👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🏦 Fed holds, 2 want a rise: The vote was 10-2 and Warsh refused to promise December. Futures price a rise at more than 81%.

• 📉 Alphabet down 10%, Microsoft up: Google Cloud grew 103% and Search slowed to 12%. Azure grew 48% and guided higher still.

• 🇬🇧 Budget: banks up, builders down: Healey raises taxes £4.3 billion a year, keeps the £20,000 cash ISA, and gilt yields edge lower.

• 🇰🇷 Samsung’s record, shares fall: Samsung made 107.4 trillion won of operating profit, and its shares fell 4.13% as the buyback came without a number.

• 🛡️ Fortinet drags cyber down: Fortinet fell about 26% after hours on a service forecast cut, and Palo Alto, CrowdStrike and Zscaler lost 6% to 7%.

• 🛢️ Shell’s $5 billion buyback: Shell beat with $10.81 billion of profit and lifted its buyback, while Haleon fell 13.3% on a growth warning.

• 🤝 Marvell eyes Lumentum: Marvell is in advanced talks to buy Lumentum, worth about $83 billion, and fell 9.7% before the open.

• 🇮🇱 Arab parties hold the balance: With 89.8% counted, Netanyahu’s bloc had 53 seats, Eisenkot’s 48 and Arab-led parties 19.

• 🪙 Bitcoin below $80,000: Bitcoin slipped to $79,848 this morning even as US spot bitcoin ETFs took in $137 million yesterday.

• 🇺🇸 PCE Day Cheat Sheet: Core PCE lands at 12:30pm UK / 8:30am ET, expected at 3.1%, with Q3 GDP alongside.

• 📈 Google’s next support is $273: Chart of the Day covers the $273 floor, resistance at $296 and $315, and the falling trend line.

🧠 One Big Thing

Today the market marks 2 pieces of homework at once. At 12:30pm UK, 8:30am in New York, the Fed’s own inflation gauge lands. That comes a day after 2 officials voted for a rise and Kevin Warsh refused to promise one in December. Core PCE is forecast at 3.1%. Then Amazon reports after the US close. Yesterday showed how the AI bill gets judged. Microsoft’s cloud sped up and its shares rose. Alphabet’s Search slowed and its shares fell 10%. Amazon’s turn comes tonight, with AWS growth expected in the mid to high 30s.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

12%

✅ 5 Things to Know

🏦 Fed holds, and 2 officials wanted a rise

10 votes to 2. That is how the Fed held its rate at 3.75% to 4.00% yesterday. Governor Lisa Cook and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack voted for a quarter-point rise, after a 12-0 vote in September. The statement changed its tone as well, dropping September’s firmer line on getting inflation back to 2%. In its place: “The accumulation of more information will help the Committee determine the policy stance appropriate to ensure a timely return of inflation to the Committee’s 2 percent goal.” The urgency went. The destination stayed. The Fed also upgraded the economy from a “solid” pace to a “strong” one. Federal Reserve

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said the committee had “just come out of a family fight, a serious, sober discussion”. He said the “monetary medicine is starting to work some”, with no firm conclusions yet. He refused to point at December, saying he does not believe in forward guidance outside a crisis. He pushed back on the idea the Fed has gone soft too. “There is no soft inflation, no implicit inflation target,” he said. The target is 2%, measured by PCE. Markets read him as patient. The 2-year yield fell to about 4.70% as he spoke and was still near 4.70% this morning. The 10-year touched about 5.04% yesterday and was near 5.00% this morning. The S&P 500 finished up 0.3%.

December is still the base case. CME FedWatch put the chance of a rise at the 9 December meeting at more than 81% this morning, Reuters reported. All 100 economists in a Reuters poll before the meeting expected one. Christopher Hodge of Natixis called a December hike “now likely a foregone conclusion”. Karl Schamotta of Corpay read it the other way, calling 2 dissents, against the 3 or 4 many had expected, “a dovish surprise at the margin”. The first test lands today. September PCE inflation, the Fed’s own gauge, comes at 12:30pm UK, 8:30am ET, with core forecast at 3.1% on the year. Reuters via Investing.com

📉 Alphabet sinks 10% on Search, Microsoft climbs on Azure

Google Cloud doubled, and Alphabet’s shares still fell. Revenue rose 25% to $127.58 billion in the third quarter, short of the $128.22 billion LSEG consensus, Reuters reported. Google Cloud grew 103% to $30.71 billion, against about $29.1 billion expected, and its profit more than tripled to $11.12 billion. Search grew 12% to $63.35 billion, down from 17% in the second quarter. Capital spending was $51.36 billion in the quarter and free cash flow was minus $9.07 billion. Earnings per share fell to $2.12 from $2.87. An $8.7 billion loss on investments cut $0.55 a share, mostly a paper loss on Alphabet’s SpaceX stake, the company said on its call. The shares were down 10.2% before the open this morning, Reuters reported. Reuters via AOL

Microsoft went the other way, up 3.6% before the open this morning. Revenue rose 19% to $92.28 billion against $90.69 billion expected, and adjusted earnings were $4.89 a share against $4.73. Azure grew 48%, up from 43% the quarter before, and Microsoft put a dollar figure on it for the first time: $33.17 billion. It guided to Azure growth of 49% to 50% this quarter in constant currency. Capital spending, including finance leases, was $45.2 billion, below Microsoft’s own outlook of more than $50 billion. “We still have demand that exceeds supply,” finance chief Amy Hood said. Microsoft

Why did the market treat them so differently? The bill was similar, $45 billion to $51 billion each in 3 months, and both companies say demand outruns supply. The difference was the core business. Microsoft’s cloud sped up. Alphabet’s Search slowed. Google blamed currency moves most, and said the fast growth of AI Mode searches, which make less money so far, played a part. Nasdaq 100 futures were down 1.01% at 9:18am UK this morning. Amazon reports after the close today, with the call at 9:00pm UK, 5:00pm ET, and AWS growth expected in the mid to high 30s. “Cloud is carrying the story, but until search shows AI is additive, the stock’s probably going to trade lower,” said Dave Wagner of Aptus Capital Advisors.

🇬🇧 Healey’s Budget: banks up, builders down, cash ISA saved

“Is that it?” Kemi Badenoch’s reply caught the mood. John Healey’s first Budget raises net taxes by about £4.3 billion a year by 2029-30, roughly a sixth of the £26 billion Rachel Reeves raised in November 2025. The bank surcharge goes from 3% to 6% for 15 months from January 2027, after lenders had feared a return to the old 8% rate.

Tax on savings interest and property income rises by a further 2 percentage points from April 2027, on top of the 2 points Reeves had already set for that date. The rates go from 20%, 40% and 45% today to 24%, 44% and 49%. The cut to the cash ISA limit, due in April 2027, was scrapped. “I will not go ahead with the cut to the tax-free amount that people can put into a cash ISA,” Healey said. It stays at £20,000. gov.uk

The numbers underneath were worse. The OBR cut its growth forecast for 2027 to 1.0% from 1.6%. Borrowing this year is now about £133 billion, almost £18 billion more than the £115.5 billion it expected in March. Healey’s buffer against his own borrowing rule fell to £14.5 billion from £23.6 billion, with higher debt interest doing most of the damage. “That is what a buffer is for, use it when you need it, rebuild it when you can,” he said. The Debt Management Office raised this year’s gilt sales to £250.6 billion from £246.2 billion.

The gilt market took it quietly. The 10-year yield closed at about 5.33%, a few basis points lower, after hitting a 19-year high of 5.53% in early October. Sterling ended at $1.33. The FTSE 100 closed up 0.1% at 10,694.50 and the banks rallied on the smaller-than-feared surcharge: NatWest rose 2.0%, Lloyds 1.7% and Barclays 1.6%. Housebuilders were the losers, even with a new £4.7 billion Your First Home equity-loan scheme due from next spring: Taylor Wimpey fell 7.3%, Persimmon 6.9% and Barratt Redrow 6.6%. PA via Share Talk

The rest is detail, and some of it is useful for savers. Capital gains tax rates, the dividend tax and the 25% tax-free pension lump sum are all unchanged, though the lifetime limit for Business Asset Disposal Relief halves to £500,000 from April 2027. The Lifetime ISA penalty for buying a home above the £450,000 cap drops from 25% to 20% from today. A First Time Buyer ISA replaces the LISA for new savers from April 2029. The state pension rises 3.9% to £250.70 a week in April 2027.

The 5p fuel duty cut runs to July 2027, and up to 20 million households in England, in council tax bands A to D, get a £100 energy payment from January 2027. Next up for sterling: the Bank of England on 5 November, where a rise to 4.00% is priced.

🇰🇷 Samsung’s record 107 trillion won profit, and shares fall

Can a record quarter disappoint? In Seoul today it did. Samsung Electronics made 107.4 trillion won of operating profit in the third quarter, and says it is the first tech company to pass 100 trillion won in a single quarter. Revenue hit a record 195.3 trillion won. The chip division did nearly all the work, earning 106.5 trillion won on sales of 147.1 trillion. Phones and appliances lost 0.8 trillion. HBM4, its newest AI memory chip, more than tripled its revenue on the quarter. “Negotiations for next year’s HBM supply have been completed at our target prices,” Samsung said. Samsung

The shares still fell 4.13% to 232,000 won, and the Kospi dropped 1.24% to 5,937.66, Korea JoongAng Daily reported. Investors wanted a number for the buyback and got a range. Samsung will pay a dividend of 4,601 won a share, about 30 trillion won in total, on 27 November. Its 2026 return plan runs to 90 to 110 trillion won. The rest, 55 to 75 trillion, includes “a substantial share repurchase and cancellation program”, with the amounts set at a board meeting in late January 2027. “Investor sentiment weakened as the company did not present a detailed shareholder-return plan,” said Lee Kyung-min of Daishin Securities. SK Hynix, which named its numbers yesterday, rose 2.62% to 1.5 million won. Korea JoongAng Daily

🛡️ Fortinet’s warning drags cybersecurity down with it

Fortinet beat on profit and sales last night, and its shares fell about 26% after hours. Adjusted earnings were 91 cents a share against 86 cents expected, and revenue rose 20% to $2.08 billion. Investors looked at 2 other lines. Growth slowed from 26% in the second quarter. Fortinet also cut its full-year forecast for service revenue to $5.15 billion to $5.17 billion, from $5.18 billion to $5.22 billion, even as it raised its total revenue range. The stock had more than doubled this year before the report. SiliconANGLE

The fall did not stay with Fortinet. Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike and Zscaler each lost 6% to 7% after hours, and Tenable more than 5%. Why would one company’s forecast move its rivals? Investors read a slowdown at one seller as a sign of what customers are spending across the whole category, so the peers get repriced before they report. ServiceNow added to the selling. Its profit missed by 2 cents a share, and its revenue forecast for this quarter, $4.25 billion to $4.26 billion, sat below the $4.36 billion expected. Before the open, Fortinet was down 25% and ServiceNow 18.2%. Nasdaq 100 futures were down 1.01% at 9:18am UK, 5:18am in New York, Reuters reported. Reuters via Yahoo Finance

Stories You Might Have Missed

🛢️ Shell’s $5 billion buyback leads a busy London morning

Shell made $10.81 billion in the third quarter, its highest since 2022, against $10.33 billion expected, Reuters reported. It raised its quarterly buyback to $5 billion from $3 billion. Only the $6 billion of the second quarter of 2022 was bigger. Refining margins were $42 a barrel, up from $11.6 a year earlier, and the shares rose about 3%. Lloyds fell 3.5% by 9am after an in-line £2.3 billion pre-tax profit, the day after the Budget doubled the bank surcharge. Haleon fell 13.3% after cutting its organic growth forecast to about 2.5%, from 3% to 5%. The FTSE 100 was up 0.5% at 10,746. Reuters via 93.3 The Drive City AM

🤝 Marvell in talks to buy $83 billion Lumentum

Marvell Technology is in advanced talks to buy Lumentum, Bloomberg News reported last night, with a deal possible as soon as next week. No price was given. Lumentum, a maker of optical networking parts, is worth about $83 billion. Marvell had about $3.92 billion of cash, and Bernstein said a deal would likely need extra financing. Neither company commented. Lumentum rose 9% after hours and Marvell fell more than 8%. Before the open, Marvell was down 9.7% and Lumentum up 4.2%. MarketScreener Reuters via Yahoo Finance

🇮🇱 Israel’s Arab parties hold the balance, and oil eases

With 89.8% of votes counted, Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc had 53 seats and Gadi Eisenkot’s 48, the Times of Israel reported. Both are short of the 61 needed to govern. Arab-led parties had 19 seats, up from 10. Around 430,000 to 480,000 soldier and other ballots are being counted today, and official results come on 4 November. Oil eased on a diplomatic report. Brent fell 0.7% to $114.50 early today, after the Wall Street Journal reported that US Vice President JD Vance had written to Iran’s Mohsen Rezaei to revive talks. Times of Israel Business Recorder

🪙 Bitcoin slips below $80,000 as ETF money keeps coming

Bitcoin was at $79,848 at 7:32am UK, 3:32am in New York, down about 1% over 24 hours, Cointelegraph reported. US spot bitcoin ETFs still took in $137 million yesterday. That made a third straight day of inflows, worth about $424 million in total, and left October with net inflows of about $111 million. Ether ETFs lost about $21 million. Ether was at $2,317.78, down 2.12%, at 10:12am UK, crypto.news reported. Coinbase and Strategy both report after the US close tonight. Cointelegraph crypto.news

🔍 Today’s Cheat Sheet

Read more

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🇰🇷 SK Hynix opens the vault: SK Hynix earned an 80% operating margin, pledged about 100 trillion won to shareholders, and the Kospi jumped 6.63%.

• 📉 Records, then selling: Seagate, Robinhood and NXP each fell 6% to 8% late yesterday on record or better-than-expected quarters.

• 🇮🇱 Israel votes, nobody wins: With 76% counted, Netanyahu’s bloc had 54 seats to Eisenkot’s 47, short of 61, and the TA-125 fell 2.1%.

• ✈️ Boeing drops 10.75%: Boeing posted a wider loss than expected yesterday and cut its full-year delivery target.

• 🏦 London’s results morning: Standard Chartered rose 4.4% on a 27% profit rise, while GSK fell 3.5% as restructuring cut its pre-tax profit.

• 🪙 Ripple signs up Robinhood: Ripple’s dollar stablecoin went live on Robinhood’s own blockchain at Swell, and BNY’s custody platform now supports XRP.

• 💳 SoFi jumps 13.42%: SoFi posted record quarterly revenue of $1.4 billion and raised its 2026 guidance to about $5.04 billion.

• 🇬🇧 Budget Day Cheat Sheet: Healey speaks at 12:30pm UK / 8:30am ET with his buffer down from £23.6 billion and gilts keeping score.

• 🏛️ Fed Day Cheat Sheet: A hold is about 90% priced for 6pm UK / 2pm ET, so the dissent count is the news.

• ☁️ Microsoft Earnings Cheat Sheet: Azure needs about 45% growth to carry more than $50 billion of quarterly spending, reporting after the US close.

• 🔎 Alphabet Earnings Cheat Sheet: Google Cloud is forecast at $29.6 billion, against a 2026 spending plan of $195 billion to $205 billion.

• 📦 Amazon Earnings Cheat Sheet: Consensus sits at the top of Amazon’s sales guide before tomorrow’s results, with about $220 billion of 2026 spending.

• 📈 Zoom stays above its band: Chart of the Day covers $107.25 and $123.98 above, and the $94.54 to $94.77 band below.

🧠 One Big Thing

Today has 3 big tests for markets, and the cheat sheets below cover each one. Healey’s Budget lands at 12:30pm UK, 8:30am in New York. The Fed decides at 6pm UK, which is 2pm in New York, and Microsoft and Alphabet report after the US close. The good news came first. SK Hynix showed the AI boom is producing real cash, with an 80% operating margin and about 100 trillion won going back to shareholders. Tonight tests the other side. Are the companies spending the money getting paid for it?

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

80%

✅ 5 Things to Know

🇰🇷 SK Hynix answers the payout question: 100 trillion won

20,000 won. That is SK Hynix’s dividend per share for the third quarter, up from 375 won the quarter before, the Seoul Economic Daily reported. Half of it is a one-off special, paid from gains on the company’s stake in Japanese memory maker Kioxia. The dividend sits inside a 2026 return plan of about 100 trillion won. At least 30 trillion is cash dividends and at least 60 trillion is buybacks and share cancellations, including a 40 trillion won buyback the company has already completed. Operating profit hit a record 83.33 trillion won, up 632% on a year earlier. Consensus was 76.96 trillion, according to FnGuide data cited by Aju Press. Seoul Economic Daily

Seoul took it well. The Kospi rose 374.10 points, or 6.63%, to 6,012.44. SK Hynix gained 10.89% to 1.49 million won and Samsung Electronics 9.01% to 242,000 won. SK Hynix also said HBM4, its newest AI memory chip, should overtake the older HBM3E in shipments and revenue in the fourth quarter. Samsung reports its full results tomorrow. Its preliminary figures showed operating profit of 107.4 trillion won. Korea JoongAng Daily

📉 Seagate and Robinhood post records, and their shares fall

Seagate posted a record quarter yesterday, and its shares fell about 6% after hours. Revenue rose 61% to a record $4.23 billion. It guided to $4.8 billion for this quarter, against $4.53 billion expected, TIKR reported. The worry was supply. Toshiba has started shipping hard drives from an expanded production line. NXP Semiconductors beat on revenue, at $3.79 billion and up 19%, then fell about 7% after hours. Its revenue guide for the fourth quarter came in a touch below forecasts. Visa beat as well and slipped 2.3% after hours, after guiding to slower earnings growth next year. TIKR

Robinhood showed where the crypto slowdown lands. Its revenue reached a record $1.42 billion, up 12%, while crypto revenue fell 55% from a year earlier to $120 million, Bitcoin.com reported. Crypto trading volume fell 38% to $50 billion. Prediction markets, a newer line, brought in $173 million, more than crypto did. Revenue also came in under the $1.43 billion analysts expected. The shares fell 7.36% after hours to $87.60 and were down about 8% before the open today. Bitcoin.com

🇮🇱 No majority in Israel, and Tel Aviv falls

“The prime minister is now a caretaker prime minister,” Gadi Eisenkot said after yesterday’s vote, the Jerusalem Post reported. The count has not settled it either. With more than 76% of votes counted this morning, Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc was on course for 54 of the Knesset’s 120 seats and Eisenkot’s bloc for 47, Al Jazeera reported. A government needs 61. Turnout was 77.7%, the highest since 1999. Final results are expected by Friday and will be published officially on 4 November. Al Jazeera

Tel Aviv took it badly. The TA-35 was down 1.7% and the TA-125 down 2.1% this morning, with the banking index off 2.92%, Ynet reported. The dollar bought about 3.09 shekels, up from a low of 3.02 yesterday. The result matters for oil too. “If Netanyahu loses, it makes it difficult for Trump to go it alone,” Mizuho’s Robert Yawger said yesterday of the Iran talks. Brent rose 1.36% to $115.43 early today, after the Houthis claimed a strike on a Saudi refinery that Saudi authorities had not confirmed. Ynet

✈️ Boeing falls 10.75% after cutting its delivery target

10.75%. That is how far Boeing shares fell yesterday, closing at $168.07, 24/7 Wall St reported. The plane maker lost 34 cents a share excluding items in the third quarter, against an expected loss of 21 cents. Revenue rose 4% to $24.19 billion and the net loss was $116 million. Boeing also cut its full-year delivery target. “But we are not done,” chief executive Kelly Ortberg said. TheStreet

Why do deliveries matter so much? A plane maker collects most of the price of a jet when it hands it to the airline. A lower delivery target pushes that cash further out. Forecasters disagreed on whether revenue was a beat: TheStreet had a $23.84 billion estimate and InvesTrade $24.37 billion. The fall came on a day when the Nasdaq rose 1.18% and the S&P 500 rose 0.60%. 24/7 Wall St

🏦 Standard Chartered jumps and GSK slides on Budget morning

London’s results came in a few hours before the Budget. The FTSE 100 opened 22.99 points lower at 10,663.55, Alliance News reported. Standard Chartered led the index, up 4.4%, after its third-quarter pre-tax profit rose 27% to $2.25 billion and it raised its guidance. GSK was the biggest faller, down 3.5%. Its revenue rose 4% to £8.89 billion. Pre-tax profit fell 21% on £328 million of restructuring charges. Unilever fell 2.6% even after raising its volume growth outlook to at least 3%. MarketScreener

The UK banks were watching Westminster. Barclays and Lloyds were up 0.3% each and HSBC was down 0.6%, ahead of an expected rise in the bank surcharge. In Zurich, UBS net profit rose 8% to $2.69 billion, just under the $2.71 billion forecast. It bought back $1.8 billion of shares in the quarter and now aims to finish its $3 billion programme by February. Its shares fell 1.4%. Deutsche Bank rose 3.6% after its pre-tax profit rose 7.7% to €2.63 billion. Investing.com

Stories You Might Have Missed

🪙 Ripple brings Robinhood into its stablecoin plans

Ripple opened its Swell conference in New York yesterday by announcing a partnership with Robinhood. RLUSD, Ripple’s dollar stablecoin, is now live on Robinhood Chain, Robinhood’s own blockchain, and on the Bitstamp exchange. It is due in the main Robinhood app later this year. BNY’s custody platform now supports XRP and RLUSD. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent opened the conference. XRP was at $1.32, up 1.99% over 24 hours, at 7:29am UK, which is 3:29am in New York, TokenPost reported. Bitcoin was near $80,900, below the average price of about $81,500 paid by holders of US spot bitcoin ETFs, according to Glassnode data. CryptoPotato TokenPost

💳 SoFi jumps 13.42% on a record quarter

SoFi shares rose 13.42% yesterday after record third-quarter results, Cappnotes reported. Adjusted net revenue rose 44% to $1.4 billion and net income was $241 million, or 18 cents a share. Members rose 35% to 17.1 million. SoFi raised its 2026 revenue guidance to about $5.04 billion and gave a first 2027 outlook of about $6.4 billion of revenue and 90 cents a share. “We are adding more members, who are using more products, and generating more revenue per product,” chief executive Anthony Noto said. SoFi Cappnotes

🔍 Today’s Cheat Sheets

Read more

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 💸 Meta prices at $625: Meta sold $25 billion of new shares at $625 each, more than planned and below Friday’s $642.62 close.

