The Open Bell

Today on The Open Bell: Meta just reported its best revenue quarter in years, $64.6 billion, up 26%, and the Nasdaq still tumbled 2.6% on Friday because buried in the regulatory filings was an $825 billion commitment to AI infrastructure, up from $700 billion just three months ago, and the company that's supposed to be printing money ran out of free cash doing it. Houthi drone strikes on Saudi energy facilities pushed Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, to $113 a barrel in a single session, a four percent surge to a five-month high, and the straightforward truth is that every time infrastructure like this gets...

Today on The Open Bell: A drone strike on Saudi Aramco's Shaybah oilfield sent Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, above $110 a barrel this morning, and with the U.S. government now ordering non-emergency staff and families out of Saudi Arabia, the question isn't whether this is a supply shock, it's how long it lasts and who absorbs the cost at the pump. Tesla beat Wall Street's earnings estimate last quarter and still watched its stock fall, because what investors actually saw was a company quietly spending its way toward a humanoid robot future while the car business that's supposed...

Today on The Open Bell: A Korean AI company just had the worst opening-day performance in modern Korean stock market history, and within hours that single Seoul trading floor was enough to drag US futures into the red, which tells you everything about how thin the confidence underneath the AI trade actually is right now. The US housing market's September numbers came out and they weren't just soft, they were a signal: home starts fell more than five percent and contracts to buy existing homes dropped at fourteen times the rate economists were penciling in, which means the dream of...

Today on The Open Bell: The US government's borrowing rate just hit 5.15%, and if you're carrying a mortgage, shopping for a car loan, or running a business on credit, that number is not abstract. Oil crossed $110 a barrel overnight, and the last time it got there the pain showed up everywhere: at the pump, in your grocery delivery fee, on your next flight booking. South Korea's stock market has shed about a fifth of its value since September, and because it's essentially a pure-play bet on whether the global AI boom is real, what happens in Seoul right now is...

Today on The Open Bell: Indonesia's stock market just had its worst two days since the 1998 Asian financial crisis, because a single American index firm floated the idea of kicking the country out of the global benchmarks that trillions of dollars in passive funds track automatically, and that's not a rumor sending prices down, that's the mechanism working exactly as designed. Congress passed Russia sanctions with overwhelming bipartisan support, they were two days from taking effect, and Trump signed a waiver on Friday to suspend them entirely, all while diesel prices sit near record highs and the people who benefit...

Today on The Open Bell: Wholesale prices just posted their second-biggest monthly jump on record, a full 1.3% in a single month against forecasts of 0.5%, and the weird part is that bond markets responded by falling in yield, meaning traders think the economy breaks before inflation does. Iran confirmed it sank a container ship in the Strait of Hormuz, oil jumped 3% toward $98, and the only reason it's not already past $100 is that Saudi crude is moving through alternative routes and emergency reserves are hitting the market right now. The European Central Bank just cleared Italy's UniCredit to push its stake in...

Today on The Open Bell: U.S. inflation came in hotter than expected for September, and the ugly part is that almost half of it is gasoline, which means the Fed is being asked to cool a fire it didn't start and can't really put out with higher interest rates. Australia shed 39,300 jobs last month when everyone was forecasting a gain, and the market's confidence in a November rate hike from the Reserve Bank of Australia has gone from near-certain to basically a guess overnight. Bolivia is rewriting its gold export rules to pull in U.S. dollars before its...

Today on The Open Bell: A Houthi ballistic missile hit the Dhahran headquarters of Saudi Aramco yesterday, set fire to an administrative tower that effectively runs one-eighth of the world's entire oil supply, and oil prices surged toward $95 a barrel before markets had time to blink. The head of the New York Fed told the world on Tuesday that rate hikes are basically done after one more this year, and the bond market, which prices US government debt and sets the floor for mortgage rates everywhere, added billions in value within minutes. Singapore's central bank just held rates steady despite...

Today on The Open Bell: The IMF nudged its global growth forecast up to 3.1% this week, which sounds reassuring until you read what the fund actually said: the world economy is holding together, but only barely, and there's not much runway left if something else goes wrong. Oil is sitting at $105 a barrel, up roughly 70% from a year ago, and reports that the Trump administration is weighing military strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen could push it higher, which means the fuel and freight costs already squeezing household budgets aren't done yet. South Korea's stock market dropped 6% in a single...

Today on The Open Bell: Trump announced an "energy ceasefire" between Russia and Ukraine on Sunday, oil dropped below $104 a barrel on the news, and Ukraine said Russian strikes on its power grid had already resumed by Monday morning. A Chinese state-backed chipmaker just disclosed a next-generation memory chip design that sent Samsung shares down more than 3%, and if you think the chip war was already tense, CXMT says it wants these in servers before the end of the year. OpenAI accidentally overstated its own revenue by $18 billion last week, briefly erasing hundreds of billions in value from the Nasdaq...

