Finance

Crude oil prices sustained their upward momentum for a fourth consecutive day following an escalation in military hostilities between the United States and Iran near the Strait of Hormuz. Despite political statements suggesting the conflict will be brief, crude contracts advanced to their highest levels in over a month, further driving up national retail fuel costs.

Semiconductor giant Nvidia announced a $13 billion agreement to acquire the open artificial intelligence platform Hugging Face, a deal projected to finalize next year. While mega-cap tech shares broadly pushed equity markets upward, chip sector peer Broadcom bucked the positive trend due to a disappointing quarterly revenue outlook.

Both gold futures and major digital assets like Bitcoin experienced solid gains as global bond yields pulled back from their recent yearly highs. The stabilization of the 10-year Treasury note near the 4.75% threshold alleviated pressure on non-yielding hard assets, allowing Bitcoin to test the $80,000 mark once again.