senate. Typically, the president’s party loses seats in the midterms, and recent polls suggest Democrats might flip the House. The Senate, where 35 seats are up for election, appears to be more of a tossup.

Democrats are hoping to pick up Senate seats in Texas, Maine, Alaska, Ohio, Iowa, and Kansas.
Meanwhile, the GOP has its best chance of gaining a seat in Michigan.

It’s the economy, stupid. That adage, which emerged from Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, is looking especially true today, with rising consumer prices top of mind for many voters.

What else is on the ballot?

Control of Congress may inspire the most shouting from pundits, but there are also 36 governorships up for grabs. Plus, local issues including:

Data centers: There are 40+ data-center-related initiatives on ballots across the US. Tech companies are racing to build them to power AI, but the public is increasingly wary.
California’s wealth tax: Proposition 40, which seeks to impose a one-time tax on the state’s billionaires equal to 5% of their wealth, has drawn fierce opposition from the ultrarich. They’ve spent considerable sums to fight it, and several have threatened to flee the state—Meta’s board even struck a deal to keep Mark Zuckerberg around.

Looking ahead…while political ad season has mercifully come to a close, we may not get all the answers tonight. Vote counting could take longer in some close races. There could also be legal challenges: Courts have so far rejected the Trump administration’s arguments over there being two candidates named Dan Sullivan in Alaska’s Senate race and its efforts to set aside 20,000 California mail-in ballots it claims were sent by noncitizens.—AR

Need to know where to go? You can find your polling place here.

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World

Tour de headlines

Wu Xiaoling/Getty Images

📱Apple’s revenue is up, but its profit margins are narrowing. In his first bite at the earnings report apple as CEO, John Ternus delivered a mixed bag. Revenue was better-than-expected, growing 12% year over year to $114.5 billion, and the iPhone maker expects solid revenue growth of between 7% and 10% over the holiday season. But investors sent its stock down in after-hours trading anyway, after Ternus revealed on a call with analysts that margins are shrinking due to the high cost of memory and expenses related to Siri AI. With expectations sky-high for Apple as a haven from Big Tech’s AI turmoil, that news made investors wary. Meanwhile, if you’re waiting for an iPhone Duo, it might be a while: Apple said it’s “hard to predict” when supply might catch up to demand.—AR

💰 Marvell bets $115 billion on lasers for ~~sharks~~ data centers. In an effort to squeeze the data center boom for all its juice, chipmaker Marvell has agreed to buy Lumentum, which builds lasers and other optical hardware that transmit information between chips and servers. At a value of $115 billion including debt, this is the second-most expensive tech transaction in history, behind the SpaceX–xAI merger. Though the acquisition will give Marvell another foothold in AI infrastructure, the size of the deal—which represents more than half of Marvell’s market cap—and broader concerns about a potential AI spending bubble have some investors on edge. Marvell and Lumentum’s stocks fell 13% and 19%, respectively, following yesterday’s announcement.—ML

📈 Palantir’s commercial revenue outpaced government revenue for the first time. The data software company reported third-quarter earnings yesterday that beat Wall Street estimates and revealed that its private-sector business has caught up with its public-sector business. Palantir reported $2.31 billion in revenue, nearly double from the same period last year. Within that, its US commercial revenue spiked 148% to $984 million as companies adopted more of its AI tools, while revenue from contracts with US government entities like the Army, ICE, and the IRS jumped 96% to $953 million. Palantir also lifted its full-year guidance, saying it now expects $8.53 billion in 2026 revenue.—ML

THINGS GOT HEATED

Hackers attacked European supermarket fridges

Shopper walking past refrigerated aisle of grocery store

Fred Tanneau/Getty Images

Boiled gelato was the plat du jour after hackers targeted fridges and freezers at dozens of European supermarkets early yesterday morning. The defrosting cyberattacks had temperatures reaching 122 Fahrenheit in some grocery store refrigerators across Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Sweden.

A similar cyberattack in France last month left dozens of supermarkets dealing with fires (on top of preemptively steamed broccoli), forcing them to toss millions of euros worth of products.

How can this happen? The Belgian company Sabcobel, which operates some of the fridges involved, said that hackers attacked a digital system that remotely controls the devices, putting them into defrost mode. Sabcobel said it had been patching software vulnerabilities over the past few weeks but explained that some fridges require physical modifications. Danfoss, a Danish refrigeration temperature-control systems supplier, said its tech was targeted both in yesterday’s hack and in the earlier French cyberattack, affecting customers with non-updated software.

The US might have endured a similar incident. The Pentagon is investigating August hacks on several military base commissary fridges that led to the mass melting of frozen foods.

Big picture: These fridge-to-sauna transformations are heightening concerns about AI-enabled hackers attacking critical infrastructure that relies on digital systems. More than 20 cyberattacks on refrigeration systems have taken place this year, with some linked to Russia-aligned hackers, according to cybersecurity firm Forescout.—SK

Sandwich trivia

On National Sandwich Day, here’s a relevant “Final Jeopardy” clue from a few years back:

This sandwich was first sold in 1962 as an attempt to give the many Catholics of Cincinnati something to eat on Fridays during Lent. (You must phrase your answer in the form of a question for full credit.)

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What is the Filet-o-Fish?

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: adage, meaning “a short, memorable saying that expresses a general truth.” Thanks to Heather from Milwaukee for a suggestion universally acknowledged to be good. Submit another Word of the Day here.

✤ A Note From Citi

Citibank, N.A., Member FDIC

Written by Abigail Rubenstein, Sam Klebanov, Dave Lozo, Molly Liebergall, Matty Merritt, and Neal Freyman

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