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▸ US stocks rebound after tumul­tu­ous week on indic­a­tion of Fed rate cut▸ Nas­daq climbs after swinging between gains and losses as tech shares fal­ter▸ European bourses fall, dragged down by Stoxx tech­no­logy sub-indexUS stocks reboun­ded at the end of a week marked by erratic trad­ing, after a top Fed­eral Reserve offi­cial lif­ted Wall Street’s hopes for a Decem­ber rate cut.The tech-focused Nas­daq Com­pos­ite rose 1 per cent in choppy after­noon trad­ing in New York, with the broader S&P 500 1.2 per cent higher.The moves came after the Nas­daq dropped 2.2 per cent in the most tur­bu­lent trad­ing ses­sion since Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump’s “lib­er­a­tion day” tar­iff announce­ment sparked huge mar­ket gyr­a­tions in April.Wor­ries about elev­ated valu­ations for Big Tech groups, which have ral­lied this year, and dimin­ish­ing expect­a­tions that the Fed will cut rates next month have promp­ted sharp pull­backs in recent weeks.

A plan backed by Don­ald Trump to restrict US states from reg­u­lat­ing AI com­pan­ies has pro­voked a back­lash from prom­in­ent Repub­lic­ans and Maga sup­port­ers, and accus­a­tions that he has caved to Big Tech donors.The US pres­id­ent on Tues­day called for “one Fed­eral Stand­ard instead of a patch­work of 50 State Reg­u­lat­ory Regimes” to sup­port the sec­tor’s growth, des­pite vehe­ment oppos­i­tion from some Repub­lican sen­at­ors and gov­ernors.The White House is even con­sid­er­ing an exec­ut­ive order that would poten­tially with­hold fed­eral funds from states who attempt to pass AI laws, accord­ing to a per­son famil­iar with the mat­ter.Trump’s back­ing of a fed­eral frame­work — a pri­or­ity for Sil­icon Val­ley lob­by­ists who fear restric­tions on AI from some states — came two weeks after a group backed by ven­ture cap­ital firm Andreessen Horow­itz and an OpenAI co-founder was formed in Wash­ing­ton in part to fight state-led legis­la­tion.Build Amer­ican AI’s leader Nathan Leamer vis­ited the White House just hours before Trump announced his decision to back the move that had already ignited out­rage among some Repub­lic­ans.

▸ US tech stocks exper­i­ence tur­bu­lent trad­ing amid valu­ation con­cerns▸ Wor­ries per­sist des­pite optim­ism over Nvidia earn­ings as Vix fear gauge rises▸ European stocks close higher, led by Ger­many’s Dax indexUS tech stocks dropped yes­ter­day in tur­bu­lent trad­ing as optim­ism over Nvidia’s robust earn­ings was over­shad­owed by a fresh bout of fears over lofty valu­ations for arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence com­pan­ies.The Nas­daq Com­pos­ite was down about 1.2 per cent in after­noon trad­ing in New York, giv­ing up a gain of more than 2 per cent. The S&P 500 was down0.9 per cent.Shares in Nvidia — seen as a bell­wether for the boom in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence — had ini­tially ral­lied more than 5 per cent after the group pos­ted bet­ter than expec­ted quarterly res­ults late on Wed­nes­day, but slumped 1.1 per cent later in the ses­sion.The Vix index, Wall Street’s so-called fear gauge, soared from about 20 to 28 in the course of two hours, a sharp move that under­scored the abrupt bout of volat­il­ity that jol­ted US equit­ies mar­kets.

Domestic investors have fled the stock mar­ket at a record rate this year, miss­ing out on a storm­ing rally in which Lon­don has out­paced both US and European bourses.UK investors have pulled about £26bn from Lon­don-lis­ted equit­ies in 2025, accord­ing to EPFR data, the highest level on record for a cal­en­dar year as meas­ured by out­flows from funds invest­ing in the coun­try.Nev­er­the­less, the FTSE 100 is on course for its best year since its rebound from the global fin­an­cial crisis in 2009, driven in part by for­eign investors look­ing to diver­sify their expos­ure bey­ond the US and to rel­at­ively cheap valu­ations on the Lon­don mar­ket.“The UK equity mar­ket is the unex­pec­ted win­ner of 2025 but UK investors don’t seem to care,” said Emmanuel Cau, head of European equit­ies strategy at Barclays.UK investors pulled £3.4bn from Lon­don stocks via fund with­draw­als in Octo­ber alone, the biggest monthly out­flow of the year.Ana­lysts attrib­uted the moves in part to next week’s Budget, which is likely to involve tax rises and has promp­ted investors to sell out of the mar­ket and boost their cash reserves.

