Financial Markets

CME blamed the outage, which halted trading for more than 11 hours, on a cooling failure at a data centre in Chicago.

Global futures markets were thrown into chaos for several hours after CME Group, the world’s largest exchange operator, suffered one of its longest outages in years, halting trading across stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies.

By 13:35 GMT on Friday, trading in foreign exchange, stock and bond futures as well as other products had resumed, after having been knocked out for more than 11 hours because of an outage at an important data centre, according to LSEG data.

CME blamed the outage on a cooling failure at data centres run by CyrusOne, which said its Chicago-area facility had affected services for customers, including CME.

The disruption stopped trading in major currency pairs on CME’s EBS platform, as well as benchmark futures for West Texas Intermediate crude, Nasdaq 100, Nikkei, palm oil and gold, according to LSEG data.

‘A black eye’

Trading volumes have been thinned out this week by the United States Thanksgiving holiday, and with dealers looking to close positions for the end of the month, there was a risk of volatility picking up sharply later on, market participants said.

“It’s a black eye to the CME and probably an overdue reminder of the importance of market structure and how interconnected all these are,” Ben Laidler, head of equity strategy at Bradesco BBI, said.

“We complacently take for granted that much of the timing is frankly not great. It’s month-end, a lot of things get rebalanced.”

“Having said that, it could have been a lot worse; it’ll be a very low-volume day. If you’re going to have it, there would have been worse days to have a breakdown like this,” he said.

Futures are a mainstay of financial markets and are used by dealers, speculators and businesses wishing to hedge or hold positions in a wide range of underlying assets. Without these and other instruments, brokers were left flying blind, and many were reluctant to trade contracts with no live prices for hours on end.

“Beyond the immediate risk of traders being unable to close positions – and the potential costs that follow – the incident raises broader concerns about reliability,” said Axel Rudolph, senior technical analyst at trading platform IG.

A few European brokerages said earlier in the day they had been unable to offer trading in some products on certain futures contracts.

Biggest exchange operator

CME is the biggest exchange operator by market value and says it offers the widest range of benchmark products, spanning rates, equities, metals, energy, cryptocurrencies and agriculture.

Average daily derivatives volume was 26.3 million contracts in October, CME said earlier this month.

The CME outage on Friday comes more than a decade after the operator had to shut electronic trading for some agricultural contracts in April 2014 due to technical problems, which at the time sent traders back onto the floor.

More recently, in 2024, outages at LSEG and Switzerland’s exchange operator briefly interrupted markets.

CME’s own shares were up 0.4 percent in premarket trading.

Russian “shadow vessels” are using false flags to skirt sanctions imposed on Moscow over its war in Ukraine, according to a new report.

A total of 113 Russian vessels have flown a false flag in the first nine months of this year, transporting some 11 million tonnes of oil valued at 4.7 billion euros ($5.4bn), according to the report published on Thursday by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a Helsinki-based think tank.

“The number of Russian ʻshadowʼ tankers sailing under false flags is now increasing at an alarming rate,” said report co-author Luke Wickenden.

“False-flagged vessels carried 1.4 billion euros ($1.6bn) worth of Russian crude oil and oil products through the Danish Straits in September alone.”

Russia’s clandestine shadow fleet transports sanctioned commodities, especially oil, under non-Russian flags to evade scrutiny.

Every vessel sailing on the open seas is required to fly a flag that provides it with legal jurisdiction for its operations in international waters.

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea allows countries to grant their nationality to ships and fly their flag.

Some countries provide open registries that allow foreign-owned or controlled vessels to use their flag, a practice favoured by some shippers due to lower regulatory burdens and registration costs.

In its report, CREA said that 96 sanctioned vessels had flown a false flag at least once this year as of the end of September.

A total of 85 vessels registered at least two flag changes six months after being sanctioned by the European Union, the United States Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) or the United Kingdom, according to the think tank.

Six flag registries that had not flagged a Russian ship before Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 had at least 10 such vessels each in their fleet in September 2025, according to CREA, for a total of 162 shadow vessels.

“In addition to the risks of false flagging, we also see that ʻshadowʼ vessel operators are taking advantage of capacity limitations of economically weak nations to exploit their flags and existing regulations to gain passage rights to deliver blood oil,” said co-author Vaibhav Raghunandan, calling on the EU and the UK to reform their flagging regulations and practices.

CREA said it based its report on vessel ownership and flag registry records obtained from maritime safety platform Equasis.

It said it cross-referenced the data with the IMO Global Integrated Shipping Information System (GSIS), a global shipping industry database.

‘More evasive techniques’

Rachel Ziemba, adjunct senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for a New American Security, said the CREA’s findings aligned with previous reports on Russia’s shadow fleet.

Ziemba said Moscow had resorted to “more evasive techniques” on the back of increased pressure from the EU, as well as moves by China to block so-called “zombie vessels”, which use the registration numbers of retired vessels.

While the US and the EU have continued to roll out new sanctions on Russian oil, “there is an open question about enforcement”, Ziemba said.

With sanctions enforcement becoming more difficult due to the growing illicit trade, countries would need to target vessels, intermediaries and buyers to significantly reduce Russia’s oil sales, she said.

“But that comes with costs,” Ziemba said, suggesting that China, a major buyer of Russian oil, could retaliate against countries that tightened sanctions.

“Plus, actual enforcement might mean more quasi-military stoppages of vessels to check papers, something that these countries might be wary of doing,” she added.

It has been a whiplash-inducing month for the American rancher, one of United States President Donald Trump’s most steadfast voting blocs.

Starting with an October 19 quip from Trump that the US would increase beef imports from Argentina to the ensuing rancher backlash against the announcement of an investigation into the hyperconsolidated US meatpacking industry and the dropping of tariffs on Brazilian beef, ranchers have found themselves caught between the president’s desires to appease both them and the American consumer in the face of high beef prices.

