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This week is shaping up to be a pivotal moment for the entire technology sector. Earnings season is hitting its peak phase and investors only really want the answer to one question: are the massive AI capital expenditures paying off? Markets received a partial answer on Monday, when Anthropic submitted a 400-page S-1 filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The document, a necessary step for any company seeking to go public, detailed staggering revenue growth over the last 12 months, from $1.2 billion in the first half of 2025 to $16.3 billion in the first half of this year. The thirteen-fold increase speaks for itself. Buyers are opening their wallets for the artificial intelligence company, which as of the end of June, boasted $112 billion in cash and cash equivalents. While such a massive war chest easily rivals that of Apple or Alphabet, Anthropic has already pledged far greater sums to the likes of Broadcom, SpaceX, Google, and Amazon as uncancellable compute commitments as part of its ruthlessly ambitious expansion plans. Assuming all goes smoothly, the earliest Anthropic could start trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange would be around mid-November. Numbers of shares and their price have yet to be disclosed. The filing from Anthropic infused the wider tech sphere with some much-needed vigour, pushing the Nasdaq-100 up 2.4% so far this week while lifting the S&P 500 1.3% higher. What is good for AI is good for the companies responsible for manufacturing the required hardware. Chip makers certainly saw it that way, with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) gaining 5.5% yesterday, Western Digital (WDC) climbing almost 7% and Micron (MU) edging 2.8% higher and pushing further north during extended trading hours. The optimism has spread to the Far East, where the Nikkei 225 is enjoying its second day in the green, while the Korean Kopsi index is busy rising over 6% as investors pile back in. Future IPOs aside, a number of heavyweights are getting ready to publish their latest quarterly earnings, including Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet (GOOG) after market close later today, followed by Amazon (AMZN), Eli Lilly (LLY), Mastercard (MA) and Intel (INTC) on Thursday, before petroleum giants ExxonMobil (XOM) and Chevron (CVX) complete the picture on Friday. Outside of technology stocks, the wider macro picture is refocusing on the US dollar, which has moved strongly against competing currencies this week, pushing the DXY to the mid-102 range. The euro is once again flirting with multi-year lows, falling to $1.112 this morning and matching rates from May 2025. Any continued movement to the downside would wind the clock back even further. Fiscal fears have taken hold in the common currency area, particularly in France, but the more concrete problem is simply the interest rate differential between the euro and the dollar. The Fed will almost certainly hold rates steady at 4% on the greenback later today, while the ECB is equally likely to maintain a 2.5% deposit rate on the euro on Thursday; the gap is not forecast to narrow any time soon. The Fed’s press conference will throw a bone to market participants trying to decipher the central bank’s next move, but as far as most are concerned, a 25-bps rate hike is all but guaranteed for the next FOMC meeting on the 9th of December. It has not been a great week for the pound sterling either, with cable losing $1.33 earlier today ahead of the incoming chancellor’s new budget. With that said, the Bank of England is expected to raise interest rates on the pound next Thursday, and many analysts are predicting even more rate hikes over the course of the following year, giving markets a reason to hold on to cable for now. The Canadian dollar will also face an interest rate decision later today, as will the Japanese yen on Friday, although neither meeting is expected to result in anything other than a hold. #ANT #AI #ANTHROPIC About the Author Lawrence J. came from a strong technical and engineering background before pivoting into a more financial role later on in his career. Always interested in international finance, Lawrence is experienced in both traditional markets as well as the emerging crypto markets. He now serves as the financial writer for RADEX MARKETS. Reviewed by RADEX MARKETS Risk Warning: Trading derivatives and leveraged products carries a high level of risk, including the risk of losing substantially more than your initial investment.

