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The stock market rose in the 12 months after every midterm since 1946, by 14.7% on average. This time the Fed is raising rates and bonds pay almost 5%.

The FBI says North Korea's TraderTraitor hackers took over $6bn from Binance: one night's haul, close to the $6.75bn it stole in crypto in all years to 2025.

Bank of England interest rate decision on Thursday: markets put a rise from 3.75% at 94.9%, the first since 2023, with UK inflation at 3.5% and climbing.

A crack spread is what refiners earn between crude oil and fuel. The 3-2-1 version hit a record $81.86 a barrel in September 2026; by 27 October it had halved.

The Binance hack took about $6.3bn, most of it in 20 minutes: four times the Bybit theft. About $2.7bn is frozen; Binance says it will cover every loss.

Lagarde steps down as ECB president on 7 February 2027, almost nine months early, to speak freely. The ECB held at 2.50%; France pays 150bp over Germany.

Bank of Japan rate decision: the policy rate stays at 1.25% in an 8–1 vote. The bank will sell ¥860bn of ETFs a year from January, up from ¥330bn.

What is GDP: the value of all an economy produces in a period. US GDP ran at $33.0tn a year in Q3 2026 and grew at a 3.4% annual rate.

Amazon earnings: shares fell 7% after hours and Intel 23%, after Alphabet's worst day on record. Microsoft held. The round-up of 24 hours of results.

Trump on Iran strikes after the midterms: "anything's possible". He ruled out attacks before 3 November; Gulf states were told to expect a short campaign.

Iran war cost to US taxpayers: $47.1bn by 16 October, most of it to replace missiles. It excludes damage to bases, and the White House wants $95bn more.

Ras Tanura attack: the Houthis say a missile hit Saudi Arabia's 550,000-barrel refinery. Riyadh has not confirmed it; a fire near the terminal was contained.

How do tariffs work? The importer pays the tax at the border, then passes most of it on. US customs duties were $173bn in fiscal 2026, after refunds.

Google earnings: Alphabet fell 10% after hours as profit missed on a SpaceX markdown and cash flow turned negative. Microsoft rose. We think it is too big.

The Fed holds rates at 3.75% to 4% in a 10–2 vote, with two officials for a rise. Warsh gave no date for the next move. The 2-year yield fell; the 10-year rose.

Fed decision today at 2pm in Washington: futures give a hold 88.1%. The chance of a higher rate by December jumped to 89.1% in a day, so the words matter most.

Israel election results with 76.8% counted: Netanyahu's bloc has 54 seats, Eisenkot's 47 and the Arab parties 19. The shekel fell 1%, Tel Aviv shares 1.7%.

The Brazilian real fell 8.4% the day after Lula's win, its worst day since 2008. São Paulo stocks lost 13.9% and bond yields jumped almost 3 points.

OpenAI and Anthropic say their models refuted the Exponential Time Hypothesis on the same day. 800 papers lean on it; no practical speed-up follows yet.

What is a budget deficit: the gap when a government spends more than it collects in a year. The US gap was $1,992bn in fiscal 2026; Britain's £134bn.

Anthropic IPO: the S-1 shows $16.3bn of revenue in the first half of 2026, 14 times a year earlier. A share class with 50.1% of votes stays with the founders.

At the Fed meeting on 28 October 2026, futures price an 88% chance of no change. A rise to 4–4.25% by December is priced at 79%, after weak September jobs.

Gas prices under Trump vs Biden: the second-term average, $3.446 a gallon, is a cent below Biden's $3.457. At $4.28, it passes his by the midterms.

What is an IPO? A company's first sale of shares to the public. Here are the steps, from the SEC filing to the 180-day lock-up, read off Anthropic's own filing.

CCC spreads are 10.13 points above single-B, the widest gap since 2020. A viral video calls it a crash signal. It came late three times and missed nine falls.

Q3 earnings season so far: 83% of companies beat forecasts, but by little. Oil moved profit from airlines to refiners, and AI spending is eating cash.

Serbia election results: the Student List has 52.6% to 39.3% for Vučić. Lula won Brazil with 51.8%. Betting markets had both wrong; the US votes on 3 November.

What is stagflation? High inflation with weak growth and rising unemployment. In the 1970s US prices rose 12% a year as output fell; in 2026, CPI is 3.7%.