US ranchers have enjoyed rising cattle prices, largely the result of the lowest herd numbers for beef cattle since the 1950s. Other factors constricting supply include the closure of the Mexican border to live cattle due to concerns over screwworm and steep tariffs on foreign beef.

Cattle prices paid to ranchers are separate from consumer beef prices, which, as of September, were $6.32 for a pound (453 grams) of ground beef, an 11 percent rise from September 2024 when they were $5.67 a pound. The Bureau of Labor Statistics did not release economic data, including the consumer price index for last month, because of the government shutdown.

Trump had no patience for the typically loyal ranchers objecting to his plan to import more Argentinian beef, which they saw as a threat to their recent economic gains.

“If it weren’t for me, they would be doing just as they’ve done for the past 20 years – Terrible! It would be nice if they would understand that,” Trump wrote in an October post on his Truth Social platform.

While Corbitt Wall, a commercial cattle manager and market analyst, is clear that he “totally supports Trump and everything he does”, he also saw hubris and a misunderstanding of the cattle industry by the president.

“There was not a person in the cattle business on any level that was not insulted by that post,” he told Al Jazeera.

Wall religiously follows prices across the cattle trade from ranch to slaughterhouse and has watched the futures market for cattle slide down by more than 15 percent since Trump’s October 21 announcement.

Futures prices dictate what ranchers can expect to sell cattle for down the line and sway current sale prices as well. For ranchers’ sake, Wall said he hopes Trump leaves the cattle market alone.

“He doesn’t live in this world, in this cattle world, and doesn’t realise the impact that a statement can make in our business,” Wall said.

Years of rough seasons

Oregon rancher David Packham said that while cattle prices have jumped in ranchers’ favour, many are still struggling in the face of years of rough seasons.

Years of drought across the country raised feed costs for all and pushed some ranchers to sell off cattle. Sticker prices on farm equipment from tractors to pick-up trucks have ballooned as well, especially on the back of supply chain challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, and are expected to rise further on account of Trump’s tariffs.

Packham said he has regularly sold cattle at a loss and doesn’t want consumers to think ranchers are living high off the hog.

“I’m looking at a 40-year-old tractor that I use on a daily basis just to keep putting off replacing it, making repairs, although it’s difficult to find parts for now, just to keep it limping along because I couldn’t afford $100,000 for a new tractor,” Packham said. “When I say we’re not really making a whole lot of money, it’s because we have all this loss carryover.”

Packham was a registered Republican until Trump’s first term. The president’s Argentina comments and the subsequent chaos for the cattle industry have propped open a door for ranchers critical of Trump, but they represent a minority within the community, he said.

“I’m noticing more and more of them [ranchers] that had been cautiously neutral, that are now kind of like me and just saying, ‘You know what? No. This is bulls***. He’s a train wreck,’” Packham said.

‘Perennial issue’

One action ranchers can support, however, is Trump’s November 7 announcement of a Department of Justice investigation into the big four US meatpackers – Tyson, JBS, Cargill and National Beef – “for potential collusion, price fixing and price manipulation”.

Historically, ranchers looking to sell cattle have held little negotiating power as the four companies control more than 80 percent of the market.

However, a prior Department of Justice investigation into meatpacker price-fixing was started under the first Trump administration in 2020 due to a gulf created by falling cattle prices and rising consumer beef prices. The investigation continued under President Joe Biden’s administration but was never publicly concluded. According to Bloomberg News, the investigation was quietly closed with no findings just weeks before Trump announced the November antitrust probe.

James MacDonald, a research professor in agricultural and resource economics at the University of Maryland, views the administration’s antitrust investigation announcement as “entirely for political consumption”.

“It is a perennial issue that p***es off ranchers, and you can gain some political ground by attacking the packers,” MacDonald said.

Packham would prefer the new investigation to come at a different time and said that given the squeeze from the tight cattle market, packers are operating under slimmer margins and not from a position of absolute power.

On Friday, Tyson announced the closure of a Nebraska beef-processing plant that employed more than 3,000 people. MacDonald called the decision a “shock” indicative of the depths of the US beef shortage. The current low cattle inventory in the US came from years of drought, which wiped out grazing lands and slowed herd rebuilding. Replenishing the cattle supply chain is a years-long process.

“That’s sort of a fact and a fundamental, and it’s not going to change for a while,” MacDonald said.

MacDonald also doesn’t believe the increased Argentina imports will ease this shortage or lower prices as the country largely sends lower-grade, lean beef to the US, accounting for only 2 percent of imports. He expected that while the reintroduction of largely lean Brazilian beef will impact the import market, it holds less weight on overall beef supply.

McDonald also cited heifer retention numbers, which indicate how many female cattle that ranchers hold back to produce future herds years down the line, which are still low.

Tyson likely factored in these numbers when making the decision to shutter its Nebraska plant, and it doesn’t seem like the industry is expecting herd numbers to rebound either, McDonald told Al Jazeera.

“It’s Tyson saying we don’t think cattle supplies are going to recover anytime soon,” MacDonald said.

While the actual mechanisms of Trump’s recent policies might not budge consumers’ bottom lines or change the cattle market for the time being, Wall is more concerned about the ripple effects from the news cycle, saying ranchers “live and die” by the cattle markets. While his faith is shaken, Wall regardless believes that ranchers, conservative as ever, will show up for Trump when election time comes around.

“You look at what the other side has to offer, and there’s no way people are going to go for that,” Wall said. “So in the long run, they’ll stick with him.”

A sluggish job market lowers consumer confidence but may also lead to another rate cut from the Federal Reserve by the end of the year.

United States consumer confidence sagged in November as households worried about jobs and their financial situation, likely in part because of the recently ended government shutdown.