Wall Street is buzzing with rumours of a potential merger between SpaceX and Tesla, in what could be the single largest integration of its kind in the modern era. SpaceX completely obliterated investor expectations in recent weeks, publishing a bombshell earnings report that revealed a massive jump in revenue and a staggering $4.4 billion in net income. Markets are quickly realising that the space faring company has more to offer than rockets, and in fact SpaceX is already emerging as one of the major hyperscalers, joining the ranks of Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon in providing mass cloud computing and artificial intelligence services. Elon Musk now predicts the company will rake in up to $1 trillion in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2027, prompting investors to completely revise their growth forecasts. The Super Intelligence division of SpaceX is hugely profitable, but so too is the Starlink satellite business. Each of these enterprises represent huge accomplishments in their own right, but they are merely divisions of a larger rocket and orbital freight company. The profits generated by the peripheral elements of the business are funnelled straight into novel rocket and spaceship designs, pushing SpaceX to technological leap after technological leap. Add an electric car company into the mix and the picture broadens even further. The world is beginning to witness the birth of the kind of megacorporation that is normally confined to works of science-fiction. Multi-industry, globe-spanning entities are a common trope in far-future world-building, such as the Tyrell Corporation in Bladerunner, Weyland-Yutani in the Alien saga, the Umbrella Corporation in Resident Evil, Mao-Kwikowski Mercantile in the Expanse, or even Shinra Electric Power Company in FFVII. There are so many examples to list, throughout various franchises and different media, that such consolidated megacorporations seem like a foregone conclusion in our own world. There are good reasons to believe this may indeed be the case. Typically, the larger a company becomes, the harder it is for smaller competitors to catch up, simply by virtue of scale. If one player can afford to spend billions of dollars on infrastructure and one cannot, the former necessarily gains the upper hand. Moreover, as is the case with SpaceX, one division of the company can fund a completely separate venture, granting vast sums of cash that would not otherwise be available, and at basically no cost. The other side of this dynamic is the structural inflexibility that typically arises as companies scale to new heights. Bureaucracy takes hold, communication breaks down, bloated departments create inefficiencies and decision-making grinds to a halt. German car companies illustrate the problem well enough. To make matters worse, government bodies will sometimes step in to regulate and break up perceived monopolies, erecting artificial barriers to consolidation. The above issues can, and do, allow more nimble startups to disrupt the playing field, resulting in a chaotic balancing act between the old guard and the new. This is where a new spanner gets thrown into the works. As AI continues to gain ground, many of the human elements of the equation will be removed. It follows that many of the structural disadvantages of large employee counts will also be removed. What happens to the scaling problem when a component is entirely designed by AI, before the schematic is sent off to an automatic machining factory, then shipped to a similarly independent testing facility, and finally transported to a client via autonomous transport, all with no delay, no rest time, and no human concerns to address? What happens when billion-dollar corporations become immune from government intervention because they only have handful of employees on their payroll? By the time the regulations catch up, it is far too late. There are many barriers preventing a SpaceX-Tesla merger. National security is the big one; SpaceX works directly with NASA and the Pentagon and routinely handles classified information. This is a problem because Tesla relies on China for over half its global vehicle production. Shareholder voting is also a major hurdle because the decision to merge would depend on securing the consensus of a majority of all outstanding shares, which presents a huge logistical task even if such an agreement were indeed forthcoming. The final problem is of course that of regulatory watchdogs shutting down the merger on anti-competition grounds. The final point raises the interesting question of just how much longer governments will be able to wield such power. There are no models for the kind of hyperbolic growth exhibited by AI technology. By the time the people in charge figure out what is going on, they may no longer be in any position to do anything about it. Every previous industrial revolution was ushered in after technological breakthroughs allowed humanity to drastically increase its output via automation. The first industrial revolution introduced steam and coal to automate heavy machinery. The second brought about electricity to automate entire production lines. The third automated data and information transmission. The fourth is about to automate cognition itself. Non-linear positive feedback loops are difficult for the mind to grasp. Human technological advancements have never been gradual, they have always occurred in sudden bursts of innovation, but the next leap forward may be the most aggressive yet. A company that does everything from AI to telecoms to cars to spaceships, while earning hundreds of billions of dollars in the process, will not simply wait around, nor will it ask for permission before acting. Megacorporations already have real-world equivalents, albeit in limited form, in the likes of the massive companies found in Japan and South Korea, and increasingly in China. In Japan, Zaibatsu (roughly translated as ‘asset clique’) have long been the main economic drivers of the island nation, covering everything from coal mining to heavy manufacturing to banking and insurance. Companies such as Mitsubishi perfectly exemplify this, with branches in finance, heavy industry, car manufacturing and consumer electronics. The South Korean ‘Chaebol’ is essentially the same structure. Whereas in the West such monopolies were routinely dismantled to promote domestic competition, in the East these super-conglomerates were actively encouraged by their respective governments so that they could fight for larger shares of the global economy. The end result of the difference in approach is that a company like Mitsubishi wields far greater local government power, while a company like Google influences the world from an entirely commercial angle. In Japan, government and business interests are usually aligned; in the US, the government and major companies are often at each other’s throats.

