Finance

Crude oil futures experienced a downward correction following a heavy surge earlier in the week driven by escalating geopolitical tensions in West Asia. Brent crude dropped roughly 3% to settle around $104 per barrel after the International Energy Agency downwardly revised its global oil demand forecast for the year.

Shares of enterprise software giant Oracle jumped following a quarterly earnings report that handily beat consensus revenue and profit expectations. The strong performance was primarily driven by a massive expansion in its artificial intelligence cloud infrastructure segment, reassuring investors of immediate returns on high-scale tech investments.

Digital assets and gold faced notable downside volatility, with Bitcoin slipping below the $77,000 threshold and Ethereum hovering near $2,500. The asset classes have struggled to serve as traditional inflation hedges because sticky core consumer pricing has driven market expectations of an impending Federal Reserve interest rate hike.