Big Tech earnings this week: Alphabet and Microsoft report on Wednesday, Amazon on Thursday. In their last quarters, capital spending took 98% of their cash.

What is a bond yield? The yearly return on a bond at today's price. Prices and yields move in opposite ways. The US 10-year yield was 5.00% on 23 October 2026.

What is the federal funds rate? The rate banks charge each other overnight, which the Fed steers. Raised to 3.75% to 4% in September; next decision 28 October.

What is a recession? A broad fall in output, jobs and income that lasts months. Two quarters of falling GDP is a rule of thumb; the US uses a committee.

Is the AI bubble bursting? Meta now spends more than its cash flow, and protests stall an Australian data centre. The Nasdaq fell 2.6% and bonds rallied.

The stock market fell 19.8% around the 2018 midterm elections and rose 28.9% once the Fed turned. Now bonds pay almost what stocks earn, and rates are rising.

Why is diesel more expensive than gas? In the US it costs $1.99 a gallon more, near the record gap. Refining and distribution cause it, not crude oil or tax.

SpaceX and Tesla have set up committees to weigh a merger. Musk's $1tn revenue goal is 17 times SpaceX's current pace; even combined, they make $170bn a year.

Anthropic compute costs: its draft prospectus plans $750bn of capacity. But each dollar of revenue now needs 55 cents of compute, down from $2.09 a year ago.

Netflix stock fell 5% after a third straight quarter of slower growth, to its lowest since 2024. Meta was in a worse spot at its 2022 low, then rose 7.8 times.

A PHP vulnerability found with AI lets attackers take over web servers. PHP runs 69% of sites whose language is known; French and Dutch state sites went dark.

Ghana's raw mineral export ban by 2030 joins Congo, Gabon and Zimbabwe. Africa mines 73% of the world's cobalt and manganese, so metal prices are the test.

SpaceX earnings: revenue rose 161% to $14.6bn as its AI arm outgrew Starlink. It spent $19.6bn on capital projects in the quarter, more than it took in.

UK inflation rose to 3.5% in September from 3.1%, the ONS says, as petrol reached 169.5p a litre. Markets put a Bank of England rate rise on 5 November at 95%.

Brazil election run-off on Sunday: Flávio Bolsonaro leads Lula 47% to 45%, a tie. The real jumped 4.8% after the first round; debt is 82.9% of GDP.

Is the Nasdaq cheap? Tech's P/E ratio fell from 25.6 in June to 20.4, below consumer staples. Prices barely moved: chip profit forecasts soared, and can fall.

French bond yields rose to 4.85% after riots burned Limoges town hall. The gap over Germany is 139bp, and speculators hold their biggest euro bet since 2016.

China's trade surplus reached $938bn by September, on course for a record. Chips and computers made two-fifths of export growth; the EU now tops the US.

Rubio in Uzbekistan promised deeper ties on critical minerals. But China's trade with Uzbekistan this year is $13.2bn, and America's just $810m.

The Albanian lek is so strong that no floating currency has gained more since 2019. Tourism leads; import prices did not fall, but the state's debt ratio did.

China GDP growth picked up to 4.5% in the third quarter. Exports rose 16.4% this year, but investment fell 7.2% and retail sales grew just 1.1%.

Albania's protests hit a sixth day as Rama said EU membership, not his government, is at stake. €709m of the EU's €922m in Growth Plan money is still to come.

Are UK house prices falling? Asking prices are 0.1% below a year ago, Rightmove says, and are falling in cheaper regions as two-year fixes reach 5.55%.

US net interest on the national debt hit $1,051.8bn in fiscal 2026, up 8.4%, Treasury figures show. It now costs more than defence and a fifth of revenue.

Cost of living protests hit France, Italy and Portugal. Euro area inflation reached 3.8% in September, as fuel cost 31.9% more than a year earlier.

Microsoft has dropped its deal for Nscale's Loughton site, billed as the UK's largest AI supercomputer, with 23,040 Nvidia GPUs. Grid power is the cause.

The US PPI rose 1.3% in September, the biggest monthly rise since March 2022, as energy jumped 10.8%. Core producer prices rose 0.7%, and Fed hike odds rose.

Indonesia stocks fell 11.5%, their worst day since 1998, after MSCI proposed moving Indonesia from emerging to standalone status. It will decide by June 2027.