The Conference Board said on Tuesday its consumer confidence index dropped to 88.7 this month, from an upwardly revised 95.5 in October, hitting its lowest level since April.

Economists polled by the Reuters news agency had forecast the index edging down to 93.4 from the previously reported 94.6 in October.

“Consumers’ write-in responses pertaining to factors affecting the economy continued to be led by references to prices and inflation, tariffs and trade, and politics with increased mentions of the federal government shutdown,” said Dana Peterson, chief economist at the Conference Board.

“Mentions of the labour market eased somewhat but still stood out among all other frequent themes not already cited. The overall tone from November write-ins was slightly more negative than in October.”

Consumer confidence remained low among all income brackets. While confidence among those who make less than $15,000 annually ticked up slightly, it still remained the group with the lowest consumer confidence.

The consumer confidence report was released amid a slowing labour market. The September jobs report, released late last week, showed 119,000 jobs were added to the US economy as the unemployment rate ticked up 0.1 of a percentage point to 4.4 percent.

However, there is limited economic data available to fully gauge the sentiment of the US economy because the government shutdown, the longest in US history, hindered federal agencies’ ability to gather the data needed to assess current conditions.

“More worries about what lies ahead … hence, putting purchases for major items on hold,” Jennifer Lee, senior economist at BMO, wrote to Reuters.

The economic data followed dovish comments from policymakers in the past few days that helped cement rate cut expectations.

On Monday, Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said the job market was weak enough to warrant another quarter-point rate cut in December although action beyond that depended on a flood of data that was delayed by the federal government shutdown.

The federal government seeks to develop tailored artificial intelligence (AI) solutions and drive significant cost savings by leveraging AWS’s dedicated capacity.

Amazon is set to invest up to $50bn to expand artificial intelligence (AI) and supercomputing capacity for United States government customers, in one of the largest cloud infrastructure commitments targeted at the public sector.

The e-commerce giant announced the investment on Monday.

The project, expected to break ground in 2026, will add nearly 1.3 gigawatts of new AI and high-performance computing capacity across AWS Top Secret, AWS Secret and AWS GovCloud regions through new data centres equipped with advanced computing and networking systems.

One gigawatt of computing power is roughly enough to power about 750,000 US households on average.

“This investment removes the technology barriers that have held the government back”, Amazon Web Services (AWS) CEO Matt Garman said.

AWS is already a major cloud provider to the US government, serving more than 11,000 government agencies.

Amazon’s initiative aims to provide federal agencies with enhanced access to a comprehensive suite of AWS AI services. These include Amazon SageMaker for model training and customisation, Amazon Bedrock for deploying AI models and agents and foundational models such as Amazon Nova and Anthropic Claude.

The federal government seeks to develop tailored AI solutions and drive significant cost savings by leveraging AWS’s dedicated and expanded capacity.

The push also comes as the US, along with other countries such as China, intensifies efforts to advance AI development and secure leadership in the emerging technology.

Tech companies, including OpenAI, Alphabet and Microsoft, are pouring billions of dollars into building out AI infrastructure, boosting demand for computing power required to support the services.

On Wall Street, Amazon’s stock was up 1.7 percent in midday trading.

Other tech stocks surged amid the recent investments. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, closed in on a $4 trillion valuation on Monday and was set to become only the fourth company to enter the exclusive club. Its stock was up 4.7 percent.

Last week, Nvidia announced expectations of higher fourth-quarter revenue — a month after the tech giant announced a partnership to build supercomputers for the US Department of Energy — a deal that sent the company’s valuation topping $5 trillion.

Nvidia stock was up by 1.8 percent in midday trading.

The company’s stock has zoomed this year, driven by the explosive growth of the weight-loss drug market.

Eli Lilly has hit $1 trillion in market value, making it the first drugmaker to enter the exclusive club dominated by tech giants and underscoring its rise as a weight-loss powerhouse.

A more than 35 percent rally in the company’s stock this year has largely been driven by the explosive growth of the weight-loss drug market and saw it join the $1 trillion club on Friday.

Once seen as a niche category, obesity treatments are now one of the most lucrative segments in healthcare, with steadily rising demand.

Novo Nordisk had the early lead in the space, but Lilly’s drugs – Mounjaro and Zepbound – have surged in popularity and helped eclipse its rival in prescriptions.

The company’s shares were up 1.3 percent at a record high of $1,057.70.

Lilly now trades at one of the richest valuations in big pharma, at about 50 times its expected earnings over the next 12 months, according to LSEG data, reflecting investors’ belief that demand for obesity drugs will remain strong.

Shares have also far outpaced the broader United States equity market. Since the launch of Zepbound in late 2023, Lilly has gained more than 75 percent, compared with a more than 50 percent rise in the S&P 500 over the same period.

In the latest reported quarter, Lilly posted combined revenue of more than $10.09bn from its obesity and diabetes portfolio, accounting for more than half of its total revenue of $17.6bn.

“They are doing so many things outside of obesity, but to suggest anything is driving share price beyond obesity at this point, I don’t know if that would be a factual statement,” said Kevin Gade, chief operating officer at Lilly shareholder Bahl and Gaynor, in advance of the milestone.

‘Sales phenomenon’

Wall Street estimates the weight-loss drug market to be worth $150bn by 2030, with Lilly and Novo together controlling the majority of projected global sales.

Investors are now focused on Lilly’s oral obesity drug, orforglipron, which is expected to be approved early next year.

In a note last week, Citi analysts said the latest generation of GLP-1 drugs have already been a “sales phenomenon”, and orforglipron is poised to benefit from the “inroads made by its injectable predecessors”.

Lilly’s recent deal with the White House to cut prices for its weight-loss drugs, as well as planned investments to expand drug production, augur well for its growth.

