The Nasdaq 100 advanced on Wednesday as a blockbuster quarterly report from SpaceX eased some of the recent anxiety surrounding the durability of the global investment surge in artificial intelligence, even as prominent voices continued to debate whether the boom has entered bubble territory. Shares of the satellite, rocket and AI company jumped 10 percent, gains amplified by Elon Musk’s endorsement of a possible combination with Tesla Inc. that would create a roughly $3.5 trillion conglomerate spanning electric vehicles, energy storage, rockets, satellites and orbital data centers. The electric-car maker and Meta Platforms Inc. are scheduled to report later in the day, while Super Micro Computer Inc. rose on solid preliminary figures and chipmakers broadly bounced, allowing the Nasdaq 100 to outperform major indexes. David Morrison at Trade Nation noted an impressive start to the earnings season and asked whether the worst of the tech selloff that began this month, particularly among chip stocks, might be over. Investors’ worries had intensified amid fears that the substantial upfront capital spending required by artificial intelligence would take longer than expected to generate profits and productivity gains. Billionaire Ken Griffin said investors are almost certainly in the midst of an AI bubble, with many companies still grappling with spending levels and the technology’s ultimate economic transformation. BlackRock Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink warned that delays in data-center construction could raise computing costs and threaten growth. If we do not build out these data centers, it is actually more inflationary because the cost of compute is so high right now, Fink said in a Bloomberg Television interview on the sidelines of the Berlin Global Dialogue, adding that faster build-out would bring costs down more quickly.
SpaceX itself reported $4.4 billion in net income for the quarter ended in September, far above the average analyst projection of $1.88 billion, with revenue rising 161 percent from a year earlier. Revenue from its AI business, now operating as Super Intelligence or SI, soared to $7.56 billion, more than nine times the prior-year level. The company has become a major compute and infrastructure supplier to Anthropic, Alphabet and others, and in August it acquired Cursor, the developer of a popular AI-powered coding tool. Those factors, along with increased adoption of Grok, the large language models developed by Musk’s xAI, helped the AI business post $431 million of operating income, compared with a $1.7 billion loss a year earlier. Super Intelligence was the standout growth driver for the quarter, Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen said, citing rising demand for computing power and Grok enterprise sales. SpaceX expects total revenue to reach as much as $37 billion in the first quarter of next year and indicated it will continue borrowing. Starlink subscribers reached 13.6 million by the third quarter, short of expectations, yet connectivity revenue still rose 69 percent to $5.25 billion, driven by aviation in-flight Wi-Fi and Starshield, the more encrypted militarized version. Launch-vehicle and spacecraft revenue rose only 6 percent to $1.77 billion. Musk said SpaceX expects to catch both the booster and the ship for the 15th Starship test flight next month, aiming for full reusability. President Gwynne Shotwell said the first demonstration of on-orbit refueling is planned early next year, a capability required for the NASA contract to land humans on the moon. Starship is also essential for launching upgraded Starlink satellites with greater capacity. Connecting cars, robots and the adoption of superintelligence will increase communication demands by orders of magnitude, Shotwell said, expecting Starlink alone to represent a significant portion of global internet traffic. Starshield has faced renewed scrutiny after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the White House and Musk of restrictions on the technology used for battlefield communications; both denied involvement.
Musk openly endorsed combining SpaceX with Tesla, saying the boards of both companies had formed special committees of independent directors to consider the idea. There’s a lot of merit to combining the companies, he said after the earnings release. SpaceX is valued at more than $2 trillion and Tesla at about $1.5 trillion. Musk cautioned that securing Tesla shareholder support may be tricky and that neither committee has settled on terms. I think it would be a good idea, but it’s really up to the special committees, he said, noting he cannot participate because he is a conflicted party. He suspects some people assume the merger is a certainty, though he called that an overstatement. Both stocks extended gains after the comments. The stated rationale lies in shared ambitions to leverage artificial intelligence for data centers in space, driverless cars and humanoid robots. Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management, which holds stakes in both, said Musk clearly wants the deal sooner rather than later and is building enthusiasm. Chad Anderson of Space Capital, an early SpaceX investor, called the combination logical, saying the merged entity would own the full physical-AI stack from chip fabrication to orbital data centers to autonomous devices, with no competitor possessing an analog.
