Dry bulk freight fell 3.88 percent, the largest move in the overnight tables, while miner equities sold off and energy rose on the Red Sea escalation.
Dry bulk freight fell 3.88 percent to $13.12, the largest single move in the tables, extending a 6.95 percent weekly decline. No clear single driver appears in this morning’s reporting; the fall sits in a freight complex where tanker rates also eased 1.09 percent even as the Red Sea escalation lifted crude.
Meta rose 2.63 percent to $762.50, the strongest megacap move, against a flat tape for the tech sector overall (down 0.04 percent) and a 0.31 percent fall in the Nasdaq 100. This morning’s technology reporting led on chip and AI infrastructure news, including the ASML result and Microsoft’s Maia 300 inference chip, and carried no Meta specific catalyst; no clear single driver in this morning’s reporting.
Silver miners fell 2.27 percent and gold miners fell 1.46 percent, amplifying a soft precious metals tape in which silver eased 0.64 percent to $58.78 an ounce and gold eased 0.19 percent to $4,169.30. The mining reporting shows the same pattern at the single name level, with the senior producers down on a day when the underlying metals were only modestly lower.
BHP fell 2.04 percent to $84.95 and Rio Tinto fell 1.31 percent to $93.06. Rio’s quarterly production update, covered in this morning’s mining reporting, held its full year iron ore guidance, so the fall reads as part of the broad miner selloff rather than a company specific miss; no BHP specific driver appears in this morning’s reporting.
Rare earth miners fell 1.25 percent (down 9.94 percent on the week) and copper miners fell 1.11 percent, a divergence worth noting because copper itself rose 0.88 percent to $6.74 a pound on the Escondida supervisors strike (see today’s Escondida strike story). Miner equities are not following the metal they produce.
The cross market read is split rather than risk off. Energy was bid on the Red Sea escalation, with Brent up 0.65 percent to $106.38, WTI up 0.45 percent to $94.56 and natural gas up 1.1 percent to $3.32 (see today’s oil and Aramco stories), while long dated US yields eased, the 10 year down 2.3 basis points to 5.22 percent and the 30 year down 3.5 basis points to 5.56 percent, and the dollar index was flat at 102.13 ahead of the US CPI print.
Zambia and Abu Dhabi's International Resources Holding reaffirmed their Mopani Copper Mines partnership on Wednesday, weeks after state investor ZCCM-IH alleged funding and operational breaches by IRH unit Delta Mining.
The Saudi-led coalition struck a Yemen Petroleum Company fuel depot on the outskirts of Sanaa on Tuesday after warning civilians away, in an operation it said targeted Houthi missile and drone supply sites.
The Port of Los Angeles handled a record 1,042,652 TEUs in September, the busiest month in its 118 year history, with loaded imports up 19 percent year on year to 545,696 TEUs.
Nigeria produced an average of 1.72 million barrels a day of crude and condensate in September, up 2.34 percent on August, with crude alone at 1.53 million barrels a day, 102 percent of its 1.5 million OPEC quota.
Nigeria's federal government is launching Project WHEAT-NESS to strengthen its wheat-based foods industry, a sector that consumes and imports an estimated six to seven million metric tonnes of wheat a year.
Mercuria Energy Group will pay up to $250 million to subsidiaries of Shanghai Jayson New Energy Materials for three years of copper supply from operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, including the newly started Kinga Kila project.
Global Ship Lease has agreed a $1 billion, seven year syndicated loan at SOFR plus 1.5 percent to finance 15 newbuild containerships delivering from late 2028 through 2030, the company announced on October 12.
Ghanaian petrol prices are projected to fall almost 2 percent to GH¢17.67 a litre and diesel by 3.32 percent to GH¢19.30 from October 16, while LPG rises 18.5 percent to GH¢20.60 a kilogram, the Chamber of Oil Marketing Companies said.
US ultra-low sulfur diesel futures swung roughly 20 cents higher in about two hours on Tuesday morning after trading negative on Monday, a whipsaw FreightWaves analyst John Kingston attributed to drawn down inventories and exhausted policy options.
Saudi Aramco and its Chinese partners have received the first crude cargo at their HAPCO refining complex in Liaoning province, a 300,000 barrel a day refinery with 1.65 million tons a year of ethylene capacity.