Bank executives expect a bank tax rise in Healey's Budget on 28 October. UK banks paid £39.1bn in tax last year. The surcharge on profits is 3%, down from 8%.

Thames Water's emergency money runs out around the new year. It wants creditors to lift its super senior loan from £3bn to £5.4bn. They vote by 29 October.

Students joined the flamingo movement and attacked government buildings for two nights. EU countries gave Albanians 68,653 first residence permits last year, and youth unemployment is 25.6%.

TSMC earnings: third-quarter profit rose 68.7% and TSMC expects up to $54.3bn in sales next quarter. The shares still fell 2% in Taipei in the chip sell-off.

UK GDP grew 0.1% in August and 0.7% in the three months to August, the fastest since 2022, the ONS says. Tech and legal services led, before the Budget.

The IEA's October Oil Market Report sees oil demand falling 2.6m barrels a day in 2026. Gulf supply is back, but stocks are 509m barrels below pre-war levels.

The 10-year Treasury yield is 5.19%, up 44bp since August. In the year to July, private foreign investors bought $392.3bn of US corporate bonds and $263.4bn of Treasuries.

Chip stocks fell for a sixth day, and the semiconductor index lost 4.3% after a hot inflation report. Chipmakers carry much of the S&P 500's profit growth.

SpaceX capped Ukraine's military Starlink and two missile warnings never came, as 600,000 lost power. Zelensky says he feels betrayed. Kyiv's allies fear the aim is a forced deal.

A quarter of US finance HR staff say their firms tie raises, promotions and bonuses to AI proficiency. PwC puts the pay premium for AI skills at 62%, up from 57% a year earlier.

US CPI for September is out today. Here is what a hot, in-line or soft report would mean for the odds of a Fed rate rise in October or December, and for yields.

In the flight to quality, quality stocks beat momentum by the widest margin since 2023. The money went into tech: McDonald's and Home Depot are down this year.

ASML's third-quarter results beat its own forecast and it raised its 2026 outlook again. Chipmakers now want more machines than it can build in 2027 and 2028.

The Bank of America fine is the third-largest in Treasury history. The bank admits it relied on police and other banks to spot money laundering for it.

Nvidia guarantees $108.5bn of data-centre leases, $105bn of them for OpenAI, and holds $51.2bn of private stakes. Its filings show why it is too big to fail.

The IMF's October World Economic Outlook sees global growth of 3.1% in 2026 and 3.4% in 2027. AI investment offsets the energy shock, but inflation is rising.

China will hold hybrid car exports to the EU to 350,000 a year from December, against about 800,000 this year. The EU's deficit with China was €372bn in 2025.

US diesel costs $6.20 a gallon, 67% more than a year ago. The IEA wants stocks released faster, and experts say Trump's Russian deal will barely move prices.

Meta's Muse Wonder Full scores 56 on an independent index, behind Claude Opus 5.5 at 58 and ahead of OpenAI's best at 53. More labs at the top test safety rules.

Trump declared an energy ceasefire as US officials threatened to cut Ukraine's arms and intelligence unless it stops striking Russian refineries, the FT says.

Nvidia is in talks to buy Reflection AI or invest more in it, having already put in $800m. It is the chipmaker's latest bet on open AI models made in America.

Before the UK Budget 2026, the IFS says inflation will squeeze public services. Avoiding cuts and funding defence could need £35bn of tax rises or benefit cuts.

The US Treasury licensed Russian diesel imports until April 2027 after a Trump-Putin call. The first 300,000 tonnes equal about 14 hours of US diesel use.

The rupee is near a record low. The RBI cut the hedging limit from $100m to $5m, added a 20% reserve on dollar hedges and will sell dollars to oil firms.

OpenAI told investors its annualised revenue was about $50bn at the end of September, well short of the $68bn widely reported. CoreWeave fell nearly 8% and Oracle almost 6%.

Spending on US data centre construction reached an $85.0bn annual rate in August. Private building outside data centres fell 5.3%, and AI deals made up more than half of net bond supply.

Revolut's chief executive says the digital bank is targeting a primary US listing, citing the depth of American markets. The US holds 43.7% of the world's stock market value.

Brent closed up 4% at $104.28 after Trump pledged no attack on Iran before 3 November. As long as oil is above $70, we read such pledges as talk.

Weekly jobless claims fell to 197,000, the fourth week in a row under 200,000, a run last seen in 1969. American employers are not firing, but they are not hiring much either.