Multiple reports are claiming that Iran’s offshore crude oil supplies have now run dry as a result of the blockade enforced by the US Navy. Iran has long maintained a fleet of tankers stationed in international waters near Malaysia and Singapore, which it has used to supply its allies with crude oil throughout the duration of the conflict, bypassing international sanctions and granting the war-torn country a much-needed income stream. The reports indicate that back in April, 150 million barrels were held in floating storage, but because of the inability of Iranian ports to dispatch new oil tankers, these supplies have substantially dwindled. Without fresh inventory to replenish them, Iran’s offshore supplies have now apparently been exhausted. According to US Central Command, the naval blockade has denied the Iranian regime at least $25 billion in oil revenue, severely limiting Tehran’s ability to replace destroyed weaponry and infrastructure. The missing oil volumes are not enough to cause a major supply shock; the bigger problem is that Iran now has very few economic options left, cornering the country into potentially more drastic courses of action. International shipping rates are already sky-high, as are risk premiums for navigating through middle eastern waters, and today’s development is certainly doing nothing to help matters. The Brent Crude benchmark rose to $114 per barrel earlier this morning, pulling further ahead of WTI contracts, which remain grounded at a more modest $100. The huge difference is indicative of just how high freight costs have risen; refiners would normally arbitrage this kind of spread, but the logistical costs of doing so now make such financial plays impossible. Financial markets at large are reacting poorly to the deepening energy crisis. Higher crude oil prices mean higher inflation, something the world is collectively sick to death of hearing about. All asset classes were shaken yesterday, and the damage appears to be worsening this morning. Gold plummeted almost 3% on Thursday and continued the descent as today’s session got underway, briefly dipping under $4,000 per ounce. Silver has fallen to an 11-month low of $54 per ounce, platinum is lingering dangerously close to long-term support levels at $1,550, while palladium has already taken the plunge, dropping to a 16-month low of $1,040. Cryptocurrencies fared little better; Bitcoin fell back down to $81,000 but is showing some degree of resilience as of this morning. Equities are facing the additional problem of an ongoing flight from technology stocks, causing the S&P 500 to drop 1.2% and the Nasdaq-100 to crumble 2.9%, although the Dow Jones managed to remain flat on the day. The tech selloff has been particularly unkind to Asian stock markets. The Nikkei 225 fell 2.7% yesterday and continued to collapse this morning before buyers stepped in. The Kospi followed a similar path, falling 3.5% on Thursday and remaining under pressure early on Friday. It was the same story in the Hang Seng index, which lost 3% yesterday amid concerns that the Chinese government has largely abandoned the idea of a planned stimulus package that investors had been hoping for. A turbulent end to the week to say the least. #OIL #BRENT #IRAN About the Author Lawrence J. came from a strong technical and engineering background before pivoting into a more financial role later on in his career. Always interested in international finance, Lawrence is experienced in both traditional markets as well as the emerging crypto markets. He now serves as the financial writer for RADEX MARKETS. Reviewed by RADEX MARKETS Risk Warning: Trading derivatives and leveraged products carries a high level of risk, including the risk of losing substantially more than your initial investment.