Elsewhere in the technology and infrastructure complex, Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang urged Europe to adopt artificial intelligence more rapidly across all industries, speaking at the company’s GTC conference in Berlin where the firm unveiled new data-center equipment, software, models and partnerships. For Europe to benefit from AI and create an AI ecosystem and economy, all end markets and industries must adopt the technology, Huang said, pointing to automotive, financial services and health care. Nvidia shares rose about 2 percent in premarket trading. The remarks were briefly interrupted by Greenpeace protesters questioning reports of Nvidia chips in Russian drones before security removed them. The event forms part of Huang’s European tour aimed at persuading political and business leaders of AI’s safety amid a delicate moment for the industry. AI stocks have been battered over the past two weeks, and the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Index suffered its longest losing streak since 2008. Nvidia introduced the DSX Pod, a mini data-center product that includes pre-installed and tested server hardware, cabling and plumbing, reducing installation time to 14 days from six months. It suits smaller-scale deployments under a gigawatt. Customers across Europe are adopting the DSX blueprint and the newest Vera Rubin processor design, including Nvidia-backed Nscale. To address supply-chain constraints, partners including Ibiden, Samsung Electro-Mechanics and Unimicron will expand substrates, Amkor will increase chip packaging fourfold by the end of 2028, and KYEC will boost testing capacity. Nvidia is also expanding on-package optical connections. Amid concerns that AI agents may become difficult to control, the company is developing software and a reference design to keep agents within prescribed limits, preventing unauthorized data access or self-permissioning. In physical AI, including robots, revenue rose as much as 30 percent to about $11 billion in the first half of the year. Nvidia announced a Siemens partnership for AI-based radiation therapy machines that monitor breathing and adjust dosage dynamically. It is working with Agile Robots on an open robotics platform featuring the Jetson Thor computer inside an Agile One SN humanoid. In automotive, Volvo is developing self-driving cars with Nvidia chips, Volkswagen is using the technology for commercial vehicles, and Bolt is employing it for robotaxis.
Nscale’s chief executive, Josh Payne, told employees in a note that the value of contracts to deliver computing power has more than doubled since a March funding round, reaching more than $100 billion with major AI companies, while demand remains insatiable. He highlighted relationships with Microsoft and Nvidia, an investor, and lender financing, saying commitments remain as strong as when signed. Nscale is targeting an initial public offering that would value the company at $30 billion, but delays in data-center construction and Microsoft’s withdrawal from a UK project have prompted some investors to urge a lower range of $16 billion to $19 billion. The company filed publicly for a US listing in September and is working through Securities and Exchange Commission comments before formal marketing. One Norwegian facility is six months behind schedule, with only 6.4 megawatts of the intended 30 megawatts operational. The Monarch campus in West Virginia is scalable to more than 8 gigawatts; part of it was initially expected to be leased by Microsoft, which signed a letter of intent in March but walked away in the summer, allowing Anthropic to become the tenant for the first building. Microsoft has said it remains committed to the partnership, and Nscale is in talks with Anthropic for a second deal potentially worth about $45 billion. Payne included a video of construction progress and described the site’s scale as reflecting the company’s ambition. Nscale raised $3.36 billion in a pre-IPO round last month led by Third Point, with participation from Nvidia, Apollo, Citadel and others, after a March Series C valuing it at about $14.6 billion.