• 🧠 Anthropic’s loss, explained: $72.4 billion of Anthropic’s $80.7 billion first-half loss was an accounting charge, and operations brought in $3.9 billion of cash.

• 🏦 HSBC slides on a miss: HSBC fell more than 6% in Hong Kong after its $18.6 billion of revenue missed forecasts, on Budget eve.

• 🇬🇧 Budget, then the Fed: Healey’s Budget lands at 12:30pm UK / 8:30am ET tomorrow, and the Fed decides at 6pm UK / 2pm ET.

• 🇰🇷 Seoul’s chip stocks jump: The Kospi rose 3.09% as SK Hynix gained 5.18%, a day before its decision on a reported $12 billion payout.

• 🛢️ Tehran talks end in more talks: Saudi, Turkish and Pakistani officials agreed to keep talking with Iran, and Brent was at $114.81 early today.

• 🪙 Ripple’s bank gets the nod: US regulators gave Ripple final approval for a trust bank to hold the reserves behind its $2.5 billion stablecoin.

• 📦 UPS and Coca-Cola lift outlooks: UPS now expects $92.6 billion of 2026 revenue, and Coca-Cola beat forecasts with earnings of $0.91 a share.

• 🗳️ Israel votes today: Israelis vote in a Knesset election today, with exit polls due at 8pm UK / 4pm ET.

• 📈 Oil is sitting on $100: Chart of the Day covers the $100.72 support, $113 and $120 above, and $92 below.

🧠 One Big Thing

The AI build is now being paid for in public. Meta sold $25 billion of new shares overnight at $625 each, below where they closed on Friday, and sold more than it first planned. Anthropic published its IPO filing yesterday. Its headline $80.7 billion loss turned out to be mostly an accounting charge, and its operations brought in $3.9 billion of cash in the first half. Is the market paying up? It took the Meta shares at a discount and pushed chip stocks higher from New York to Seoul. Tomorrow brings the UK Budget, the Fed decision and results from Microsoft and Alphabet.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

$72.4 billion

✅ 5 Things to Know

💸 Meta sells $25 billion of shares at $625 each

Meta priced its share sale overnight at $625 a share, and made it bigger. The ordinary share offering rose to $25 billion from the $22.5 billion announced yesterday, covering 40 million shares, Meta said. Meta also sold $12.5 billion of preferred shares at $50 each. They pay a 6.50% yearly dividend and convert into ordinary shares in August 2029. Both deals are expected to close on Thursday. The $625 price is 2.74% below Friday’s close of $642.62. StockTitan

When does Meta get the cash? Later. The ordinary shares are sold through forward agreements with Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, and Meta expects to settle them on or before 19 November 2027. The preferred shares convert at prices between $625 and about $734 a share, depending on where the stock trades in 2029. It is a sharp turn for Meta. It bought back $26.2 billion of its own stock in the first 9 months of 2025 and none in the same stretch of 2026, TIKR reported. Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom had indicated interest in up to $5 billion of the shares. FinanceFeeds

🧠 Anthropic’s $80.7 billion loss is mostly an accounting charge

$16.3 billion. That is Anthropic’s revenue for the first half of 2026, up from $1.2 billion a year earlier, according to the IPO prospectus it published yesterday. The company will list on the Nasdaq under the ticker ANT, and Fortune reported it is targeting a debut in Thanksgiving week. Its 7 cofounders keep 50.1% of the votes through a special class of shares. The filing also shows a net loss of $80.7 billion. Of that, $72.4 billion is an accounting charge for the higher value of its convertible notes, which rose with the company’s private valuation. Fortune

So what does the business look like underneath? The operating loss narrowed to $693 million from $2.1 billion a year earlier. Operations brought in $3.9 billion of cash, against an outflow of $1.5 billion in the first half of 2025. Second-quarter revenue alone was $11.6 billion. The risks sit with the customers. The top 5 made up about 25% of revenue in the first 9 months of 2026, and nearly half of revenue flows through cloud marketplaces run by Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Mitrade’s reading of the filing puts signed, mostly non-cancellable computing commitments at about $450 billion. Mitrade

🏦 HSBC slides 6% a day before a bank-tax Budget

“As we simplify HSBC, we are creating greater capacity to invest, grow and deliver strong returns for our shareholders,” chief executive Georges Elhedery said this morning. The shareholders sold. HSBC’s shares fell more than 6% in Hong Kong, to around HK$133.5. Pre-tax profit rose 32% to $9.6 billion in the third quarter, and revenue rose $800 million to $18.6 billion. Net profit of $7 billion was up 45.5% and still short of the $7.3 billion the market expected. The bank announced another buyback of up to $1 billion. Malay Mail

London followed. The FTSE 100 was down 94 points, or 0.9%, at 10,673 by 9:19am UK, which is 5:19am in New York, with HSBC leading the fall, Share Talk reported. The timing is awkward for the banks. Tomorrow’s Budget is expected to raise the tax on their profits. HSBC is also cutting its UK wealth business, where about 70% of financial adviser roles are expected to go, the Financial Times reported. The bank said its restructuring has saved $1.4 billion since 2025. Share Talk

🇬🇧 Budget and Fed land 6 hours apart tomorrow

Chancellor John Healey delivers his Budget after Prime Minister’s Questions tomorrow, at about 12:30pm UK, which is 8:30am in New York. The Fed announces its decision at 6pm UK, 2pm in New York. The Bank of Canada decides in between, at 1:45pm UK, which is 9:45am in New York, and Microsoft and Alphabet report after the US close. Healey has less room than he did in March. EY estimates the buffer against his own borrowing rules has fallen to £11.3 billion from £23.6 billion, and a Reuters survey suggests economists want it rebuilt to around £15 billion to £16 billion, investingLive reported. investingLive

What could move markets? Newsquawk expects the bank surcharge to rise from 3% to as much as 8%, raising about £2 billion, and says the risks are skewed to a negative reaction if Healey disappoints. A miss on the buffer, it says, tends to bring the same pattern: long-dated gilts sell off and sterling softens. Traders price a 99% chance that the Bank of England raises rates at its meeting next week, investingLive reported. At the Fed, 94 of 100 economists in a Reuters poll expect a hold, as yesterday’s issue reported. Newsquawk

🇰🇷 Seoul’s chip giants jump before SK Hynix’s payout decision

Who was buying in Seoul today? Foreign investors, who put a net 592.97 billion won into Korean shares, the Korea JoongAng Daily reported. The Kospi rose 168.87 points, or 3.09%, to 5,638.34. Samsung Electronics gained 4.23% to 222,000 won and SK Hynix 5.18% to 1.34 million won. The paper tied the rally to the revenue growth in Anthropic’s IPO filing. In New York yesterday, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose 2.82%. Korea JoongAng Daily

SK Hynix reports tomorrow, and it has a payout question to answer. Korean media reported it is weighing a special dividend of about 16 trillion won, roughly $12 billion, from gains on selling down its stake in Japanese memory maker Kioxia. The company has said only that it is reviewing shareholder return measures, and it will set them out with its third-quarter results. Samsung reports on Thursday. The index was still on track for a fall of about 17% in October, CoinCentral reported. CoinCentral

Stories You Might Have Missed

🛢️ Tehran talks end with a promise of more talks

Saudi Arabia’s defence minister, Pakistan’s army chief and Turkey’s intelligence chief met Iranian leaders, including President Masoud Pezeshkian, in Tehran yesterday. The 4 countries agreed to continue talks, Iranian state media said. Brent settled down 91 cents at $115.81 yesterday, after briefly trading above $117. It was at $114.81 by 4:18am UK, which is 12:18am in New York. Flows through Hormuz are running at about 60% of normal, ANZ said. Bank of America’s Francisco Blanch said $120 is “probably on the cards” over the next few months if Iran resumes attacks on regional infrastructure. Arab News Oil & Gas Middle East

🪙 Ripple gets final approval for its US trust bank

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates US national banks, gave Ripple final approval for its national trust bank yesterday, Crypto Times reported. Conditional approval came on 12 December 2025. Ripple National Trust Bank will manage the reserves backing RLUSD, Ripple’s dollar stablecoin, and offer digital asset custody to large clients. It cannot take deposits or make loans. RLUSD, worth about $2.5 billion, will still be issued by a New York-regulated company. “For years, we’ve said crypto and banks work better together,” chief executive Brad Garlinghouse said. Ripple’s Swell conference opens in New York today. XRP traded between $1.30 and $1.31 early today, 36Crypto reported. Crypto Times 36Crypto

📦 UPS and Coca-Cola lift their outlooks before the open

UPS said this morning that third-quarter revenue rose 6.7% to $22.9 billion, with growth in every segment. Adjusted earnings were $1.69 a share. It now expects about $92.6 billion of revenue for 2026 and adjusted earnings of about $7.28 a share. Coca-Cola reported adjusted earnings of $0.91 a share against $0.88 expected, on revenue of $13.38 billion against $12.93 billion, 24/7 Wall St reported. Its unit case volume rose 5%. Coca-Cola raised its 2026 free cash flow forecast to at least $13 billion from about $12.4 billion. StockTitan 24/7 Wall St

🗳️ Israel votes in a Knesset election today

Polls opened at 7am Israel time today, which is 5am UK. Exit polls are due at 10pm in Israel, which is 8pm UK and 4pm in New York, the Jerusalem Post reported. Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party has led Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud in most recent polls. The final Channel 12 poll gave Yashar 22 seats and Likud 19, down from the 32 Likud holds now. Neither Netanyahu’s bloc nor the opposition was projected to reach the 61 seats needed for a majority without the Arab parties. Final results will take days. Jerusalem Post

📈 Chart of the Day - WTI Crude Oil (USOIL)

Read more

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 💸 Meta sells new shares: Meta launched a $35 billion stock sale to fund AI, with up to $60 billion more planned from early 2027.

• 🇧🇷 Brazil’s stocks crash on Lula: Nu Holdings fell about 22% before the US open after Lula won Brazil’s runoff 51.8% to 48.2%.

• 🧠 Anthropic opens its books today: Anthropic is expected to publish its IPO prospectus at 1pm UK / 9am ET, 3 days later than first reported.

• ☁️ Musk warns the AI renters: Musk says lenders have shut out 200-plus AI cloud firms, and CoreWeave’s bonds now yield above 15%.

• 🛢️ Oil eases as envoys gather: Brent fell 1.89% to $114.51 early today as Saudi, Pakistani and Turkish officials headed to Tehran.

• 🏦 The Fed’s December question: In a Reuters poll, 94 of 100 economists expect a hold on Wednesday, and all 100 expect a December rise.

• ⛽ EQT buys Range Resources: EQT agreed an all-stock deal for Range Resources, creating a gas group worth over $50 billion including debt.

• 📱 Verizon adds 406,000 phone customers: Verizon nearly doubled the 209,439 phone additions analysts expected and raised its full-year outlook again.

• 🪙 Bitcoin slips below $80,000: Bitcoin traded near $79,947 early today, below the $81,300 average price ETF buyers paid, Coinbase Institutional estimates.

• 📈 Bloom Energy back at support: Chart of the Day covers about $197, the $125 to $148 zone below and $300 above.

🧠 One Big Thing

Lenders and stock buyers are giving AI 2 different answers. Elon Musk said yesterday that debt markets have almost entirely shut off money for AI cloud companies without other revenue, and CoreWeave’s June bonds now trade below 80 cents on the dollar. Shareholders are being asked to step in. Meta launched a $35 billion stock sale this morning, with up to $60 billion more to follow, and Anthropic is expected to publish its IPO filing today. So who pays for the AI build from here? More and more, the people who own the shares. Wednesday brings the Fed decision and results from Microsoft and Alphabet.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

15%

✅ 5 Things to Know

💸 Meta asks shareholders for $35 billion to pay for AI

$35 billion. That is how much new stock Meta put up for sale this morning to fund its AI build, Reuters reported. The sale splits into $22.5 billion of ordinary shares and $12.5 billion of preferred shares that must convert into ordinary shares after 3 years. Meta also plans to sell up to $60 billion more straight into the market once its new non-voting Class C shares start trading, expected in the first quarter of 2027. That takes the plan to as much as $95 billion. Meta shares were up 2.3% at $657.50 before the US open. Investing.com Rallies

Who is buying? Partly the companies Meta buys its chips from. Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom said they would take up to $5 billion of the shares as cornerstone investors, Meta said. The need for the money showed up in last week’s results. Capital spending of $34.91 billion ran ahead of the $32.79 billion of cash Meta’s operations brought in, and the shares fell 6.98% on Thursday. At the end of September Meta held $82.45 billion of cash and securities, just above its $80.92 billion of long-term debt. It has about $825 billion of future spending commitments. BNN Bloomberg

🇧🇷 Lula’s comeback sinks Brazil’s stocks in New York

22%. That is roughly how far Nu Holdings, the Brazilian digital bank, fell in trading before the US open today, to about $11.77 from Friday’s close of $15.16. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won yesterday’s runoff with 51.8% of the vote against 48.2% for Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, who had led after the first round earlier this month. About $16.4 billion of Nu’s market value went over one weekend. Bolsonaro has refused to concede, Reuters reported. Yahoo Finance

Why such a big move? Brazil’s banks had rallied after the first round, when Bolsonaro took the lead. Itau rose 15% and Bradesco 19% on that result. Those gains are now going into reverse. Brazil’s bank stocks fell between 23% and 29% before the open, and the iShares MSCI Brazil ETF dropped more than 18%, Investing.com reported. Dollar futures jumped about 10% against the Brazilian real. Lula’s new term starts on 5 January 2027, and Nu reports results on 12 November. Investing.com

🧠 Anthropic is due to open its books today

Anthropic is expected to publish its IPO prospectus at 9am in New York today, which is 1pm UK, Fox Business reported. That is 3 days later than the Friday date reported last week. Fox Business’s Liz Claman said the listing itself could come as soon as 19 or 20 November. US rules require the prospectus to be public 15 days before a company starts pitching its shares, so today starts that clock. Investing.com

Friday’s issue covered the reported first-half figures: $16.3 billion of revenue and a loss of more than $80 billion. What does the filing add? The audited version, plus the promises. Anthropic rents computing power through Google and Amazon, and from SpaceX’s Colossus 1 data centre, Yahoo Finance reported. The prospectus has to put a number on those commitments. Wall Street talk is of raising up to $100 billion at a $2 trillion valuation. Yahoo Finance

☁️ Musk says lenders have shut out the AI cloud renters

“Some will make it through, but not many.” Elon Musk posted that on X yesterday, after writing that debt markets have “almost entirely shut off access to money” for companies without substantial revenue outside AI data centres. He said the 200-plus neoclouds, firms that rent out AI computing power, face “guppy-level death and consolidation”. Before the US open today, CoreWeave was down more than 5%, Iren more than 4% and Nebius 3.8%, AP reported. AP via KSAT

The bond market moved first. CoreWeave’s unsecured notes, sold in June with a 9.63% coupon, have fallen below 80 cents on the dollar, which pushes their yield above 15%. The cost of insuring its debt against default reached 1,115 basis points. CoreWeave’s shares closed on Friday at $54.24, down 37.75% since the end of September. Chief executive Michael Intrator says a backlog of about $104 billion more than covers roughly $35 billion of debt. Musk said SpaceX has closed $40 billion of debt for chips, backed by Starlink and launch revenue. Yahoo Finance

🛢️ Oil eases as regional envoys head to Tehran

Saudi Arabia’s defence minister, Pakistan’s army chief and Turkey’s intelligence chief were due in Tehran today, a day after Qatari mediators arrived there, Euronews reported. Brent’s December contract fell $2.21, or 1.89%, to $114.51 by 4:26am UK, which is 12:26am in New York. On Friday it settled at $116.72 after a 6% weekly gain. WTI was down 2.16% at $101.04. Grafa

Has the war premium gone? Very little of it. Brent is still more than $40 above its pre-war level of around $72. President Trump told Fox News yesterday that his choice is “do I make a deal with them, or do I finish them off?” Houthi attacks on Saudi oil sites continued over the weekend. Vandana Hari of Vanda Insights said “the reprieve may prove temporary.” The US midterm elections on 3 November are the next date the oil market is watching. Euronews

Stories You Might Have Missed

🏦 The Fed decides on Wednesday, but December is the question

Bank of America still expects the Fed to raise rates on Wednesday. Few others agree. In a Reuters poll, 94 of 100 economists expect a hold, and all 100 expect a rise at the 8 to 9 December meeting, against fewer than 50 a month earlier. CME FedWatch puts a 90% chance on a hold this week and 76.2% on a December rise. The decision lands at 6pm UK, 2pm in New York. Thursday’s PCE report, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, is expected to show prices rising at a 3.7% rate, AP reported. Seoul Economic Daily AP via KSAT

⛽ EQT agrees all-stock deal for Range Resources

EQT agreed today to buy Range Resources in an all-stock deal, creating a US natural gas group with an enterprise value, which counts debt as well as shares, of more than $50 billion. Range shareholders get 987 EQT shares for every 1,000 Range shares they own and will hold about 27% of the combined company. It will produce more than 9 billion cubic feet equivalent of gas a day. The firms expect $325 million of yearly cost savings within 2 years and plan to close in the first quarter of 2027. Both cancelled their results calls for Wednesday. Investing.com

📱 Verizon adds 406,000 phone customers and raises its outlook

Verizon added 406,000 more monthly-bill phone customers than it lost in the third quarter, nearly double the 209,439 analysts expected, Newsquawk reported. Adjusted earnings were $1.31 a share against $1.28 expected. Revenue of $34.3 billion missed the $34.77 billion forecast. Verizon raised its full-year earnings forecast to $5.04 to $5.06 a share and its phone additions target to 1.1 million to 1.2 million, the third raise in a row. It also signed an AI infrastructure deal with Amazon Web Services worth more than $2 billion. The shares rose 0.7% after the release. Investing.com Newsquawk

🪙 Bitcoin slips below $80,000 as ETF money leaves

Bitcoin traded near $79,947 early today, down 1.02% over 24 hours, after touching about $79,100 over the weekend, crypto.news reported. Over Thursday and Friday, $773.5 million left US spot bitcoin ETFs, Farside data showed, although the week still ended $301.2 million in the black. Coinbase Institutional puts the average price ETF holders paid at about $81,300. That means the typical fund buyer is now sitting on a loss. Ether was at $2,320.48 and XRP at $1.29. crypto.news investingLive

📈 Chart of the Day - Bloom Energy (BE)

Read more

This Week

XRP ends the week around $1.30, up 2.5%. It traded between $1.40 on Wednesday and $1.25 on Saturday. It also gained 3.3% against bitcoin, in a week bitcoin slipped. Crypto as a whole edged down 0.4% to $2.77 trillion, and bitcoin holds 58.6% of it. The Sensei Fear and Greed reads 42 for crypto. That is still Fear, a little warmer than last week’s 38.