The WTO doubled its 2026 goods trade forecast to 3.9%, and AI goods drove almost half the growth. The productivity gains are hard to see. The borrowing is not.

Jared Kushner and Putin's envoy Kirill Dmitriev talked about a US stake in the idle Nord Stream pipelines, Reuters reported. Germany says it does not want them back.

AI agents that shop for us will make the biggest platforms stronger, ING says. Amazon has blocked Meta's Muse agent, Shopify has let it in, and Amazon's ad business shows why.

Musk asked if Mukesh Ambani is ‘the real boss of India’ as Starlink waits to launch there. Jio and Airtel hold 77% of India's mobile users. The government denies any bias.

Mortgage rates rose for a seventh week: the 30-year fixed averaged 7.40%, the highest since November 2023, as Treasury yields climbed. Here is what it costs.

The American Express money laundering fine is $350m: regulators found its bank missed about $13bn of suspect activity over a decade, from 2014 to 2025.

PepsiCo earnings: third-quarter revenue rose 5.6%, but PepsiCo cut its 2026 profit forecast as sales in North America stalled and input costs kept rising.

Tesco results for the half year: adjusted operating profit rose 6.3% to £1.78bn, and Tesco raised its profit forecast for the year and its buyback to £950m.

Tariffs and inflation: NY Fed economists find tariffs added 2.9 points to US goods inflation at the peak. Without them, goods prices would have fallen slightly.

The ECB minutes for September show every member backed the rise to 2.50% and saw inflation risks to the upside, but they chose to promise nothing for October.

The Fed minutes show most officials expect another rate rise by the end of 2026. Since then, inflation and hiring came in softer, but long yields kept rising.

Samsung earnings guidance puts third-quarter operating profit at 107.4tn won, about $76bn, almost nine times last year's, as AI demand keeps memory chips short.

Levi Strauss earnings rose on $79m of tariff refunds after the Supreme Court ruling. Without them, operating profit was flat on the year and US sales fell 1%.

Paramount closed its Warner Bros. Discovery takeover and is now Skydance. It paid about $78bn in cash, funded by $47bn of equity and $41.4bn of secured bonds.

The RBI raised the repo rate by 25bp to 5.50% and moved to calibrated tightening, its first rise since February 2023, as it sees inflation near 6% this winter.

Heating oil prices will average $5.26 a gallon this winter, up 34%, the EIA says. Oil-heated homes face a 21% higher bill; gas and propane users pay less.

The US trade deficit jumped to $105.6bn in August, the widest since March 2025, as imports of crude oil, gold and chips rose much faster than exports.

Why is the euro falling? French bond yields jumped, Spain called a snap election, and the euro hit $1.1204, its lowest since May 2025. The figures behind it.

UK mortgage rates are at three-year highs: the average five-year fix is 6.00% and sub-5% fixed deals have almost gone, as gilt yields and BoE rate bets climb.

Schneider Electric will pay $205 a share in cash for PTC, the design software maker. Its shares fell 10% on the news, while PTC's still trade below the offer.

A chart pairing 1987 with 2026 says rising yields end in a crash. Since 1962 the 10-year has jumped 100bp by October in nine years, and only 1987 crashed. The real risk is real yields.

Since 1946, more S&P 500 bear markets have ended in October than in any other month. Today the index is 1% from a record, yet 182 of its stocks are in a bear market of their own. PepsiCo is one.

Official Brazil election results give Flávio Bolsonaro 47.03% of valid votes and Lula 45.16%. Neither passed 50%, so they meet in a run-off on 25 October.

The Super Intelligence Force puts Trump's spy chief, the FTC chairman and two others in charge of coordinating AI policy. It follows an industry accord.

Most economists expect Wednesday's RBI policy decision to lift the repo rate to 5.50%. Inflation hit 4.82% in August, and the RBI sees it peaking near 6%.

The 10-year Treasury yield rose 11bp in the week, to its highest Friday close since 2002, even as weak jobs data cut the odds of a Fed rise. Real yields did it.

G7 leaders agreed to release 100m barrels of oil and diesel over four months. About 75m was still owed from March. Then Trump ruled out a diesel export ban.

Seven OPEC+ countries held their combined November target at 31m barrels a day. OPEC's own data show its members pumped 28% less in the spring than in 2025.