A number of recent developments suggest that the glacial relations between Russia and other parts of the world may be beginning to thaw. Political commitments are slowly being abandoned in favour of economic pragmatism, particularly now that the world finds itself without the endless fount of Middle Eastern resources. This week, Reuters reported that Russian oil exports through the Northeast Passage have increased substantially this year, already surpassing 2025 volumes by 50%. During the summer months, ice cover in the Arctic Ocean is thin enough to permit vessels to traverse the entire span of Russia’s northern coast, which allows oil tankers to transit from the northwestern port of Arkhangelsk all the way to Japan and the Far East. The passage completely bypasses Western maritime jurisdictions, avoiding chokepoints such as the Suez Canal or the Malacca Strait, to say nothing of the Red Sea and all the shipping problems encountered therein. The United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union routinely stop and seize oil tankers deemed to be in violation of international sanctions, while also barring such vessels from Western ports and blacklisting operators from insurance and financial services, making oil shipments via the Suez route highly problematic. The legal difficulties of heading west are compounded by the current sky-high freight costs plaguing the global shipping industry. Under normal circumstances, the Northeast Passage is the more expensive route due to icebreaker escort fees, navigation permit charges, slower transit speeds and increased insurance premiums, but maritime freight rates are now expensive enough that the northern route has become economically viable. The North Sea Route, as it is also known, is much shorter than the traditional Suez route, cutting the journey to China from 21,000 km to just 12,000 km. By shaving thousands of nautical miles off the journey, the notion of delivering a tanker full of precious crude oil via the dangerous Arctic corridor is suddenly much more palatable. With the world’s super tankers tied up in much longer sea voyages, the northern release valve is seeing more use than ever before. The second development is the direct agreement between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to ship Russian diesel to the United States. The first tanker will set sail later today, according to Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who went on to claim that additional shipments would soon follow and that Russia ‘will meet the United States’ needs, to the extent of our capabilities’. President Trump stated that Russia would export 300,000 tonnes of diesel in October, followed by 500,000 tonnes in November and 1,000,000 tonnes ‘immediately thereafter’. Paradoxically, the US is in fact a net exporter of diesel, but finds itself importing such refined petroleum products anyway due to geographic constraints and simple market dynamics. Most of the United States’ refining capacity is located around the Gulf Coast, from where much of the produced diesel is immediately exported to Latin America. Channelling fuel from Texas to the East Coast of the US is surprisingly difficult because of domestic shipping regulations and pipeline constraints; it makes more financial sense to simply import the required fuel from the likes of Canada, Europe, or, as of this week, Russia. The global oil market makes more sense when viewed in terms of regional networks of buyers and sellers as opposed to sovereign states trading with one another. The conflict in Iran has squeezed petroleum deliveries globally and said networks are now having to adjust to the change in market dynamics. While not indicative of much in isolation, the recent souring of relations between Ukraine and the US adds crucial context to the Russian diesel agreement. Political friction between the war-torn country and the West in general has reached a level of discomfort not seen since the conflict began, while military aid packages meet increased resistance from US and European politicians alike. No one is immune from the rules of supply and demand. Faced with the economic reality of high energy costs and reduced access to natural resources, political purity suddenly becomes much harder to defend. The structural advantage of buying diesel from Russia now apparently outweighs the political commitment to ideological containment. The first diesel shipment is expected to reach the East Coast of the US within the next three weeks. About the Author Lawrence J. came from a strong technical and engineering background before pivoting into a more financial role later on in his career. Always interested in international finance, Lawrence is experienced in both traditional markets as well as the emerging crypto markets. He now serves as the financial writer for RADEX MARKETS. Reviewed by RADEX MARKETS Risk Warning: Trading derivatives and leveraged products carries a high level of risk, including the risk of losing substantially more than your initial investment.