The week’s shape comes from what happens next. Ripple’s Swell opens in New York on Tuesday, its biggest stage of the year. The lead story below walks through what is on it, what XRP has done after past Swells, and why the ledger’s lending feature will not be switched on by the time the speeches start.

Two other moves landed on the ledger and in the filings. Evernorth signed up to sell new shares, and the reason sits in its own paperwork. Franklin Templeton moved a large block of a money market fund onto the XRP Ledger in a single day.

The Consensus

• 🌊 Ripple’s Swell opens in New York on Tuesday, with the ledger’s lending upgrade still 10 validator votes short.

• 🏦 Evernorth’s share sale could raise up to $80.7 million, timed for when the stock trades above its XRP.

• 🏛️ Franklin Templeton issued $150 million of fund shares on the XRP Ledger, all of it in one wallet.

The Numbers

The Chart Watch

The Ripple Effect

🌊 Swell Comes Home to New York, With Lending Still Switched Off

Ripple’s Swell opens on Tuesday 27 October at The Shed in Manhattan. It runs for 3 days across 3 stages. Ripple expects more than 1,500 people and 100 speakers. This is the 10th Swell, and the first to fold in XRPL Apex, Ripple’s conference for developers on the ledger.

Swell is where Ripple puts its biggest news in front of the banks and funds it sells to. Last year’s event was also in New York. Ripple used it to announce a $500 million investment, led by Fortress and Citadel Securities. That deal valued the company at $40 billion (ForkLog). RLUSD was first shown off at the 2024 event in Miami. Hopes run high every year.

Tuesday 27 October. The invite-only summit for institutions runs, with speakers from DBS, Evernorth and RLUSD’s advisory board, which includes Raghuram Rajan, the former head of India’s central bank.

Wednesday 28 October. Brad Garlinghouse opens the main stage, and Monica Long, Ripple’s president, sits down with Robinhood’s Johann Kerbrat. David Schwartz, Ripple’s former chief technology officer, talks about what comes next for the ledger at 4:30pm ET / 8:30pm UK.

Thursday 29 October. Garlinghouse sits down with Tom Farley, who runs the crypto exchange Bullish and used to run the New York Stock Exchange.

Speakers from BNY, ICE and TD Securities are on the bill too (Ripple). RippleX’s Jasmine Cooper is due to set out a roadmap for institutional lending and trading on the ledger.

That roadmap runs into a vote. An upgrade to the XRP Ledger switches on only after a supermajority of validators backs it for 14 days in a row. That means more than 80% of the 35 on the trusted list. One dip below the line restarts the clock. The lending feature has 19 votes. It needs 29. A smaller bug-fix package was due on Friday. On Wednesday 21 October its support fell to 26 votes for about 2 hours. The countdown reset, and the fix is now due on Wednesday 4 November (CryptoTicker).

So anything said about lending at Swell is a plan. Arf, a Swiss payments lender, agreed with Ripple on Thursday to fund payment companies in RLUSD on the ledger. Its move onto native lending waits on that same vote. Evernorth has promised “something special” at Swell, with no details.

The Fed decides on rates the same Wednesday. The decision lands at 2:00pm Eastern. That is 6:00pm UK. Futures put the chance of a hold at about 90%. History is not kind to the event either. 24/7 Wall St. tracked 6 Swells since 2018. XRP closed the event month lower in 5 of them. Last year it fell 14.1% in November (24/7 Wall St.). Ripple has not announced a public livestream. It says most sessions will be recorded and published afterwards.

🏦 Evernorth Wants to Sell Up to $80.7 Million of Shares. Here Is Why

Evernorth can now sell up to 5,218,935 new shares to Cantor Fitzgerald, over the next 14 months. It disclosed the agreement on Friday 23 October. At Thursday’s close of $15.46, those shares are worth about $80.7 million. Cantor pays 97% of the average market price and sells them on. Nothing can be sold until the SEC declares the matching registration effective (SEC).

This kind of deal is called an equity line. Evernorth decides when to sell, and how much, a little at a time. Each sale is capped at 20% of the shares traded over that window. XRPN traded about 330,000 shares a day late in the week. That allows roughly 65,000 shares a day, or about $1 million. It is slow by design. At that pace the full $80.7 million takes months.

So what is the money for? The filing names 3 uses. The first is “general corporate purposes, including the acquisition of XRP”. The other 2 are activity in the XRP ecosystem and working capital. The filing also says the chance to sell will come “if and when our stock price trades at a premium” to the value of its XRP (SEC).

That premium is the whole mechanism. If a share sells for more than the XRP behind it, the cash buys more XRP than that share represented. Every remaining holder ends up with slightly more XRP per share. Strategy built its bitcoin pile the same way.

Right now the premium is there. Evernorth holds 473 million XRP, worth about $615 million at $1.30. Its 57.5 million shares, counting both classes, closed on Friday at $15.06. That values the company at about $866 million, roughly 1.4 times its XRP alone. Each share holds about 8.2 XRP, worth around $10.70.

There is a second source of cash. On Monday 19 October the SEC declared effective a prospectus covering 11,499,992 shares that warrant holders can claim at $11.50 each. If every warrant is exercised for cash, Evernorth receives about $132 million, also for “general corporate purposes”. The shares themselves went nowhere. XRPN closed at $15.23 on Monday and $15.06 on Friday. The filing ties the timing of every sale to that premium.

🏛️ Franklin Templeton Puts $150 Million of a Money Market Fund on the XRP Ledger

Franklin Templeton now holds about 193 million fund shares on the XRP Ledger. On Wednesday it held about 48 million. Its issuing account recorded 2 subscriptions of $75 million each that day. On Thursday it issued 2 batches of just over 72.18 million shares, at about $1.04 each. That is about $150 million of new money, and about $200 million in total (CoinDesk).

Each token is a share of the Franklin OnChain U.S. Dollar Short-Term Money Market Fund, sold in Singapore as sgBENJI. The fund holds short-term dollar debt, government paper and bank deposits. Its return builds up in the share price. Franklin launched it with DBS in November 2025, for wealth and accredited clients, with a $20 minimum. Under a deal with Ripple, DBS clients are meant to be able to switch between sgBENJI and RLUSD.

Every share sits in a single wallet. That wallet is controlled by the same 8 signers as Franklin’s issuing account. Holding sgBENJI on the ledger needs Franklin’s approval, and Franklin can freeze balances. Brokers often hold shares for many clients in one account. Franklin has not said whether this is one investor or many. It had not answered CoinDesk’s questions by Saturday.

RWA.xyz now ranks Franklin as the second-largest real-world asset on the XRP Ledger. RLUSD leads at about $930 million. Ondo sits third at $185 million. The fund runs on other networks too, Stellar among them.

Franklin had a good week on the XRP side as well. Its spot XRP fund, XRPZ, took in $3.55 million on Thursday. That was most of the $4.3 million that came into the US spot XRP funds over the week. The funds were back to inflows, a week after their 13-week streak ended (crypto.news).

The $150 million bought no XRP. The fund holds dollars and dollar debt. XRP’s part is the fee each ledger transaction burns, and the small XRP reserve every ledger account has to keep.

Seen on X

Sensei’s Insight: David Schwartz posted on Friday that a world where the XRP Ledger wins in finance while XRP sees little demand is very unlikely. In a second post he added that XRP is the only asset on the ledger any account can accept without trusting an issuer. It lands in a week Franklin Templeton put a money market fund on the ledger and bought no XRP doing it. Schwartz takes the Swell main stage on Wednesday, with the lending vote still short.

Debunked

On Wednesday 21 October, Whale Insider shared word that Ripple had launched RLUSD-backed loans. U.Today ran it the same day under the headline “RLUSD-Backed Loans Go Live as Ripple Launches 24/7 Stock Trading for Institutions” (U.Today). The trading part is real, and old. On 15 October, Ripple Prime opened round-the-clock swaps on more than 100 markets, from stocks to gold, and it accepts RLUSD as collateral for them. Collateral posted against a trade is margin. No lending product launched, and U.Today’s own article describes none.

There is a grain of truth, and it arrived a day later. On Thursday Arf and Ripple agreed that Arf will fund licensed payment companies in RLUSD on the XRP Ledger, with loans repaid in 1 to 5 days. No amounts were given (Arf). What is confirmed is a partnership and a plan. What is not live is lending on the ledger itself, which still waits on the validator vote laid out in the Swell story above.

The Polls

This content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Always do your own research. Not financial advice (NFA).

5 central banks decide this week, and the biggest of them meets with Brent at $116.72 and the 10-year Treasury yield at 5%. The Fed announces on Wednesday afternoon, a few hours after the UK Budget and 2 hour before Microsoft and Alphabet report. Thursday morning then brings US growth and the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge for September, the day after the decision it would normally inform. Amazon reports that evening, and the Bank of Japan closes the week on Friday. UK clocks went back on Sunday and the US does not change until 1 November, so this week the gap between New York and London is 4 hours.

Last Week:

Meta and Tesla Q3 Meta reported revenue of $64.6 billion, up 26%, and narrowed its 2026 spending range to $135 billion to $145 billion. Capital spending of $34.91 billion ran ahead of the $32.79 billion of cash its operations brought in, and it gave no 2027 figure. The shares closed 6.98% lower at $648.85 on Thursday, the day the Nasdaq had its worst session since June. Tesla went the other way on spending: it cut its capital budget to about $20 billion from more than $25 billion and earned $0.48 a share against a $0.43 consensus (Zacks).

UK CPI (September) 3.5%. Consensus was 3.4%, and August was 3.1%. Core inflation rose to 2.8% from 2.6% and services to 3.7% from 3.4%, so the rise reached beyond the pump, where petrol averaged 169.5p, the highest since August 2022. The Bank of England decides on 5 November, a week after Wednesday’s Budget. (ONS)

US Flash PMIs (October) Manufacturing printed 56.0 against 55.5 expected and services 57.9 against 58.0, with the composite at 57.6 after 58.4. The output prices index rose to 59.8, its highest since August 2022. Chris Williamson of S&P Global said the reading “indicates consumer price inflation is likely to rise further above the Fed’s target in the coming months”. (investingLive, Newsquawk)

The setup: the S&P 500 closed Friday at 7,623.68, down 0.47% on the week, and the Nasdaq fell 0.71%, a second straight weekly loss for both. Brent’s December contract settled $3.55 higher at $116.72 on Friday, and the 10-year yield ended at 4.99%. CME FedWatch pricing on Friday implied about a 1 in 10 chance of a rise on Wednesday and close to a full rise by December. Wednesday’s decision comes 6 days before the 3 November midterms, with business surveys showing the fastest price rises in more than 4 years. (investingLive, Newsquawk)

Week at a Glance

🔴 Fed Decision and Warsh Press Conference: Wednesday, 2:00 PM ET / 6:00 PM GMT

🔴 UK Autumn Budget: Wednesday, 8:30 AM ET / 12:30 PM GMT

🔴 Microsoft and Alphabet Q3 Results: Wednesday, After Close

🔴 US Q3 GDP and September PCE Inflation: Thursday, 8:30 AM ET / 12:30 PM GMT

🔴 Amazon Q3 Results: Thursday, After Close

🟠 ECB Decision: Thursday, 9:15 AM ET / 1:15 PM GMT

🟠 Bank of Japan Decision: Thursday Night ET / Friday Morning GMT

🟠 Bank of Canada Decision: Wednesday, 9:45 AM ET / 1:45 PM GMT

🟡 Ripple Swell, New York: Tuesday to Thursday, All day

MONDAY, October 26

Read more

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 📉 Meta drags the Nasdaq down: Meta fell 6.98% and the Nasdaq 2.6%, its worst day since June, as Nvidia, AMD and CoreWeave slid.

• 🏦 Bond yields drop below 5%: The 10-year Treasury yield fell to 4.95%, its biggest one-day drop since March 2023, as rate-rise bets faded.

• 🛢️ Brent closes at a 5-month high: Brent settled 4% higher at $113.17 after Saudi Aramco evacuated its Dhahran headquarters yesterday.

• 🚀 SpaceX gives back its jump: SpaceX fell 9.14% on unlock day as volume doubled, erasing the 7.79% gain that followed its results.

• 🧠 Anthropic’s filing could land today: Anthropic may publish its IPO prospectus as early as today, with Wall Street talking about a $2 trillion valuation.

• 🛍️ UK shoppers pull back: Retail sales fell 0.4% in September against a 0.1% fall expected, and consumer confidence dropped 11 points.

• 🪙 Bitcoin funds lose $635 million: US spot bitcoin ETFs saw $635.49 million leave yesterday, their biggest daily outflow since 25 June.

• 🇯🇵 Japan’s inflation picks up: Prices excluding fresh food rose 2.1% in September, up from 1.7%, a week before the Bank of Japan meets.

• 📈 Gold tests very important support: Chart of the Day covers about $4,000, $4,210.78 and $4,400, and the lower levels if support breaks.

🧠 One Big Thing

Money ran out of AI stocks and into US government bonds yesterday. The Nasdaq fell 2.6% after Meta dropped 6.98%, and the 10-year Treasury yield fell to 4.95%, its biggest one-day drop since March 2023. That yield sets the price of mortgages and company loans across the US, so a lower one eases borrowing costs well beyond tech. Traders now put the chance of a Fed rate rise next week at 7.2%. A month ago it was 55.4%. Oil went up at the same time. Brent closed at $113.17, its highest since May, after Saudi Aramco evacuated its headquarters.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

7.2%

✅ 5 Things to Know

📉 Meta drops 6.98% and drags the Nasdaq down 2.6%

Meta closed down 6.98% at $648.85 yesterday, the first full session after its results. On Wednesday night the shares had traded higher after hours. Revenue was a record, and investors sold anyway, on doubts that its AI data-centre spending will pay off. Meta has $825 billion of spending commitments and raised the bottom of this year’s spending range to $135 billion. The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.6%. Yahoo Finance

So who else was sold? Nearly every big AI name. Nvidia fell 4.4%, AMD 8.1% and CoreWeave, which rents out AI computing power, 10%. It was the Nasdaq’s worst day since June, and the S&P 500, down 1.2%, had its worst since July. Nvidia boss Jensen Huang told CNBC yesterday that demand for capital is “much greater than the availability of the capital.” The Dow finished slightly higher, helped by an 8% rise in Blackstone. CoinCentral

🏦 Treasury yields drop below 5% as hike bets fade

4.95%. That was the US 10-year Treasury yield yesterday, down 19.3 basis points in a day, the biggest one-day fall since 10 March 2023. A basis point is a hundredth of a percentage point. It is the first time the yield has been below 5% in about a month. On 7 October it reached 5.36%, its highest since April 2002. The 2-year yield fell 18.8 basis points to 4.64%. The Herald Business

Why did bonds rally while oil climbed? Investors sold AI stocks and bought government debt for safety. “The ‘flight to safety’ is winning in the Treasury market right now,” said Thomas Urano, co-chief investment officer at Sage Advisory. Traders also cut their bets on a Fed hike. CME FedWatch put the chance of a rise at the 28 October meeting at 7.2%, down from 27.7% a week earlier. JKN

🛢️ Brent closes at a 5-month high as Aramco evacuates

Saudi Aramco ordered the evacuation of its headquarters in Dhahran yesterday, on the Gulf coast near Bahrain, as fighting with Yemen’s Houthis intensified. Brent crude settled up 4% at $113.17, its highest close since 4 May. By 7:39am UK today, which is 2:39am in New York, Brent was at $114.47, up 1.2%, and WTI was at $100.84. Brent is on course for a third straight weekly gain. Business Recorder

Aramco told staff to keep working from home. The reports did not show any new halt to Saudi oil output. ING said “re-escalation seems the most likely path.” In Libya, closing a pipeline valve cut production at the Hamada and Tahara fields, the head of the national oil company told Reuters. US crude stocks fell about 3.06 million barrels in the week to 16 October. Profile News

🚀 SpaceX falls 9.14% as unlock-day volume doubles

196.2 million. That is how many SpaceX shares changed hands yesterday, about twice the 97.7 million average, on the day up to 1.3 billion pre-listing shares became free to sell. The stock fell 9.14% to $144.75. That gave back all of Wednesday’s 7.79% jump after its first profit as a listed company, and left it below Tuesday’s close of $147.79. It traded between $143.21 and $154.26. Motley Fool

The bill for SpaceX’s AI build is also getting dearer. SpaceX is finalising a $40 billion debt deal at sharply higher interest rates than when it last borrowed from bondholders, Semafor reported yesterday. The company has guided $35 billion to $40 billion of capital spending this quarter, and its cash flow is negative, so more borrowing looks likely. Phil Stock World

🧠 Anthropic could make its IPO filing public today

Read more

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 📱 Meta’s cash turns negative: Revenue beat at $64.6 billion, but $34.91 billion of capital spending left free cash flow at minus $2.12 billion.

• 🚗 Tesla cuts its spending plan: Tesla cut 2026 capital spending to about $20 billion, produced $1.53 billion of free cash, and still slipped after hours.

• 🛢️ Brent nears $112: Iran says 7 tankers were on fire or damaged in Hormuz overnight, while Trump says Washington is not negotiating.

• 🚀 SpaceX’s lock-up ends: Up to 1.3 billion pre-listing SpaceX shares become eligible for sale today, after the stock jumped 7.79% yesterday.

• 🇯🇵 Asia sells AI stocks: The Nikkei fell 2.65% and the Kospi 3.52%, and Lam Research dropped 7.41% after hours despite beating forecasts.

• 🏦 Barclays adds a buyback: Pre-tax profit rose 12% to £2.3 billion in the third quarter, and Barclays announced a £500 million buyback.

• 🪙 Solana’s upgrade goes live: Alpenglow switched on yesterday, cutting the time for a transaction to become final from about 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds.

• 🧪 EQT buys Qiagen: EQT agreed to buy the diagnostics group for €46.50 a share in cash, about €9.6 billion.

• 📈 Silver tests $55: Chart of the Day covers $54.74, $49.78 and $61.11, the levels I am watching for a double bottom.

🧠 One Big Thing

Meta spent $34.91 billion in 3 months on its AI build, $2.12 billion more than its business brought in. Revenue still grew 26%, and the shares rose after hours. Tesla went the other way. It cut this year’s spending plan to about $20 billion, produced $1.53 billion of cash, and its shares fell. Overnight, Asia sold AI and chip stocks, with the Kospi down 3.52% and Nasdaq futures lower. The AI trade now turns on what the biggest buyers spend in 2027. Meta says that figure comes with its next results.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

-$2.12 billion

Meta’s free cash flow in the third quarter was minus $2.12 billion: it spent $34.91 billion on capital projects against $32.79 billion of cash from operations, while revenue rose 26%.