Finance leaders offered mixed views on whether the AI investment boom constitutes a bubble. Deutsche Bank Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing, speaking at the Berlin Global Dialogue, said he sees no reason to worry about a sharp reversal in asset prices soon. Overall, I don’t think that we are living in a bubble which is bursting, he said, though individual company setbacks can occur. Fink reiterated that delays in data-center construction would be inflationary by keeping computing costs elevated. Steve Chiavarone of Federated Hermes suggested worries about a bubble may be premature by several years, as the infrastructure build-out has years to run and markets remain discerning about capital allocation, the opposite of bubble behavior. Sewing and Fink both pointed instead to fiscal deficits as a more immediate concern, particularly as the AI industry competes with governments for investor capital. US Treasury yields have hit multi-decade highs amid a nearly $2 trillion fiscal deficit. In France, months of budget debate have pushed the extra yield on French government debt over German bonds into territory associated with the euro-area debt crisis. Sewing called it a wake-up call for public financing that budget discipline is key, while noting ongoing volatility from geopolitical tensions rather than a bursting bubble. He described industrial application of AI as the chance of the century for Germany if the regulatory framework is right, and said Deutsche Bank uses the technology for efficiency and controls. Sewing is among executives who regularly speak with Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who hosted the German government’s first investor conference this week.
The Treasury market itself is undergoing a structural shift that leaves the US government more dependent on price-sensitive private investors. After swelling seven-fold to $32 trillion over two decades, the market has seen foreign governments, central banks and pension funds—the slow money that historically bought with less regard to price—become relatively less important, while private investors now own about 70 percent of federal debt, near the most since 1990, and hedge funds hold almost a tenth. These fast-money buyers, who have other assets to choose from and often use leverage, turn away more readily if prices do not suit them. For Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh, the concern is that such investors wield more power if they take fright at monetary policy, the economic trajectory, widening deficits or presidential statements. Anshul Pradhan of Barclays observed that the investor base has become more discerning, so a market relying on private capital may require larger concessions to absorb supply. This year’s bond selloff, driven largely by global factors including higher oil prices and an improved growth outlook, has revived fiscal worries and raised borrowing costs for companies and individuals. An Australian state-run fund reduced Treasury holdings last year over tariff and tax concerns, and Norges Bank Investment Management proposed cutting sovereign debt holdings for better risk-adjusted returns elsewhere. Companies have issued record debt to finance AI developments. Unlike foreign central banks, private investors can more easily switch into corporate debt or stocks. The Fed is no longer buying bonds under quantitative easing. Paul Donovan of UBS noted that the less-captive private sector has increased its influence. Bloomberg Economics estimated that the decline in Fed and foreign official holdings once added roughly 105 basis points of term premium. Corporate pension demand for long-dated bonds may also be fading as funding ratios improved to about 114 percent of needs as of September, versus 82 percent in July 2020, and many plans are frozen to new members. Jason Williams of Citigroup suggested waning pension demand may lead the Treasury to cut long-dated issuance in favor of bills. Hedge funds quadrupled their Treasury holdings between 2012 and 2025, reaching roughly 8.5 percent or $2.7 trillion by late last year, according to Fed researchers. Their leveraged strategies, including the basis trade between futures and bonds and swap-spread trades, boost demand but can reverse sharply if repo rates rise, flooding the market. The basis trade has been shrinking recently. A TS Lombard team wrote that global bond markets are adjusting to a less forgiving buyer base, so governments will still fund themselves but increasingly at prices set by discretionary investors.
In Europe, the yield on benchmark French 10-year debt hit 5 percent for the first time since 2002, rising seven basis points as elevated energy prices exacerbated fiscal concerns. The spread over German yields widened to 159.4 basis points, the most in 15 years, a key gauge of euro-area credit risk that has grown sharply since late September amid doubts over France’s ability to pass a budget addressing its debt burden. Public fury over the cost of living degenerated into violent protests over the weekend. Spreads are likely to remain under pressure as attention turns to upcoming budget votes, said Pooja Kumra of Toronto Dominion Bank, noting that even if the budget passes, investors remain concerned by fiscal dysfunction and political fragmentation. Benchmark European natural gas futures climbed around 4 percent and Brent crude traded near $110 a barrel. Deutsche Bank’s Sewing highlighted fiscal and political instability in France, with volatility likely until next year’s presidential elections. The euro underperformed most Group-of-10 peers, falling as much as 0.2 percent to $1.1214. France’s deeply divided parliament makes compromise on next year’s budget painful, and the process is unlikely to ease with elections six months away.