Price stalls at the same level two or three times, each dip ends a little higher than the last, and the breakout looks only a candle away. A trader buys just under that ceiling, price turns down from it once more, and the stop-loss is hit before the move ever starts. This guide shows how to confirm that the ascending triangle pattern is really there, where to enter after the breakout, where the stop-loss goes and how to measure the target. It then works one trade through in pips and money and explains what to do when the pattern breaks down instead. An ascending triangle is a chart pattern formed by a flat resistance line across the highs and a rising trendline under the lows. It shows buyers paying higher prices on each dip while sellers hold one level. It usually breaks upwards, and Thomas Bulkowski's study of more than 1,400 patterns found upward breakouts about 63% of the time. See how the breakout plays out on a live chart. An ascending triangle is a price pattern in which a horizontal resistance line and a rising support line converge, as buyers lift each low while sellers keep capping the highs at one price. Inside an uptrend it is usually read as a bullish continuation pattern: the market pauses, the sellers at the ceiling are absorbed, and the trend resumes once price closes above it. When the same shape appears at the end of a downtrend, it can act as a reversal pattern instead, marking the point where buyers start to take control. It is one of three triangle patterns, together with the descending triangle and the symmetrical triangle. The next section compares the three side by side. A resistance level is a price at which selling has repeatedly stopped a rise, so the market has turned lower from it more than once. Read more: 15 Best Chart Patterns Every Trader Should Know Triangle pattern trading means trading three related shapes with the same tools, a trendline entry, a stop beyond the opposite line and a measured target, while each shape leans in a different direction. The table sets out how the three triangles differ in shape, bias and trade plan. When both lines are flat, the pattern is no longer a triangle but a rectangle, which is traded as a range until price closes outside it. An ascending triangle is built from three groups of parts, and all three need to be present before the shape counts as the pattern. The flat resistance line is the upper boundary, where sellers keep defending one price. Three touches carry more weight than two, because each extra rejection shows the same sellers are still there. The rising support line is the lower boundary, drawn through the higher lows, where buyers pay more on each dip. The two lines squeeze price into a smaller range as they head towards the apex, the point where they would meet. Spot forex has no central volume figure, so traders read tick volume from their platform as a stand-in. Tick volume is the number of price updates recorded in a candle, used in forex as a stand-in for traded volume because the market has no central exchange. Analysing an ascending triangle runs in four checks that separate a real pattern from a random range. Each check has to pass before moving on to the next. The highs need to stop at roughly the same price at least twice. On most forex charts, small overshoots of a few pips still count as the same level, as long as candles close back below it. At least two higher lows are needed to draw the lower line. Price should also move between the two lines several times, so the triangle is filled with trading rather than drawn from two isolated points. Tick volume usually fades while the pattern forms. Bulkowski found that breakouts arrive on average about 64% of the way from the start of the pattern to the apex, so a breakout very close to the apex is a weaker signal. The pattern is only confirmed when a candle closes above the resistance line on the chosen timeframe. Wicks above the line are often pulled back inside, so the close is the trigger. Read more: Forex Technical Analysis: A Step-by-Step Beginner's Guide An ascending triangle is usually bullish, and Bulkowski found upward breakouts in about 63% of patterns. It turns bearish when price closes below the rising trendline. The shape leans bullish because sellers keep offering at the same price, so the highs stay flat, while buyers step in earlier on each dip, so the lows rise. Each test of resistance removes some of the sellers waiting there, and the ceiling gets thinner every time. The trend before the pattern changes how it is read. The table shows the four situations traders meet most often. The bias is only a lean, so traders still wait for the candle close before acting. A close below the rising trendline cancels the bullish case. Bulkowski found this downward breakout in roughly 37% of patterns, with a much higher failure rate than upward breakouts, at 38% against 17%. Whichever way price breaks, the trader needs a fixed entry, stop-loss and target before acting, which is what the next section sets out. Three practical strategies cover the breakout: entering on a close above resistance or on a retest, placing the stop-loss below the last higher low, and aiming for a target equal to the height of the triangle added to the breakout level. Choose one of two entries before the breakout happens, and stick to it. Bulkowski found that price came back to test the broken level in about 64% of upward breakouts. That is why the retest entry is common, and also why it misses roughly a third of the moves. Place the stop-loss a few pips below the most recent higher low. A close back below the rising trendline means the