✅ 5 Things to Know

📱 Meta’s AI bill now runs ahead of its cash

Minus $2.12 billion. That was Meta’s free cash flow in the third quarter, the money left after capital spending, the company said after the US close yesterday. Meta spent $34.91 billion on capital projects and brought in $32.79 billion of cash from its operations. Revenue still beat. It rose 26% to $64.6 billion, against about $63.3 billion expected, and Meta guided $73 billion to $76 billion for the fourth quarter. Fortune

Earnings were $3.83 a share after a $9.89 billion legal charge for its settlement with 52 US states over teen mental health. Without the charge they were $7.40. The operating margin fell to 20% from 40% a year earlier, and staff numbers fell 15% to 66,775. Meta narrowed its 2026 spending range to $135 billion to $145 billion, from $130 billion to $145 billion. Separately, a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion over privacy violations yesterday, and Meta plans to appeal. Meta

So what about 2027? Meta gave no spending figure. “We are quite early in developing our budget and capacity plans for next year,” finance chief Susan Li said on the call, with numbers due at the fourth quarter results. Meta also plans a new class of non-voting shares, one for every share held, from 19 January 2027. It expects the change to work like a 2-for-1 split. The shares closed at $697.43 and traded up to 3.79% higher after hours. Investing.com

🚗 Tesla cuts its 2026 spending plan to $20 billion

“We are revising our CapEx guidance to be approximately $20 billion for the current year.” That was Tesla finance chief Vaibhav Taneja on the call yesterday, down from more than $25 billion before. Tesla produced $1.53 billion of free cash flow in the third quarter, against a $4.92 billion outflow analysts expected. It spent $4.73 billion where $7.96 billion was forecast. Revenue was $28.05 billion, roughly flat on a year earlier, and adjusted earnings were $0.48 a share against $0.45 expected. Yahoo Finance

The shares still slipped. They closed up 3.41% at $386.47 yesterday, then traded at $378.57 after hours, down 2.04%. Tesla said its Robotaxi service is targeted to launch in Dallas next month, with unsupervised driving on customer cars around the second quarter of 2027. It has secured up to $30 billion of borrowing capacity and plans no draws this year. On a SpaceX merger, Elon Musk added nothing to what he said on SpaceX’s call on Tuesday. Investing.com

🛢️ Brent nears $112 as Iran claims 7 tankers hit

Iran said 7 oil tankers were on fire or damaged in the Strait of Hormuz overnight, the Associated Press reported early today. UK Maritime Trade Operations, the Royal Navy’s shipping reporting centre, had not confirmed it. Brent crude rose 2.59% to $111.64 by 7:26am UK, which is 2:26am in New York. Yesterday it settled just 3 cents higher, at $108.82. WTI settled at $97.15 and climbed to $99.39 this morning, after US crude stocks fell 3.06 million barrels last week. AP Outlook India

Are Washington and Tehran talking? They give opposite answers. Donald Trump said yesterday “we’re not negotiating”, and posted that there would be no attack on Iran before the 3 November midterms. Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi says indirect talks continue through Pakistan and Qatar. In Saudi Arabia, a person was killed at Dammam airport yesterday and 2 more in a drone attack on an oilfield, and the US ordered some diplomats out of the country. Nation Thailand

🚀 SpaceX’s biggest lock-up ends after a 7.79% jump

Who can sell SpaceX shares from today? Holders of up to 1.3 billion shares bought before the listing. Those shares become eligible for sale today, Opening Bell Daily and VT Markets reported. At yesterday’s close of $159.31, those shares are worth about $207 billion. The stock rose 7.79% yesterday, the first full session after SpaceX’s first profit as a listed company, then traded at $156.44 overnight, down 1.80%. Elon Musk’s own shares stay locked until 12 June 2027, and about 798 million more come free on 8 December. Yahoo Finance VT Markets

Does an unlock push the price down? On the earlier SpaceX unlock days tracked in the 20 October Cheat Sheet, the shares moved +6.14%, -4.05%, -3.86%, -0.22% and +1.25%. That is an average of -0.15%. Academic work by Field and Hanka put the average move around US lock-up expiries at about -1.5%. The stock now sits 18% above its $135 listing price, so most early holders are sitting on gains. Opening Bell Daily

🇯🇵 Tokyo, Seoul and Hong Kong sell AI stocks

Asian markets sold off today, led by AI and chip stocks. The Nikkei fell 2.65% to 62,907.84, the Kospi 3.52% and the Hang Seng 3.12%. Lenovo and chipmaker Hua Hong fell about 7% in Hong Kong, and Tokyo Electron, SoftBank, Samsung and SK Hynix all came under pressure. The Bank of Korea held its rate at 3.00% by a 7-0 vote, after rises in July and August. Analytics Insight SBS

In the US, chip equipment maker Lam Research beat forecasts after the close yesterday. Revenue was $8.22 billion against $8.15 billion expected, and it guided $8.2 billion to $9 billion for next quarter. The shares fell 7.41% after hours, to $241.48. Nasdaq-100 futures were down 1.33% at 7:08am UK, which is 2:08am in New York, and S&P 500 futures were down 0.69%. Yesterday the S&P 500 closed up 0.58% at 7,757.17. Benzinga Benzinga

Stories You Might Have Missed

Read more

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🚀 SpaceX beats and guides: Revenue of $14.6 billion beat forecasts, and SpaceX guided $33 billion to $37 billion for next quarter.

• 🇬🇧 UK inflation hits 3.5%: Petrol at 169.5p pushed inflation above forecasts, and traders now price a 98% chance of a November rate rise.

• 🎬 Netflix cuts its ad forecast: Netflix beat on earnings, cut 2026 ad revenue to about $2.7 billion, and fell 4% after hours.

• 📱 Meta and Tesla report: Both fell after their last results, and options price moves of 5% to 7.5% after the close.

• 🔍 Meta and Tesla’s $228 billion evening: The Cheat Sheet covers what is expected, the move priced in, and why spending decides both reactions.

• 🛢️ Oil swings on Saudi attacks: Brent hit $111.99, closed lower, then climbed back above $110 as attack claims spread beyond Hormuz.

• 🇰🇷 Seoul bounces 3.29%: The Kospi rebounded to 5,735.66, and Elice, down 32% on its debut, rose by its daily limit.

• 🏛️ UK debt tops £3 trillion: Public sector net debt passed £3 trillion for the first time, and September borrowing came in at £24.5 billion.

• 🚗 GM slides on its guide: GM beat on earnings, guided below forecasts, and closed 6.84% lower despite a new $20 billion buyback.

• 🪙 Solana’s big upgrade: Solana switches to Alpenglow on Wednesday, aiming to cut finality from about 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds.

• 📈 Joby back at its lows: Chart of the Day covers $4.65, $3.80 and $3.11, my 3 levels on a very high-risk name.

🧠 One Big Thing

UK inflation rose to 3.5% in September, above the 3.4% forecast, and petrol at 169.5p a litre did most of the work. Services inflation, the part the Bank of England watches most closely, rose to 3.7%. Traders now put a 98% chance on a rate rise to 4% on 5 November. That rise lands a week after the Budget, and the same morning showed UK public debt passing £3 trillion for the first time. Money in Britain is getting dearer while the government borrows more. Meta’s spending plan arrives after the US close.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

169.5p

✅ 5 Things to Know

🚀 SpaceX beats, then gives its first revenue forecast

SpaceX beat on almost every line. Revenue rose 161% to $14.6 billion in the third quarter, against $12.89 billion expected, the company said after the US close on Tuesday 20 October. Net income was $4.4 billion, its first profit as a listed company, against a $1.1 billion loss a year earlier. About $1.4 billion of that came from outside the business, other income and a tax benefit, so operating profit was $2.8 billion. Capital spending was $19.59 billion, in line with the $19.61 billion forecast. The spending shock that took the shares down 13.61% in August did not repeat. Axios

The AI business did most of the work. SpaceX now calls it Super Intelligence. Revenue was $7.56 billion, against about $6.4 billion expected, and it swung to a $431 million operating profit from a $1.26 billion loss in the second quarter. Cursor, the coding company SpaceX bought on 14 August, added $608 million. Without it, AI revenue was still about $6.95 billion, above forecasts. Starlink grew 69% on the year to $5.25 billion. Subscribers reached 13.6 million, at the low end of forecasts, and revenue per subscriber rose to $69 a month. ABC News

Then came the first revenue forecast SpaceX has ever given. It expects first quarter 2027 revenue of $33 billion to $37 billion, more than double the third quarter, and fourth quarter capital spending of $35 billion to $40 billion, nearly double again. The backlog of signed work rose to $63 billion from $47.5 billion, with about $42 billion due within a year. Cash fell about $10 billion in the quarter, to about $89.9 billion. On the call, Elon Musk said SpaceX “could rent out our compute several times over if we said yes to everyone”, and that contract renewals are coming back at higher prices. Investing.com

Musk also confirmed that SpaceX and Tesla have both set up special committees of independent directors to look at a merger. “The special committees have not reached agreement on the terms of any transaction. And obviously, there’s no guarantee that they will,” he said. Tesla’s side would need the backing of 50% of all its shares, which he called “quite a high hurdle”. The shares closed at $147.79 and rose 8% to $159.40 in early after-hours trading, near the 7.12% move options had priced. Tesla reports after the US close on Wednesday, and about 1.3 billion more SpaceX shares come free from lock-up on Thursday 22 October. The Motley Fool

🇬🇧 UK inflation hits 3.5% as petrol tops 169p

3.5%. That was UK inflation in September, up from 3.1% in August and above the 3.4% economists expected, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday 21 October. Prices rose 0.4% in the month. Fuel did most of the work. Motor fuel prices were 29.8% higher than a year earlier. Petrol averaged 169.5p a litre, up 8.2p in a month and the highest since August 2022. Diesel rose 10.7p to 192.5p. Core inflation, which strips out energy, food, alcohol and tobacco, rose to 2.8% from 2.6%. ONS

Services inflation is the figure the Bank of England watches most closely, and it rose to 3.7% from 3.4%. Traders now see a 98% chance that the Bank raises Bank Rate to 4% from 3.75% on 5 November, BigGo Finance reported, with most also expecting another quarter-point rise in December. The pound barely moved. “Market expectation of a November increase is now nearing 100%,” said Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at AJ Bell. The Budget comes first, on 28 October. BigGo Finance Euronews

🎬 Netflix beat, then cut its ad forecast

“We are currently a bit behind our aggressive target for the year.” That was Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on advertising, after the company cut its 2026 ad revenue forecast to about $2.7 billion from about $3 billion on Tuesday 20 October. The quarter itself beat. Earnings were $0.87 a share against $0.82 expected, on revenue of $12.87 billion. The operating margin was 34.6% against Netflix’s own 33.2% forecast, which the company put mainly down to the timing of expenses. TheWrap

The guide disappointed. Netflix forecast fourth quarter revenue of $13.44 billion, short of the $13.5 billion Wall Street expected, Stocktwits reported. It is cutting about 6% of its staff, around 1,000 roles, its largest cut since 2022, and content chief Bela Bajaria is leaving, replaced by Peter Rice. The shares closed at $68.69, then traded at $65.97 at 4:20pm New York time, which is 9:20pm UK, down 4%. Stocktwits StockTitan

📱 Meta and Tesla report after the US close

Meta and Tesla report after the US close on Wednesday 21 October. Meta’s call is at 4:30pm New York time, which is 9:30pm UK, and Tesla’s follows an hour later, at 10:30pm UK. Both fell after their last results: Tesla dropped 12.7% in July, and Meta about 8%. Options are priced for a move of 5.9% to 7.3% either way in Meta, and 5.1% to 7.5% in Tesla. Everything to watch is in today’s Deep Dive below. MarketBeat

🛢️ Oil swings as attack claims spread past Hormuz

Brent crude hit $111.99 on Tuesday 20 October, its highest since May, and still closed lower. The Houthis claimed attacks on a Saudi Aramco site at Yanbu and on the Shaybah oilfield, then talk of a US-Iran deal pulled the price back. Brent settled at $108.79, down 0.69%. By 4:50am UK on Wednesday it was back at $110.38, up 1.5%, after American Petroleum Institute data showed US crude stocks fell 4.9 million barrels last week. FinanceFeeds Business Recorder

None of the Houthi claims has been independently confirmed, and neither has Iran’s report of mines setting 2 tankers alight. Kpler counted at least 18 ships attacked in 2 weeks, and LSEG said Iran is now targeting vessels as far south as the Gulf of Oman. Iran’s president met Pakistan’s army chief in Tehran, and Iranian outlet Nournews reported that Iran told Pakistan there would be no talks with Washington until its demands are met. “Any deal is still very distant,” said Suvro Sarkar of DBS. Official US stock data follows at 3:30pm UK, 10:30am in New York. Sunday Guardian Business Recorder

Stories You Might Have Missed

🇰🇷 Seoul bounces 3.29% and Elice hits its daily limit

The Kospi rose 3.29% to 5,735.66 on Wednesday 21 October, a day after falling 3.73%. Samsung Electronics gained 5.67% and SK Hynix 5.81%. A buy-side sidecar, which pauses programme trading after a sharp jump in futures, fired for the first time since 20 August. Foreigners bought a net 658 billion won of shares, while retail investors sold about 1.13 trillion won. Analysts pointed to SpaceX’s AI revenue. Elice, the AI listing that fell 32.04% on its Tuesday debut, rose 29.92% to 79,900 won, its daily limit. Hankook Ilbo Financial News

🏛️ UK public debt passes £3 trillion

UK public sector net debt passed £3 trillion for the first time at the end of September, the ONS said on Wednesday 21 October, equal to 94% of GDP. The government borrowed £24.5 billion in September, £1.8 billion more than a year earlier and more than markets expected. Borrowing from April to September reached £97.8 billion. That is £6 billion above the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast, a week before the 28 October Budget. Euronews

🚗 GM beat forecasts and its shares still fell 6.84%

General Motors earned an adjusted $3.70 a share in the third quarter, against $3.63 expected, and revenue of about $50 billion also beat, Benzinga reported on Tuesday 20 October. Its full-year guide of $12.75 to $13.75 a share put the midpoint below the $13.41 analysts expected. The company also announced a new $20 billion buyback. At midday the shares were down 7.6%, on course for their worst day since July 2025. They closed 6.84% lower, on a day when health care stocks hit a record and the Dow rose 1.02% to 52,495.88. Benzinga CappNotes

🪙 Solana switches to Alpenglow

Solana’s network is scheduled to switch to a new system called Alpenglow on Wednesday 21 October, at about 3:50pm UK, which is 10:50am in New York, developer Anza said. Alpenglow aims to cut the time it takes for a transaction to become final from about 12.8 seconds to about 150 milliseconds. The switch needs validators holding 82% of staked SOL to be running the new software. Bitcoin traded near $82,708 on Wednesday morning, after US spot bitcoin ETFs took in $526.7 million on Monday. Solana Compass CryptoTicker

🔍 Deep Dive - The $228 Billion Evening: Tesla and Meta Earnings Cheat Sheet

Meta’s call is at 9:30pm UK, 4:30pm ET. Tesla’s follows at 10:30pm UK, 5:30pm ET.

Revenue is the least uncertain number for both. Tesla’s deliveries are already public, and Meta’s forecast sits $580 million below the top of its own guidance. I think the reaction comes from spending: Tesla’s cash burn and how it pays for capital spending above $25 billion this year, and Meta’s first word on 2027, where forecasters already have about $193 billion pencilled in.

What each number is expected to be. The move options are priced for, about $90.7 billion of Tesla’s value and $137 billion of Meta’s. What would break that band, the 4 things to watch at each company, why Meta’s profit forecasts run from $3.79 to $6.76, and the SpaceX merger question.

It is attached below. Have a read before the print.

Read more

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🛢️ Brent back above $110: Monday’s waiver dip lasted a single session, and Brent traded at $110.48 on Tuesday as Hormuz talks continued.

• 🇰🇷 AI listing drops 30%: Korea’s Elice was 408 times oversubscribed, then fell 30% on its debut as the Kospi sank 3.73%.

• 🇬🇧 UK jobless rate falls: Unemployment fell to 4.7% against forecasts of a rise, and vacancies dropped below 700,000 for the first time since 2021.

• 🎬 Netflix and SpaceX report: Netflix has fallen after 5 of its last 6 results, and options imply a 7.3% move either way.

• 🪙 Bitcoin funds’ best day: BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF took in $665.16 million, its best day in a year, and bitcoin still fell below $82,000.

• 🇫🇷 Curfews in Paris: At least 3,000 French businesses were damaged or looted, and parliament votes on budget revenue before Moody’s reports Friday.

• 🏭 ABB’s record orders: ABB’s orders jumped 40% to a record $12 billion, and the shares still fell more than 4%.

• 🥇 Gold slips on yields: Gold fell about 0.6% to $4,120 as the US 10-year yield climbed to 5.14%.

• 🔍 SpaceX’s $128 billion evening: The Cheat Sheet covers what is expected, the implied move, and the 1.3 billion shares freed after the print.

• 📈 Below $150, I am watching $135: Chart of the Day covers the $150 line, the $135 target below, and $170 above if earnings lift it.

🧠 One Big Thing

Oil is back above $110, and Monday’s dip on the Russia waiver lasted a single session. Brent traded at $110.48 on Tuesday morning, around a 5-month high. The US 10-year Treasury yield closed Monday at 5.14%. Those 2 numbers make money and energy dearer for everyone, and Tuesday’s moves show it: Seoul fell 3.73%, gold slipped, and bitcoin fell even after its funds had their best day in a year. What would change the picture? A deal on Hormuz, and mediators say one could be announced this week. UK inflation lands on Wednesday morning.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

691,000

UK job vacancies fell to 691,000 in the 3 months to September, below 700,000 for the first time since 2021, in the same release that showed unemployment falling to 4.7%.

✅ 5 Things to Know

🛢️ Brent climbs back above $110 after the waiver dip

Brent crude rose 0.9% to $110.48 a barrel in London trading on Tuesday 20 October, around its highest level in 5 months. Monday’s fall on the Russia sanctions waiver did not hold into the close. Brent settled just 0.3% lower at $109.55 on Monday. US crude moved the other way. WTI gained 2.2% to settle at $103.66, its highest close since 15 September. Gas felt it too. Asian LNG prices rose to $30.4 per million British thermal units on Monday, the highest since December 2022. MarketScreener The Nation

So what would bring it down? A deal on the strait. Qatar and Pakistan are mediating between Washington and Tehran, and The New Arab reported that a breakthrough is expected to be announced this week. Iran’s Abbas Araghchi said Iran would reopen Hormuz within 7 days if the US lifts its blockade of Iranian ports and eases limits on Iranian oil exports. The US wants deep cuts to Iran’s uranium enrichment. ING said the market is “pricing in a significant risk premium”. The New Arab Euronews

🇰🇷 Korean AI listing loses 30% as Seoul sinks

408 times. That was how heavily retail investors oversubscribed Elice, a Korean company that started in AI education and has moved into GPU cloud services and data centres. It priced its listing at 90,500 won, the top of its range, raising about 201.1 billion won. Within half an hour of its Kosdaq debut on Tuesday 20 October, the shares were at 63,000 won, down 30.39%. Seoul Economic Daily

The wider market fell with it. The Kospi closed 3.73% lower at 5,552.74, giving back all of Monday’s rebound. Foreigners sold a net 530 billion won of shares and institutions 1 trillion won. Retail investors bought about 898 billion won. SK Hynix fell 4.23% and Samsung Electronics 2.98%. Analysts at Daishin and Mirae pointed to doubts over whether AI spending pays off, along with the unrest in France. Japan’s Nikkei fell 1.3%. Aju Press Korea JoongAng Daily

The private market is asking for more. Reuters reported on 19 October that OpenAI is speeding up a fundraising that could value it above $1.4 trillion, ahead of Anthropic’s expected listing in mid-November. Nscale, which lost Microsoft from its planned Essex site at the weekend, is seeking about $30 billion in its US listing. Some investors told Bloomberg that $16 billion to $19 billion would attract more buyers. Reuters via TradingView GuruFocus

🇬🇧 UK unemployment fell, and job vacancies dropped below 700,000

Some economists expected UK unemployment to rise to 5%. It fell to 4.7%. The Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday 20 October that the rate dropped 0.1 percentage points in the 3 months to August. Regular pay grew 3.7% on the year, just above the 3.6% forecast in a Reuters poll. Pay including bonuses also grew 3.7%, down from 3.9%. Job vacancies fell 21,000 to 691,000 in the 3 months to September, below 700,000 for the first time since 2021. ONS Reuters via Yahoo Finance

Sterling rose about 0.3% to about $1.33. Investors now expect the Bank of England to raise Bank Rate to 4% from 3.75% on 5 November, a week after the 28 October Budget. Inflation comes next. September CPI is out at 7am UK on Wednesday, which is 2am in New York, and a Reuters poll expects 3.4% after 3.1%. “The continued fall in vacancies is a flashing red warning light for the labour market,” said Suren Thiru of the ICAEW. Reuters via Yahoo Finance FXStreet

🎬 Netflix and SpaceX report after the US close

Netflix shares have fallen after 5 of its last 6 results. The company reports third quarter numbers after the US close on Tuesday 20 October, at about 9pm UK, which is 4pm in New York. Forecasts point to earnings of $0.82 a share on revenue of $12.87 billion, up 11.8% on the year. Options imply a move of about 7.3% either way. The shares traded near $69.83 on Monday afternoon, and BMO cut its price target to $125 from $135. Investing.com

SpaceX reports the same evening, with a webcast at 9:30pm UK, 4:30pm in New York. There is more on SpaceX in today’s Deep Dive.

