A Bottleneck at the Top of the ChainWhat the Headlines Lead With Most coverage this morning leads with the September CPI report, due at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, and with oil. Brent traded above $106 a barrel after fresh attacks on Saudi energy facilities. The ASML report deserves equal billing. The Dutch company is the only maker of extreme ultraviolet machines. TSMC, Samsung and Intel need them for their most advanced chips. It raised its 2026 sales forecast to 44 to 45 billion euros, from 43 to 45 billion. Fourth-quarter guidance is 14.2 to 15.2 billion euros. Why a Shortage Can Be Good News A supplier that cannot keep up is usually a sign of real demand, not hype. Chipmakers do not order machines that cost hundreds of millions of dollars on a whim. ASML said customers keep raising their equipment forecasts, mostly because they expect AI spending to be larger and last longer. That is the opposite of what the chip stocks have priced this week. Investors sold the group for five sessions amid fears of an AI bubble. Our view: the company closest to the real orders is reporting record sales and an order book that grows every quarter. The stocks are reacting to fear of a peak that the order book does not yet show. What It Means for Your Money Bottlenecks shift where the money goes. When the machines are scarce, the companies that own the scarce step tend to keep pricing power. For index investors, a selloff in a sector is not the same as a collapse in its business. Five down days can reflect positioning as much as fundamentals. The risk runs the other way too. ASML depends on a small group of very large customers, and its own results will swing if those customers pause. | 