▸ US stocks edge higher in advance of high-stakes Nvidia earn­ings▸ Delay to jobs data sup­presses momentum for Amer­ican indices▸ European stocks close flat after shak­ing off early lossesUS stocks edged higher in choppy trad­ing yes­ter­day, in a ses­sion char­ac­ter­ised by anti­cip­a­tion ahead of a high-stakes Nvidia earn­ings along­side nerves about the state of the US employ­ment mar­ket.The Nas­daq Com­pos­ite rose as much as 1.7 per cent in early trad­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing, but fell back later in the day fol­low­ing the announce­ment that cru­cial US employ­ment data for Octo­ber would not be released as expec­ted.By early after­noon in New York, the Nas­daq Com­pos­ite and the S&P 500 were both 0.1 per cent higher.The Bur­eau of Labor Stat­ist­ics, respons­ible for the closely watched jobs data that traders use to gauge US interest rate expect­a­tions, said it will not pub­lish its Octo­ber employ­ment report this week as planned, due to the recent US fed­eral gov­ern­ment shut­down ham­per­ing data col­lec­tion.

Former prime min­is­ter Rishi Sunak has been appoin­ted as a senior adviser to both Microsoft and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence start-up Anthropic, becom­ing the latest Brit­ish politi­cian to take a Sil­icon Val­ley role.Sunak, who will remain an MP, worked with both tech groups as prime min­is­ter, set­ting up an AI safety sum­mit in 2023.The former Con­ser­vat­ive leader yes­ter­day said he had “long believed that tech­no­logy will trans­form our world”.“In my role as a senior adviser, I want to help these com­pan­ies ensure that this shift deliv­ers the improve­ments in all of our lives that it can,” he added.Sunak’s twin appoint­ments mean he will be advising rivals in the push for AI break­throughs. Microsoft is work­ing on its own AI tools and is a key backer of OpenAI, Anthropic’s chief com­pet­itor.He fol­lows former deputy prime min­is­ter and leader of the Lib­eral Demo­crats Nick Clegg in tak­ing a post at a lead­ing tech com­pany. Clegg was Meta’s pres­id­ent of global affairs until this year.

▸ Wall Street weak­ens as US gov­ern­ment shut­down con­tin­ues to hang over trad­ing▸ French assets more stable after Mac­ron prom­ises to name prime min­is­ter▸ Gold prices sur­render some ground after this year’s dizzy­ing rallyGlobal equit­ies edged lower yes­ter­day as the US gov­ern­ment shut­down con­tin­ued to hang over fin­an­cial mar­kets.After reach­ing record highs on Wed­nes­day, Wall Street stocks slipped back, with the blue-chip S&P 500 index down 0.3 per cent and the tech-heavy Nas­daq Com­pos­ite fall­ing 0.4 per cent by early after­noon trad­ing in New York.Fund man­agers said the shut­down — which has delayed the pub­lic­a­tion of key US eco­nomic data — meant investors were hold­ing off on mak­ing big bets ahead of third-quarter earn­ings sea­son, which will provide an indic­a­tion of the health of the world’s biggest eco­nomy.“Investors are sus­pen­ded in anim­a­tion with the US gov­ern­ment shut­down and earn­ings sea­son kick­ing off next week,” said Arun Sai, senior multi-asset strategist at Pic­tet Asset Man­age­ment.Stock mar­kets across the Atlantic also broadly weakened, with the region-wide Stoxx Europe 600 index fall­ing 0.4 per cent.In Paris, mar­kets were more stable after Pres­id­ent Emmanuel Mac­ron prom­ised to name a new prime min­is­ter by today. The Cac 40 index edged 0.2 per cent lower.