🪙 Bitcoin funds’ best day in a year, and bitcoin fell

BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF took in $665.16 million on Monday 19 October, its biggest single day since 7 October 2025, The Block reported. US spot bitcoin ETFs took in $526.6 million in total, after losing $82.4 million on Friday. Ether funds went the other way, losing $103.3 million on their 4th straight day of outflows. Strategy said it bought 267 more bitcoin for about $22.1 million, taking its holdings to 848,517. The Block The Block

The price did not follow the money. Bitcoin touched $83,062 on Monday, then slipped to $81,678 as the US 10-year Treasury yield rose to 5.13% and the 30-year to 5.46%, Bloomingbit reported. It traded near $81,382 on Tuesday morning, down 1.6% on the day. Bloomingbit CryptoTicker

Stories You Might Have Missed

🇫🇷 Paris brings in curfews as France’s budget vote lands

At least 3,000 businesses were damaged or looted across France after Saturday’s protests, AP reported, and Paris police imposed overnight curfews around Place de la République and Les Halles. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez offered to resign, and President Macron refused. The National Assembly votes on Tuesday 20 October on the revenue section of the 2027 budget. The French 10-year yield eased to about 4.9% after surging on Monday. The gap over German debt held at 147 basis points, the widest since the euro debt crisis, before Moody’s reviews France’s rating on Friday 23 October. 1News via AP TradingView

🏭 ABB booked record orders and its shares fell

ABB’s orders jumped 40% to a record $12 billion in the third quarter, the Swiss engineering group said on Tuesday 20 October, and orders from data centres more than doubled. It raised its full-year outlook to sales growth in the low teens. Revenue rose 14% to $9.70 billion, just short of the $9.74 billion analysts expected. The shares fell more than 4% in early European trading. Reuters via AOL ad-hoc-news

🥇 Gold slipped as US yields climbed

Gold fell about 0.6% to $4,120.30 an ounce early on Tuesday 20 October, after closing Monday at $4,137.80, according to Kitco prices cited by FinanceFeeds. The US 10-year Treasury yield rose to 5.14% on Monday. Gold pays no interest, so a higher yield on government bonds raises the cost of holding it. CME FedWatch put the chance of the Fed holding rates on 28 October at about 82%, and the chance of a December rise at about 89%. FinanceFeeds

🔍 Deep Dive - The $128 Billion Evening: SpaceX Earnings Cheat Sheet

SpaceX reports after the US close, at about 9pm UK, which is 4pm in New York, with the webcast at 9:30pm UK. The revenue number is mostly known, because the AI hosting fees are public. The spending plan, and how SpaceX pays for it, is what took the shares down 13.61% in August, and I think it decides tonight too. The Cheat Sheet covers what every number is expected to be, the implied move and how it is worked out, the 5 things to watch, and every unlock so far, with about 1.3 billion more shares coming free 2 trading days after the print.

Click to open the full SpaceX Earnings Cheat Sheet PDF below.

Read more

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🛢️ Oil slips on Russia waiver: Brent fell 2.1% to $107.55 after Trump waived Russia sanctions 2 days before they started.

• 🇨🇳 China beats on growth: China grew 4.5% in the third quarter, and September retail sales rose 1.1%, the fastest since March.

• 🔌 Microsoft quits UK AI site: Microsoft walked away from Nscale’s £2 billion Essex data centre, which may not get grid power until the 2030s.

• 🚀 SpaceX’s first profit test: SpaceX reports on Tuesday, with forecasts of $12.89 billion in revenue and $19.61 billion of quarterly spending.

• 🇫🇷 France counts riot costs: 2,400 arrests, Carrefour down 2%, and French borrowing costs near their highest since 2002 before Moody’s reports Friday.

• 🏦 Barclays sees 2 Fed hikes: Barclays now expects the Fed to raise rates in both December and January after hot inflation readings.

• ♻️ EQT buys Cleanaway: EQT agreed to buy Australia’s Cleanaway for about A$9.3 billion, a 32.1% premium, and the shares jumped 20%.

• 🇰🇷 Kospi turns a 3% drop around: Seoul opened 3.17% lower and closed 1.76% higher at 5,768.01 as institutions bought.

• 🪙 Bitcoin ETFs keep bleeding: US bitcoin ETFs lost $82.4 million on Friday, with bitcoin near $82,769 on Monday morning.

• 📈 Bitcoin sits on its May highs: Chart of the Day covers the $82,000 line, and the $64,000 to $67,000 zone below if it breaks.

🎥 Sundays with Sensei

Every Sunday, premium members send in their chart requests and I go through them live. This week’s replay covered 17 stocks, including Netflix and Lam Research, which both report results this week. We also discussed quantum stocks and diversification, and shared an update on the gold and silver auctions. The replay link is in the premium section below.

🧠 One Big Thing

Oil came off its 5-month high on Monday, and the reason came from Washington. Brent slipped 2.1% to $107.55 after President Trump waived the Russia sanctions that were due to start on 18 October. The Gulf has not calmed down. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said 2 more tankers hit mines over the weekend. So why did oil fall? More Russian fuel can now reach buyers without a penalty. The Fed stays silent until the day after its 28 October decision, so companies carry the week. SpaceX and Netflix report on Tuesday, Meta and Tesla on Wednesday.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

-20.6%

✅ 5 Things to Know

🛢️ Washington waived its own Russia sanctions and oil slipped

Brent crude fell 2.1% to $107.55 a barrel by late morning UK on Monday 19 October. On Friday it had settled at its highest since 19 May, after briefly touching $110. The trigger came from Washington. On Friday 16 October, President Trump signed an order waiving the sanctions and tariffs in the Graham Act, 2 days before they were due to start on 18 October. The law required tariffs of up to 500% on Russian goods, tariffs of up to 100% on the biggest buyers of Russian oil and gas, and sanctions on foreign banks dealing with Russia’s state banks. ABC News AP via CP24

Why does that move oil? The penalties would have hit anyone buying Russian fuel. With them waived, more Russian barrels can reach the market. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the president would take up to 60 days to assess the economic impact. Trump’s diesel deal with Moscow starts at about 2.3 million barrels this month and rises to about 7.6 million a month. Republican senator Thom Tillis called the waiver “beyond irresponsible”. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said 2 tankers caught fire in Hormuz after hitting mines over the weekend, a claim not independently confirmed. TBS via Reuters

🇨🇳 China’s shoppers had their best month since March

4.5%. That was China’s growth on the year in the third quarter, the statistics bureau said on Monday 19 October. Forecasts were 4.4%, and the second quarter was 4.3%. Retail sales rose 1.1% in September against 0.5% expected, the fastest since March. Industrial output rose 5.5%, its strongest in 6 months. Growth for the first 9 months came to 4.6%, inside Beijing’s target of 4.5% to 5%. Seoul Economic Daily

Property is still shrinking. Investment in property development fell 20.6% in the first 9 months, and fixed asset investment fell 7.2%. Exports did the heavy lifting, with the trade surplus on course to beat last year’s record. “The key macroeconomic message is that China’s economy is still supply- and production-side driven,” said Yuhan Zhang, principal economist at The Conference Board’s China Center. The Australian dollar, often traded as a stand-in for China, rose 0.36% to 69.71 US cents. Hong Kong was shut for a holiday. TBS via Reuters

🔌 Microsoft walked away from the UK’s biggest AI data centre

Microsoft has pulled out of Nscale’s planned data centre at Loughton in Essex, billed as the UK’s largest AI site, The Telegraph reported on Sunday 18 October. Nscale had pledged £2 billion to build it. Authorities have told the company not to expect a grid connection until the 2030s. “Our relationship with Microsoft remains strong and long-term, and this unfortunate London-wide grid issue has no impact on our other contracts,” an Nscale spokesman said. Microsoft did not comment. The Next Web

The timing is awkward for Nscale. It is preparing a New York listing that could raise up to $3 billion as soon as this month, and Microsoft and Anthropic make up about 85% of its contracts. It lost $1 billion on revenue of $141 million in the first half, mostly from non-cash charges. The news follows the longest losing streak for US chipmakers since 2008, and a 4.48% fall in the Nasdaq last week, its worst week since June. Nasdaq 100 futures were up 1.3% early on Monday. City AM FinancialJuice

🚀 SpaceX faces its first profit test as a listed company

SpaceX reports third quarter results after the US close on Tuesday 20 October, with a webcast at 9:30pm UK, which is 4:30pm in New York. Forecasts compiled by Bloomberg point to revenue of $12.89 billion and adjusted earnings of about $0.15 a share. That would be its first profitable quarter since it listed. The shares closed at $146.03 on Friday, 15.1% below their 6 October close and about 28% under their June record. Options imply a move of about 6.8% either way on the day. Pepperstone Teslarati

Spending is the figure that settles the debate. Forecasts put capital spending at $19.61 billion for the quarter, up from $18.37 billion, and free cash flow at minus $11.6 billion. SpaceX also carries a $20 billion bridge loan due in September 2027. About 1.3 billion shares become eligible for sale around these results, ahead of a larger lock-up expiry on 8 December. Netflix reports the same evening. Pepperstone

🇫🇷 France’s riots hit Carrefour as bond investors wait for Moody’s

About 550,000 people marched across France on Saturday 17 October against the rising cost of living, by the authorities’ count. The day ended in looting in Paris, Lyon, Marseille and Bordeaux. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said 2,400 people were arrested. Carrefour said 50 of its stores were targeted, and its shares fell more than 2% at Monday’s open. By late morning the CAC 40 was down 1.3% at 7,854.31, leading Europe’s losses. The FTSE 100 fell 0.8% and Germany’s DAX 1%. Euronews AP via CP24

Bond investors had already put a price on France’s troubles. The 10-year French government bond yield stood at 4.86%, after touching its highest since 2002 earlier this month. The gap over German debt was 143.5 basis points, after topping 150 in early October, the widest since the euro debt crisis. Moody’s publishes its review of France’s Aa3 rating after the European close on Friday 23 October, and a divided parliament is still debating the 2027 budget. Unions have called a national strike for 5 November. Euronews

Stories You Might Have Missed

🏦 Barclays now expects 2 more Fed rate rises

Barclays said on Friday 16 October that it expects the Fed to raise rates by 0.25 percentage points in both December and January, after stronger-than-expected inflation readings. It had previously expected a December rise only. US industrial production rose 0.7% in September against 0.4% forecast, and factories ran at 76.9% of capacity, the highest since December 2023. The Fed decides on 28 October and is in its quiet period until the day after, so officials cannot respond to the call. Reuters via TradingView Saxo

♻️ EQT agreed to buy Cleanaway for A$9.3 billion

Swedish investor EQT agreed on Sunday 18 October to buy Cleanaway Waste Management for 309.5 Australian cents a share in cash, valuing the Australian waste company at about A$9.3 billion including debt. That is a 32.1% premium to the A$2.37 close on 12 August, the last full day before Cleanaway first said it was in talks. The shares jumped about 20% to A$2.96 in early Sydney trade, still below the offer price. The board backs the deal, subject to an independent expert’s report, with a shareholder vote before the end of February 2027 and completion targeted by the end of March. EQT Investing.com

🇰🇷 The Kospi turned a 3% drop into a 1.76% gain

Seoul’s Kospi opened 3.17% lower on Monday 19 October and fell as far as 5,488.41, then reversed to close 1.76% higher at 5,768.01. Institutions bought a net 574.66 billion won, about $432 million, of shares. Retail investors sold a net 1.09 trillion won, and foreigners were small net sellers. Samsung Electronics rose 1.16% and SK Hynix 0.39%. Hyundai Motor rose 4.49%. Korea JoongAng Daily

🪙 Bitcoin ETFs lost $82.4 million on Friday

US spot bitcoin ETFs lost a net $82.4 million on Friday 16 October, Farside data showed, with BlackRock’s IBIT accounting for $71.8 million of it. That took the week’s outflow to about $228.4 million. Ether funds lost more, about $320.1 million over the same week. Bitcoin traded at $82,769 early on Monday, 1.6% above Friday’s close of $81,501, after a weekend that saw about a third of normal trading volume. FinanceFeeds CryptoTicker

📈 Chart of the Day - Bitcoin (BTCUSD)

Read more

This Week

XRP ends the week around $1.27, down 10%. It traded between $1.42 on Monday and $1.26 at the weekend. It fell harder than bitcoin too, losing 7% against it. Crypto as a whole shed 3.5% to $2.78 trillion. Bitcoin now holds 58.5% of it. The Sensei Fear and Greed reads 38 for crypto. That is Fear.

The shape of the week came from what happened under the price. A floor that had held twice gave way on Wednesday. Coins piled onto exchanges, and the XRP funds stopped buying. The lead story below lays out the evidence that a bigger move is building, and which way it could break.

Ripple spent the same week signing banks and brokers to RLUSD, from Standard Chartered in Dubai to Cross River in New Jersey. And Evernorth finished its first week on Nasdaq with a plan to put its XRP to work.

The Consensus

• 🌀 XRP’s floor at $1.31 gave way as coins moved onto exchanges and the ETF buyers went quiet.

• 🏛️ RLUSD’s bank week signed up Standard Chartered and Cross River. None of the deals needs anyone to hold XRP.

• 🏦 Evernorth’s first Nasdaq week ended at $15.45 a share, with a plan to start deploying its XRP this quarter.

The Numbers

The Chart Watch

The Ripple Effect

🌀 XRP Lost $1.31. Now Everything Points to a Big Move

For a week, $1.31 was the line XRP would not cross. Buyers stepped in there on Thursday 8 October. They stepped in again on Tuesday 13 October. Then came Wednesday. US inflation came in hotter than forecast, at 3.7% against 3.6%, and the line gave way (CoinDesk). By the weekend XRP was at its lowest since the CLARITY Act vote failed in mid-September.

So who was selling? The first clues sit on the exchanges. A coin has to be moved onto an exchange before it can be sold, which makes deposits an early warning. Between 13 and 15 October, tracked exchange wallets took in about 84 million XRP. Binance alone took 54.61 million over the week. The biggest holders were moving too. Large wallets sent 1.67 billion XRP to Binance over 30 days, the most in 7 months on CryptoQuant’s data. A deposit is still not a sale. Those 84 million coins are about 0.4% of the 22 billion already sitting in exchange wallets (CryptoSlate, Bitcoin.com News).

The order books show the selling itself. One gauge tallies trades where buyers paid up against trades where sellers gave way. Across the big exchanges it has run about $2 billion further into the red since 23 September. Sellers have been in charge for most of a month (TokenPost).

The steadiest buyer of the past 3 months went quiet at the same time. US spot XRP funds had taken money in for 13 straight weeks. This week they lost $1.84 million. Friday alone saw $2.47 million leave Canary’s fund. It is a rounding error against roughly $1.8 billion put in since launch. The size is small. The streak was the point.

The ledger went quiet as well. Payments on the XRP Ledger fell to 119.5 million XRP on Saturday 17 October. That was down 72% in a day, and far below the 30-day average of 629.3 million. Weekends are always slower, so one day proves little on its own.

Is the whole market turning over? Bitcoin sits around $82,000. That is about 35% below its record of roughly $126,000, set in October 2025. It briefly slipped under $80,000 on Thursday, and US bitcoin funds lost $228.6 million over the week. The on-chain firms read it as a pullback inside a recovery. Glassnode says this year’s bear market never closed below the realised price, the average price at which every bitcoin last moved. It says the cycle “looks early in a recovery”, and called the selling near $80,000 a possible local bottom. The ceiling is close by. Glassnode puts the average cost of the past year’s buyers at about $88,000 (Glassnode).

Then there is oil. Brent closed on Friday at $109.86, its highest since May, and up 4.9% on the week. The world is spending its backup barrels to hold it there. The IEA agreed this week to speed up about 100 million barrels of emergency releases. That comes on top of roughly 330 million already let go since March, under the largest stock release on record. The IEA says oil held in tanks on land is at its lowest since at least 2016. Dearer fuel feeds inflation, and inflation is what keeps a rate rise on the table.

Now the other side. The futures market has been quietly clearing itself out. Open interest, the value of futures bets still open, is down 26.5% on Binance and Bybit since 23 September. Less borrowed money means fewer traders who can be forced to sell. The traders who remain still lean one way. On Binance, 2.7 accounts are betting on a rise for every 1 betting on a fall. Crowded bets like that can unwind fast in either direction (Bitcoin.com News).

The price has gone quiet too. The average daily range is down to about 6 cents, and XRP is leaning on its lower Bollinger Band at $1.26. Those bands mark how far price normally strays from its recent average. My own read is in The Chart Watch above.

Which way does it break? The answer may come from the Fed. It raised rates in September for the first time since 2023, to a range of 3.75% to 4%. After the hot inflation figure, traders briefly put the odds of another rise on 28 October at about 50%. Fed chair Kevin Warsh then said “I don’t prejudge meetings”, and the odds fell back to between 15% and 30%.

The politics make October harder. The US midterm elections fall on 3 November, 6 days after the decision. UBS’s Simon Penn called an October rise “politically untenable”, and markets now lean towards December. The Fed last raised rates within a week of an election in November 2022. The decision comes on Wednesday 28 October at 2:00pm Eastern. That is 6:00pm in the UK.

🏛️ Standard Chartered, Cross River and DriveWealth Sign Up to RLUSD

A fintech that banks with Cross River can now send dollars and RLUSD through the same connection. Cross River announced it on Thursday 15 October, with RLUSD running on the XRP Ledger inside its core banking system. It is live only in a limited number of US states. No customers were named. “Businesses shouldn’t have to rely on several different providers to move money across the globe,” said Adam Goller, its head of fintech banking (Cross River).

Cross River’s deal capped a busy 4 days for Ripple.

Monday 12 October. Standard Chartered launched RLUSD custody on the XRP Ledger through its Dubai branch.

Wednesday 14 October. DriveWealth, which powers investing for more than 100 partners, agreed to settle in RLUSD in Europe first.

Wednesday 14 October. Meritz Securities became Ripple’s fourth Korean institution this year, starting with custody and tokenisation.

Thursday 15 October. Ripple Prime opened round-the-clock swaps on more than 100 markets, from stocks to gold, with RLUSD accepted as collateral.

Ripple Prime is the prime broker Ripple built out of its purchase of Hidden Road. The new swaps track perpetual futures listed on Hyperliquid, a crypto exchange, and trade around the clock. Virtu, a market maker, is one early client. “RWA swaps are where traditional and digital markets meet,” said Michael Higgins, Ripple Prime’s international chief executive. RWA stands for real-world assets, meaning stocks, metals and currencies brought onto crypto rails (Ripple).

Naureen Hassan, DriveWealth’s chief executive, explained why it wants RLUSD. “We’ve already enabled 24/5 trading; now we need the funding to match.” Standard Chartered also plans to make RLUSD usable as collateral at the trading venue LMAX. That plan still depends on “final documentation, successful testing” (Ripple, Ripple).

So what does XRP get? None of these deals needs anyone to hold it. The token’s direct link is the fee every XRP Ledger transaction burns, which starts at 10 drops. A drop is a millionth of an XRP. A million RLUSD payments would burn about 10 XRP (CryptoTicker).

RLUSD itself sits at $2.43 billion on CoinGecko, below its 4 October record of $2.5 billion. More than $1 billion of it lives on the XRP Ledger, according to Cross River’s release. No volumes have been disclosed for any of this week’s deals.

🏦 Evernorth’s First Week on Nasdaq, and a Job for 473 Million XRP

Read more

The Fed has gone silent. Its quiet period started on Saturday and runs until the day after the 28 October decision, so no official can talk the market up or down this week. That leaves the companies and the rest of the world to do the talking. Meta, Tesla, IBM, Texas Instruments, Lam Research and SAP all report on Wednesday after the close, hours after UK inflation lands that morning. Brent settled at $109.86 on Friday, its highest since May, and Friday’s flash PMIs give the first read on what that is doing to prices inside businesses.

