Global Reports

The US midterm elections set the tone for the week. Democrats won control of Congress, and investors worried that new lawmakers could slow the building of AI data centres, the spending that has been driving tech stocks. That fear hit on Thursday, when the Nasdaq fell 5.5% in a single day. A Friday bounce did […]

Amazon and Alphabet missed expectations, and Intel had its worst day since 1974 after a weak outlook. Investors are now asking when all the money spent on AI will start paying back. Tech stocks took the hit. The Nasdaq fell 2.0% to 25,437.00 and the S&P 500 slipped 0.6% to 7,580.07. The same worry spread […]

Oil set the tone again. Brent crude rose to about $116.72 a barrel, another weekly gain, after Houthi attacks in Saudi Arabia and fresh US-Iran tension near the Strait of Hormuz. Costlier oil feeds inflation, so traders now put the odds of a Fed rate rise by December above 80%. Gold pays no interest, so […]

Borrowing costs set the tone. The US 10-year Treasury yield, what the US government pays to borrow, hit a 24-year high on Wednesday, then fell back to about 5.25% by Friday. Stocks dipped midweek. A report that OpenAI’s revenue was about $20 billion below earlier estimates hit AI shares on Thursday. The S&P 500 still […]

This week, borrowing got expensive almost everywhere. In the US, the 10-year government bond yield went to its highest level since 2002. In the UK, the 30-year yield crossed 6% for the first time since 1998, and the FTSE 100 had its worst day since May. Then Friday’s US jobs data came in weak. The […]

Bond markets set the tone. The US 10-year Treasury yield finished the week above 5.1%, and two Federal Reserve officials said more rate rises may still be needed. That firmed the dollar and pulled gold down 2.1% to $4,284.20. Stocks climbed anyway, and AI did the lifting. Excitement around Meta’s new agent Muse put technology ahead of every other […]

The Fed raised rates this week for the first time since 2023 and signalled at least one more to come, which set the tone for everything else. Treasury yields climbed with it, the US 10-year reaching its highest level since 2007, and oil stayed above $100 a barrel. Rising borrowing costs and rising fuel costs land on the […]

Fighting near the Strait of Hormuz pushed crude above $100 a barrel. Expensive oil makes everything else cost more, so it arrives as inflation. US price data on Thursday and Friday was not alarming but not reassuring either, and most traders now expect the Federal Reserve to raise rates next week. Europe raised this week, […]

Interestingly, one of the companies we covered in this edition of Global Investing update has witnessed the dark side of AI. Hugging Face makes about $150 million a year, was hacked in July by AI that OpenAI was testing, and Nvidia is (still) paying $12.93 billion to buy it. Broadcom tripled its AI revenue to $16.7 billion […]

Salesforce reported earnings of $5.90 a share against the $3.27 expected and had its second-best day ever, except $2.53 of that did not come from selling software. Meta agreed to pay up to $16.7 billion as settlement and its stock went up. Nvidia added $435 billion in a single session, on a day the average […]