Tanker freight extended its war-risk run, up 5.5 percent on the day and nearly 23 percent on the week to $1,012.75. The move tracks the Strait of Hormuz attack tally and Iran’s vow to block more routes, plus a newly reported tanker attack off Qatar signaling the threat is widening beyond Hormuz (see today’s Hormuz story).
Chip stocks sold off on an OpenAI revenue miss. Broadcom fell 4.4 percent, the semiconductor basket lost 3.4 percent, Nvidia dropped 2.9 percent and Amazon slid 2.3 percent, after reporting on OpenAI’s revenues undercut the AI demand narrative; Oracle, Micron and AMD fell in the same session (see today’s OpenAI revenue story).
Uranium miners fell 3.4 percent, the weakest miner sub-basket for a second straight session. No clear single driver in this morning’s reporting; the sector overhang includes Global Atomic’s third equity tap this year with its $295 million US-bank debt facility still stalled (see today’s Dasa financing story).
Copper rose 2.3 percent to $6.67 a pound on day two of the Centinela strike, with LME copper up 1 percent to $14,614.50 a tonne as BMO warned the production impact could show from November (see today’s Centinela story). Copper miners, notably, lagged the metal, falling 1.6 percent.
Silver gained 2.4 percent to $60.51 an ounce and gold added 1.2 percent to $4,205, with precious metals bid as the strong $22 billion 30-year auction pulled the long bond down 5.5 basis points to 5.61 percent (see today’s 30-year auction story).
Rare earth miners fell 2.1 percent. No clear single driver in this morning’s reporting; the overhang is the EU-China trade council ending its second day in Beijing with no public outcome, leaving the rare-earth export-control moratorium extension unresolved (see today’s EU-China council story).
The cross-market read is defensive rotation with an energy-risk bid. Capital came out of AI-linked equities and uranium and rare-earth miners while flowing into bullion, silver and tanker freight, and the long end of the Treasury curve rallied on the same risk-off impulse plus genuine auction demand. Brent eased 1.3 percent to $102.98 even as freight surged, a divergence that says the market is pricing shipping disruption more than outright supply loss for now.