To The Moon

TSMC’s October print matters because it is not merely a “good sales month” — it is a leading indicator of downstream demand intensity in high-end wafers, and historically TSMC’s revenue inflections precede the sharpest earnings beats from the fabless leaders by one to two quarters.

October being a record month implies that the 3 nm and CoWoS capacity squeeze is still real, and that the capex digestion narrative was overstated.

Implication for Nvidia

If TSMC’s ramp is driven by HBM+advanced packaging, then sentiment will naturally lean towards a pre-earnings re-rating for Nvidia, because:

Nvidia remains the biggest single beneficiary of CoWoS priority

Nvidia converts wafer share into gross margin faster than any peer

Nvidia’s backlog visibility is longer than the macro volatility window

So yes — a recovery towards fresh highs before earnings is entirely plausible if the macro doesn’t derail risk appetite in the next few sessions.

But note the nuance:

These TSMC numbers are supply-side signal — not demand elasticity evidence.

Nvidia remains hyperscaler-constrained, not demand-constrained.

Key watch

If HBM and CoWoS utilisation rates stay above 90% when the next monthly print lands, the market will treat this as confirmation that the AI hardware cycle’s second leg is re-accelerating into 2025, not merely stabilising.

That would be the catalyst that hardens the “new highs pre-earnings” thesis into a base case rather than a sentiment swing.