Lilly is starting to resemble the “Magnificent Seven” again, said James Shin, director of Biopharma Equity Research at Deutsche Bank, referring to the seven tech heavyweights, including Nvidia and Microsoft, that have powered much of the market’s returns this year.

At one point, investors viewed it as part of that elite group, but after some disappointing headlines and earnings, it slipped out of favour.

Now, however, it seems poised to rejoin that circle, possibly even as an alternative for investors, especially given recent concerns and weakness in some AI stocks, he added.

Still, analysts and investors are watching whether Lilly can sustain its current growth as prices of Mounjaro and Zepbound come under pressure, and whether its scale-up plans, along with its diversified pipeline and dealmaking, will offset margin pressure.

Analysts expect AI chip demand to remain strong.

Nvidia has forecast fourth-quarter revenue above Wall Street estimates and is betting on booming demand for its AI chips from cloud providers even as widespread concerns of an artificial intelligence bubble grow stronger.

The world’s most valuable company expects fourth-quarter sales of $65bn, plus or minus 2 percent, compared with analysts’ average estimate of $61.66bn, according to data compiled by LSEG.

The results from the AI chip leader mark a defining moment for Wall Street as global markets look to the chip designer to determine whether investing billions of dollars in AI infrastructure expansion has resulted in towering valuations that potentially outpace fundamentals.

“The AI ecosystem is scaling fast with more new foundation model makers, more AI start-ups across more industries and in more countries. AI is going everywhere, doing everything, all at once,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement.

Before the results, doubts had pushed Nvidia shares down nearly 8 percent in November after a 1,200 percent surge in the past three years.

Sales in the data-centre segment, which accounts for a majority of Nvidia’s revenue, grew to $51.2bn in the quarter that ended on October 26. Analysts had expected sales of $48.62bn, according to LSEG data.

Warning signs

But some analysts noted that factors beyond Nvidia’s control could impede its growth.

“While GPU [graphics processing unit] demand continues to be massive, investors are increasingly focused on whether hyperscalers can actually put this capacity to use fast enough,” said Jacob Bourne, an analyst with eMarketer. “The question is whether physical bottlenecks in power, land and grid access will cap how quickly this demand translates into revenue growth through 2026 and beyond.”

Nvidia’s business also became increasingly concentrated in its fiscal third quarter with four customers accounting for 61 percent of sales. At the same time, it sharply ramped up how much money it spends renting back its own chips from its cloud customers, who otherwise cannot rent them out, with those contracts totalling $26bn – more than double their $12.6bn in the previous quarter.

Still, analysts and investors widely expected the underlying demand for AI chips, which has powered Nvidia results since ChatGPT’s launch in late 2022, to remain strong.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said last month that the company has $500bn in bookings for its advanced chips through 2026.

Big Tech, among Nvidia’s largest customers, has doubled down on spending to expand AI data centres and snatch the most advanced, pricey chips as it commits to multibillion-dollar, multigigawatt build-outs.

Microsoft last month reported a record capital expenditure of nearly $35bn for its fiscal first quarter  with roughly half of it spent primarily on chips.

Nvidia expects an adjusted gross margin of 75 percent, plus or minus 50 basis points in the fourth quarter, compared with market expectation of 74.5 percent.

Paramount Skydance is reportedly preparing a bid to acquire Warner Bros Discovery.

Variety, an entertainment industry trade magazine in the United States, first reported the looming proposal on Tuesday, quoting sources familiar with the talks.

The publication said the company formed an investment consortium with the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi to submit a $71bn bid for Warner Bros Discovery.

The report said Paramount Skydance would contribute about $50bn towards the proposed acquisition with the remainder coming from the wealth funds.

Paramount Skydance has described the involvement of the sovereign wealth funds as “categorically inaccurate”.

Paramount Skydance is now led by David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, cofounder of Oracle and a close ally of US President Donald Trump. Warner Bros Discovery previously rejected a bid from the Ellison family, which holds all board voting power at Paramount Skydance.

Neither Paramount nor Warner Bros Discovery responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Under the proposed structure, the wealth funds would take small minority stakes and each would receive “an IP, a movie premiere, a movie shoot”, the report said.

Warner Bros Discovery – home to the DC film universe and television studios, HBO, CNN, TNT and Warner Bros Games – is on the verge of breaking up, crippled by declines in its television business.

The company said in October that it has been considering a range of options, including a planned separation, a deal for the entire company or separate transactions for its Warner Bros or Discovery Global businesses.

Nonbinding, first-round bids are due on Thursday.

Paramount is the only company currently considering a full buyout according to the US news website Axios. Warner Bros Discovery also wants to have a deal by the end of the year, according to Axios’s reporting.

Political pressures

The looming deal is shaped in part by how the Trump administration views coverage by the news outlets owned by Warner Bros Discovery.

Netflix and Comcast are also reportedly exploring bids, but any Comcast-led effort would need regulatory approval.

Trump has also repeatedly attacked Comcast over its TV news coverage, saying the company “should be forced to pay vast sums of money for the damage they’ve done to our country”.

Comcast owns NBC News and its subsidiary Versant Media, the parent company of MS-Now – formerly MSNBC – and CNBC.

CBS, owned by Paramount Skydance, has taken a more conciliatory posture towards the administration, including hiring a Trump nominee as an ombudsman to investigate bias allegations after settling a Trump lawsuit claiming its flagship programme 60 Minutes deceptively edited an interview with 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump.

Paramount Skydance also recently tapped Bari Weiss, a right-leaning opinion journalist with no television background, to lead the CBS broadcast news division.

Any of the deals that are being discussed raise antitrust concerns. But if Paramount Skydance, which already owns CBS, now purchases CNN as part of Warner Bros Discovery, “that would create an added civic risk”, Rodney Benson, professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, told Al Jazeera.