pattern has failed, so the stop sits where the trade idea stops being valid. The distance to the stop then decides the lot size, not the other way round. Measure the height of the triangle from the resistance line down to the first low of the pattern, then add it to the breakout level. Bulkowski found that about 70% of upward breakouts reached this target. Some traders take half the position off at the target and trail the stop on the rest, so part of the profit is banked while the remainder can follow a longer move. Read more: Breakout Trading: What It Is and Key Strategies for Forex Traders The trade below runs one ascending triangle on the EUR/USD 4-hour chart from first touch to final result. The prices are illustrative and are not historical quotes or trading advice. EUR/USD rises into 1.0950 three times and turns lower each time. The pullbacks end at 1.0850, 1.0880 and 1.0905, so the lows are rising. The height of the triangle is 1.0950 − 1.0850 = 100 pips. A 4-hour candle closes at 1.0962, above resistance, and the trader buys at that close. The stop-loss goes at 1.0900, 5 pips below the last higher low, which is 62 pips from the entry. The target is the breakout level plus the height: 1.0950 + 100 pips = 1.1050, which is 88 pips above the entry. The account holds £10,000 and risks 1%, or £100, per trade. One standard lot of EUR/USD is worth $10 per pip, which is £8 at an illustrative GBP/USD rate of 1.2500. The lot size is £100 ÷ (62 × £8) = 0.20 lots, so one pip is worth £1.60. Money at risk is 62 × £1.60 = £99.20. Money at target is 88 × £1.60 = £140.80. The risk-to-reward ratio is 88 ÷ 62 = 1:1.42. A spread of 1 pip takes 1.6% of the stop distance. In the first outcome, two candles after the breakout, price dips back to 1.0952, where the old resistance now holds as support. Buyers step in, and over the following sessions EUR/USD reaches 1.1050. The target order closes the trade for a gain of 88 pips, or £140.80. In the second outcome, the next candle closes back inside the triangle at 1.0935, and price slides through the rising trendline to 1.0900. The stop-loss closes the trade for a loss of 62 pips, or £99.20, which is the 1% planned at entry. The trader treats the pattern as failed, does not add to the position and does not reverse straight away into a short without a separate signal. Read more: What is a pip in forex trading? How to calculate and use it Read more: 10 Forex risk management tips every trader should know The ascending triangle can work well for UK forex traders because it gives a clear entry, stop-loss and target. It also fails often enough that confirmation and a stop-loss are essential on every trade. The figures below come from Thomas Bulkowski's study of more than 1,400 ascending triangles in bull markets. These are results from a large sample of US share charts, not from forex, so traders should test the pattern on their own pairs and timeframes before relying on the figures. On spot forex, a UK retail trader reads tick volume instead of exchange volume, so volume only supports the reading. The spread matters more on small triangles: a 1-pip spread is 1.6% of a 62-pip stop but 6.7% of a 15-pip stop on a 15-minute chart. Breakouts on the major pairs are also more likely to follow through during the London and New York sessions, when liquidity is highest. At least two highs at the same level and two higher lows are needed to draw it. A third touch of resistance makes the level more reliable. Measure the distance from the resistance line to the first low of the pattern and add it to the breakout level. A 100-pip triangle breaking out at 1.0950 gives a target of 1.1050. The bullish setup is cancelled, and any long position should be closed at the stop-loss. A short trade needs its own confirmation, because downward breakouts from this pattern fail more often. In Bulkowski's study, 63% of ascending triangles broke upwards and 70% of those upward breakouts reached the measured target. These figures come from US shares, so they should be tested on forex pairs before being relied on. Yes, the pattern appears on 15-minute and 1-hour charts. False breakouts are more frequent there, and the spread takes a larger share of a small triangle's height. The ascending triangle has a flat top and leans bullish. The symmetrical triangle has two sloping lines and usually breaks in the direction of the trend before it. An ascending triangle combines a flat ceiling with rising lows, and it leans bullish because buyers keep paying more while sellers hold one price. It is confirmed by a candle close above resistance, traded with a stop below the last higher low and a target equal to the triangle height, and cancelled by a close below the rising trendline. Bulkowski's figures show it breaks upwards more often than not, but they come from US shares. Count at least three touches of resistance, wait for the close, size the position from the stop distance and set the target before entering. Exit without hesitation when price closes back below the trendline. An ascending triangle is best treated as a trade plan with a defined exit, not as a promise that the breakout will come. The RADEX MARKETS editorial team consists of seasoned financial professionals and market observers. Dedicated to delivering objective market summaries, macroeconomic insights, and educational content, the team strives to keep traders well-informed in a fast-paced financial environment. Reviewed by RADEX MARKETS Risk Warning Trading derivatives and leveraged products carries a high level of risk, including the risk of losing substantially more than your initial investment.