Oil was little changed as attacks in the Strait of Hormuz continued to menace supplies, though flows through the waterway remain robust. Iran said the United States must lift its naval blockade and show seriousness about ending the war diplomatically, as deadlock over talks and growing threats from both sides fuel fears of a return to outright conflict. In Italy, officials are looking into whether outside actors such as Russia helped fuel violent protests that swept Milan and other European cities over the weekend, according to people familiar with the matter. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government has asked to be briefed on any foreign provocateur role. Defense Minister Guido Crosetto described the events as fundamentally different and the product of hybrid warfare conducted through TikTok, social media and YouTube. He said children as young as 11 or 12 involved seemed subjected to counter-education. The government announced measures including deployment of 500 military personnel in Milan until year-end amid concern over further demonstrations. Critics accused the government of using the unrest for political advantage ahead of next year’s election while failing to address underlying economic and social problems. Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey defended his earlier decision to speak out against Donald Trump’s attacks on then-Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, saying he and other central-bank chiefs acted because the attacks targeted Powell personally rather than institutional policy. I only commented when I felt it was an attack on his person and the personality of a friend, Bailey said at an Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum event on central-bank independence. He counted Powell as a friend of the utmost integrity and said he would do the same again. Earlier this year, Bailey and peers at the European Central Bank and Bank of Canada signed a letter of full solidarity after Trump served the Fed with subpoenas threatening criminal indictment over headquarters renovations, widely seen as an attempt to coerce lower rates. Bailey had previously expressed concern that any erosion of independence could spill over globally. He avoided commenting on the current policy debate as the Bank of England prepares for its next decision in early November, with economists and investors widely expecting a quarter-point hike to fight inflation triggered by the Middle East conflict.
Corporate restructuring and strategic shifts continued. Abbott Laboratories plans to spin off its nutrition unit after missteps with brands including the infant formula Similac, creating a separate publicly traded company through a tax-free distribution expected by the end of 2027. The unit will have about $8.5 billion in annual sales from brands including Pedialyte and Ensure, with Daniel Salvadori named chief executive. The separation will not affect 2026 or 2027 guidance. Abbott narrowed its full-year 2026 earnings forecast to $5.50–$5.55 per share and reported third-quarter results meeting expectations, though medical-device sales fell short. Shares fell 4.5 percent and have declined more than 18 percent year-to-date through Tuesday. Chief Executive Officer Robert Ford said the separation will benefit both companies. The nutrition business is influenced by wellness trends and shifts away from ultraprocessed foods, and an independent company can adapt faster. The industry has faced costly recalls and litigation; Abbott agreed last month to pay $385 million to settle US allegations related to manufacturing practices and $670 million in August to settle some lawsuits over premature-baby formula. Rival Reckitt Benckiser has also sought to shed its infant-formula business. Other healthcare firms have slimmed down, including Johnson & Johnson’s spin-off of its consumer unit into Kenvue. Abbott lowered prices on some nutrition products late last year after earlier increases.