Today on The Open Bell: Oil is back above $100 a barrel because ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel that carries roughly a fifth of the world's crude, are under threat, and the knock-on is already showing up in grocery prices from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur and in government budgets that were not built for $102 oil. Samsung just told its suppliers to cut shipments by up to 30% this quarter, because the same memory chip that's powering every AI model you've heard of is now too expensive to put inside a smartphone at a price anyone wants to...

Today on The Open Bell: Brent crude just jumped more than three dollars in a single session to clear $103 a barrel, and if you've ever wondered how fast a flare-up in the Strait of Hormuz turns into a higher number at the petrol pump, today's your case study. Chinese stock markets reopened this morning after a week-long National Day holiday and walked straight into a wall of news their traders had been locked out of, including US government borrowing costs at levels nobody's seen since 2002, which makes their first session back less a trading day and more a damage assessment. ...

Today on The Open Bell: The Fed raised rates again in September, but the minutes released today show a central bank quietly arguing with itself about whether it's gone too far, and the honest answer is that nobody on that committee seems entirely sure. France's debt costs are now blowing out at a pace that's bringing back some uncomfortable memories of 2011, the euro just hit a 17-month low, and the question the bond market is asking isn't whether France has a problem but whether Europe does. India's central bank just hiked rates for the first time since early 2023, erasing the...

Today on The Open Bell: The U.S. economy added just 29,000 jobs in September, less than a third of what forecasters expected, and the market's response was to rally, which tells you everything about how strange this moment is: bad news for workers is now good news for investors, because a weakening labour market gives the Federal Reserve, America's central bank, less reason to keep borrowing costs high. Saudi Aramco just made oil significantly cheaper for Asian buyers and more expensive for European ones in the same pricing document, and that split decision is basically a map of where the...

Today on The Open Bell: The US economy added 29,000 jobs in September, a number so far below what anyone expected that it may have just quietly closed the book on the Federal Reserve's rate-hiking campaign, and if you have a mortgage, a loan, or anything priced off borrowing costs, that's the number that matters this week. OPEC+ held its oil output steady going into November, but the cartel's vote is almost beside the point when a single chokepoint in the Persian Gulf is doing more to keep Brent crude above a hundred dollars a barrel than anything the group actually...

Today on The Open Bell: The US now has three aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf for the first time since 2012, and oil just crossed $102 a barrel, which means this weekend's petrol price is already being written by people in military planning rooms, not market trading floors. The 10-year Treasury yield, the benchmark that prices US government debt and your mortgage in the same breath, touched 5.30% this week, a level the country hasn't seen since 2002, and the bond market just posted its worst quarter in decades without most people noticing. The IMF cut its global growth forecast to 3.0% for 2026 and...

Today on The Open Bell: The Fed's favorite inflation gauge, PCE, came in cooler than Wall Street expected for August, and the odds of another rate hike this month just collapsed, but mortgage rates are still sitting at 7.58% so the relief isn't exactly landing on anyone's doorstep yet. Micron Technology just posted the kind of quarter that makes you reconsider everything you thought you knew about a chip company's ceiling: $54 billion in a single quarter, nearly four times where it was a year ago, because AI needs memory and Micron is essentially the only American company equipped to supply it...

Today on The Open Bell: The 30-year Treasury yield, which is what the US government pays to borrow money for three decades and the invisible hand behind your mortgage rate, just hit 5.62 percent, a level this country hasn't seen since 2002, and the people setting prices on those bonds are saying something loud and clear about where they think inflation is actually headed. The Trump administration just cracked open 40 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the country's emergency oil stockpile, to try to hold pump prices down while the US-Iran standoff keeps rattling Middle East supply routes, but two days...

Today on The Open Bell: Trump rejected Iran's offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel that carries a fifth of the world's oil, and Brent crude responded by surging past $107 a barrel, which means the world just chose the more expensive option. Australia's central bank raised borrowing costs to their highest point since 2011, and the reason printed right there in the official statement is a war in the Middle East that has nothing to do with Australia's own economy. Japan is warning currency traders to stop selling the yen, loudly and with apparent U.S. backing, but...

Today on The Open Bell: Trump turned down Iran's offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway that carries roughly a fifth of the world's seaborne oil, and the market's response was instant: if those tankers stay disrupted, inflation isn't going anywhere. That rejection sent bond yields, the interest rate the government pays to borrow your money, climbing to 5.20% on the 10-year US Treasury, the highest since before the 2008 financial crisis, which means mortgages, car loans, and business borrowing all just got a little more expensive before breakfast. Meanwhile, in a story that tells you exactly where investors are...