Last Week:

US CPI (September) Prices rose 0.6% on the month and 3.7% on the year. Core, which strips out food and energy, rose 0.3% on the month and 2.6% on the year, up from 2.4%. Petrol jumped 9.1% and did more than half of the headline’s work. The S&P 500 fell 1.10% that day and CME FedWatch briefly put a 28 October rise at about 1 in 2. (BLS, Axios)

US PPI and Retail Sales (September) Wholesale prices rose 1.3% on the month and 6.3% on the year. Excluding food, energy and trade, the rise was 0.5% on the month and 5.0% on the year. Retail sales rose 0.8%, but the control group, the slice that feeds into GDP, rose just 0.1%. Energy made up more than 80% of the wholesale jump. The 10-year yield fell about 12 basis points that day. (BLS, Babypips)

The Big Banks Q3 JPMorgan earned $5.57 a share against forecasts of about $5.90, with costs up 12% and revenue up 8%, and it gave a first 2027 net interest income case of about $107 billion excluding markets. Goldman earned $17.01 on a 72% jump in equities trading to $6.44 billion. Bank of America took a $1.2 billion Treasury penalty, earned $0.91 a share and closed 4.76% lower on Wednesday. Citigroup guided fourth quarter markets revenue down about 20%. (TradingNews, Yahoo Finance, Citigroup)

TSMC Q3 Net income hit a record NT$763.1 billion, about $23.6 billion, up 69%, on revenue of $46.72 billion. The fourth quarter guide of $52.3 billion to $54.3 billion sat above the $50.48 billion consensus. The shares still fell as much as 5.1% in New York, in a week when the chip index fell for 8 straight days. (Investing.com, Techloy)

The setup: Fed Chair Kevin Warsh told the Bangkok audience “I don’t prejudge meetings” and said the world “has broadly conformed to our expectations”. October odds fell back below 1 in 5 after he spoke, with CME FedWatch at 17% for October and 89% for December on Friday, as reported by Yahoo Finance. The S&P 500 closed Friday at 7,659, down 1.95% on the week, and the Nasdaq fell 4.48%, its worst week since June. Brent settled at $109.86 after Iran said 2 tankers hit mines in Hormuz, which has not been independently confirmed. With the Fed silent, Wednesday’s results and Friday’s PMIs are the last big reads before 28 October. (Axios, Yahoo Finance, Investrade)

Week at a Glance

🔴 Meta, Tesla, IBM, Texas Instruments, Lam Research and SAP Q3 Results: Wednesday, After Close

🔴 UK CPI (September): Wednesday, 2:00 AM ET / 7:00 AM BST

🔴 US Flash PMIs (October): Friday, 9:45 AM ET / 2:45 PM BST

🔴 Netflix and SpaceX Q3 Results: Tuesday, After Close

🔴 China Q3 GDP: Sunday, 10:00 PM ET / Monday, 3:00 AM BST

🟠 GE Aerospace, RTX, GM and 3M Q3 Results: Tuesday, Before Open

🟠 UK Labour Market: Tuesday, 2:00 AM ET / 7:00 AM BST

🟠 Procter & Gamble, Lockheed Martin, Blackstone and Union Pacific Q3 Results: Thursday, Before Open

🟡 Solana Alpenglow Upgrade: Wednesday, 10:50 AM ET / 3:50 PM BST

MONDAY, October 19

Read more

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🏭 Wholesale prices jump 1.3%: US producer prices had their biggest monthly rise since March 2022, and over 80% of it was energy.

• 🏛️ Warsh gives nothing away: The Fed chair called AI the most consequential change of his lifetime and gave no signal for 28 October.

• 🇮🇩 Indonesia’s worst day since 1998: Shares fell about 11% after MSCI proposed dropping Indonesia from its emerging-market indexes.

• 🔌 CoreWeave’s default gauge hits record: Insurance against a CoreWeave default hit a record on Thursday, even as Nvidia’s boss defended the company.

• 🏦 UK banks slip on tax report: Lloyds fell 2.3% after a report that the 28 October budget will raise the tax on bank profits.

• 🇹🇼 Taiwan targets chip smuggling: Taiwan plans to make unlicensed AI chip shipments to China a crime, under its trade deal with the US.

• 🚗 Tesla’s Roadster takes flight: Tesla’s new Roadster hovered over parked cars using thrusters, with production promised for 2028 and no price yet.

• 🥤 KFC picks Coca-Cola: KFC’s 3,718 US restaurants will switch from PepsiCo to Coca-Cola by spring 2027, ending about 40 years.

• 🪙 Bitcoin ETF flows stall: US bitcoin ETFs took in just $5.06 million on Thursday, with bitcoin near $82,000 on Friday morning.

• 📈 Lululemon could drop to $83 first: Chart of the Day covers the $83.20 shelf below and the $119.04 and $164 levels above.

🧠 One Big Thing

Thursday brought the hottest US wholesale inflation figure since 2022, and bond yields fell anyway. Producer prices rose 1.3% in September, more than double the forecast. Over 80% of that rise was energy, which is the war. The pieces that feed the Fed’s own inflation gauge were calmer, apart from airfares. Fed chair Kevin Warsh then spoke in Bangkok overnight and gave nothing away on 28 October. So what is the Fed deciding? Whether fuel costs spread into everything else. The number that settles it, September PCE, lands on 29 October, the day after the decision.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

80%

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

🟢 Top Gainers

• : +17.61% SITE Centers Corp. jumped after its board declared a special cash distribution worth almost the entire share price, funded by asset sales including its stake in the Dividend Trust Portfolio joint venture. The shopping centre REIT also announced plans to voluntarily delist from the NYSE before 4 December.

• : +7.77% Regencell Bioscience Holdings extended a momentum run that has lifted the shares about 65% in a month, after Thursday’s 17% surge came on volume more than six times its 10-day average.

Losers

• No major losers today.

✅ 5 Things to Know

🏭 Producer prices jumped 1.3% and bond yields fell

US producer prices rose 1.3% in September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Thursday 15 October. Forecasts sat between 0.5% and 0.6%. That is the largest monthly rise since March 2022. On the year, prices were up 6.3%, the biggest increase since December 2022. Core producer prices, which strip out food and energy, rose 0.7% against 0.3% expected. Energy did most of the lifting. The BLS said over 80% of the rise came from energy, and petrol prices alone jumped 20.3%. Bureau of Labor Statistics

So why did bond yields fall on a number that hot? Traders looked inside it. The pieces that feed PCE, the Fed’s own inflation gauge, were milder than the headline, with airfares the one hot spot. Employ America nudged its estimate for September core PCE to 3.09% on the year. The 10-year Treasury yield fell about 10 basis points to 5.09%. Retail sales rose 0.8% against 0.3% expected, though the control group, the slice that feeds GDP, rose only 0.1%. The official PCE figure lands on 29 October, a day after the Fed decides. Employ America Investrade

Stocks made the same turn inside one session. At Thursday’s open the S&P 500 was down 0.49%, the Nasdaq 1.34% and the Russell 2000 of smaller companies 1.93%. By the close the S&P 500 was up 0.33% at 7,744.06, the Dow up 1.08% and the Russell 2000 up 1.38%. So what flipped it? 3 things landed during the day. Bond yields kept falling as traders digested how much of the number was fuel. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang defended CoreWeave, which took the edge off the chip sell-off. And money moved out of technology and energy and into almost everything else. TheStreet

🏛️ Warsh named AI as a price pressure and stayed quiet

“I don’t prejudge meetings.” That was Fed chair Kevin Warsh in Bangkok, speaking alongside IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva at 4:30am UK on Friday, which was 11:30pm New York on Thursday. He gave no hint on the 28 October decision. He called AI “probably the most consequential change to the U.S. and the global economy in my lifetime to this point”. He also named the surge in AI investment as one of the forces behind higher inflation, before it expands what the economy can produce over time. AP via WSLS

Warsh said central banks had tightened together in most places, “and that means there’s no free riders.” Traders had already pulled back their bets. The odds of an October rise fell from about 1 in 2 after Wednesday’s CPI to about 3 in 10 by Thursday’s close, Newsquawk reported. Reuters said markets still expect the Fed to wait until December after his comments. Fed officials enter their quiet period on Saturday 17 October, so there is no more guidance before the decision. Korea Times via Reuters Newsquawk

🇮🇩 Indonesia had its worst day since 1998

Indonesian shares fell about 11% on Friday 16 October, their steepest one-day drop since January 1998. Trading stopped for 30 minutes after an 8% fall at the open, Reuters reported. The trigger was MSCI, the company whose indexes decide what many global funds hold. It said Indonesia’s emerging-market status was “no longer appropriate” and opened a consultation on moving it to “Standalone Market” status. That would skip frontier status entirely and put Indonesia alongside Jamaica and Panama. Euronews

Why does a label matter this much? Funds that track MSCI’s emerging-market index hold what the index holds. If Indonesia leaves it, those funds have to sell. MSCI cited unclear shareholding structures and suspected coordinated trading. It said it expects to go ahead “unless the consultation identifies clear evidence of material improvements”, with a final decision due by the end of June 2027. The benchmark is down nearly 40% this year. The rupiah traded at 18,070 to the dollar, close to its record low of 18,190. MarketScreener via Reuters

🔌 CoreWeave’s default gauge hit a record as shares bounced

CoreWeave’s 5-year credit default swap hit a record 1,194.5 basis points on Thursday 15 October, according to ICE Data Services. A credit default swap works like insurance on a company’s debt. That price implied a more than 60% chance of default over 5 years. The shares went the other way. They fell as much as 9.5% early, then turned higher after Nvidia boss Jensen Huang spoke to Bloomberg in Stockholm. “CoreWeave’s strength is improving every day,” he said. “I’m optimistic. Their cost of capital is actually decreasing.” Nvidia owns about 10% of CoreWeave. Yahoo Finance via Investing.com

The shares closed 5.94% higher at $69.69, Bloomberg data showed, after a 15% fall to $65.78 on Wednesday. CoreWeave carries more than $51 billion of debt and obligations. The relief reached Seoul overnight. The Kospi rose 2.05% to 5,668.05 on Friday, its first gain in 8 sessions, a day after its 7.57% fall. Benzinga SBS

🏦 UK banks fell on a budget tax report

Lloyds fell 2.3% and NatWest 2.05% by 9:40am UK on Friday (4:40am New York), after The Guardian reported that Chancellor John Healey plans to raise taxes on banks in his 28 October budget. The likely tool is the bank surcharge, an extra 3% tax on bank profits that sits on top of corporation tax. Industry figures expect it to rise to 8%. Reversing earlier cuts to the surcharge would raise more than £2 billion a year. Investing.com

Healey told reporters in Bangkok that banks are “hardwired into the economic fabric of this country and our future prospects.” HSBC, NatWest, Barclays and Lloyds made £200 billion in pre-tax profit over the past 5 years. UK Finance and TheCityUK have written to Healey warning that banks could move staff and business abroad. Eurozone banks rose 0.9% in early trade, Reuters reported. The budget lands on 28 October, the same day as the Fed decision. AOL via Reuters

Stories You Might Have Missed

🇹🇼 Taiwan plans to make AI chip smuggling a crime

Taiwan plans to add AI servers and advanced chips to its list of controlled exports, Economic Affairs Minister Kung Ming-hsin told Bloomberg, in a report on Friday 16 October. Once the rules take effect, shipping restricted AI hardware to China without permission would become a criminal offence under Taiwan’s Foreign Trade Act. No start date was given. The curbs would cover all Chinese buyers, where earlier rules applied only to blacklisted names such as Huawei, and they form part of Taiwan’s trade deal with the United States. Bloomberg has reported that Nvidia chips still reach Chinese buyers through alleged smuggling networks in Southeast Asia. Yahoo Finance via Stocktwits Crypto Briefing

🚗 Tesla’s new Roadster hovered over parked cars

Tesla showed its new Roadster on Thursday 15 October at a SpaceX site in Texas, 9 years after the first version was unveiled in 2017. Using 10 thrusters fed by compressed air, the remote-operated car jumped and briefly hovered over a Cybertruck, a Tesla Semi and other parked vehicles. Tesla showed 0 to 60mph in about 1 second. Elon Musk said production starts in 2028 and gave no price. Reservations cost $50,000 for the base version and $250,000 for the Thrust version. Musk said he is “not sure it moves the needle massively from a revenue standpoint.” TechCrunch

🥤 KFC is swapping Pepsi for Coca-Cola

KFC signed Coca-Cola as its US drinks partner on Thursday 15 October, ending a PepsiCo relationship of about 4 decades that began when PepsiCo owned the chain. Coca-Cola products will be in KFC’s 3,718 US restaurants by spring 2027. Terms were not disclosed. PepsiCo said it had just renewed its deals for Taco Bell and KFC’s international restaurants, with the Taco Bell deal running 10 years. PepsiCo, which has the activist investor Elliott on its share register, said this month that its recovery is taking longer than planned. “It is just a bad look for PepsiCo,” said Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets. Investing.com via Reuters

🪙 Bitcoin ETF flows stalled

US spot bitcoin ETFs took in a net $5.06 million on Thursday 15 October, according to Farside data, after losing $261.5 million on Wednesday. BlackRock’s IBIT took in $16.79 million and Grayscale’s Bitcoin Mini Trust lost $7.64 million. October flows stand at minus $539.8 million so far. Bitcoin traded at $81,963 at 7:26am UK on Friday (2:26am New York), after touching $79,814 on Thursday afternoon. CryptoTicker

📈 Chart of the Day - Lululemon (LULU)

Read more

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🇰🇷 Seoul halts trading: The Kospi fell 7.57% and stopped trading for 20 minutes, its seventh straight fall and 21% in 7 sessions.

• 🏛️ Hot print, no rush: Core US inflation rose 0.3% against 0.2% expected, and 2 Fed officials said they want more data first.

• 🏭 TSMC guides higher again: TSMC’s quarterly profit rose 69% to a record $23.59 billion, and it guided fourth-quarter sales about 14% higher.

• 🚢 A box ship sinks: The container ship GFS Pride sank in the Strait of Hormuz as Iran struck 4 vessels within hours.

• 🤖 Anthropic’s $16.8 billion quarter: Anthropic told investors its quarterly revenue hit $16.8 billion with an adjusted profit, ahead of a planned IPO.

• 🇬🇧 UK economy beats forecasts: Britain’s economy grew 0.1% in August, against a 0.1% fall expected, helped by a 1.2% rise in manufacturing.

• 🏦 Morgan Stanley’s IPO money: Wealth clients brought in $232.4 billion of new assets, and just over half was tied to IPO flows.

• 🪙 Bitcoin slips under $81,000: US bitcoin ETFs lost $261.4 million on Wednesday as hotter inflation hit crypto prices.

• 🔍 The Pipeline Print: A second hot reading after CPI would make an October rate rise likely, and our Cheat Sheet shows what to watch.

• 📈 Silver back at $54.53 support: Chart of the Day covers the $54.53 shelf, the broken $61.11 line and the $49.78 zone below.

🧠 One Big Thing

Wednesday’s US inflation figure made money dearer, and the stocks most reliant on borrowed money took the hit overnight. Core prices rose 0.3% in September against 0.2% expected. Chip stocks fell 4.3% in New York, and Seoul’s market fell 7.57% on Thursday. The Fed’s own officials called the number bad and said they want more data before moving. The next piece of that data lands at 1:30pm UK today, which is 8:30am in New York: producer prices, which feed the Fed’s own inflation gauge. A second hot reading would put a rate rise on 28 October firmly on the table.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

21%

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

🟢 Top Gainers

No major winners today.

🔴 Top Losers

• : -9.33% Rocket Lab Corporation fell after pushing the debut launch of its Neutron rocket from Q4 2026 into 2027 because of manufacturing issues. The news came after Wednesday’s close and extends a six-day slide that has wiped around 21% off the stock.

• : -6.63% SK hynix Inc. sank after its Seoul shares closed 11% lower in a Kospi rout that tripped circuit breakers. Hot US inflation data, AI funding worries and reports of HBM4 equipment delivery delays drove the selling.

• : -4.74% Bloom Energy Corporation extended Wednesday’s 9% drop as a hot inflation print and firm oil prices revived fears that higher-for-longer rates will slow data centre financing.

• : -4.42% Seagate Technology Holdings led storage names lower alongside Western Digital (-4.31%) and Sandisk (-4.16%) as the week’s memory rout deepened. China’s ChangXin DRAM breakthrough and hotter-than-expected US inflation are driving investors out of one of 2026’s most crowded AI trades.

• : -4.04% Nebius Group N.V. extended Wednesday’s 10% slide as AI cloud names sold off on debt worries, with peer CoreWeave plunging more than 15% as its rising debt load came into focus.

• : -3.79% Dell Technologies Inc. extended Wednesday’s 11% plunge after Barclays cut the stock to Equal Weight. The bank cited a stretched valuation after a 300%-plus rally this year and slower growth as memory-driven pricing normalises.

✅ 5 Things to Know

🇰🇷 Seoul halted trading as the chip sell-off spread

South Korea’s Kospi fell 7.57% on Thursday 15 October to close at 5,554.22, its lowest close since 7 April. Trading across the whole market stopped for 20 minutes after a circuit breaker kicked in at about 4:30am UK (11:30pm New York on Wednesday). At the low, the index was down 9.29%. Samsung Electronics closed 9.48% lower and SK Hynix 11.06% lower. It was the seventh fall in a row, and the Kospi has lost 21% across those 7 sessions. Foreign investors sold a net 3.63 trillion won, their eighth straight day of selling. Aju Press

So why did it break on Thursday? In New York on Wednesday, 2 things hit at once. Core inflation came in hotter than forecast, which pushed up the cost of money. And the doubts over who pays for the AI build-out got louder. CoreWeave, which rents out Nvidia chips and borrows heavily to buy them, fell 15.46% to $65.78 after the research firm Gartner projected that about 80% of these “neocloud” providers could be gone by 2030. The Philadelphia chip index fell 4.30%. Japan’s Nikkei fell 4.90% on Thursday, with SoftBank Group down 9.1%. Seoul’s financial authorities held an emergency meeting and warned investors against excessive borrowing. Yahoo Finance AP via Click2Houston

🏛️ Inflation ran hot and the Fed said there is no rush

Core prices rose 0.3% in September. Consensus was 0.2%. That is a miss in the wrong direction. Headline inflation rose to 3.7% on the year, from 3.4% in August, against 3.6% expected, with petrol doing most of the lifting. Core inflation, which strips out food and energy, rose to 2.6% from 2.4%. The S&P 500 fell 1.11% to 7,718.94, ending a long run without a 1% drop, and the Nasdaq fell 1.88%. Only health care, consumer staples and energy rose. TheStreet

Traders’ odds of a rate rise on 28 October briefly passed 1 in 2 after the release, then fell back. The Fed’s own officials explain the pullback. “I found it discouraging,” Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee told Yahoo Finance. “We need to get more data.” San Francisco Fed president Mary Daly told Reuters more rises are likely needed, with no urgency for October. The next data lands at 1:30pm UK (8:30am New York). Producer prices are expected up 0.3% on the month at the core level, after 0.2% in August, and retail sales up 0.3%. Fed chair Kevin Warsh speaks in Bangkok at 4:30am UK on Friday, which is 11:30pm New York on Thursday. Yahoo Finance Investing.com

🏭 TSMC posted a record and guided higher into the rout

$23.59 billion. That is what TSMC earned in the third quarter, up 69% on a year earlier and a record. In local money it was NT$763.1 billion, against NT$746.3 billion expected by analysts polled by LSEG. Revenue rose 41.2% to $46.72 billion. Chips for high-performance computing, which is mostly AI, made up 68% of sales. The gross margin came in at 66.4%, inside the company’s 65% to 67% range. Investing.com via Reuters

What matters more is the next quarter. TSMC expects fourth-quarter revenue of $52.3 billion to $54.3 billion, about 14% more than the third quarter at the midpoint. It plans to spend $60 billion to $64 billion on new capacity in 2026. Its US-listed shares closed at $430 on Wednesday, down 3.4% before the results, and traded at $421.49 after hours. Taiwan’s market fell on Thursday with the rest of Asia. Investing.com

🚢 A container ship sank in Hormuz as Iran widened its targets

The GFS Pride, a Singapore-flagged container ship, sank in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday 14 October. All 21 crew were evacuated safely, Singapore’s maritime authority said. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the ship hit a mine while using an “illegal and dangerous” route. The cause has not been confirmed. Its sister ship, the GFS Giselle, was also hit and reached a safe anchorage. Iran struck 4 vessels in a matter of hours. US Central Command said 19 million barrels of crude passed through the strait the day before. Maritime Executive