Coca-Cola’s $5.1 billion acquisition of Costa Coffee in 2018 has largely failed to deliver the expected entry into the global coffee market. Former Chief Executive Officer James Quincey bet that Coke’s bottler network could scale Costa’s barista-in-a-box vending machines and bottled coffee. Instead, the machines proved expensive and complicated for bottlers, and Coke was outdone by PepsiCo and Starbucks’ Frappuccino joint venture in the ready-to-drink segment. Costa remains concentrated in more than 2,700 shops in the UK and Ireland. Former executives described the vision of marrying Coke’s vending network with Costa Express as unrealistic. The pandemic closed shops in 2020, and recovery has been uneven. A confidential Project Decaf to franchise more shops met resistance over price and condition. Matcha was initially rejected as too much of a stretch before a late launch. US expansion was limited by lack of brand recognition and bottler unfamiliarity with fresh-milk espresso machines. A BaristaBot robotics effort was shut down in 2025. Quincey acknowledged last summer that the investment was not where desired. Coke tried unsuccessfully to sell Costa late last year; talks with potential buyers including TDR Capital fell apart over price and scope. The company says it is not currently for sale and believes in the business, with actions delivering positive results. Costa revenue rose 5 percent to £1.29 billion in 2025 and swung to a £20.4 million operating profit from a loss. Growth accelerated in the first half of 2026, and the brand is in about 50 countries. For Coke, with a market capitalization above $400 billion and shares up 34 percent this year, the episode is a public rounding error that may prompt greater caution on future acquisitions. Veteran consultant John Sicher noted that while diversification makes sense as soda sales trend down, entering the restaurant business has not worked out well so far; the Fairlife premium milk acquisition was more successful.
EBay will eliminate 9 percent of its workforce, or around 1,000 employees, in its second round of cuts this year, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company said the step aligns teams and resources with strategic priorities to capture opportunities from a position of strength. Shares rose about 1.2 percent. In May, eBay rejected a $56 billion takeover offer from GameStop Chief Executive Officer Ryan Cohen as neither credible nor attractive. Cohen had pledged $2 billion in cost savings and criticized marketing spending. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Iannone has focused on categories including luxury, refurbished items and collectibles. Earlier cuts in February eliminated around 800 jobs, or 6 percent of the workforce at the time, following reductions in 2023 and 2024. EBay acquired secondhand fashion marketplace Depop earlier this year; the deal was $200 million more than initially announced, which could weigh on third-quarter earnings. Results are due October 28.
Intel touted progress on its long-delayed US factory expansion, finishing a plant in Arizona and advancing its Ohio site. Tool installation is underway at Fab 62 near Phoenix, and the first major roof truss has been installed in New Albany, Ohio, Vice President Naga Chandrasekaran said. The company is betting the facilities can restore leadership and support its early-stage foundry ambitions. Under Chief Executive Officer Lip-Bu Tan, who took over in March 2025, spending has become more cautious, with projects advancing only when demand is assured. Fab 52 is already operational; Fab 62 is expected to begin operations at the beginning of 2028. The Ohio site was envisioned as the world’s largest chipmaking facility and a symbol of resurgence under Tan’s predecessor Pat Gelsinger, but work paused after initial construction and a 2022 visit by then-President Joe Biden. Intel is seeing a surge in orders for its own data-center processors used in AI services and is struggling to keep up. In July it raised its plant and equipment budget to about $20 billion this year, with a significant increase expected in 2027, though still well below Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing’s projected roughly $60 billion and Samsung’s higher outlays. Historically, chipmakers often build shells and wait for demand before installing expensive tools.
In the insurance sector, Todd Boehly sought to reassure lenders to Security Benefit Life Insurance that he would soon receive significant personal liquidity from exiting investments. The comments came on an August conference call after Fitch changed its outlook on the firm’s A- rating to negative, citing an unusually large share of affiliated investments and concerns that some could be hard to value in distress. Security Benefit, central to Boehly’s Eldridge Industries, has for years disclosed that affiliated assets amount to 42 percent of invested holdings, including a Beverly Hills development, a Miami office tower, a South Beach hotel, the South by Southwest festival, Flexjet and funding for film studio A24. Among major life insurers with more than $50 billion in assets, only one other has a similarly large share: the companies of Boehly’s longtime associate Mark Walter, who faces a federal probe tracing loans his insurers made to other ventures without earlier disclosure. About 40 percent of Walter’s two main insurers’ combined holdings are directed to affiliates. Boehly and Walter pioneered the strategy of taking over life insurers, dialing up annuity sales and investing in higher-returning, potentially riskier assets. More than 130 other US life insurers were owned by private-equity firms by mid-last year, accounting for about a third of new annuity sales in the second quarter. Such deals are allowed if disclosed; about 7 percent of all US life-insurer assets were in affiliates at year-end. Security Benefit has spoken with Wall Street firms about potential transactions to reinforce capital. Boehly said transparency has always been clear and none of the companies are under investigation. The firm’s collateral loans, mostly affiliated and totaling almost $14 billion at the end of 2025, face stiffer capital rules at the end of 2027. It needs to reduce that pile by 30 to 40 percent to keep its risk-based capital ratio above 400 percent; the metric stood at 424 percent in 2025. Investments returned more than 7 percent in the second quarter. Security Benefit has ceded $10.4 billion of $12.2 billion in reserves to SkyRidge, a Bermuda and Cayman firm in which it owns a 20 percent equity stake but less than 10 percent of voting rights. Regulators note that even minimal relationships can compound risks. Boehly projected calm, saying achieving the plan is not something that keeps him up at night.