“Such a deal would put two leading news outlets under the roof of the same large, multi-industry conglomerate with avowed close relations to the party in power – and that could lead to more conflicts of interest, less independent watchdog reporting and a narrowing of diverse voices and viewpoints in the public sphere,” Benson said.

Warner Bros Discovery remains the parent company of CNN.

On Wall Street, Paramount Skydance shares were up 1.7 percent in midday trading. Warner Bros Discovery was also up 2.8 percent from the market open. Comcast gained 0.5 percent, and Netflix climbed 3.5 percent.

The dip comes amid doubts about future US interest rate cuts and a risk-averse mood in broader markets.

Bitcoin fell below $90,000 for the first time in seven months in the latest sign that investor appetite for risk is drying up across financial markets.

The cryptocurrency began to rebound as United States markets opened on Tuesday. However, Monday’s steep drop in the risk-sensitive asset had already wiped out all of its gains for the year.

It is now nearly 30 percent below its peak of $126,000 in October.

It was down 0.5 percent at $91,338.47 during European trading hours, after slipping as low as $89,286.75.

About $1.2 trillion has been wiped off the total market value of all cryptocurrencies in the past six weeks, according to market tracker CoinGecko.

Market participants said that a combination of doubts around future interest rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve and the risk-averse mood in broader markets, which have wobbled after a long rally, was dragging down crypto.

“The cascading selloff is amplified by listed companies and institutions exiting their positions after piling in during the rally, compounding contagion risks across the market,” said Joshua Chu, co-chair of the Hong Kong Web3 Association.

“When support thins and macro uncertainty rises, confidence can erode with remarkable speed.”

Speculators who had put money into crypto in the hopes of supportive US regulation have started to pull back, causing steady outflows from exchange traded funds (ETFs) and similar instruments in recent weeks, said Joseph Edwards at Enigma Securities.

“The sell pressure here isn’t extraordinary, but it’s coming at a relative weak point on the buy side … a lot of retail buyers were stung during the flash crash last month,” he said, referring to an October crash in which there were $19bn in liquidations across leveraged positions.

Crypto stockpilers such as Strategy, miners such Riot Platforms and Mara Holdings, and exchange Coinbase have all slid with the souring mood.

‘Underwater’

There has been a boom in public crypto treasury companies this year, with small companies in unrelated sectors becoming crypto proxies by announcing plans to buy and hold cryptocurrencies on their balance sheets.

But Standard Chartered has estimated that a drop below $90,000 for Bitcoin could leave half of these companies’ Bitcoin holdings “underwater” – a term that typically refers to assets worth less than what was paid for them.

Listed companies collectively hold 4 percent of all the Bitcoin in circulation, and 3.1 percent of the ether, Standard Chartered said.

The cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) has also been under pressure for months, and has lost nearly 40 percent of its value from an August peak above $4,955.

“All in all, sentiment is pretty low in crypto and has been since the leverage wipeout of October,” said Matthew Dibb, chief investment officer at Astronaut Capital.

The announcement underscores AI industry’s insatiable appetite for computing power as companies race to build systems that can rival or surpass human intelligence.

Microsoft and Nvidia plan to invest in Anthropic under a new tie-up that includes a $30bn commitment by the Claude maker to use Microsoft’s cloud services, the latest high-profile deal binding together major players in the AI industry.

Nvidia will commit up to $10bn to Anthropic and Microsoft up to $5bn, the companies said on Tuesday, without sharing more details.

A person familiar with the matter said both the companies have committed to investing in Anthropic’s next funding round.

The announcement underscores the AI industry’s insatiable appetite for computing power as companies race to build systems that can rival or surpass human intelligence. It also ties major OpenAI-backer Microsoft, as well as key AI chip supplier Nvidia, closer to one of the ChatGPT maker’s biggest rivals.

“We’re increasingly going to be customers of each other. We will use Anthropic models, they will use our infrastructure and we’ll go to market together,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a video. He added that OpenAI “remains a critical partner”.

The move comes weeks after OpenAI unveiled a sweeping restructuring that moved it further away from its non-profit roots, giving it greater operational and financial freedom.

The startup has since then announced a $38bn deal to buy cloud services from Amazon.com as it reduces reliance on Microsoft. Its CEO, Sam Altman, has said OpenAI is committed to spending $1.4 trillion to develop 30 gigawatts of computing resources – enough to roughly power 25 million US homes.

Still, three years after ChatGPT’s debut, investors are increasingly uneasy that the AI boom has outrun fundamentals. Some business leaders have noted that circular deals – in which one partner props up another’s revenue – add to the bubble risk.

“The main feature of the partnership is to reduce the AI economy’s reliance on OpenAI,” D A Davidson analyst Gil Luria said of Tuesday’s announcement.

“Microsoft has decided not to rely on one frontier model company. Nvidia was also somewhat dependent on OpenAI’s success and is now helping generating broader demand.

AI industry consolidating

Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI staff, Anthropic was recently valued at $183bn and has become a major rival to the ChatGPT maker, driven by the strong adoption of its services by enterprise customers.

The Reuters news agency reported last month that Anthropic was projecting to more than double and potentially nearly triple its annualised revenue run rate to around $26bn next year. It has more than 300,000 business and enterprise customers.

As part of Tuesday’s move, Anthropic will work with Nvidia on chips and models to improve performance and commit up to 1 gigawatt of compute using Nvidia’s Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin hardware. Industry executives estimate that one gigawatt of AI computing can cost between $20bn and $25bn.

Microsoft will also give Azure AI Foundry customers access to the latest Claude models, making Claude the only frontier model offered across all three major cloud providers.

“These investments reflect how the AI industry is consolidating around a few key players,” eMarketer analyst Jacob Bourne said.

Despite the looming deal, Microsoft shares are down 3.2 percent in midday trading. Nvidia is also trading 1.9 percent lower than at the market open, and Amazon has fallen 4 percent. Tech stocks remain under pressure after a cloud services outage earlier on Tuesday. Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic is publicly traded.