Container ships carry the goods that end up on shop shelves. That widens the war’s reach beyond oil. Brent still fell 1.5% to about $104.43 on Thursday morning, from Wednesday’s $106.06 settlement. Reuters reported that Washington is considering easing sanctions on some tankers that carried Venezuelan, Russian and Iranian oil, to bring down record freight rates. Nothing has been decided. Iranian officials told Reuters they plan to step up strikes on tankers. FinanceFeeds

🤖 Anthropic’s revenue hit $16.8 billion before its IPO

Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, told prospective investors its revenue reached $16.8 billion in the third quarter, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday 14 October. It said it reached profitability on an adjusted basis during the quarter. For the whole of 2025, revenue was about $4.6 billion, with a net loss of nearly $42 billion. Formal marketing for a share listing could start as soon as the week of 9 November. Prospective investors suggested a valuation of $1.8 trillion to $2 trillion. Anthropic declined to comment. Yahoo Finance via Bloomberg

Why does a private company’s quarter matter on a day like this? It speaks to the question that sank CoreWeave. Gartner’s worry is whether AI revenue will ever cover the money spent on chips and data centres. Anthropic is one of the biggest renters of that computing power, and a quarter of $16.8 billion is part of the answer. “Adjusted” profit leaves costs out, and the full numbers arrive only with the listing documents. Yahoo Finance via Bloomberg

Stories You Might Have Missed

🇬🇧 Britain’s economy grew in August against forecasts

The UK economy grew 0.1% in August, official figures showed on Thursday 15 October, against a 0.1% fall expected. It follows 0.4% growth in July. Manufacturing did the work, up 1.2%. Consumer-facing services fell 0.3%, with restaurants down 2.7%, and construction fell 0.2% for a fourth straight month. If September is flat, the third quarter would show growth of about 0.7%. Businesses are holding up while households cut back, and that split is what the Bank of England weighs at its 5 November decision. Investing.com

🏦 Morgan Stanley’s wealth arm took in $232 billion

Morgan Stanley earned $3.03 a share in the third quarter, on revenue of $20.3 billion, up 12%, it said on Wednesday 14 October. Its wealth management arm had record revenue of $9.1 billion. New client assets came to $232.4 billion, against $81.0 billion a year earlier, and just over half of that was tied to IPO-related flows. Stock trading revenue rose 41% to $5.8 billion, while fixed income fell 7% to $2.0 billion. That is the same split JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs showed earlier in the week. SEC filing

🪙 Bitcoin slipped below $81,000

Bitcoin fell below $81,000 early on Thursday after the hot inflation figure, down more than 2% in 24 hours, CoinDesk reported. Ether, XRP and Solana fell between 3.5% and 4%. US spot bitcoin ETFs lost $261.4 million on Wednesday, according to Farside data, led by Fidelity’s FBTC at $152.7 million and BlackRock’s IBIT at $110.9 million. Ether ETFs lost $130 million. CoinDesk Crypto Briefing

🔍 Deep Dive - The Pipeline Print: What September’s Producer Prices Mean

Read more

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🏛️ One more, then done: The Fed’s John Williams said one more rate rise may be appropriate and saw no need for more in 2027.

• 🛢️ Missile hits Aramco HQ: A missile hit Aramco’s Dhahran headquarters as the IEA said oil stocks on land sank to their lowest since 2016.

• 🏦 Goldman’s traders cash in: Goldman’s stock traders made $6.44 billion, up 72%, and the shares still closed lower.

• 🔬 ASML can’t build enough: ASML said its 2027 and 2028 supply will not fully meet demand, and Seoul still closed lower.

• 🕵️ A bug in OpenAI’s boardroom: An OpenAI engineer was charged after a recorder was found hidden in toilet paper behind an executive room TV.

• 🇨🇳 China’s factory prices jump: Chinese producer prices rose 5.0% in September, the fastest since June 2022, as exports surged 36.3%.

• 🍎 Apple’s hub costs $299: Apple priced its new HomeView hub at $299, below the roughly $350 reported beforehand, with sales from 13 November.

• 🤖 Character.ai files for bankruptcy: The AI chatbot company filed for Chapter 11, with Disney the first bidder at $20 million.

• 🪙 Bitcoin ETF money returns: US bitcoin ETFs took in $175.7 million on Tuesday after Monday’s $65.4 million outflow.

• 🔍 The Petrol Print: Our CPI Day Cheat Sheet maps each possible core reading to the usual first move in bitcoin, gold, stocks and yields.

• 📈 SoundHound hits its $4 to $5 zone: Chart of the Day covers the support zone, the broken $5 line and the $6 and $8 levels.

🧠 One Big Thing

September’s US inflation figure lands at 1:30pm UK today, which is 8:30am in New York, and one of the Fed’s most senior rate-setters has already said where he thinks rates are heading. New York Fed president John Williams said on Tuesday that one more rise may be appropriate this year, and that he sees no reason yet for more in 2027. Economists expect prices up about 0.6% on the month, mostly petrol. Core prices, which strip out food and energy, are expected up 0.2%. A core reading near 0.2% would point to December. A clearly higher one brings the 28 October meeting into play.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

113 million barrels

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

🟢 Top Gainers

• : +53.82% Liquidia Corporation surged after reaching a global settlement with United Therapeutics that ends all six lawsuits between them and keeps Yutrepia on the market for pulmonary arterial hypertension, removing the risk of a forced withdrawal that wiped out more than half the stock’s value after a 30 September patent ruling. In return, Liquidia will drop the PH-ILD indication from Yutrepia’s label and pay a net 380.7 million USD, which it expects to fund from sales and cash on hand.

• : +50.00% Greenland Energy Company jumped after President Trump announced plans for large-scale oil, gas and mineral exploration in Greenland, lifting Greenland-linked names including Greenland Mines and Critical Metals. The move puts the exploration-stage driller on track to snap a nine-session losing streak.

🔴 Top Losers

• : -23.81% Biomea Fusion, Inc. slid after Phase 1 data for its oral GLP-1 obesity pill BMF-650 showed only 1.5% to 3.2% weight loss over four weeks in its main cohorts, while the 6.1% result in the high-dose group was clouded by similar losses in that group’s placebo arm. The drug was well tolerated, but the drop pushes the shares below 1 USD.

• : -4.00% Bank of America Corporation slipped after third-quarter revenue and trading income came in below forecasts, and earnings of 91 cents a share included a 1.2 billion USD Treasury penalty over anti-money-laundering and sanctions failures. Even adding back the roughly 17 cent hit from the penalty, profit landed just short of expectations.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $83,319.57 (▲0.30%)
Ethereum (ETH): $2,500.48 (▲0.23%)
XRP: $1.37 (▲0.32%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,872.00 (▲0.21%)
NASDAQ 100: 30,782.25 (▼0.03%)
FTSE 100: 10,679.70 (▲0.27%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 5.21% (▼0.21%)
Oil (WTI): $95.40 (▲0.65%)
Gold: $4,143.62 (▼0.42%)
Silver: $58.58 (▼1.01%)

Data as of: UK: 11:40 BST / US: 06:40 EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 19:40 JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

🏛️ A top Fed official said one more rise, then stop

“I haven’t changed my view that it may be appropriate to have one more rate hike.” New York Fed president John Williams said that in a Bloomberg interview on Tuesday 13 October. Williams is vice chair of the committee that sets US rates, and he votes at every meeting. He also said he had no reason at this point to believe the Fed would need to do more in 2027. He expects inflation to ease “quite a bit” over the next year. “This is not an economy that is overheating overall,” he said. Yahoo Finance

So what is left for September’s inflation figure to settle? The timing. Boston Fed president Susan Collins said on Tuesday that it will be appropriate “to raise rates a bit further before the end of the year”. She added that the timing “will depend importantly on how the totality of incoming data shapes my outlook”. Economists expect consumer prices to have risen about 0.6% in September, after 0.4% in August, with petrol doing most of the work. Core prices are expected up 0.2%, after 0.3%. The figures land at 1:30pm UK (8:30am New York), and the Fed decides on 28 October and again on 9 December. Investing.com investingLive

🛢️ A missile hit Aramco’s headquarters as oil stocks ran thin

A missile struck an administrative building at Saudi Aramco’s Dhahran headquarters on Tuesday night, starting what Saudi authorities called a “limited fire”. Nobody was hurt. The Houthis have fired missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia all week. In the Strait of Hormuz a container ship and a tanker were hit by unknown projectiles, according to UK Maritime Trade Operations. Iranian officials told Reuters they began using new tactics against shipping about 10 days ago. Brent traded at $105.72 at 9:19am UK (4:19am New York) on Wednesday, up 3 cents on the day. The National Euronext

The IEA’s monthly report, out on Wednesday 14 October, shows how little spare oil is left. More oil got through in September. Flows through Hormuz rose 3.7 million barrels a day, to 10.9 million. Stocks fell anyway. Oil held in tanks on land dropped 113 million barrels in the month, to the lowest level since at least 2016, while oil at sea rose 103 million barrels. Global stocks now sit 509 million barrels below their level at the end of February. The IEA expects world demand to shrink by 2.6 million barrels a day this year. IEA

🏦 Goldman’s traders made $6.44 billion and the shares fell

$6.44 billion. That is what Goldman Sachs made from stock trading in the third quarter, up 72% on a year earlier. Goldman earned $17.01 a share, against $13.02 expected by analysts polled by LSEG. JPMorgan earned $5.57 a share, or $5.75 excluding a securities loss, against $5.93 expected. That was its first miss in nearly 3 years. JPMorgan’s equities revenue rose 49%, while its fixed income trading fell 4% to $5.37 billion. Wells Fargo’s $1.87 a share also beat forecasts. Citigroup’s profit rose 40%. Investing.com Fortune

Did the beats hold up in the share price? Goldman jumped more than 4% at the open on Tuesday and finished 0.2% lower. Bank of America reported on Wednesday 14 October, a day after the US Treasury fined it $1.2 billion for failing to report more than $5 billion of suspicious activity. It earned 91 cents a share, a figure that includes the penalty, which cost about 17 cents a share. Revenue came to $29.96 billion, against $30.62 billion expected. Net interest income, the profit on lending after paying depositors, was $16.45 billion. Morgan Stanley’s call follows at 2:30pm UK (9:30am New York). Euronews SEC filing

🔬 ASML says it can’t build enough machines

What does the only maker of the most advanced chipmaking machines see ahead? Too little capacity. ASML reported record third-quarter sales of €11.66 billion on Wednesday 14 October, with net profit of €4.96 billion and a gross margin of 57.5%. It raised its 2026 sales outlook to €44 billion to €45 billion, from €43 billion to €45 billion. It expects €14.2 billion to €15.2 billion in the fourth quarter. Chief executive Christophe Fouquet said some customers want to place orders for 2029 and even 2030. Yahoo Finance Newsquawk

ASML said its planned supply for 2027 and 2028 “will not fully meet the demand of our customers”. That holds even after a 30% capacity increase in 2027, and it is studying a further 30% for 2028. Memory makers took 46% of its system sales in the quarter. Seoul’s market still fell. The Kospi gave up a gain of more than 2% and closed 0.44% lower at 6,008.81, its sixth straight fall. Foreign investors sold a net 1.18 trillion won. SK Hynix fell 1.66% and Samsung closed flat. Investing.com BigGo Finance

🕵️ An OpenAI engineer was charged over a hidden recorder

On 30 September, OpenAI staff found an audio recorder plugged into a USB port behind a television in an executive conference room. It had been hidden in toilet paper about 2 days earlier. On Tuesday 13 October the US Justice Department charged Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi national who had worked at OpenAI as an engineer since July 2025, with attempting to intercept oral communications. He was arrested on Friday 9 October. On 5 October, security staff found a second, similar device in a bag he had left unattended, according to the complaint. CBS News

Why does one bugged room matter? It was used for talks on research, product plans and business development, the information AI labs compete hardest over. The complaint says a chatbot account linked to his spouse asked how to build, install and remotely access a recording device between 24 and 30 September. OpenAI fired him and called in the FBI. It said it has no indication he accessed or took model weights, source code or customer data. His lawyer, William Pernik, said his client is presumed innocent. A detention hearing is set for 19 October. CBS News

Stories You Might Have Missed

🇨🇳 China’s factory prices jumped 5%, a 4-year high

Chinese factory-gate prices rose 5.0% in September from a year earlier, the fastest since June 2022, against 4.5% expected, data showed on Wednesday 14 October. Most of it came from costs. “Much of the upward pressure still came from commodity supply disruptions caused by the Middle East conflict,” said Nguyen Hoang Nam, China economist at Capital Economics. Consumer prices rose only 0.9%. Exports jumped 36.3% against 25.5% expected, and the trade surplus widened to $133.5 billion. Higher factory prices in China could feed into what importers elsewhere pay. KFGO via Reuters Click2Houston via AP

🍎 Apple priced its new home hub at $299

Apple unveiled HomeView on Tuesday 13 October, a home hub with a 7-inch screen priced at $299. That is below the roughly $350 widely reported before the launch. Pre-orders opened the same day and the hub goes on sale on 13 November, though not in the EU. Apple also launched a new Apple TV 4K and the HomePod mini 2, which arrives on 30 October. HomeView is built around Apple’s new Siri AI, which works through a compatible iPhone or iPad. A wall-mounted version costs more. MacRumors

🤖 Character.ai filed for bankruptcy, with Disney bidding $20 million

Character.ai, the AI chatbot company, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware to run a sale of its assets. Disney is the first bidder. It is offering $20 million plus transition services, using former Character.ai staff it has hired, for a permanent, non-exclusive licence to some of the company’s intellectual property. Higher offers can still come in, and the sale is expected to close in late November or early December. The platform keeps running during the process and will be wound down if no buyer takes it on. Business Wire

🪙 Bitcoin ETF money came back

US spot bitcoin ETFs took in $175.7 million on Tuesday 13 October, Farside data show, after $65.4 million of outflows on Monday. BlackRock’s IBIT brought in $65.9 million of it. Bitcoin traded at about $83,590 early on Wednesday, ahead of the US inflation figures. Farside Yahoo Finance

🔍 Deep Dive - The Petrol Print: What September’s Inflation Figure Means

The number lands at 1:30pm UK, 8:30am ET.

Petrol cost 7% more in September than in August, so headline inflation is expected to jump to 3.6% to 3.7%. That pump price was public weeks ago. If there is a surprise, it sits in core prices, which strip out food and fuel. Every big bank forecast rounds to +0.2%, and Goldman Sachs, Barclays and Morgan Stanley sit at 0.24%, a hair under the +0.3% line.

The 4 numbers that land and what each one means. The usual first move in bitcoin, other crypto, gold, stocks and bond yields for every core outcome. Our take on the Fed’s 28 October decision. Every bank forecast on one chart.

You can open up the full Cheat Sheet below.

Read more

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 💾 Korea’s chipmakers sink: The Kospi fell 5.46% as a Chinese rival promised denser memory and foreigners sold 4.53 trillion won.

• 🏦 Banks report after a slide: JPMorgan, Goldman, Citi and Wells Fargo report today, with the bank index more than 14% below its August peak.

• 🛢️ Oil up, demand down: OPEC cut its 2026 demand growth forecast to 400,000 barrels a day, and Brent still closed at a 4-week high.

• 🏛️ A Fed voter wants higher: Cleveland’s Beth Hammack said “interest rates need to be higher”, 2 days before September’s inflation figure.

• 🌍 The IMF bets on Hormuz: The IMF raised 2026 world growth to 3.1%, assuming Hormuz shipments resume by March and oil averages $96.

• ☕ Starbucks rules out Chipotle: “Starbucks is not buying Chipotle,” a spokesperson said, and Chipotle shares fell more than 4% on Monday.

• 🍎 Apple’s home launch: Apple unveils new products today, with a 6-inch home hub widely reported and nothing confirmed yet.

• 🪙 Bitcoin ETFs slip again: US bitcoin ETFs lost $65.4 million on Monday, all of it from BlackRock’s IBIT.

• 📈 XRP squeezes between Deep Trends: Chart of the Day covers the $1.31 bounce, Deep Trend resistance at $1.51 and support at $1.27.

🧠 One Big Thing

The AI chip trade took its first real supply scare overnight. Chinese memory maker CXMT said it will sell a denser type of server memory by the end of the year, and Korea’s stock market fell 5.46%, with SK Hynix down 9.47% and Samsung down 6.79%. CXMT has published no specifications, no yields and no customers. Tight memory supply is what produced Samsung’s record profit guidance, so any hint of new supply hits these shares first. The big US banks report today, and September’s inflation figure lands on Wednesday.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

400,000 barrels a day

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

No major winners today.

🔴 Top Losers

• : -17.22%: Syndax Pharmaceuticals, Inc. sank after axatilimab missed its primary endpoint in the Phase 2 MAXPIRe trial in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, failing to slow the annual decline in lung function, and the company has dropped further development in that indication. Syndax said the miss does not affect axatilimab’s approved chronic graft-versus-host disease business or its other ongoing trials.

• : -10.76%: Chaince Digital Holdings Inc. is down for a third straight session as traders unwind last week’s tokenisation rally, which was driven by sympathy buying after Securitize launched onchain versions of major US stocks. The stock has already lost more than a third of its value since Thursday’s close, including a volatility halt on Friday.