South Africa’s Industrial Development Corp. reached an initial agreement to take over ArcelorMittal’s South African unit in a deal worth about 10 billion rand ($610 million), including roughly 3 billion rand in cash and assumption of about 7 billion rand in debt. The transaction would place a key industrial asset under state-owned control and is aimed for completion by year-end subject to a shareholder vote. AMSA shares surged as much as 21 percent, giving a market value of 1.3 billion rand. A 10-year agreement with Black economic partner Likamva Resources ends in early December and is unlikely to continue. Negotiations began in November 2023 when AMSA announced plans to shut two mills producing grades crucial to automotive and mining. The IDC, already a shareholder, and the trade and industry department intervened to save capacity seen as vital to manufacturing. AMSA has closed two mills and an iron-ore mine but still operates in Vanderbijlpark; facilities in Pretoria and Saldanha are idled. After the deal, the IDC would conduct a strategic review and could seek industry partners. AMSA, formerly Iscor, came under Lakshmi Mittal’s control in 2003; ArcelorMittal formed in 2006. Bridgepoint, Bain Capital and Aquiline are among private-equity firms bidding for UK-based wealth and investment manager W1M, with the auction in its second round. W1M generates about £70 million in EBITDA. Private-credit firms are interested in funding, and existing lender Ares has provided staple financing. Rothschild is advising the seller. W1M was formed in 2024 from the merger of Waverton and London and Capital; US firm Lovell Minnick invested in 2023.
United Airlines Chief Executive Officer Scott Kirby defended his support for a national wealth tax, arguing that the current system allows the richest Americans to accumulate fortunes without paying taxes on investment gains. It’s not a policy advocacy, but I just think that the basic concept is one of fairness, he said in a Bloomberg Television interview. If you’re wealthy enough, you can have passive income and the laws are set up that you literally never pay taxes on all that growth. He first floated the idea in a New York Times interview published October 18, saying a national wealth tax would work because people would not simply move, and that he would pay it. Conservatives including Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry suggested he simply cut a check himself. Kirby said he would not redistribute his own fortune to employees, noting even if Elon Musk did so it would not make a difference. He advocated taxing wealth growth while lowering income taxes. The comments come as United forecast weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings of 50 cents to $1.50 a share, below the $1.88 average analyst estimate, after fuel expenses surged 61.6 percent to $4.84 billion in the prior quarter amid soaring jet-fuel prices. Kirby also called for compulsory national service, arguing Americans should address long-term challenges rather than leave them for future generations. I have seven kids. I care about what the country is going to be like for them, he said.