Relations between Tokyo and Beijing have plummeted over Japanese leader’s recent remarks on Taiwan.

Japanese shares linked to the tourism industry have nosedived following China’s warning to its citizens against travelling to Japan.

Relations between Tokyo and Beijing have plummeted since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested earlier this month that Japan’s military could intervene to stop China from taking control of Taiwan.

In a sharp escalation of the dispute on Friday, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs advised citizens to avoid travel to the East Asian country, claiming that Takaichi’s comments had increased risks to their “personal safety and lives”.

The issue continued to reverberate as Japan’s stock market reopened on Monday after the weekend break, with shares of airlines and retail outlets taking sharp falls.

Department store group Isetan Mitsukoshi fell more than 11 percent in afternoon trading, while its rival Takashimaya tumbled about 5 percent.

Japan Airlines fell about 4 percent, while Uniqlo owner Fast Retailing dipped about 5 percent. Cosmetics company Shiseido plunged about 9.5 percent.

China is Japan’s biggest source of foreign tourists, accounting for almost one-quarter of the 31.65 million arrivals in the first nine months of this year, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization.

Ryota Abe, an economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, said Japan’s gross domestic product (GDP) could shrink by about 0.5 percent in the event of a total collapse in Chinese arrivals and by about 0.1-0.2 percent if arrivals decreased by about one-third.

“Even if the number of visitors decreases 30 percent because of the heightened tensions, the negative impact will be around 0.1-0.2 percent,” Abe told Al Jazeera.

Japan’s economy shrank by 0.4 percent in the three months to September, official data released on Monday showed, the first contraction in six quarters.

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a regular news briefing on Monday that Beijing’s travel warning was inconsistent with mutually beneficial ties and that Tokyo had requested “appropriate steps” from the Chinese side.

Japan’s top official for Asia Pacific affairs, Masaaki Kanai, departed for China on Monday for talks aimed at lowering tensions between the sides, Japanese media reported.

Masaaki Kanai will meet his Chinese counterpart, Liu Jinsong, in Beijing, where he is expected to clarify that Tokyo has made no change to its security policy despite Takaichi’s comments on Taiwan, the reports said.

Japan has long viewed China’s threats to take control of Taiwan with concern due to the self-ruled island’s close proximity to Japanese territory and its location in waters that carry large volumes of trade.

China considers Taiwan part of its territory and has pledged to “reunify” the island with the Chinese mainland, by force if necessary.

Taiwan is not officially recognised by most countries but has many characteristics of a de facto independent state, including its own military and passport, and a democratically elected president and legislature.

The carmaker first announced the plan for battery production in 2021.

Toyota Motor Corporation has begun production at its $13.9bn North Carolina battery plant as it ramps up hybrid production and confirms plans to invest $10bn over five years in United States manufacturing.

The Tokyo, Japan-based carmaker announced the developments on Wednesday.

It first introduced the plan in December 2021 to produce batteries for its hybrid and electric vehicles (EVs). Batteries from the plant are set to power hybrid versions of the Camry, Corolla Cross, RAV4, and a yet-to-be-announced, all-electric, three-row-battery vehicle. The plant is producing hybrid batteries for factories in Kentucky and a Mazda and Toyota joint venture in Alabama.

“Over the next five years, we are planning an additional investment of $10bn in the US to further grow our manufacturing capabilities, bringing our total investment in this country to over $60bn,” said Ted Ogawa, president of Toyota Motor North America.

Toyota’s 11th US factory, on a 1,850-acre (749-hectare) site, will be able to produce 30 gigawatt-hours of energy annually at full capacity and house 14 battery production lines for plug-in hybrids and full EVs. It will eventually employ 5,000 workers.

Last month in Japan, US President Donald Trump said Toyota planned a $10bn investment in the United States.

“Go out and buy a Toyota,” said Trump, who has been critical of Japanese and other auto imports and has imposed hefty tariffs on imported vehicles.

Toyota has been one of the slowest carmakers to move to full EVs, but has rapidly moved to convert its best-selling vehicles to hybrids.

“We know there is no single path to progress”, Ogawa said on Wednesday.

“That’s why we remain committed to our multi-pathway approach, offering fuel-efficient gas engines, hybrids, plug-in hybrids, battery electronics and fuel cell electronics.”

Other car companies like Volkswagen have said they will add more hybrids as the Trump administration has rescinded EV tax credits and eliminated penalties that incentivised EV sales.

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at the event that the administration plans to soon propose to ease fuel economy standards, saying prior rules were too aggressive.

Duffy in January signed an order to direct the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to rescind fuel economy standards issued under former US President Joe Biden, a Democrat, for the 2022-2031 model years that had aimed to drastically reduce fuel use for cars and trucks.

Toyota’s stock is up by about 0.4 percent in midday trading in New York.

US airlines cancel 1,200 flights, marking five days of disruptions caused by the prolonged government shutdown.

Airlines in the United States have cancelled nearly 1,200 flights, marking the fifth consecutive day of mass delays and cancellations sparked by the country’s longest-ever government shutdown.

In addition to cancellations on Tuesday, passengers continued to face long wait times, as more than 1,300 domestic and international flights were delayed in the morning.

New York’s LaGuardia Airport, in particular, is seeing significant hold-ups, with average delays of one hour and 40 minutes, according to FlightAware — a platform that tracks flight disruptions worldwide.

On Monday, there were more than 2,400 cancelled flights to, from and within the US, along with over 9,500 delayed flights, according to the same tracker.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last week instructed airlines to cut 4 percent of daily flights from Friday at 40 major airports due to air traffic control staffing shortages. Reductions rose to 6 percent on Tuesday, then 8 percent on Thursday, and are expected to reach 10 percent by November 14th.