Global stock mar­kets are at risk of a sud­den cor­rec­tion as the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence boom pushes valu­ations towards dot­com-bubble levels, both the IMF and Bank of Eng­land have warned.Kristalina Geor­gieva, IMF man­aging dir­ector, yes­ter­day said bullish mar­ket sen­ti­ment about “the pro­ductiv­ity­en­han­cing poten­tial of AI” could “turn abruptly”, hit­ting the world eco­nomy.She was speak­ing hours after the BoE body over­see­ing fin­an­cial sta­bil­ity risks also drew par­al­lels with the 2000 crash that fol­lowed the dot­com boom, warn­ing of the risk of a “sud­den cor­rec­tion” in global fin­an­cial mar­kets.“Today’s valu­ations are head­ing towards levels we saw dur­ing the bullish­ness about the inter­net 25 years ago,” Geor­gieva said in a speech ahead of the IMF’s annual gath­er­ing next week.

▸ Global stocks hit record highs as traders back Wall Street’s AI-driven rally▸ US gov­ern­ment bonds and the dol­lar both attract investor demand▸ Paris equit­ies and French debt recover some losses from earlier in the weekGlobal stocks were trad­ing at record highs yes­ter­day, rebound­ing from a brief dip earlier in the week as investors con­tin­ued to bet on Wall Street’s AI-driven rally.US stocks slipped on Tues­day after reports that tech giant Oracle was facing hurdles con­cern­ing its plans to buy and rent bil­lions of Nvidia chips. The news unsettled investors, rais­ing fears of an AI stock mar­ket bubble.But con­fid­ence returned to the mar­ket yes­ter­day with Wall Street’s two main indices trad­ing at record highs. The blue­chip S&P 500 rose 0.5 per cent and the tech-heavy Nas­daq Com­pos­ite was up 0.9 per cent by early after­noon in New York.

OpenAI has inked $1tn of agree­ments this year for com­put­ing power, rais­ing big ques­tions about how it can fund them. As it burns through cash, it has nowhere near the cap­ital required. The deals often involve cir­cu­lar fin­an­cing that binds big tech groups to its abil­ity to turn a profit. ‘Part of Sil­icon Val­ley’s “fake it until you make it” ethos is to get people to have skin in the game. Now a lot of com­pan­ies have a lot of skin in the game,’ one expert says.

▸ Investor nerves over bubble in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence weigh on Wall Street▸ Dol­lar and Treas­ur­ies advance des­pite con­tinu­ing US gov­ern­ment shut­down▸ European stocks edge lower amid polit­ical crisis in FranceWall Street stocks slipped from record highs yes­ter­day with tech­no­logy stocks pulling the mar­ket lower as investor nerves about a bubble in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence were tested again.Shares in Oracle — which have soared 65 per cent this year — fell as much as 7 per cent fol­low­ing reports that internal com­pany data sug­ges­ted chal­lenges con­cern­ing its plans to buy bil­lions of Nvidia chips and rent them out.The blue-chip S&P 500 index dropped 0.4 per cent while the tech-heavy Nas­daq Com­pos­ite was down 0.6 per cent by early after­noon in New York after brief intra­day record highs in early trad­ing.In spite of a flurry of recent deals between big AI com­pan­ies, some investors are increas­ingly con­cerned that US AI stocks exhibit char­ac­ter­ist­ics remin­is­cent of the dot­com era bubble.

OpenAI has agreed to buy tens of bil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of chips from AMD as part of a deal that could see the Chat­GPT maker take a 10 per cent stake in the $270bn chip­maker over time.The US-based arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence start-up said it had agreed to pur­chase pro­cessors with a total power con­sump­tion of 6 gigawatts — roughly equi­val­ent to Singa­pore’s aver­age demand — send­ing the US-based chip­maker’s shares as much as 30 per cent higher yes­ter­day.The com­pan­ies did not put a total fig­ure on the trans­ac­tion, but OpenAI exec­ut­ives estim­ate that 1GW of capa­city costs about $50bn to bring online, with two-thirds of that spent on chips and the infra­struc­ture to sup­port them.The deal comes just a fort­night after AMD rival Nvidia said that it planned to invest $100bn in OpenAI, with the two com­pan­ies pledging to deploy 10GW of new data centre capa­city.AMD has also issued OpenAI a war­rant to pur­chase as many as 160mn shares at an exer­cise price of $0.01 over time based on AMD’s “achiev­ing cer­tain share price tar­gets” and OpenAI deploy­ing its chips. That would equate to about 10 per cent of the com­pany.

