☕️ Brent tops $100 after China fuel export ban

Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Finpresso.

In today's newsletter:

🛢️ Brent tops $100 on China fuel export ban

📉 UK borrowing costs hit highest since 1998

💵 Visa, Stripe back new $1B stablecoin

💎 Google unveils Gemini 4 Argon to top coding benchmark

💾 Micron revenue soars 379% on AI memory demand

Plus: 🌍 9 macro stories, 🏢 10 corporate stories, and 📑 6 research & reports.

📊 Before The Bell

• Brent crude climbed 2.4% to $100.36 a barrel today, reversing an earlier loss, after a report that Chinese refiners suspended October fuel exports tightened markets already strained by conflict.
• Reuters reported that state major PetroChina canceled several gasoline and jet fuel shipments slated for October to protect domestic supplies, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate rose 2.5% to $92.70; CNBC could not verify the report.
• Crude supply fears had been easing as Saudi Arabia resumed loadings from its Red Sea port of Yanbu via its restarted East-West Pipeline, a workaround while Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz, though analysts say that pipeline is far from full capacity.

• UK government borrowing costs jumped to their highest level since 1998, with 10-year gilt yields hitting 6.07% in morning trading today, dragging London's FTSE 100 down 2% as a global bond sell-off spilled into stock markets.
• Yields rise when bond prices fall, and higher yields mean it costs more for the government to borrow, intensifying pressure on Chancellor John Healey ahead of his first Budget later this month amid Britain's rising debt pile.
• The rout spread across Europe, with Germany's Dax and France's Cac 40 both off 1.3%, and the US 10-year yield hit its highest since 2002, even as Brent crude slipped 2% to $99.9 a barrel, offering bond markets no lasting relief.

• Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase and Shopify launched a jointly owned stablecoin, Open USD, which went live yesterday across four blockchains with the five founding partners pledging more than $1 billion to support its liquidity.
• Rather than keeping the interest earned on reserves, as market leaders do, Open Standard says it will hand most of its equity to partners based on how much they grow the coin's supply and transaction volume, with creation and redemption carrying no fees.
• The threat to incumbents is already showing: Mizuho cut Circle's price target to $50 from $85 and downgraded it to Underperform in July, citing Open USD, though Coinbase, Visa and Mastercard still back Circle's USDC too.

• Alphabet yesterday unveiled Gemini 4 Argon, its latest AI model, positioning it against rivals from OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI on coding, cybersecurity and professional-work tasks.
• Google is already running Argon internally to manage memory at its data centers, freeing up hundreds of terabytes without buying new hardware, and says it tops a real-world software-engineering benchmark while tying for first in cybersecurity.
• The rollout is phased, starting with trusted cybersecurity partners and U.S. government safety checks before public release, coming a day after CEO Sundar Pichai signed a voluntary AI-safety agreement with President Trump at the White House.

• Micron posted record quarterly revenue of $54.23 billion, up 379% from a year earlier, as AI demand for its memory chips far outstripped supply and pushed earnings per share above what Wall Street had expected.
• DRAM chips generated a record $39.8 billion, nearly three-quarters of sales, with prices rising by a high-teens percentage; the only US maker of high-bandwidth memory says customers have locked in more than 75% of its 2027 output.
• Despite the beat, shares traded flat at about $1,065 after hours, investors had priced in the result after a 500%-plus gain over the past year, with the next leg hinging on how fast new fabs in Idaho and New York start shipping.

🌍 Macro News

• US core inflation cooled to 3% in August, below forecasts. LINK
• Private employers added 90,000 jobs in September, beating forecasts. LINK
• Senate Democrats blocked a bill preventing data centers shifting power costs to households. LINK
• Bailey says regulators must retain intervention powers over risky AI models. LINK
• Middle East-driven energy costs are accelerating inflation across southern Europe. LINK
• White House reviews CFTC proposals tightening federal oversight of prediction markets. LINK
• Britain's FCA opens authorization applications ahead of 2027 crypto regulation. LINK
• SEC loosens accredited-investor rules to expand retail access to private markets. LINK
• Fed finalizes more transparent stress tests, smoothing big banks' capital requirements. LINK

🏢 Corporate News

• Tesla secures $30 billion credit to fund robotaxi, robot and truck production. LINK
• ElevenLabs doubles valuation to $22 billion from February's $11 billion. LINK
• Synopsys shares rise after OpenAI partnership to automate semiconductor design. LINK
• Apple's Ternus weighs management cuts and year-round product launches, report says. LINK
• Stripe will acquire Parafin to expand lending across its software platform network. LINK
• BMW plans 20% management cuts by 2027 as AI reshapes operations. LINK
• Vultr places $1.2 billion order for HPE's AMD AI racks. LINK
• Sycamore nears $9 billion Boots sale to Canada's Weston family. LINK
• Valley National will buy digital banking platform Bluevine for about $340 million. LINK
• FTC investigates whether OpenAI and Anthropic AI systems threaten consumers. LINK

📈 Stocks

📑 Research & Reports

• Aleph's FP&A fitness score: scores your planning process and shows where it lags comparable finance teams. Get your free score
• AI speeds finance operations but cannot fix external cash-flow bottlenecks. LINK
• Tokenization is creating distinct 24-hour markets as institutional adoption accelerates. LINK
• Singapore crypto economy grew 55% to $284 billion, leading regional markets. LINK
• Goldman now expects the Fed's next rate hike in December. LINK
• BofA warns Meta's AI assistant poses long-term competitive risk to Apple. LINK
• Surging junk-bond issuance pushes demanded yields to a five-month high. LINK

📅 Market Calendar

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