Finance

Crude oil benchmarks remain substantially higher than their pre-war baselines due to ongoing military tensions between the U.S. and Iran. Recent strikes on shipping vessels in the Persian Gulf and near the Strait of Hormuz have exacerbated supply concerns, keeping international benchmark Brent crude trading well above the $100 per barrel mark.

Long-term U.S. Treasury yields have surged significantly, with the 10-year and 30-year notes touching their highest marks since 2002. This upward pressure on long-term bonds, combined with stabilizing short-term yields due to reduced expectations for an October interest rate hike, has resulted in a notable steepening of the Wall Street yield curve. Investors remain cautious as higher borrowing costs threaten to weigh on broader equity valuations.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite and broader S&P 500 managed a late-week rebound as immediate anxieties regarding the actual monetization of artificial intelligence started to moderate. Concerns had previously intensified following reports that OpenAI's annualized revenue fell short of previous expectations, triggering a severe single-day selloff in major semiconductor and cloud hardware companies.