Airlines and the FAA are in talks over whether these cuts will be eased as a record-setting 42-day government shutdown draws to a close.

An end to the shutdown appears to be in sight. On Monday, the Senate passed a bill to reopen the federal government. It now heads to the House of Representatives and, if approved, will go to President Donald Trump’s desk for signing. Once signed, the bill would reopen the government.

Despite progress on Capitol Hill, the president has urged air traffic controllers across the country to return to work, warning that their pay could be “docked” if they do not comply. He also claimed that those who remained on duty during the shutdown would receive a $10,000 bonus.

On Wall Street, airline stocks are taking a hit amid persistent cancellations. As of 11am in New York (16:00 GMT), Delta Air Lines had fallen 1.26 percent since the market opened on Tuesday. United Airlines was down 1.7 percent, while American Airlines had tumbled more than 1.8 percent.

Budget carriers are also being hit hard. New York-based JetBlue has dropped by more than 2 percent, Dallas-based Southwest by 1.8 percent, and Alaska Airlines is down roughly 2.1 percent.

Over the weekend, United States President Donald Trump promised Americans $2,000 each from the “trillions of dollars” in tariff revenue he said his administration has collected.

During his second term, Trump has imposed tariffs broadly on countries and on specific goods such as drugs, steel and cars.

“People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS!” Trump said in a November 9 Truth Social post. “We are taking in Trillions of Dollars and will soon begin paying down our ENORMOUS DEBT, $37 Trillion. Record Investment in the USA, plants and factories going up all over the place. A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”

How seriously should people take his pledge? Experts urged caution.

Tariffs are projected to generate well below “trillions” a year, making it harder to pay each person $2,000. And the administration already said it would use the tariff revenue to either pay for existing tax cuts or to reduce the federal debt.

Trump’s post came days after the US Supreme Court heard arguments about the legality of his tariff policy. The justices are weighing whether Trump has the power to unilaterally impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. If the justices rule against Trump, much of the expected future tariff revenue would not materialise.

What Trump proposed, and who would qualify

The administration has published no plans for the tariff dividends, and in a November 9 ABC News interview, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he had not spoken to Trump about giving Americans a dividend payment.

Details about a potential payment have been limited to Truth Social posts.

Trump said “everyone”, excluding “high income people”, would get the money, but did not explain the criteria for high-income people. He also did not say whether children would receive the payment.

In a November 10 Truth Social post, Trump said his administration would first pay $2,000 to “low and middle income USA Citizens” and then use the remaining tariff revenues to “substantially pay down national debt”.

Trump has not said what form the payments might take. Bessent said the dividend “could come in lots of forms, in lots of ways. You know, it could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president’s agenda. You know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, deductibility of auto loans. So, you know, those are substantial deductions.”

Analysts said it is a stretch to rebrand an already promised tax cut as a new dividend.

Trump has previously discussed paying Americans with tariff revenue.

“We have so much money coming in, we’re thinking about a little rebate, but the big thing we want to do is pay down debt,” he told reporters on July 25. “We’re thinking about a rebate.”

Days later, Senator Josh Hawley introduced legislation that would give $600 tariff rebate cheques to each American adult and child. Hawley’s bill has not advanced.

Tariff revenue collected versus cost of ‘dividend’ payment

Trump made the imposition of tariffs one of his signature campaign promises for the 2024 presidential election. Since taking office in January, he has enacted tariffs on a scale not seen in the US in almost a century; the current overall average tariff rate is 18 percent, the highest since 1934, according to Yale Budget Lab.

Through the end of October, the federal government collected $309.2bn in tariff revenue, compared with $165.4bn through the same point in 2024, an increase of $143.8bn.

The centre-right Tax Foundation projects that tariff revenue will continue to increase to more than $200bn a year if the tariffs remain in place.

Erica York, the Tax Foundation’s vice president of federal tax policy, estimated in a November 9 X post that a $2,000 tariff dividend for each person earning less than $100,000 would equal 150 million adult recipients. That would cost nearly $300bn, York calculated, or more if children qualified. That is more than the tariffs have raised so far, she said.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projected that Trump’s proposal could cost $600bn, depending on how it is structured.

The administration previously detailed other uses for tariff revenue

The Trump administration already promised to use tariff revenue for other purposes, including reducing the country’s deficit and offsetting the cost of the GOP tax and spending bill Trump signed into law in July.

As Trump announced new tariffs on April 2, he said he would “use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt”.

Bessent has made the same promise, falsely saying in July that tariffs were “going to pay off our deficit”.

The treasury secretary said in August that he and Trump were “laser-focused on paying down the debt”.

“I think we’re going to bring down the deficit-to-GDP,” Bessent said in an August 19 CNBC interview. “We’ll start paying down debt and then, at a point, that can be used as an offset to the American people.”

Tariffs’ current cost to Americans 

Tariffs are already costing Americans money, analysts say. Independent estimates range from about $1,600 to $2,600 a year per household. Given the similarity of these amounts to Trump’s proposed dividend, York said it would be more efficient to remove the tariffs.

Joseph Rosenberg, Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Centre senior fellow, said a $2,000 dividend in the form of a cheque would require congressional approval – and lawmakers have already declined to act on that idea once.

When members of Congress approved the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, “They had the ability to include a tariff dividend, but they didn’t”, Rosenberg said.

US Senate vote to end shutdown delivers reprieve to investors worried about AI valuations and weakness in US economy.

Stocks from the United States to Japan have risen sharply amid hopes that an end to the longest US government shutdown in history is imminent.

US lawmakers on Sunday moved to end a five-week impasse over government funding, a boost for investors unnerved by signs of growing weakness in the US economy and the sky-high evaluations of firms involved in artificial intelligence.

