Maybe the key to lowering interest rates is to pay less attention to it. Everyone knows nothing kills interest faster than having it reciprocated.

💸Cheers To A Horrible Jobs Report: For once, Wall Street cheered a bad jobs report: the U.S. added just 29,000 jobs in September, well below economists’ forecast of 90,000, while unemployment rose to 4.2%. That made investors more confident the Fed will not hike interest rates again, with end-of-day market pricing on Friday putting the chance of an October rate hike at about 23%, down from roughly 64% a week earlier. The Nasdaq jumped 1.2% and touched an intraday record, while the S&P 500 gained 0.7% and the Dow rose 0.5%.

💸Anthropic’s IPO Is A Story Of Explosive Growth vs. Eye-Watering Costs: Anthropic is racing toward an IPO before Thanksgiving, and if it gets anywhere near its reported U.S.$2tn target, it would be the biggest public-market debut in history by valuation. Bloomberg says the Claude maker could start marketing the deal the week of 9 Nov. Investors will face a tricky dilemma: On one hand, it is reported that Anthropic's 2025 revenue jumped 12x to about U.S.$4.6bn; however, at the same time, the company’s operating losses reportedly topped U.S.$8bn with roughly U.S.$518bn tied up in future infrastructure commitments.

💸Some Unusual EU Bond Action: The difference in interest rates between France and Germany has increased to a record high not seen since 2012. In particular, the 2-year bond yields in Germany are 22 basis points (0.22%) lower than in France. The main reason for France’s divergence is its ongoing political mayhem and large fiscal deficits. But who cares about German and French bonds, you may ask? The interesting thing for EU countries is that they share a currency and a central bank, the ECB. If France’s economic conditions become increasingly different from Germany's, any monetary action from the ECB (cutting or hiking rates) will hurt one of them and boost the other, which makes rate decisions even more dicey.

💸Is Nike A Falling Knife?: Nike continues to stink it up. Fiscal Q1 2027 revenue came in at U.S.$11.21bn versus U.S.$11.32bn expected, while China sales fell 26%. Nike now expects full-year revenue to decline by high single digits, far worse than the roughly 2% drop analysts had forecast, and the stock is hovering near its lowest level since 2013. The company has also introduced “Pace,” a turnaround plan targeting U.S.$2.5bn in savings by 2031 through a three-region reorganization, supply-chain modernization, a new corporate and operations hub in India, and further job cuts from 2027 onward after roughly 2,175 U.S. roles were already eliminated this year.

🏛️Trump Unveils U.S.$15bn Plan For America’s Biggest Steel Mill: Trump has announced a U.S.$15bn steel plant in Iowa and says it shows his tariffs are helping bring manufacturing investment back to the U.S. The project is being developed by Mesabi Metallics, a U.S. steel and mining company owned by India’s Essar Group. Mesabi says it could create more than 6,000 construction jobs and about 1,750 permanent jobs, with production targeted for 2030. The company also estimates the project could generate U.S.$95bn in economic output through construction and its first decade of operation.

🏛️Jerome Powell Cleared Of Misconduct In Fed Renovation Probe: Trump wasn’t a fan of the Fed’s over-budget headquarters renovations in July 2025 and pinned much of the blame on Jerome Powell, then Fed chair. The Fed’s Inspector General this week found no criminal or administrative misconduct on Powell’s part and said the luxury design features critics focused on did not materially cause the overruns, though it did fault weak oversight and cost controls as major reasons the project went ~U.S.$1bn over budget. Since the report, Trump has called for Powell to leave the Fed’s Board of Governors and said the U.S. government should sue him for “corruption or incompetence”. The Justice Department says it currently has no basis to reopen its criminal probe.

🏛️DHS Offers Incentives For Local Immigration Arrests: While the general public outcry against ICE in the US has reduced the number of arrests and deportations by ICE agents, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has other plans. Under a new scheme, the DHS will pay at least U.S.$60,000 per illegal alien deported to a local police department. For a small county, receiving U.S.$120,000 for deporting two people is an incredible incentive. The DHS has paid out over U.S.$200mn under this scheme so far and has another U.S.$800mn available. However, despite this incentive, local-police arrests account for less than 10% of countrywide arrests.

🏛️Nvidia Chip Smuggling Shenanigans: With an ongoing crackdown on individuals who attempt to bypass the US government’s chip restrictions to China, it is beginning to put a larger focus on Nvidia. The US government alleges Nvidia has been turning a blind eye to potential red flags, such as sending chips to Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore — hosts of real data centres but also locations where chips can just disappear. Nvidia fired back, saying that smuggled chips would account for less than 1% of total chips produced and China is producing a similar quality of chips domestically after massive government investment.