Younger male voters who helped return Donald Trump to the White House are rapidly abandoning the Republican coalition or opting out of politics altogether, describing themselves as blackpilled. Dallas Cruze, a 34-year-old construction worker who voted for Trump in 2016, said he has checked out, expecting to clear about $85,000 yet still fall short of bills, and worried that frustration could turn to violence. Men aged 18 to 30 who are determined to vote now prefer a generic Democratic congressional candidate by 57 percent to 40 percent, according to a late-month Cygnal poll, and only a third said they were extremely determined to vote in the midterms. The reversal could threaten GOP hopes of retaining the Senate in key states. The Trump administration has invested heavily in the demographic, scrutinizing university affirmative-action programs, with Vice President JD Vance appearing on male-focused podcasts, hosting controversial athletes, and overhauling communications to be more meme-friendly. An advertising blitz by Choose Freedom PAC, funded by a $10 million donation, features ads during college football arguing Republicans care more about paychecks. Yet more than 700,000 women have entered the workforce since Trump returned, versus 65,000 men, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Male-dominated sectors such as manufacturing, mining and transportation shed jobs. Inflation has outpaced average hourly earnings growth for six straight months. Consumer sentiment among men has trended lower for more than a year. The black-pill concept, drawn from The Matrix, means dropping out entirely because problems cannot be fixed. Ty Bommarito, chairman of the Michigan Federation of College Republicans, understands the impulse when jobs, housing and relationships seem unattainable. GOP pollster Amanda Iovino is assembling text-based focus groups because participation is difficult. Pew’s Unconventional Right group, 79 percent of whom voted for Trump, showed only about half approving of his job performance as of April. Popular voices such as Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Megyn Kelly and Candace Owens have broken with Trump over the war in Iran. Ed Elson, co-host of Prof G Markets, said economic access and mobility for young men are lower than in a long time, and Trump’s 2024 appeal rested more on escaping the post-pandemic morass than on culture-war issues. Even millennial men who are more established, such as real-estate agent Warren Teall, express drifting toward the middle and uncertainty whether voting matters, citing the disappearance of affordable starter homes and discomfort with aspects of foreign policy.
The US Supreme Court rejected an administration request to cut off hormone treatments and social accommodations including wigs and makeup for about 1,000 federal inmates, leaving in force a lower-court conclusion that the Bureau of Prisons did not adequately assess effectiveness before implementing a Trump executive order. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented. The order, signed on Trump’s first day back in office, bars federal funds for medical procedures, treatments or drugs to conform an inmate’s appearance to the opposite sex. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued the bureau weighed security concerns against benefits based on the latest science. Lead plaintiff Alishea Kingdom said stopping medication she had received since 2016 caused incapacitating distress. District Judge Royce Lamberth halted the policy in June, finding inadequate consideration of the bureau’s own experience and evidence that denial can worsen mental health. An appeals court left the order intact. The case is Trump v. Kingdom.
Southern California and the US Southwest face heavy rain from Pacific storms, offering a preview of the coming El Niño winter. Downtown Los Angeles is forecast to receive as much as 1.5 inches starting Wednesday into Thursday, with heavier totals inland and flood watches posted. The risk of overflowing rivers, creeks and mudslides in burn areas is elevated. The strengthening El Niño typically brings heavy rain from California to Florida and raises flooding and property-damage risks. Chances remain high that it will be a historic event, the strongest in records dating to 1950, with effects lingering for months. The flood threat extends to Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado, with heavy rain spreading into the central US. Parts of Arizona face a Level 2 to 3 severe-thunderstorm risk with damaging winds, hail and tornadoes.
Looking ahead, Tesla and Meta Platforms are due to report results later Wednesday, with eBay set for October 28. The Bank of England’s next policy decision is expected in early November, with a quarter-point hike widely anticipated. SpaceX has outlined Starship milestones including a test flight next month and on-orbit refueling demonstration early next year, while its revenue outlook extends into the first quarter of next year. Nscale continues working through Securities and Exchange Commission comments ahead of IPO marketing. Budget votes and presidential elections loom in France, and further demonstrations are scheduled in Europe. The potential SpaceX-Tesla combination remains under study by special committees, and Intel’s Arizona and Ohio facilities are advancing toward operational dates in 2028 and beyond. Energy prices, fiscal debates and AI infrastructure timelines will continue to shape both market sentiment and policy discussions in the weeks ahead.