After a group of Democrats broke with the party leadership to join Republicans, the US Senate voted 60-40 to advance a bill that would fund government operations through the end of January.

The funding package still needs to win final approval in the Senate and then pass the US House of Representatives, after which it would go to US President Donald Trump for his signature – a process expected to take days.

Stock markets in the Asia Pacific made large gains on Monday, while futures in the US also rose in advance of stock exchanges reopening.

South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI led the gains, rising about 3 percent as of 4pm local time (07:00 GMT).

Japan’s Nikkei 225 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng also rose sharply, advancing about 1.3 percent and 1.5 percent, respectively.

Taiwan’s Taiex rose about 0.8 percent, while Australia’s ASX 200 gained about 0.75 percent.

Futures for the US’s benchmark S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq-100, which are traded outside of regular market hours, were up about 0.75 and 1.3 percent, respectively.

The reprieve comes as investors are concerned that AI-linked stocks may be wildly overvalued and that Trump’s sweeping tariffs could be doing more damage to the US economy than has been captured in headline data so far.

Nvidia, whose graphics processing units are integral to the development of AI, last month became the first company in history to reach a market valuation of $5 trillion, a day after tech giant Apple surpassed $4 trillion in market value.

While the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ official jobs report has been suspended since August due to the government shutdown, several other analyses have pointed to a rise in layoffs in October.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an executive outplacement firm, said in a report last week that layoffs surged 183 percent last month, making it the worst October for jobs since 2003.

A separate analysis by Revelio Labs, a workforce analytics company, estimated that the economy shed 9,100 jobs during the month.

Shareholders approved the pay package with as much as 75 percent support on Thursday.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has scored a resounding victory as shareholders have approved a pay package of as much as $878bn over the next decade, endorsing his vision of morphing the electric vehicle (EV) maker into an AI and robotics juggernaut.

Shares of Tesla rose more than 3 percent in after-hours trading after the shareholders voted on Thursday. The proposal was approved with more than 75 percent support.

Musk took to the stage in Austin, Texas, along with dancing robots. “What we are about to embark upon is not merely a new chapter of the future of Tesla, but a whole new book,” he said. “This really is going to be quite the story.”

He added: “Other shareholder meetings are like snooze fests, but ours are bangers. I mean, look at this. This is sick.”

Shareholders also re-elected three directors on Tesla’s board and voted in favour of a replacement pay plan for Musk’s services because a legal challenge has held up a previous package.

The vote, analysts have said, is a positive for Tesla’s stock, whose valuation hangs on Musk’s vision of making vehicles drive themselves, expanding robotaxis across the United States and selling humanoid robots, even though his far-right political rhetoric has hurt the Tesla brand this year.

A win for Musk was widely expected as the billionaire was allowed to exercise the full voting rights of his roughly 15 percent stake after the carmaker moved to Texas from Delaware, where a legal challenge has held up a previous pay rise.

The approval comes even after opposition from some major investors, including Norway’s sovereign wealth fund.

Tesla’s board had said Musk could quit if the pay package was not approved.

The vote will also allay investor concerns that Musk’s focus has been diluted with his work in politics as well as in running his other companies, including rocket maker SpaceX and artificial intelligence startup xAI.

The board and many investors who lent their endorsement have said the nearly $1 trillion package benefits shareholders in the longer run, as Musk must ensure Tesla achieves a series of milestones to get paid.

Goals for Musk over the next decade include the company delivering 20 million vehicles, having one million robotaxis in operation, selling one million robots and earning as much as $400bn in core profit. But in order for him to get paid, Tesla’s stock value has to rise in tandem, first to $2 trillion from the current $1.5 trillion, and all the way to $8.5 trillion.

Under the new plan, Musk could earn as much as $878bn in Tesla stock over 10 years. Musk would be given as much as $1 trillion in stock but would have to make some payments back to Tesla.

The agency made the announcement as it confronts staffing shortages caused by air traffic controllers who are working unpaid.

The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will reduce air traffic by 10 percent across 40 “high-volume” markets beginning Friday morning to maintain safety during the ongoing government shutdown, it has said.

The agency made the announcement on Wednesday as it confronts staffing shortages caused by air traffic controllers, who are working unpaid, with some calling out of work during the shutdown, resulting in delays across the country.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the agency is not going to wait for a problem to act, saying the shutdown is causing staffing pressures and “we can’t ignore it”.

Bedford and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said they will meet later Wednesday with airline leaders to figure out how to safely implement the reduction.

Widespread delays

The shutdown, now in its 36th day, has forced 13,000 air traffic controllers and 50,000 Transportation Security Administration officers to work without pay. This has worsened staff shortages, caused widespread flight delays and extended lines at airport security screening.

The move is aimed at taking pressure off air traffic controllers. The FAA also warned that it could add more flight restrictions after Friday if further air traffic issues emerge.

Duffy had warned on Tuesday that if the federal government shutdown continued another week, it could lead to “mass chaos” and force him to close some of the national airspace to air traffic, a drastic move that could upend American aviation.

Airlines have repeatedly urged an end to the shutdown, citing aviation safety risks.

Shares of major airlines, including United Airlines and American Airlines, were down about 1 percent in extended trading.

An airline industry group estimated that more than 3.2 million passengers have been affected by flight delays or cancellations due to rising air traffic controller absences since the shutdown began on October 1. Airlines have been raising concerns with lawmakers about the impact on operations.

Airlines said the shutdown has not significantly affected their business, but have warned bookings could drop if it drags on. More than 2,100 flights were delayed on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, FAA’s Bedford said that 20 percent to 40 percent of controllers at the agency’s 30 largest airports were failing to show up for work.

The federal government has mostly closed as Republicans and Democrats are locked in a standoff in Congress over a funding bill. Democrats have insisted they would not approve a plan that does not extend health insurance subsidies, while Republicans have rejected that.