A mixed start to November for US equity markets ahead of another busy week of quarterly earnings releases - Dow fell -226-points or -0.48%, with Merck & Co Inc (down -4.06%) the worst performer in the 30-stock index. 3M Co (down -2.59%), UnitedHealth Group Inc (-2.27%) and Chevron Corp (-2.33%) all declined over >2%. Microsoft Corp (down -0.15%) announced it has secured export licenses to ship Nvidia Corp (+2.23%) chips to the United Arab Emirates amid Gulf’s ambitions to become an AI leader. Amazon.com Inc rallied +4.03% to be the leading Dow component overnight, hitting a fresh record high (US$258.60) after signing a multi-year US$38B deal to supply cloud computing services to OpenAI, affording the ChatGPT maker access to Nvidia's graphics processors. Amazon soared +9.58% in the previous session after releasing stronger-than-expected third-quarter earnings after the close last Thursday’s (30 October), underpinned by a sharp acceleration in cloud revenue. Separately, an intense lobbying effort by Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, to persuade President Donald Trump to sell its chips to customers in China was thwarted by top US officials, The Wall Street Journal