💼OpenAI Debuts Dots: Since Meta Muse released a few weeks ago, Meta’s stock ($META ( ▼ 0.9% )) is on track for its best month since 2013. Not wanting to miss out, OpenAI released “Dots” a new personal agent that users can access to complete tasks and, in the future, assemble a team of dots to achieve work objectives. Dots are apparently always on via a cloud computer, have the ability to learn from what you do, and bring you work “sometimes before you even think to ask”. Whether Dots can increase productivity or they flop, time will tell, but Alfred sure does look cute.

💼Accenture Rakes It In: Last year McKinsey & Co. reported that traditional strategy consulting accounted for only 20% of its work, with the vast majority being AI/tech implementation. This shift in market demand has meant Accenture, best known for tech consulting, has been cashing in. After its most recent earnings report, Accenture’s stock went up 20% in one day; market analysts also see Accenture as the only professional services firm that has been able to adjust around AI’s disruption. For the next year, Accenture expects 3-6% growth, particularly in cybersecurity as rogue AI becomes increasingly topical.

💼Nvidia’s Attempt At Fixing Rogue AI: Given the number of incidents we have seen in the news about agents hacking into places they shouldn’t be, Nvidia has proposed a solution: Nvidia OpenShell. OpenShell is an open-source runtime that lets agents work in sandboxes and blocks any suspicious activity. Essentially like a prison, OpenShell won’t let AI agents outside of allowed parameters — and it works! In testing, OpenShell prevented a frontier model from accessing a protected GitHub repo. Nvidia has stated that despite its initial success, agents teaming up to get around rules remains an ongoing problem.

💼An AI Bubble Forming Down Under?: Firmus Grid Ltd. has priced its IPO at AU$11/share, seeking a total of AU$5 billion from the Australian market. If the final IPO price hits AU$11, it will be one of the largest IPOs ever for Australia. For reference, the Australian primary market (IPOs) for the past couple of years has pulled in AU$2bn dollars, across multiple deals. Meaning at AU$11/share, Firmus would be bringing in 2.5x the annual primary market fundraising. To compare it to the US market, Firmus would have to bring in ~US$700 billion (working off of 2024 numbers), while SpaceX only raised $75 billion.

🫣Axe Attack In Flydubai Plane Cockpit: A Flydubai jet flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv plunged more than 16,000 feet after the co-pilot attacked Capt. Smit Machchhar with a crash axe and tried to seize the controls, reportedly intending to crash the plane. Stabbed and under attack, Machchhar managed to open the cockpit door, allowing passengers and crew to rush in and overpower the co-pilot before reserve pilots safely diverted and landed the aircraft in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. UAE authorities call it an attempted terrorist act while investigators are establishing the motive and whether the attacker acted alone. Machchhar is reportedly in stable condition, recovering in Abu Dhabi.

🫣Was Manchester City’s Playing Field Ever Level?: Manchester City’s era of dominance now has an asterisk hanging over it: an independent Premier League commission found the club guilty of financial-rule breaches after concluding that “sham” commercial arrangements inflated revenue and understated costs by more than £900mn between 2009-10 and 2017-18. People care because those years overlap with City’s rise into football dominance, which raises the question of whether its success was built on uneven playing fields. Man City denies wrongdoing and appealed on 1 October, while no punishment has been imposed yet.

🫣Death Row Inmate Survives Lethal Injection - Twice: Christa Pike, convicted of torturing and murdering a classmate back in 1990, was on death row for the past 36 years. She has since faced execution in Tennessee and survived twice. Now receiving lifesaving care in the hospital, Pike’s legal and real future remains uncertain. Tennessee has since postponed any other executions in 2026, and an investigation is ongoing.

🫣Update On The Coaster That Took Mind-Blowing Too Literally: Six Flags’ famously unhinged X2 coaster is done spinning for good. The park permanently retired the 360-degree attraction after more than 100 additional riders came forward alleging brain injuries. Those claims surfaced after a July incident in which two women were hospitalized within days of each other, and both underwent emergency brain surgery after going on X2. Six Flags says the coaster repeatedly passed safety tests and has not admitted it caused the injuries, but said declining guest confidence made shutting it down “the right thing to do.”

~ The Weekly Charge Team ❤️🐮