Gold held steady as a Fed official's remarks tempered rate hike bets, US gasoline rose 7.1 percent in September, President Trump pardoned Alaska diesel mechanics at a rally touting energy deals, and South Korean steel shares rose on Alaska LNG comments.
President Trump said on Truth Social that large scale oil, gas and mineral exploration is getting ready to begin in Greenland, but named no companies, sites or start date, weeks after the United States, Denmark and Greenland signed a security pact that mentions minerals cooperation only in general terms.
South African mining production fell 12.7 percent year on year in August, the steepest annual decline since October 2022, led by platinum group metals, coal and iron ore.
The European Commission has designated Eldorado Gold's Skouries copper gold mine in Greece a Strategic Project under the Critical Raw Materials Act, in a round of 46 selections.
Nordic Mining's board told an extraordinary general meeting on October 13 that bankruptcy proceedings are the only remaining option if no short term liquidity solution is found.
Investors at Nigeria Mining Week in Abuja called for clearer rules and stronger security to unlock mining investment, as the event also targeted support for artisanal miners.
Smaller mining items today include a $7 million Quebec gold financing plan, a Sudan probe into strikes on miners, and a $100,000 US critical materials challenge.
Liberia's mines minister says the government negotiates mining agreements at a disadvantage because companies know more about its deposits than it does, and is seeking investors for geological surveys and a gold refinery.
New drilling by Fortuna Mining at Diamba Sud in Senegal cut 40.8 metres at 3.9 grams per tonne gold from 228 metres in the Southern Arc zone.
Forrestania Resources has extended its off market takeover offer for Zenith Minerals for a tenth time, to November 12, holding a relevant interest of about 58.61 percent.
Ferrexpo's total commercial production fell 19 percent quarter on quarter to 779,975 tonnes in the third quarter, after an August production halt and restricted Black Sea exports.
Evolution Mining produced 154,000 ounces of gold and 18,000 tonnes of copper in the September quarter and maintained all FY27 guidance.
Electra Battery Materials has signed a five year term sheet with trader WMC Group to finance cobalt feedstock and market battery grade cobalt from its Ontario refinery.
Voltus raised $225 million in an oversubscribed Series D led by Generation Investment Management, with Activate Capital and Vitol as co-leads, to expand its distributed energy platform toward 20GW by 2030.
Space startups attracted a record $20.8 billion in the third quarter across 216 deals, nearly triple the prior quarter, as launch and infrastructure ventures absorbed the bulk of the money, Seraphim reported.
NTT Data is in final talks to build a data centre of up to 500MW in Osaka for Anthropic, an investment reported at up to 1 trillion yen, about $6.3 billion.
Dubai Aerospace seeks a $2.1 billion loan, Maharashtra's transmission utility picks banks for an $800 million IPO, CVC takes a minority stake in Israel's Fibrotex, and PSG Equity builds a pan-European cloud platform.
Hyundai Motor Group committed $15.5 billion of investment in India from 2026 through 2032, covering manufacturing expansion, research and development, suppliers and future mobility.
SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won agreed to sell a 1.34 percent stake in SK Inc, 972,493 shares for 544 billion won, about $406 million, to DFO Public Investments, a fund affiliated with Michael Dell's family office.
The US Air Force and Northrop Grumman broke ground on a new B-21 Raider final assembly line at Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, adding more than 1 million square feet under a $4.5 billion production expansion.
Actis acquired a 112MW battery storage project in Kozienice, Poland, from DRI and agreed to acquire a second 132MW project in Trzebinia, a combined 244MW and 1,141MWh backed by 17-year capacity contracts.
Hamburg-based 1KOMMA5 raised about 70 million euros, roughly $78 million, in a round led by b2venture that values the company at $1.35 billion before the new money.
An EU survey flags wider corporate AI use, South Africa's deputy president addresses a union congress, Ghana's Speaker defends parliamentary counsel, and Nigeria's election commission opens a 14 day candidate correction window.
President Bola Tinubu transmitted five bills to Nigeria's Senate on Tuesday, covering a consolidated drug enforcement law, an expanded transport safety investigation bureau, a National School of Government, and domestication of the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Social Security's retirement trust fund is projected to be depleted in 2032, which would trigger an automatic benefit cut of about 22 percent, and the 33 senators elected this November will still be in office when it happens, yet the looming cut remains largely unaddressed on the campaign trail.
