Brent crude traded near $114 a barrel on Wednesday after touching above $117 twice in the past week, the highest level since April. Prices are up about 77 percent on the year as Iranian attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz keep a war premium in the market. October has been the worst month for attacks on shipping in and around the strait since tracking began in 2017. The waterway carried about a fifth of world energy supplies before the conflict began in February. Hints of renewed talks pulled a few dollars out of the price, and Russia is raising diesel output under new export quotas.
Consumer goods companies told investors this week that commodity and fuel costs linked to the war with Iran will keep pushing prices up into next year. Procter & Gamble put the hit at about $1 billion and guided to flat-to-3% adjusted earnings growth, after reporting quarterly core earnings of $2 a share against estimates of $1.88 and net profit of $3.04 billion. Unilever said it will raise prices again, and Nestle has issued similar warnings. US consumer prices show the pattern: energy costs are up 20.4% over twelve months and gasoline 34.2%, with freight, packaging and fertiliser adding to the bill for food and household goods.
Anthropic published its IPO filing on Monday, setting up what could be the largest stock market debut in history. The maker of the Claude chatbot reported a net loss of $80.7bn for the first half of 2026, after a $42bn loss for all of 2025. Revenue for the quarter ended 30 June grew 1,368% from a year earlier, while cloud costs rose 300%. The company has raised about $141bn and holds $112.4bn in cash, and warned it may need more money sooner than expected. It plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker ANT, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley leading a debut expected in mid-November at a valuation above $2 trillion.
Audi plans to invest about $4 billion in its first US assembly plant, at the Middle Georgia Mega Site near Macon, with roughly 4,500 jobs and capacity for up to 200,000 vehicles a year. President Donald Trump announced the project at a rally in Perry, Georgia, 10 days before the midterm elections, and put the figure at $4.2 billion. Audi said construction begins in 2027 with production in the early 2030s; Trump said work could start next month. The plant will build the Q7, Q8 and Q9 SUVs. Audi imports every vehicle it sells in the US and faces 25% tariffs on them.
Barclays will cut about 5,000 jobs this year, roughly 5 percent of its global workforce, as it puts more artificial intelligence into operational and functional work. The bank said 1,000 posts have already closed and another 4,000 will go by the end of 2026. Most of the losses fall in UK retail banking, though the investment bank is also affected. Barclays is the latest lender to tie job reductions directly to automation, after Standard Chartered announced more than 7,000 cuts in May. The announcement lands at an awkward moment for the wider economy, with US consumer sentiment near a record low and borrowing costs still elevated.
US stocks fell on Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down about 600 points, as oil climbed toward its highest close in six months and investors weighed the cost of a longer war with Iran. Brent crude rose nearly 4% to about $117 a barrel, near its wartime peak, while West Texas Intermediate moved back above $100. The drop followed the Nasdaq 100's worst session since June, when spending plans from Tesla and Meta shook confidence in the artificial intelligence trade. Semiconductor shares steadied, gaining about 1% after a 6% slide. Big Tech earnings and the Federal Reserve's rate decision both arrive next week.
A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion after a jury found the company misled users about how it handled Facebook data. Judge Francis Mathew calculated a penalty of more than $219 billion under state law, then cut it to $25 billion, roughly Meta's quarterly profit. Jurors found about 43 million violations of state consumer protection law, tied to the Cambridge Analytica data harvest for the 2016 election. The fine is far larger than the $5 billion the FTC imposed in 2019. New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez called the ruling a warning to the tech industry.
Meta Platforms, Tesla, IBM and Texas Instruments all beat analyst estimates in quarterly results reported on Wednesday. Meta earned $3.83 per share on record revenue of $64.6 billion, up 26%, but took a $10 billion charge from an $18 billion settlement over social media addiction. It guided to $135-$145 billion in AI capital spending and announced a two-for-one split. Tesla earned $0.48 per share on $28.05 billion revenue, with automotive gross margin of 18.1% excluding credits, 2 million unsupervised robotaxi miles and Optimus production starting in Fremont. IBM beat on software and infrastructure and guided to 4-5% full-year revenue growth.
Saudi Arabia has postponed the Future Investment Initiative, informally known as Davos in the Desert, until 2027. The tenth edition had been due to run from October 26 to 29, with Alphabet president Ruth Porat, Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon and BlackRock's Laurence Fink listed as speakers. The decision follows weeks of Houthi strikes on Saudi infrastructure, including Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport, which killed at least 18 people. Government agencies in the capital have told staff to work from home.
China's exports rose 36.3 percent in September from a year earlier to $447.18 billion, the fastest growth since February and well above forecasts of 25.5 percent. Electronics and semiconductors led the gain, driven by demand for data-centre parts as companies expand AI computing capacity, and car shipments also climbed. Imports rose 31 percent, but the monthly trade surplus still reached a record $133.5 billion. Exports to the United States rose 39.6 percent after Washington and Beijing agreed to roll back tariffs on $30 billion of goods each and extended their trade truce to January.