Today on The Open Bell: Oil hit $108 a barrel this week before pulling back, and the real story isn't the number itself but what's underneath it: diesel is now $6.51 a gallon in the US, up 73% since the Iran war began, and every truck and ship moving goods across the country is handing that bill straight to you at the register. The 30-year US Treasury yield just reached 5.50%, a level nobody's seen since 2004, and the bond market is now doing the Fed's job for it, meaning mortgage rates are sitting at 7.37% and the monthly cost of buying a home is quietly...

Today on The Open Bell: The US and China extended their trade truce by two months instead of the six months markets were expecting, and that gap between what everyone assumed and what actually happened is the whole story. America's economy just posted its strongest activity reading in five years, which sounds like great news until you realize that "strong growth" is exactly what's keeping interest rates, and mortgage payments, painfully high. Australia's jobs data dropped in the middle of the night, and depending on what it showed, millions of Australian homeowners could be staring down a third rate rise...

Today on The Open Bell: Oil is sitting just under $100 a barrel and the reason your petrol bill, your mortgage rate, and your grocery prices are all still climbing at the same time traces back to one thing: the same supply crunch that pushed crude past $113 in April still hasn't let go. Nigeria's central bank just slashed its benchmark rate by 350 basis points, that's three and a half full percentage points in one move, and the question isn't whether that's bold, it's whether an economy that's been squeezed this hard for this long can actually absorb a jolt that size...

Today on The Open Bell: Oil briefly cracked below $100 a barrel on Monday, and the reason is almost too absurd to say out loud: Trump told a TV interviewer he'd "probably" be open to a meeting with Iran's president, no deal, no timeline, not even a confirmed handshake, and the market moved anyway. AMD crossed $1 trillion in market value in a single session because Meta launched an AI agent that can book your flights and reply to your emails, which tells you everything about where chip investors think the money is going next. The U.S. and China just agreed...

Today on The Open Bell: Houthi forces struck Riyadh over the weekend, oil gapped higher on Sunday night, and even after pulling back this morning, we're close enough to $100 a barrel that your petrol price, your next flight, and your heating bill are all already feeling it. The US Treasury Secretary and China's top economic official sat down in New York yesterday, the highest-level contact between the two countries in months, and what they work out on tariffs before the Trump-Xi summit later this week will end up in the price of your phone, your car, and half the things...

Today on The Open Bell: The Fed raised interest rates for the first time in over three years this week, and Chair Kevin Warsh is already signaling another hike before the end of the year, which means the cost of borrowing, on your mortgage, your car loan, your credit card, just got more expensive again. Japan's central bank raised its benchmark rate to 1.25%, the highest since 1995, and with the Fed tightening in the same week, this is the most synchronized global squeeze on borrowing costs we've seen since 2022, and that synchronization has consequences that ripple well past Tokyo and Washington. ...

Today on The Open Bell: The Fed raised interest rates for the first time in three years, and the unanimous 12-0 vote is the part they're not really talking about: there is no dissent, no daylight, and the Fed's own officials are already signalling another hike is probably coming. China's central bank just quietly scrapped the targets that told its banks how much to lend each year, and if you want to understand where copper prices, shipping costs, and global manufacturing go next, that's where you need to be looking. If today's episode helped you get a handle on either...

Today on The Open Bell: The interest rate your mortgage tracks just cracked 5% for the first time since 2007, and the Fed meets today with traders almost certain they're about to push it higher still. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spent Tuesday telling Congress the economy is fine, which is a harder sell when you're doing it against a backdrop of 19-year high borrowing costs, oil above $107 a barrel, and an interest bill that's now the fastest-growing line in the entire federal budget. Stocks had their worst session in weeks before the Fed has even opened its mouth, and if today's decision...

Today on The Open Bell: Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline, the only route that lets the country move seven million barrels a day without sailing past Iran, is confirmed gone end-to-end, Brent crude is through $107, and the one "backup plan" the world oil market has always counted on turns out to be the very chokepoint that's now the threat. The 10-year Treasury yield, the single interest rate that quietly sets the price of mortgages, car loans, and corporate borrowing across the entire U.S. economy, just crossed 5% for the first time since 2023, and with oil driving inflation back up before the...

Today on The Open Bell: Core inflation came in hotter than forecast on Friday and there's now an 85% chance the Fed raises your borrowing costs again this week, which means the people who were hoping for a break on mortgages and credit cards are going to have to keep waiting. OpenAI just pulled what would have been the biggest tech IPO in history, citing safety concerns, and the Japanese investment giant SoftBank, which borrowed roughly $40 billion to get a piece of it, is down 13% this morning and very much not citing safety concerns. China is cutting interest rates to try...