▸ Land­mark deal between OpenAI and chip­maker AMD buoys Wall Street▸ European stocks weighed by polit­ical tur­moil in France as PM resigns▸ Tokyo equit­ies soar to record highs as Takai­chi elec­ted leader of rul­ing partyA rally in global tech­no­logy stocks car­ried Wall Street higher yes­ter­day after a land­mark deal between OpenAI and chip­maker AMD.OpenAI agreed to buy tens of bil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of chips from AMD in order to accel­er­ate the Chat­GPT maker’s devel­op­ment of its new data centres to power its AI mod­els.AMD’s share price rose as much as 37 per cent in early trad­ing before par­ing some gains to stand up about 27 per cent.Other semi­con­ductor names were buoyed by the deal with Super Micro Com­put­ing rising 5.4 per cent, Palantir up 4.5 per cent and Arm Hold­ings rising 4.2 per cent.Wall Street’s tech-heavy Nas­daq Com­pos­ite index was up 0.6 per cent by early after­noon in New York. The blue­chip S&P 500 index gained 0.4 per cent des­pite the ongo­ing gov­ern­ment shut­down in the US.

Gold’s biggest rally since the 1970s is being stoked by “gold-plated Fomo”, as investors fear­ful of miss­ing out on returns and wor­ried about infla­tion add the pre­cious metal to their port­fo­lios.The bul­lion price has rock­eted nearly 50 per cent this year to a record of more than $3,800 per troy ounce after US Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump’s trade war sparked a rush to haven assets and sent the dol­lar tum­bling.But even when tar­iff-induced volat­il­ity in fin­an­cial mar­kets receded over the sum­mer, the gold price accel­er­ated, with a near-12 per cent jump in Septem­ber alone mark­ing the biggest monthly gain since 2011.A cru­cial cata­lyst, said asset man­agers, was the wider range of investors jump­ing on the band­wagon of soar­ing prices after years of record buy­ing by cent­ral bank reserve man­agers.“It’s gold-plated Fomo,” said Luca Paol­ini, chief strategist at Pic­tet Asset Man­age­ment, refer­ring to a “fear of miss­ing out” that has helped stoke huge gains in mega­cap tech­no­logy stocks and other mar­kets such as credit. “Gold has become so big . . . that you can­not ignore it. There becomes a level when it becomes impossible not to own it.”

The Bank of Eng­land yes­ter­day quietly replaced a data­set linked to one of its most closely watched busi­ness sur­veys, adding to uncer­tainty about the qual­ity of UK eco­nomic fig­ures.Accord­ing to data pub­lished by the BoE at 9.31am, busi­nesses expec­ted UK infla­tion for the year ahead to be 3.5 per cent, the highest since 2023.But the BoE then swapped the spread­sheet with the under­ly­ing res­ults of its sur­vey of chief fin­an­cial officers on its web­site.The updated ver­sion showed the oneyear infla­tion expect­a­tion at 3.4 per cent, the same as the pre­vi­ous month.“The Bank of Eng­land suc­cumbed to data report­ing prob­lems, chan­ging the pub­lished res­ults of their Decision Maker Panel after the num­bers were pos­ted . . . without issu­ing a cor­rec­tion or explain­ing what happened,” said Robert Wood, eco­nom­ist at con­sultancy Pan­theon Mac­roe­co­nom­ics.

▸ Semi­con­ductor shares rally glob­ally, lift­ing Seoul stocks to all-time high▸ Stoxx Europe 600 bench­mark hits second con­sec­ut­ive record peak▸ Weak debt auc­tion pushes Japan­ese bond yields to highest level since 2008A rally in chip shares car­ried European and South Korean equity indices to record highs yes­ter­day.Semi­con­ductor stocks climbed glob­ally after SK Hynix and Sam­sung Elec­tron­ics — the two biggest South Korean chip­makers — signed a let­ter of intent with OpenAI to sup­ply the com­pany’s $500bn data centre project, dubbed “Star­gate”.Shares in SK Hynix and Sam­sung Elec­tron­ics rose 9.9 per cent and 3.5 per cent, respect­ively.Sen­ti­ment towards the sec­tor was also boos­ted by OpenAI com­plet­ing a deal that val­ues the com­pany at $500bn, mak­ing it the world’s most valu­able privately owned com­pany.

