Category: Global Investing

China has quietly become the world’s most powerful oil market player. Facing the largest supply shock in petroleum history after the Iran war shut the Strait of Hormuz, Beijing halved its crude imports, cutting 5.5 million barrels a day between February and June. Analysts reckon this move shaved $30 or more off Brent crude, doing…

The US has used up most of its stock of high precision missiles after the Iran conflict, according to Reuters, with roughly two in three Patriot interceptors and nearly half its THAAD systems also depleted, per the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Replenishing arsenals will take years, constraining Donald Trump’s options against Iran and…

Google is overhauling its AI leadership, shifting day-to-day control of Gemini development away from Sir Demis Hassabis’s DeepMind lab in London and back to Silicon Valley, where co-founder Sergey Brin has re-emerged as a driving force. Hassabis becomes Alphabet’s chief scientist, freeing him for long-term research, while deputy Koray Kavukcuoglu now runs Gemini day to…

SpaceX has built credibility through Falcon 9’s reliability and Starlink’s profits, but its latest ambition, a full mobile phone service to rival AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, has unsettled wireless analysts. Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell outlined plans to use femtocells on existing Starlink antennas, but analysts note these are mostly in rural areas, limiting reach.…

Palantir Technologies has handed short sellers a $3 billion paper loss after its stock surged 30% on Tuesday, wiping out the roughly $2.7 billion in gains bearish investors had banked so far this year. The reversal followed Palantir’s decision to raise its full-year revenue and income forecasts, with chief executive Alex Karp pointing to strong…

Bond yields in America, Britain, France and Japan are near their highest since the 2007-09 financial crisis, as investors price in persistent inflation, gaping budget deficits and geopolitical risk. Governments are increasingly betting that AI-driven growth will ease the fiscal squeeze, but AI has yet to lift productivity meaningfully anywhere, and Brookings Institution economists estimate…

Listen here Alex Karp just proved that conviction moves markets. Palantir’s overnight 29% jump has Wall Street rethinking what it thought it knew about the company, and Karp isn’t shy about telling you why. Elon Musk lays out exactly how far ahead SpaceX and Starlink already are, and how much further they’re going, while South…

Economist James K. Galbraith challenges a new paper by Peter Ireland, Stephen Miran and Nouriel Roubini urging incoming Fed chair Kevin Warsh to revive Milton Friedman’s monetarist doctrine through a modern “Divisia” money index. Drawing on his own history helping design the Fed’s 1970s reporting requirements, Galbraith argues the approach fails on two counts: the…

SpaceX’s first earnings report since its record IPO beat revenue forecasts, but a jump in AI spending to $18.4 billion spooked investors and sent shares tumbling. Elon Musk, born and raised in South Africa, still faces a domestic hurdle unrelated to Wall Street: Starlink remains unlicensed here, blocked by ownership rules requiring local equity that…

Palantir Technologies shares jumped as much as 17% in premarket trading after the company raised its full-year revenue and profit outlook, with CEO Alex Karp describing commercial demand as “otherworldly.” Full-year adjusted operating income is now expected to reach up to $4.91 billion, with sales of up to $8.16 billion, both above prior guidance and…

China has leaned on rare-earth export controls to strong-arm the US and Japan, but David Fickling argues the tactic is backfiring. Neodymium and praseodymium are now too widely mined to threaten, forcing Beijing to focus on scarcer heavy rare earths like dysprosium, terbium and samarium, long thought to exist only in one Chinese deposit. New…

The “Magnificent Seven” tech giants have lost over $2 trillion in market value since June, as investors question whether massive AI spending will ever pay off. FT columnist John Plender argues these catchy market nicknames — from the Nifty Fifty to the Faangs — are more than marketing hype: they’re symptoms of momentum-driven bubbles where…

Luno, the crypto exchange that started in South Africa and is now owned by Digital Currency Group, is cutting about 20% of its global staff as it restructures around institutional clients rather than volatile retail trading. CEO James Lanigan says automation and operational efficiencies have reduced the resourcing the business needs, freeing it to expand…

Amazon has lifted its 2026 capital spending forecast to $220 billion, mostly earmarked for AI, while Microsoft’s cloud growth triggered a $450 billion single-day jump in market value, the biggest in stock market history. Alphabet and Meta also raised spending guidance, but investors punished both over unclear returns, with Meta down nearly 8% and Alphabet…

Lesaka Technologies, the Nasdaq- and JSE-listed fintech born from the ashes of Net1, has extended Executive Chairman Ali Mazanderani’s tenure through mid-2029 via two newly signed contracts disclosed to the SEC. The filing formalises what markets had long suspected: Mazanderani, who also chairs Teya and has sat on StoneCo’s and Network International’s boards, works at…

Bloomberg’s Lionel Laurent argues that reports of a Chinese firm nearing production of rival chipmaking machines have rattled ASML investors at the worst possible time, given the Dutch company’s AI-driven sales boom. While analysts still see China 7-10 years behind ASML’s technology, the bigger worry is that US-led export controls meant to contain Beijing have…

The Financial Times’s Sarah O’Connor argues that fear of automation can become self-fulfilling: workers abandon a trade before machines actually arrive, creating shortages that then justify the very automation they feared. Her evidence stretches from horse-drawn “teamsters” a century ago to today’s truck drivers deterred by driverless vehicle trials, despite autonomous trucking remaining marginal. The…