The Weekly Sift Stack: 11.10.2025 The Longest Shutdown, The Biggest Ad Machine, and a Trillion-Dollar Paycheck

This material is for educational purposes only and is not intended to provide specific investment advice or recommendations. Investing involves risk, including loss of principal.

Index Tracker Year To Date: 11/7/2025 Market Close

• S&P 500 TR: 15.63%

• NASDAQ: 19.13%

• Russell 2000 TR: 10.29%

• MSCI International EAFE TR: 25.64%

• Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index: 6.82%

• 10-Year Treasury Yield: 4.093%

• 30-year Mortgage Rate: 6.22%

• Gold: 53.08%

• Bitcoin 8.33%

• US Dollar Index: (8.19)%

• Core Inflation 9.30.2025:

  • Year Over Year: 3.0%

  • Month Over Month: 0.2%

• CPI Index 9.30.2025:

  • Year Over Year: 3.0%

  • Month Over Month: 0.3%

Index Tracker Notes:

The S&P 500 is drew down about 2% last week, from market open Monday to market close Friday. The index has rebounded this week as DC inches closer to a resolution to the government shutdown.

Stock of the Week

Meta Platforms Inc. (META)

Let’s kick this off with a burner: how many people use Meta every day? Between Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and the newer Threads, Meta sees a staggering 3.5 billion daily active users. That’s nearly half the planet checking in every single day.

Meta’s business model remains almost entirely powered by ads, roughly 98% of total revenue. The company’s algorithm doesn’t just know what you like; it knows why you like it. With data spanning your habits, interests, and even your mood, Meta’s ad machine keeps delivering personalized content that keeps users scrolling and advertisers spending.

But even giants have growing pains. Meta’s capital expenditures for 2026 are projected to top $100 billion, driven primarily by its massive push into artificial intelligence. That investment has tightened margins, and recent financial results reflected the strain. After Q3 earnings, the company reported a one-time, non-cash $15.9 billion tax charge from the One Big Beautiful Bill, sending shares down roughly 10%.

While headline earnings per share came in at just $1.05 versus expectations of $6.66, excluding the tax charge, Meta would have delivered $7.25 per share, an 8.9% year-over-year increase. For perspective, Meta’s Q3 2024 net income was $15.69 billion, nearly identical to the one-time tax hit, an eye-popping reminder of scale.

The silver lining? Meta expects this payment to lower federal tax obligations in the future. With earnings temporarily depressed and the stock pulling back, shares now trade at a relatively attractive P/E ratio of 27.

To sum it up, Meta remains the biggest ad machine one the planet, one that knows its users almost too well, and is now betting $100 billion that AI will make that connection even deeper.

Key Facts

• CEO: Mark Zuckerberg

• Founded February 4th, 2004

• Market Cap: $1.62 Trillion

• Sector: Communication Services

• 52-week range: $479.80-$796.25

• Morningstar Economic Moat Rating: Wide

• PE Ratio: 28.38

Graph of META Stock vs SPY (SPDR Shares S&P 500 ETF) over the past 5-years

Weekly Insight

Longest Government Shutdown in history coming closer to an end

The US federal government has been shut down since midnight on October 1, 2025, after congress failed to pass the required appropriations bill. As of early November, the shutdown has surpassed 40 days, making it officially the longest in U.S. history. Services across multiple federal agencies remain curtailed, nearly a million federal employees have been furloughed or forced to work without pay, and vital programs, such as air-traffic oversight and nutrition assistance, are scrambling under the strain.

 From an economic and market standpoint, the shutdown introduces heightened uncertainty at a time when markets are already navigating inflation, rate expectations, and global trade tensions. The interruption in agency operations slows data releases, delays regulatory approvals, and disrupts contracting, increasing risk for businesses that rely on federal coordination or knowledge of policy signals.

Sectors under pressure

Travel & aviation: The FAA announced it will reduce air traffic by about 10% across 40 major US markets due to controller staffing issues.

Sectors with relative resilience

Utilities & Consumer-Defensive Stocks: These companies are less dependent on new federal appropriations and more insulated from the immediate disruption of agency closures. Historical data suggests they may hold up better during shutdown periods.

Gold & Safe Haven Assets: With increased government uncertainty and a pause in key economic data, risk premium rises, helping the yellow metal and other resilient assets benefit from the “flight to safety.”

We appear to be entering stages of resolution

House Speaker Mike Johnson has officially called lawmakers back to Washington as the Senate inches toward ending the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. The Senate narrowly passed the first step of a bipartisan deal to reopen the government for the first time since October 1, setting up a critical House vote that could bring federal operations back online. If the measure clears the House, it heads to President Trump’s desk, marking the final hurdle in a shutdown saga that’s tested Washington’s gridlock and stretched public patience to the limit.

Historically, shutdowns tend to rattle markets in the short term but leave them largely intact over long stretches. According to Congressional Budget Office and Research Service and Morningstar, since 1976 the S&P 500 averages 0% returns during government shutdowns, 2.6% returns 3 months after, and 7.5% returns 6 months after. Roughly 0.1%-0.2% is lost in quarterly GDP growth per week of government closure. It is important to note that past performance does not guarantee future results, only time will tell.

Zuck’s biggest rival – Elon Musk, is making history again

Tesla shareholders just gave the greenlight on one of the biggest pay packages in history a $1T compensation plan, with over 75% voting in favor. The compensation will largely be through stock and the final value mostly depending on the company’s performance and stock price.

Did You Know?

Sift Stack Flashback: What a Large Dividend Looked like Nearly a Century Ago

November 10, 1927, General Motors declared what was at that point the largest dividend in history at $3.75 per share on its common stock, paying a total of about $65.25 million to investors

Poll Question

Response from one of our reader’s to last week’s poll question - Do you think the US and Canadian governments will resolve this rift in good time?

“Trump’s turning up the heat on the north. I don’t think the tariffs will go away unless the Supreme Court gets rid of them. I think Reagan Ad by the Canadians may have been anti-tariff…”

Quote Of The Week

“The question I ask myself like almost every day is ‘Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?’.”

-Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg

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Feel free send feedback or further input on the poll question to [email protected] or [email protected]. We would love to hear from you!