A bill to decriminalise attempted suicide in Nigeria passed its second reading in the Senate on Tuesday and was referred to the health and judiciary committees, even as Senate President Godswill Akpabio argued in the chamber that survivors should remain liable to imprisonment.
Namibia's Petroleum Exploration and Production Amendment Bill, debated in the National Assembly this week, would create an Upstream Petroleum Unit in the Office of the President to centralise licensing and oversight, a design government MPs call modernisation and opposition MPs call a concentration of power ahead of first commercial oil production.
MI5 director general Ken McCallum said on Tuesday that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 Brexit referendum through state broadcasting and online troll and bot activity, but that the referendum result is not in dispute and attempted interference should not be confused with an achieved outcome.
Ahead of Brazil's October 25 presidential runoff, in which Flavio Bolsonaro took about 47 percent of the first round vote to President Lula's about 45 percent, a US Brazil working group on tariffs and a broader trade framework has become a central campaign issue, with US access to Brazilian critical minerals and rare earths a key point of contention.
US small business optimism fell below its 52 year average in September, the NFIB said Tuesday, with its uncertainty index up 1 point to 90 and only 7 percent of owners calling it a good time to expand, down 5 points from August.
Also in rates on Wednesday: the Fed published discount rate meeting minutes, Belgium's Wunsch addressed the ECB outlook, Ghana set fuel prices from October 16, and the ECB released two monetary policy working papers.
Philippine headline inflation accelerated to 7.2 percent in September from 6.1 percent in August, with core at 4.7 percent, up from 4.1 percent, leaving the BSP widely expected to hike again on October 22.
BusinessDay projects Nigeria's headline inflation rose to 15.5 percent in September, which would end three consecutive months of decline, as oil near $100 a barrel clouds the outlook ahead of the official release.
Japan's M2 money stock rose 2.0 percent year on year in September to 1,295.6 trillion yen, unchanged from August and just below expectations for 2.1 percent, the Bank of Japan said on Wednesday.
Japan's Ministry of Finance sold 5-year JGB issue 188 on October 14 at a lowest accepted yield of 2.384 percent and an average yield of 2.379 percent, with competitive bids of 6,818.2 billion yen against 1,915.1 billion yen accepted.
UK 10-year gilt yields fell 5.3 basis points to 5.839 percent in European trade on Wednesday after Bank of England chief economist Huw Pill said he was sceptical that four quarter point hikes priced by markets over the next year will be needed.
The FSB on October 14 opened consultation on eight high level principles for modernising regulation and supervision, with comments due January 8, 2027, alongside a second G20 implementation review finding uneven adoption is driven mainly by national circumstances.
The dollar index eased 0.05 percent to 102.13 in early Wednesday trade, with the euro up 0.42 percent to 1.1207, the Australian dollar up 0.74 percent to 0.7008 and the yen firmer at 158.3 per dollar, as markets waited for US CPI.
Chinese banks extended 1.08 trillion yuan in new loans in September, up sharply from 60 billion yuan in August and above the 975 billion yuan expected, while outstanding loan growth slowed to a record low 4.8 percent.
Minutes of the Bank of England Money Markets Committee meeting of September 25, published October 13, describe sterling funding markets as stable with ample liquidity despite recent bond market volatility.
The chair of Parliament's Public Accounts Committee warned that only 6 percent of UK civil servants work in digital and data roles against a 10 percent target, while aging IT systems leave departments exposed even as ministers push AI adoption.
Topgolf told Ars Technica it has cut or eliminated more than $11.3 million in infrastructure costs after migrating 12,000 virtual machines off VMware to VergeIO, avoiding a projected 400 percent cost increase under Broadcom's licensing model.
The Justice Department announced October 13 that it had charged 14 people, arrested two US facilitators and seized about 187 laptops from more than 40 Texas laptop farms tied to North Korean remote IT workers at over 70 US companies.
Barcelona quantum startup Qilimanjaro closed a first tranche of 19.6 million euros for its Series A, led by Indra Group's 10 million euro investment through IndraMind, with Spain's public SETT fund adding 9.6 million euros.
The IMF's October outlook, released October 13 in Bangkok, models a steep drop in AI investment cutting global GDP by 1.1 percent by 2028, even as it raised 2026 growth to 3.1 percent.