• : -4.92%: SK hynix Inc. ADRs slid as the memory chip sell-off deepened in Seoul, pushing Samsung and SK hynix to their lowest levels since August and the Kospi briefly below 6,000. Two things drove it: fears that China’s CXMT is closing the gap in DRAM, and fresh warnings from Broadcom and Intel executives about AI infrastructure financing.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $83,495.89 (▲2.12%)
Ethereum (ETH): $2,510.61 (▲2.71%)
XRP: $1.36 (▲1.43%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,859.25 (▲0.02%)
NASDAQ 100: 30,741.25 (▼0.51%)
FTSE 100: 10,738.39 (▲0.87%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 5.19% (▼0.92%)
Oil (WTI): $91.81 (▼1.46%)
Gold: $4,186.00 (▲0.35%)
Silver: $60.47 (▲0.28%)

Data as of: UK: 10:59 BST / US: 05:59 EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 18:59 JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

💾 Korea’s chipmakers sank on a Chinese memory rival

Seoul’s Kospi fell 5.46% on Tuesday 13 October to close at 6,035.35, its steepest drop since 19 August. At the low it was down 7.41%. SK Hynix closed 9.47% lower at 1,453,000 won and Samsung Electronics 6.79% lower at 233,500 won. Foreign investors sold a net 4.53 trillion won, about $3.4 billion, their heaviest selling since 28 July. Retail investors bought 2.25 trillion won and institutions 1.69 trillion won. Aju Press

The trigger came from China. Chinese memory maker CXMT said at a Shanghai conference on Saturday that it will launch server memory built on a denser design, called 4F², by the end of 2026. In plain terms, the design fits about 50% more memory cells into the same space. Samsung and SK Hynix have the same design on their road maps, with no production date announced. Micron fell 3.88% on Monday and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index lost 2.67%. Korea JoongAng Daily

Is the threat real yet? Nothing CXMT has published proves it. The company has disclosed no yields, no specifications and no customer orders. In 2022 it targeted mass production of DDR5 memory by the end of that year, and its chips only appeared widely in late 2024. Seoul also lost a prop: Samsung has finished its buybacks for staff pay, and SK Hynix’s programme is nearly done. Broadcom chief executive Hock Tan added to the mood at a panel in Singapore on Monday. “A lot of investors have no clue what they’re investing in, but set very extreme expectations,” he said. Korea JoongAng Daily MarketScreener

🏦 The big banks report after a 14% slide

Bank shares have fallen hard into results day. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Wells Fargo all report before the US open on Tuesday 13 October. Over the past month Bank of America has dropped 13%, Goldman 12% and Morgan Stanley 11%. JPMorgan is down 6%. The KBW Nasdaq Bank Index sits more than 14% below its August peak, Yahoo Finance reported. Yahoo Finance

Why sell before the numbers? Yields. Treasury yields near multi-year highs slow lending and dealmaking and push up what banks pay for funding. Insider buying across US financials fell to a 23-year low in the third quarter. Stocks Today

The profits themselves are expected to be strong. LSEG’s consensus for JPMorgan is $5.94 a share, against $5.07 a year earlier. JPMorgan had guided to investment banking fees and markets revenue up in the “mid-to-high teens” percentage range. Bank of America, which reports on Wednesday with Morgan Stanley, has warned its investment banking fees will probably fall more than 10%. Goldman Sachs strategists expect S&P 500 profits to rise about 25% on the year for the quarter. JPMorgan’s call starts at 1:30pm UK (8:30am New York). Stocks Today Yahoo Finance

🛢️ Oil hit a 4-week high as OPEC cut its demand forecast

400,000 barrels a day. That is OPEC’s new forecast for oil demand growth in 2026, published on Monday 12 October, down from 1.4 million at the start of the year. OPEC expects the missing demand to return in 2027. Brent settled the same day up $1.93, or 1.8%, at $106.65, its highest close since 15 September. WTI rose $1.89 to $93.74. EnergyNow Yahoo Finance

So why did the price rise while the sellers lowered their demand forecast? Supply. The weekend’s Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia and the tanker strikes near Hormuz carried Monday’s move. Trump’s Russian diesel deal did less. “The immediate impact of the deal is questionable, as Russia’s refining capacity has been severely reduced,” said PVM analyst Tamas Varga. On Monday Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had already broken the energy ceasefire Trump announced on Sunday, and Russia did not comment. Brent eased about 1% to $105.60 early on Tuesday. Yahoo Finance HDFC Sky

🏛️ A Fed voter said rates need to be higher

“Interest rates need to be higher.” Cleveland Fed president Beth Hammack said that on Monday 12 October, 2 days before September’s inflation figure. She votes on rates this year. Hammack said the Fed has missed its 2% inflation target for 5.5 years and called the biggest risk an “inflationary mindset”. She said demand pressure from AI spending is “not self-correcting” and that firms are planning price rises beyond their rising costs. She also favours smaller, more frequent rate moves. FXStreet Yahoo Finance

Her case rests on one claim. “I see inflation pressures as relatively broad-based rather than concentrated in one component,” she said. Wednesday’s figure tests exactly that. Economists expect consumer prices up 0.6% in September, mostly fuel. Core prices, which strip out food and energy, are seen rising 0.2%, after 0.3% in August. A core reading well above that would back her. The figures land at 1:30pm UK (8:30am New York) on Wednesday 14 October, and the Fed’s next decision is on 28 October. Yahoo Finance investingLive

🌍 The IMF raised growth and assumed Hormuz reopens by March

The IMF raised its forecast for world growth this year to 3.1%, from 3.0% in July, in the World Economic Outlook it published in Bangkok overnight. It expects growth to slow in 2027. Global inflation is forecast at 4.7% this year, up from 4.1% in 2025, with oil averaging $96 a barrel. The US is held at 2.3% growth for both 2026 and 2027. China is seen at 4.5% and the euro area at 1.1%. ABC News via AP

The forecast rests on 2 assumptions: that oil and gas shipments through the Strait of Hormuz resume by March, and that AI demand cools. Brent closed on Monday at $106.65, above that $96 average. Saudi Arabia’s economy is now forecast to shrink 3.3% this year, a cut of 5 percentage points. Growth is also narrow, with 32 countries making up 95% of it, against 54 in April. “The global economy has been resilient, but that resilience is under strain,” said IMF chief economist Silvana Tenreyro. Thai PBS World ABC News via AP

Stories You Might Have Missed

☕ Starbucks said it is not buying Chipotle

“Starbucks is not buying Chipotle,” a company spokesperson told CNBC on Monday 12 October. That ended 4 days of speculation. The Financial Times had reported on Thursday 8 October that Starbucks had spent months working with advisers on a possible bid, when Chipotle was valued at roughly $39 billion to $41 billion. Chipotle fell more than 4% during Monday’s session and Starbucks edged higher. Yahoo Finance

🍎 Apple’s “Welcome home” launch lands today

Apple will introduce new products on Tuesday 13 October, marketing chief Greg Joswiak has confirmed, and his teaser video points to the home. Invited media get hands-on time in New York from 2pm UK (9am New York), and everyone else gets press releases. Reports point to a home hub with a 6-inch screen at around $350, a new HomePod mini and a faster Apple TV 4K, all built around Apple’s new Siri AI. Apple has confirmed none of the products. A second launch, for new Macs and an OLED iPad mini, is reported for 27 October. MacRumors

🪙 Bitcoin ETFs slipped back to outflows

US spot bitcoin ETFs lost $65.4 million on Monday 12 October, all of it from BlackRock’s IBIT, Farside data show. That followed $21.1 million of inflows on Friday and $244.1 million of outflows on Thursday. Bitcoin traded at about $83,920 early on Tuesday, up 0.61% on the day, with US inflation figures due on Wednesday. Farside Yahoo Finance

📈 Chart of the Day - XRP (XRPUSD)

Read more

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• ✈️ Houthis hit Riyadh’s airport: A missile killed 13 at Saudi Arabia’s main airport, Trump said the US “may” join in, and Brent hit a 2-week high.

• 🛢️ Trump turns to Russian diesel: Trump announced 4.8 million tons of Russian diesel, and oil’s dip on the news reversed within hours.

• 🧾 Wednesday’s inflation test: Economists expect September prices up 0.6% on the month, mostly gasoline, with core seen at just 0.2%.

• 🇰🇷 Korea catches up, hard: The Kospi fell 3.65% after a holiday as foreigners sold 2.02 trillion won and retail investors bought.

• 🤖 Nvidia eyes Reflection AI: Nvidia is in early talks to deepen its $800 million stake in Reflection AI or buy it, the FT reported.

• 🌀 Gulf oil restarts slowly: Isaias left 69% of Gulf of Mexico oil output shut on Saturday as Shell and Chevron sent crews back.

• 🚗 VW deliveries drop 14.3%: Volkswagen delivered 1.89 million cars in the third quarter, with China down 38.5%, and its shares still rose.

• 🪙 Bitcoin back above $84,000: US bitcoin ETFs took in $21.1 million on Friday after 2 heavy days of selling.

• 🐂 The bull market turns 4: The S&P 500 has more than doubled since its 12 October 2022 low of 3,577.03.

• 📈 Zoom above both Deep Trends: Chart of the Day covers the $107.25 resistance, $123.98 above it, and the Deep Trend at $90.12 and $75.82.

• 🎥 Premium member event: Sensei Desk chart requests on 17 stocks, the silver levels I’m watching, and a Portfolio Challenge review with no new buys.

🧠 One Big Thing

Oil dipped on Trump’s Russian diesel deal overnight and had climbed back by the European morning. Brent was at $103.18 in early Asian trading, then rose above $105.50, its highest in more than 2 weeks, as the Houthis kept firing at Saudi Arabia. Goldman Sachs puts just over $20 of the price down to risk alone. So fuel stays expensive, and fuel feeds straight into Wednesday’s US inflation figure, expected to show prices up 0.6% in September. Core inflation, expected at 0.2%, is the number that shows whether costly fuel is spreading into everything else.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

Just over $20

✅ 5 Things to Know

✈️ Houthi missiles shut Saudi Arabia’s main airport

A Houthi missile hit King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on Saturday 10 October, striking the complex that houses terminals 3 and 4. The death toll rose to 13, including an American, after an Indian national died of his injuries on Sunday, and Saudi aviation authorities said 309 were injured. It was the deadliest attack in a Gulf Arab country since the Iran war began. The airport has stayed shut since, and Lufthansa has suspended Riyadh flights until 16 October. The Houthis have declared Saudi airspace a zone of military operations. Times of Israel Euronews

Asked whether the US would join Saudi strikes on the Houthis, President Trump said: “We may. We’re going to look at it.” On Thursday he had ruled out attacking Iran before the 3 November midterms. The Houthis are backed by Iran, and that pledge named Iran alone. Another projectile hit the airport on Sunday and started a fire, and the Houthis blamed Saudi Arabia for overnight airstrikes on Sanaa. At sea, a drone hit a tanker near Sohar in Oman and a projectile damaged another in the Strait of Hormuz, the UK’s maritime agency UKMTO reported. Brent rose above $105 on Monday, its highest in 2 weeks, CBS News reported. CBS News Business Standard

🛢️ Trump turned to Russia for diesel

4.8 million tons. That is how much diesel President Trump said Russia has agreed to supply to world markets. More than 300,000 tons come straight away, which Reuters put at about 2.25 million barrels. Another 500,000 tons follow in November, 1 million tons after that and 3 million tons later. The Treasury issued a temporary licence on Friday 9 October allowing Russian diesel to be sold and shipped, including into the US, until 7 April 2027. On Sunday Trump also announced an “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine, which Volodymyr Zelensky said “was news for me”. Time Business Standard

Will it bring diesel down quickly? The first batch is small. It equals roughly 2 hours of world diesel use, on the IEA’s estimate of about 29 million barrels a day. ICE gasoil futures, Europe’s diesel benchmark, fell 3% in early Asian trading, and Brent fell 1.47% to $103.18 by 2:54am UK, Reuters reported. Business Standard

The dip lasted a few hours.

Brent was back above $105 by the European morning. “Any hope that Trump’s deal with Putin might help bring down prices has been negated by the flare-up in the Houthi conflict,” said Chris Beauchamp of IG. US diesel averaged $6.28 a gallon on 11 October, AAA said, down from a peak of $6.53 on 22 September. A 2022 law bans Russian energy imports, and Senator Thom Tillis said “there’s a legitimate case for saying the president’s not following the law.” Zelensky called the decision “weak”. Time Reuters via Investing.com

🧾 US inflation lands Wednesday, with fuel doing the work

How much of September’s inflation is fuel? Most of it, on the forecasts. Economists expect consumer prices to have risen 0.6% in the month, up from 0.4% in August, according to the Westpac calendar cited by investingLive. Energy is forecast to rise about 5.5%, led by gasoline, which was already more than 27% dearer than a year earlier in August. Core prices, which strip out food and energy, are expected to rise just 0.2%, after 0.3%. The Cleveland Fed’s own model points to 0.5% on the month and 3.6% on the year. investingLive

Households are already braced. The University of Michigan survey on Friday put expected inflation over the next year at 4.7%, up from 3.4% in February, the Associated Press reported. The US bond market is shut on Monday for Columbus Day, with the 10-year yield last at 5.24%. Cleveland Fed president Beth Hammack speaks at 5:50pm UK (12:50pm New York). The figures are out on Wednesday at 1:30pm UK (8:30am New York). CME FedWatch put the chance of a rate rise at the 28 October decision at 19%, Reuters reported. AP via Click2Houston Reuters via Investing.com

🇰🇷 Korea came back from a holiday and sold its chipmakers

Seoul was shut on Friday for Hangeul Day, so Korean investors met Thursday’s US tech sell-off and Friday’s partial rebound in a single session on Monday. The Kospi fell 3.65% to 6,384.24, trading below 6,400 for the first time since 11 August. Samsung Electronics dropped 4.4% to 250,500 won and SK Hynix 4.5% to 1,605,000 won. The smaller Kosdaq lost about 4.8%. Invezz Aju Press

Who sold? Foreign investors, a net 2.02 trillion won, and institutions another 110.7 billion won. Retail investors bought 1.47 trillion won. Mirae Asset Securities analyst Kim Seok-hwan said the 2 chipmakers were absorbing “AI-bubble concerns stemming from the OpenAI revenue debate”. That debate started with last week’s report that OpenAI’s annual revenue was about $20 billion below earlier figures. Samsung had guided on 8 October to a record 107.4 trillion won of quarterly operating profit. Aju Press Invezz

🤖 Nvidia is in talks over Reflection AI

Read more

Most Federal Reserve officials now expect another rate rise by the end of the year. That is in writing, in the minutes released on Wednesday. CME FedWatch put the odds of it coming on 28 October at about 1 in 5 on Friday, with December priced as more likely than not. Wednesday’s September CPI is the number that can move that date. Consensus has prices up 0.6% on the month and core up just 0.2% (investingLive). The big banks report the day before and TSMC the day after, and Fed Chair Kevin Warsh takes the stage in Bangkok on Thursday night. (investingLive, Mitrade)

Last Week:

FOMC Minutes (September Meeting)
“Most participants assessed that another increase in the target range... would likely be appropriate by year end.” Many also said that “despite the recent rise in longer-term Treasury yields, financial conditions appeared to be supportive of economic growth.” The 10-year yield traded above 5.35% on Wednesday and ended the week at 5.24% on the Treasury’s own curve, 4 basis points lower on the week. (Federal Reserve, US Treasury)

US ISM Services PMI (September)
54.9, after 55.4 in August, against 55.2 expected (investingLive). The prices index rose to 74.0 from 72.6, the highest since July 2022. The employment index rose to 50.1 from 47.8, back above the line between firms hiring and firms cutting. (First Trust, investingLive)

Delta Air Lines Q3 (quarter to September)
Adjusted earnings came in at $1.72 a share, below published forecasts that ranged from $1.81 (Benzinga) to $1.92 (Finviz). Delta cut its full-year range to $5.10 to $5.60 a share from $6.50 to $7.50, citing “a $6 billion increase in fuel costs”, after paying $3.61 a gallon in the quarter, up 60%. The shares fell as much as 4% before the open and ended the day near flat. (Delta, Benzinga, Finviz)

University of Michigan Sentiment (October, Preliminary)
46.3. Economists expected 47.8 (investingLive), and September was 48.1, so this is a 5-month low. Households now expect 4.7% inflation over the next year and 3.5% over 5 years, both up 0.1 percentage points. (investingLive, Advisor Perspectives)

The setup: Governor Christopher Waller said in Istanbul on Thursday “I anticipate additional hikes”, adding that they “do not need to come at consecutive meetings”. The S&P 500 set its first record since mid-August on Tuesday and closed Friday at 7,811.54, up 1.2% on the week. Hurricane Isaias came ashore near Destin, Florida, on Friday night as a Category 2 storm after shutting in about 72% of Gulf of Mexico oil output, and Brent settled at $104.72. Trump said the US “will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the midterm elections”, while the Strait of Hormuz stays closed. CPI on Wednesday is the first inflation number since the minutes put another rise on the table. (Axios, Yahoo Finance, EnergyNow, Al-Monitor)

Week at a Glance

🔴 US CPI (September): Wednesday, 8:30 AM ET / 1:30 PM BST

🔴 JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Citigroup Q3 Results: Tuesday, Before Open

🔴 TSMC Q3 Results: Thursday, 2:00 AM ET / 7:00 AM BST

🔴 Fed Chair Kevin Warsh with the IMF’s Kristalina Georgieva: Thursday, 11:30 PM ET / Friday, 4:30 AM BST

🟠 US Retail Sales and PPI (September): Thursday, 8:30 AM ET / 1:30 PM BST

🟠 Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and ASML Q3 Results: Wednesday, Before Open

🟠 Fed Beige Book: Wednesday, 2:00 PM ET / 7:00 PM BST

🟠 UK GDP (August): Thursday, 2:00 AM ET / 7:00 AM BST

🟡 Apple Event in New York: Tuesday, 9:00 AM ET / 2:00 PM BST

MONDAY, October 12

Read more

This Week

XRP had a rough week. It ends Sunday around $1.41, down 5.8%, after a range between $1.53 and $1.31. The low came on Thursday, when bitcoin funds were selling hard and the whole market slid. Crypto as a whole fell 3.4% to $2.88 trillion. Bitcoin now holds 58.5% of it. And the Fear and Greed Index? It reads 61. Still Greed.

Then on Friday came the biggest news the XRP Ledger has ever had to share. For 10 years its code carried a bug that could have created XRP out of nothing, far beyond the 100 billion that will ever exist. An AI found it. Ripple’s engineers fixed it in secret. It leads the stories below.

Evernorth closed its deal on Friday, and XRPN starts trading on Nasdaq under its own name on Monday. The filing finally shows who owns it and what a share holds. The XRP funds took money in again while bitcoin’s funds bled. And Batch, the upgrade that bundles transactions into one, went live on the ledger.

The Consensus

• 🐛 The XRP Ledger bug could have created about 18 trillion XRP, and was fixed in secret before anyone used it.

• 🏦 Evernorth’s closing filing shows who owns XRPN and what a share holds, before its Nasdaq start on Monday.

• 💰 The XRP funds took money in for a 13th straight week, while bitcoin, ether and Solana funds lost money.

• 🔗 Batch went live on the XRP Ledger, letting up to 8 transactions settle as one.

The Numbers

The Chart Watch

The Ripple Effect

🐛 18 Trillion XRP From Thin Air: The Bug That Could Have Broken XRP

For 10 years a flaw sat inside the XRP Ledger that let anyone print XRP out of nothing. About 18 trillion XRP, in a single payment. That is 184 times every XRP in existence. An AI found it last month. Ripple’s engineers fixed it in 3 days, kept it secret for 2 weeks, and told the world on Friday. Here is the full story, and why the biggest names at Ripple have gone silent.

Late on a Monday night

On Monday 21 September a small security firm, Veria Labs, pointed its AI agent at the XRP Ledger’s code. Late that night, the agent flagged something.

Founder Cayden Liao read it 3 times and didn’t believe it. By the small hours he still couldn’t find a flaw in it, so he woke up his founding engineer. By morning they were sure. The AI had found a way to create brand new XRP, and built a working attack to prove it (Veria Labs).

The bug had been in the code since 2015. Ripple’s engineers rebuilt the attack the next day. It worked. The fake XRP could be spent like any other XRP (XRP Ledger disclosure report).

How do you print 18 trillion XRP?

The XRP Ledger has a built-in exchange. One payment can buy from hundreds of sellers at once, and the software adds up the bill.

That bill had a ceiling. Think of an old car odometer. Drive past 999,999 miles and it rolls back to zero. Push the bill past the ledger’s ceiling and it rolled back to almost nothing.

Set up hundreds of accounts. Have each one sell a sliver of a token for an enormous amount of XRP. Then buy the lot in one payment. The sellers get paid in full. The buyer gets charged almost nothing. The difference is XRP that never existed.

The ledger has an alarm for exactly this. After every transaction it checks that no new XRP has appeared. The alarm used the same maths, so it rolled over too and stayed silent.

The cost of the whole attack? A few hundred XRP, most of it refundable.

Could this have sent XRP to zero?

Zero? Probably not. Nobody could ever sell 18 trillion XRP, because there are not enough buyers on the planet.

An attacker never needed to sell it all. Here is how it could have played out. Open big bets against XRP first. Mint a few billion fake XRP. Dump them on every exchange that will take them. The price collapses, the bets pay out, and the attacker gets paid twice.

Then the news breaks that XRP’s fixed supply, the one promise it makes to every holder, is gone. Nobody can tell real XRP from fake. Nobody knows how much more is out there.

We know how markets react. In June, Zcash disclosed almost the same kind of flaw: unlimited fake coins found with AI and fixed before anyone used it. ZEC still crashed 38% in a day (CoinDesk). That was for a bug nobody exploited.

My read: a real attack on XRP means a 90% crash, easily.

Fixed in 3 days. Secret for 14.

The fix was written the next day and shipped on Friday 25 September.

Then they did something the XRP Ledger had never done. Any change to how transactions work needs over 80% of the main validators to vote yes for 2 weeks. That would have left the bug sitting in public code for 2 weeks, readable by anyone. So they skipped the vote. The fix went out as a sealed download with the code hidden, and validators were asked to install it immediately. More than 80% did on day one.

What was the public told? A “Batch fix and stability improvements.”

For 14 days the most dangerous bug ever found in the XRP Ledger was fixed, and almost nobody knew. On 8 October Justin Bons of Cyber Capital spotted the hidden code and called selling XRP as decentralised “straight-up fraud”.

The next day the real reason came out.

RippleX engineer Mayukha Vadari explained the secrecy in one line: “Things have changed with AI. You can’t just sneak in a critical bug patch in a regular public release process.”

$250,000 to save $94 billion

Veria says it was paid $250,000, the most the XRP Ledger bug bounty pays out (Veria Labs).

$94 billion of XRP was on the line. That is $1 of reward for every $376,000 protected.

Others have paid far more. Polygon paid $2.2 million in 2021 for a bug that put $24 billion at risk. Wormhole paid $10 million in 2022.

So why the cap? Ripple hasn’t said. The AI tools Veria used are available to anyone. The next person to find a bug like this has a choice: $250,000 for reporting it, or billions for using it. In my opinion the reward has to make the honest choice the easy one.

Not a word from the top

Read more