Fab Five market capitalizations pulled back a bit this week (except for Apple) as AI fatigue set in. Many analysts posited that this is a beginning of a “flight to safety” out of infrastructure equities and into other investments (such as the US 10-year Treasury which started the week at 5.21% only to end the week at 5.08%). We think it’s the pause prior to blockbuster cash flows that each of the Fab Five will release over the next four weeks.
Still, the Fab Five as a group is up $2.02 trillion so far in 2026 and the cumulative market cap of the Fab Five now is at $17.6 trillion. This compares to the Telco Top Five whose cumulative market cap rebounded this week to $608 billion. When the smallest of the Fab Five (Meta) is now 3x the cumulative value of the Telco Top Five, one has to ask “who is relevant?”
The biggest news impacitng both sets of stocks was the Apple Duo launch on Friday. No one who has been following this story is surprised that supplies of the newest smartphone are limited. We will pull data later today to determine how popular the Duo is, but hold to the thesis that combined sales of the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max and iPhone Duo will (barely) beat the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max sales of the 2025-2026 Holiday season. Our other prediction, that some iPhone Duo color/ memory combinations will be backlogged into 2027 (10+ weeks) appears to be true at T-Mobile. The iPhone Duo 256 GB in Star White currently has an estimated ship date of December 29 -Jan 6. More to come in tomorrow (evening’s) report.
Separately, we had a spate of inflation news. To no one’s surprise, energy costs are keeping inflation high. Per the report (emphasis added):
“The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in September after rising 0.4 percent in August, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 3.7 percent before seasonal adjustment. The index for gasoline rose 9.1 percent in September, accounting for over half of the monthly all items increase. The energy index increased 5.2 percent over the month following a 2.1-percent increase in August.”
Housing was also up this month (+0.4%) which has less direct dependency on energy prices. All of these changes are great for petroleum providers, but continue to squeeze all of the rest of the downstream consumers of plastics and fuels.
Lastly, AT&T announced (here) that they had sold their AT&T Mexico operations to a group led by Grupo Televisa and Fintech Holdings. The $2 billion transaction will free up cash for additional US fiber deployments. With 23.4 million mostly postpaid subscribers, the transaction values each customer at $85. This Fierce article chronicles the AT&T Mexico saga – it’s no wonder they chose to sell the asset.
One final note – if you have been living under a rock the past 36 hours, please have a look at the CNET summary of the Tesla flying car event (it does not disappoint):
File is below.