Today on The Open Bell: Oil cracked $107 a barrel overnight after fresh US-Iran clashes near the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel that roughly a fifth of the world's oil flows through, and if you think that stays in the Persian Gulf, check what you paid at the pump this week. At 8:30 this morning, the US government drops the August inflation report, the last hard number the Federal Reserve sees before it decides next week whether to raise interest rates again, and after Wednesday's producer price data came in hotter than expected, "no hike" is no longer the safe assumption. ...

Today on The Open Bell: The ECB just raised interest rates again, and the reason is a war the eurozone isn't even fighting: oil above $100 a barrel means European inflation is climbing back up, which means the central bank is making borrowing more expensive for millions of people whose energy bills are already doing that job on their own. The U.S. has now banned Canadian dairy, alcohol, and motorbikes, and Canada's been hitting back just as hard, so the next time you reach for a Canadian whisky or a wedge of aged cheddar, you might want to enjoy it...

Today on The Open Bell: Houthi drones hit Saudi oil infrastructure overnight and Brent crude, the global oil price benchmark, is pushing right up against $100 a barrel, which sounds like a geopolitics story until you realise it's also a "why does my petrol cost this much" story. China just posted a record monthly trade surplus of $119 billion, exports up 25% in a single year, and the number that keeps getting buried is what they're actually selling: AI chips, electric vehicles, and advanced manufacturing goods that the rest of the world apparently can't make fast enough to compete with. And tomorrow the...

Today on The Open Bell: Iran just declared a second restricted zone on top of the already-strangled Strait of Hormuz, Brent crude is closing in on $97 a barrel, and the question now isn't whether this is a supply shock but how big one we're actually looking at. The US economy added 162,000 jobs in August, which is three times what anyone expected, and the good-news headline is real, but here's the part that hits your wallet: a labour market this strong gives the Federal Reserve, America's central bank, every reason to keep raising the interest rates that make mortgages, car loans...

Today on The Open Bell: The US military sank three Iranian oil tankers over the weekend, and Brent crude is now pushing toward $97 a barrel, which means the geopolitical bill is already landing at the petrol pump before most people even saw the news. The US economy added 162,000 jobs in August, nearly three times what forecasters expected, and the cruel irony is that a strong jobs report now raises the odds the Fed hikes rates again, so the workers who drove those numbers may find their mortgage costs going up, not down. Eurozone inflation just hit 3.3%, a three-year high driven...

Today on The Open Bell: Iran hit Kuwait with missiles and drones overnight, oil surged, and then gave back roughly half the gain in the same session once it became clear the White House is quietly moving toward talks, which tells you everything about who's actually steering this market right now. A Fed governor who could well be the deciding vote at this month's rate meeting just signalled he wants to hold steady, but the jobs report dropping today could flip that calculus before the weekend's even started. Japan's 30-year government bonds just hit yields the country hasn't seen since 1999...

Today on The Open Bell: US forces have struck Iranian targets around the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is hitting back, and Brent crude is up more than 5% in a single session to nearly $95 a barrel, because roughly one in every five barrels of oil on earth flows through that waterway and someone just turned it into a conflict zone. That oil shock is already showing up in European inflation, which jumped to 3.3% in August, well above the European Central Bank's 2% target, and almost entirely on the back of energy costs, so the ECB is now almost certain to raise interest...

Today on The Open Bell: The US struck Iranian Revolutionary Guard positions across the Strait of Hormuz yesterday, oil jumped 5.2% in a single session, and if you're wondering what that means for the price of filling up your car, the answer is: nothing good. Japan's 10-year government bond yield just crossed 3% for the first time since 1996, which sounds like a footnote from a different era, and the fact that America's Treasury Secretary was at the G20 actively pushing for it to go higher tells you this is very much someone else's policy problem landing on Japanese households. Eurozone inflation accelerated...

Today on The Open Bell: US forces have now struck Iranian positions in the Strait of Hormuz twice since July, Iran has fired back at American bases in Jordan, and oil is above $86 a barrel, which means this isn't a distant geopolitical story anymore, it's a pump-price story. The yen is closing in on 160 to the dollar, a level that last time cost Japan tens of billions to defend, and America's own Treasury Secretary just stood up at a G20 meeting and told Japan it needs to act, which is either reassuring coordination or a very public warning, depending on...

Today on The Open Bell: The new Fed Chair used his first Jackson Hole speech to tell the world that another rate hike is back on the table, and the September odds just jumped to 60%, which is a long way from the cuts everyone was pricing in six months ago. Gold had the best month this century in August, up roughly 14%, and then one afternoon speech from a Fed Chair erased nearly 3% of that in a matter of hours, which tells you everything about how fragile this rally actually is. Germany's retail sales just fell 1.5% in July when everyone was...