The consultancy beat its own forecast, booked $22.2bn of new work and expects growth of 3% to 6% next year. Its shares had lost about a third of their value this year on fears that AI would shrink demand.

Chinese refiners have halted exports of diesel, petrol and jet fuel to rebuild stocks at home. Europe is discussing a 50m-barrel diesel release. Diesel already sells for about $90 a barrel more than crude.

Energy prices were 18.8% higher than a year ago in September, and inflation reached its highest since 2023. Core inflation rose only to 2.5%, and markets see little chance of an ECB rise this month.

Hiring fell short of forecasts and the two months before were revised down by 60,000. Futures now give a Fed increase on 28 October about a one-in-five chance. Two-year yields fell 7bp.

This year's chip rally rests on a few leaders. China is building its own chips, memory and software to replace them. Nvidia barely moved, but a DeepSeek scare cost it $593bn in a day last year.

OpenAI accused Moonshot of copying its models, and Anthropic warned that a free Chinese model can build working exploits. Both say they oppose a ban. Their rivals sell for far less.

An early independent test ties Google's new model with OpenAI's best, behind Anthropic. Google may not need to lead. It sells computing power to its rivals, and owns part of one.

Revenue rose 379% to $54.2bn and the gross margin reached 87%. Micron expects supply to be much tighter in 2027 and 2028. The shares, up 273% this year, rose 3%.

Sales fell 4% and Nike expects them to fall by a high single digit for the year. The shares dropped 8% after hours. At the guided profit, the dividend costs more than Nike earns.

Core PCE prices rose 0.2% in August, less than forecast, and revisions lowered the path. Futures now give an October increase about a 35% chance, down from 71% on Monday.

The shares are down more than 40% this year and Nike has left the S&P 100. Analysts expect sales to fall again. Small investors are more patient than Wall Street.

He resigned to lead his party’s list in the election on 25 October. If it wins, he runs Serbia from the prime minister’s office. The size of the result matters as much as the winner.

Oracle, Amazon and Microsoft have cut thousands of jobs and named AI as a reason. Apple cut just over 200. John Ternus now wants fewer managers and flat headcount, and he has looked at what AI could do instead.

John Stankey calls a SpaceX mobile network “not a viable strategy” and bets another $3bn on fibre. Starlink has 12 million subscribers, and four in ten US homes still cannot get fibre.

The prime minister says Britain “could go all the way” back into the EU. Polls this year put support for membership at 60%. Reform UK, the party of Brexit, is level with Labour.

Five EU countries want to start sending rejected asylum seekers to countries outside the bloc next year, with Rwanda first. Rwanda also takes US deportees. Asylum claims are already down by a third.

Novo Nordisk will pay up to $2.6bn for an early-stage weekly pill from Hengrui. Its shares are down more than 70% from the peak, as Lilly wins in America and generics undercut Novo abroad.

Kpler put Middle East crude exports at 16.3 million barrels a day in September, the most since February. Brent fell 2.6% on the news, yet it stays far above its pre-war level.

Diesel’s premium over crude reached a monthly record in September. BloombergNEF expects Africa and Asia to account for 95% of new refining capacity to 2030, led by Nigeria’s Dangote.

The smart-ring maker cited uncertainty in the market. Anthropic’s listing could be the largest ever, and companies that can afford to wait are keeping out of its way.

GPT-6.1 Astra failed OpenAI’s own safety tests on the eve of DevDay. Anthropic overtook OpenAI this spring on revenue and valuation, and hired some of the best-known researchers in the field.

Physical crude went from $88 to $131 a barrel between 25 August and 15 September.

The first increase since 2023 took the target range to 3.75% to 4%. The median official expects another quarter point before the end of the year.

Short yields moved first as the Fed turned to rate increases. The gap between 10-year and 2-year yields fell to 20bp, the smallest since March 2025.

Brent futures rose more than 3% on 28 September, to about $107, after the US president rejected a proposal to reopen the strait within a week.

Both central banks raised rates in September. The dollar gained anyway, because Fed officials expect to go further.

The extra yield on US high-yield bonds over Treasuries rose from 2.66 to 2.93 percentage points in four trading days.

The index closed 1.5% below its August high on 28 September, and the VIX stayed below 18 through 22 September.

The 10-year Treasury yield rose 54bp in a month. The market price of inflation moved 1bp.