Private employ­ers in the US shed the largest num­ber of jobs in two-and-ahalf years in Septem­ber, accord­ing to unof­fi­cial data that investors are rely­ing on because of the gov­ern­ment shut­down.Private sec­tor employ­ment fell by 32,000 last month, payroll pro­cessing group ADP said, con­found­ing eco­nom­ists’ expect­a­tions for an extra 50,000 roles and trig­ger­ing a rally in Treas­ur­ies.The US gov­ern­ment shut down for the first time in nearly seven years early yes­ter­day, tip­ping Wash­ing­ton into one of the biggest polit­ical crises of Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump’s second term.The clos­ure is expec­ted to res­ult in the fur­lough of around 750,000 work­ers and could cost the US eco­nomy bil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of lost out­put after Repub­lic­ans and Demo­crats failed to strike an agree­ment to fund the fed­eral gov­ern­ment into the new fiscal year.

▸ Phar­ma­ceut­ical groups push Stoxx 600 and FTSE 100 to all-time peaks▸ Treas­ury bonds rally after weaker than expec­ted US employ­ment data▸ Wall Street indices mixed after claw­ing back losses from earlier in ses­sionEuropean and UK stocks jumped to fresh record highs yes­ter­day, buoyed by phar­ma­ceut­ical stocks after Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump announced a new dir­ectto-con­sumer drug sales pro­gramme.The US gov­ern­ment’s agree­ment with Pfizer to lower drug prices and sell medi­cines dir­ectly to patients is expec­ted to be rep­lic­ated by other phar­ma­ceut­ical com­pan­ies.Wash­ing­ton said it was nego­ti­at­ing higher prices for drugs sold to G7 coun­tries plus Switzer­land and the Neth­er­lands to coun­ter­act the lower US rev­en­ues for pharma com­pan­ies.The pan-regional Stoxx Europe 600 index climbed 1.2 per cent while Lon­don’s FTSE 100 gained 1 per cent — with both indices clos­ing at all-time highs.

Sir Keir Starmer has tried to revive his flounder­ing premi­er­ship by urging his flag-wav­ing Labour party to launch a “pat­ri­otic” fight against Nigel Far­age’s Reform UK, declar­ing: “I don’t believe Bri­tain is broken.”The prime min­is­ter used the threat of Far­age as a ral­ly­ing cry in his speech to the Labour con­fer­ence, accus­ing the Reform leader of “stir­ring the pot of divi­sion” and want­ing Bri­tain to fail.Call­ing Far­age “a snake oil sales­man”, he stepped up his cri­ti­cism of people seek­ing to sow “fear and dis­cord across our coun­try”.Starmer arrived in Liv­er­pool with wide­spread dis­con­tent over his lead­er­ship, spec­u­la­tion that he could face a chal­lenge after a round of elec­tions next May and a calam­it­ous -54 YouGov approval rat­ing.In a cru­cial speech, Starmer pitched his mes­sage at his party’s work­ing-class base, prom­ising to cut immig­ra­tion, feting industry and brand­ing Labour “the pat­ri­otic party” as act­iv­ists waved flags they had been given.

▸ Pro­spect of US gov­ern­ment shut­down helps push Wall Street lower▸ European equity indices more upbeat, led higher by Frank­furt▸ Gold extends gains but crude oil retreats on sup­ply glut fearsWall Street edged down yes­ter­day as the chances ticked higher of a US gov­ern­ment shut­down begin­ning at mid­night.The tech-heavy Nas­daq Com­pos­ite index was 0.2 per cent lower by early after­noon yes­ter­day while the blue-chip S&P 500 was down 0.1 per cent.US vice-pres­id­ent JD Vance said on Monday after­noon that the gov­ern­ment was “headed to a shut­down” after Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump and con­gres­sional lead­ers failed to strike a deal in a White House meet­ing.While gov­ern­ment shut­downs do not have any con­sist­ent read­through for fin­an­cial mar­kets, investors were mostly con­cerned that it would mean a sus­pen­sion of Fri­day’s closely watched non-farm payrolls data release.The data has been taken as a key baro­meter of interest rate cut expect­a­tions in recent months.