Gartner estimates AI providers will spend nearly $1 trillion on infrastructure in 2026 and $6 trillion more by 2030, against at most $3.6 trillion of attributable AI revenue, and forecasts 80 percent of neoclouds will not survive independently past 2030.
Google DeepMind and GovTech Singapore announced a fine-tuned Gemma model that detects scam conversations entirely on a user's device, in a country that has lost more than S$4 billion to scams since 2019.
Character Technologies filed for Chapter 11 on October 12 listing assets and liabilities of $50 million to $100 million each, with Disney Worldwide Services as stalking-horse bidder at $20 million for a perpetual license to some of its intellectual property.
Bumble signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Ithaca Holdings for $6.05 a share in cash, valuing the dating company at $1.3 billion, a 138 percent premium to its unaffected October 9 close.
Apple unveiled HomeView, a $299 seven-inch smart home hub on sale November 13, alongside a refreshed $149 HomePod mini, a new Apple TV 4K with Siri AI and its own locks, cameras and doorbells.
Anthropic said merged code changes rose from about 2,500 a day in May 2026 to more than 30,000 a day by September, prompting it to build its own version control system, Scion, after Git-based tooling strained at that volume.
Singapore-based Amperesand told EE Times its solid-state transformers can smooth the abrupt load swings of AI data centers, pair with batteries to ride through grid faults, and target 98.5 percent efficiency at full power.
Pluto Security emerged from stealth with $42 million to police employee AI use, as DayOne's $3.67 billion Malaysia financing and a reported $6.3 billion NTT build for Anthropic extended the AI infrastructure map.
Endpoints News reported on October 13 that Verdiva Bio terminated a mid stage trial of its oral GLP-1 candidate, citing market evolution rather than a data or safety problem.
UCB dedicated the site of its US biologics manufacturing campus at Rowen in Gwinnett County, Georgia on October 12, an approximately $2 billion investment expected to support about 330 permanent jobs and more than 1,000 construction jobs.
Syndax Pharmaceuticals said its Phase 2 MAXPIRe trial of axatilimab in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis missed its primary endpoint, and it will stop developing the drug for that disease; shares fell about 17 percent in extended trading.
An analysis in Health Affairs Scholar found that 38 percent of FDA advisory committee meetings from 2013 to 2022 included a patient or consumer representative tied to a pharmaceutical funded advocacy organization.
Souffle Therapeutics closed an oversubscribed $135 million Series B on October 13, led by Juvia Group, to move its first three oligonucleotide programs into clinical studies.
Pfizer signed a research collaboration and license agreement with Paris based Enodia Therapeutics on October 13 to discover Sec61 targeting small molecules, worth more than $500 million in upfront, milestone and royalty value.
Alaunos Therapeutics completed its acquisition of Velaris Therapeutics on October 13 alongside a $350 million private placement led by Fairmount Funds, making Velaris the ninth Paragon Labs company and funding operations into 2029.
Novartis won supplemental FDA approval on July 27 for Lamprene, its clofazimine leprosy treatment, simplifying US distribution of a drug it stopped marketing in 2024, Endpoints News reported on October 13.
The UK MHRA published its Strategy to 2030 on October 14, committing to halve the initial assessment target for qualifying Phase 1 trials to 14 days and to cut scientific advice turnaround from 90 to 45 days.
STAT reported on October 14 that a 22 member workgroup convened by the Federation of State Medical Boards, including the AMA, the American Hospital Association, Anthropic and Elevance Health, is drafting guidelines for regulating AI that performs clinical functions with limited or no physician supervision.
A prospective study in The Lancet of Google's AMIE chatbot in real primary care patients found the final diagnosis in its differential in 90 percent of cases and ranked first in 56 percent, with no conversation requiring a safety stop.
The FTC and seven states asked a federal judge on October 13 to hold Martin Shkreli in contempt, alleging he traded pharmaceutical stocks and broadcast commentary in violation of his 2022 lifetime industry ban.
Four smaller items from the October 13 to 14 window: an $11 million compliance raise, Paragon staffing its creation engine, an MHRA safety alert on renal replacement filters, and the death of STAT reporter Helen Branswell.
You’re caught up. Browse the archive.