Earnings season kicked off in earnest yesterday, as a number of big names across different sectors delivered their third quarter earnings. Industry giant 3M (MMM) convincingly beat expectations on Tuesday, rising the better part of 6% and providing momentum to the wider Dow Jones index, which closed the session a solid 1% in the green. Defence and aerospace company Northrop Grumman (NOC) also outperformed, gaining 4.5% after posting healthy margins and impressive free cash flow. The biggest outlier of all was SpaceX (SPCX), which reported earnings per share of $0.35 compared to expectations of just $0.16, as well as a net income of $4.4 billion for the third quarter, largely fuelled by its surging AI business. On top of that, it appears as though genuine efforts are being made to eventually merge SpaceX and Tesla into the same entity, according to the CEO of both companies Elon Musk. SpaceX surged more than 8% in extended trading hours following the earnings call. Speaking of Tesla (TSLA), the car manufacturer will report its own earnings after market close later today, as will Meta Platforms (META). While the Dow Jones performed solidly yesterday, the S&P 500 only managed a 0.3% rise, while the Nasdaq-100 sank 0.1%. The divergence reflects a rotation away from the more volatile elements of the technology sector and into the broader spectrum of US equities. Given the unhealthy tech concentration of US stock markets so far this year, such movements are a welcome development. The dollar has cooled off somewhat in recent sessions, bringing the DXY from highs of almost 103 last week to a more modest 101.8 as of this morning. Several Federal Reserve officials have signalled a willingness to hold off on further rate hikes for the time being, and markets are now overwhelmingly pricing in a pause during next week's FOMC meeting. The reprieve has awarded competing currencies some much needed breathing room, allowing the euro to halt its slide against the greenback – at least for now. The common currency was sadly unable to fully capitalise on the shift, and the political and fiscal problems emerging from France are largely to blame. French borrowing costs are hovering around 24-year highs, with yields on the 10-year bond edging dangerously close to 5%. Exploding debt-to-GDP ratios have soured lending appetite for the country in recent years, creating a 150-bps premium for French debt compared to that of its German neighbour. Credit is being squeezed hard and many different facets of the French economy are beginning to feel the pinch. To make matters worse, Moody’s will review France’s credit worthiness on Friday and is expected to carry out a downgrade, in line with fellow rating agencies Fitch and S&P Global. France’s situation lies in stark contrast to that of the UK, which showed surprisingly resilient labour market conditions on Tuesday after the ONS revealed an additional 102k jobs in August, causing the unemployment rate to unexpectedly fall to 4.7%. The report briefly pushed the pound up to $1.34 yesterday before a modest pull back took hold, but more interestingly, cable has now risen to 1.19 against the euro, a 17-month high for the pair. This morning, UK inflation came in marginally higher than expected at 3.5% year-over-year. The increase further cements the Bank of England’s case for raising the main bank rate from 3.75% to 4% on the 5th of November, which would fully close the interest rate gap with the US dollar. #SPCX #DOW #FRANCE About the Author Lawrence J. came from a strong technical and engineering background before pivoting into a more financial role later on in his career. Always interested in international finance, Lawrence is experienced in both traditional markets as well as the emerging crypto markets. He now serves as the financial writer for RADEX MARKETS. Reviewed by RADEX MARKETS Risk Warning: Trading derivatives and leveraged products carries a high level of risk, including the risk of losing substantially more than your initial investment.