Daily Brief — October 25, 2026
Trump said the US is considering resuming the war with Iran as soon as tomorrow — "it may be tomorrow" — as a third US aircraft carrier group and 10,000 additional troops head to the Persian Gulf and Tehran, having downed a US drone over Bandar Abbas, threatened strikes on Israel's Sorek, Hadera, Ashdod and Ashkelon desalination plants.
Trump has put a resumption of the war with Iran as early as tomorrow on the table, with a third carrier group and 10,000 more troops heading to the Gulf, and Tehran answered by downing a US drone and publishing a list of Israeli power and desalination targets. With Brent at $116.72, what is at stake is a physical Gulf supply shock rather than a priced premium.
Geopolitics
Iran / Hormuz — Trump said the US is considering resuming the war "as soon as tomorrow" while also holding out the option of a deal, and a third carrier group plus 10,000 troops are heading to the Persian Gulf. Iran's army said it shot down a US drone over Bandar Abbas, and Tehran threatened Israel's Sorek, Hadera, Ashdod and Ashkelon desalination plants, the Haifa and Ashdod refineries and two power stations. A US intelligence memo warned Iran has stepped up efforts to target American personnel.
Israel / Gaza — Two days before Tuesday's election, Israel launched a West Bank operation that displaced hundreds of Palestinians and sealed the Hebron perpetrators' homes ahead of demolition. Three Palestinians were killed in a strike on the grounds of the Islamic University in Gaza City, the second time the site has been hit. Netanyahu pressed Trump for backing, which the White House called "a sign of desperation."
Russia / Ukraine — SpaceX throttled Starlink after Musk said Ukraine used it for offensive drone strikes, before Kyiv reported all restrictions lifted and speeds restored. Russia's deputy prime minister confirmed Moscow will supply the US with any quantity of diesel, with a tanker already bound for New York as Washington eases sanctions. Trump said talks will happen "very soon," while Ukrainian drones hit a 163,000-square-metre Belgorod shopping complex and strikes killed civilians in Perm and Lipetsk.
NATO / Europe — France's interior ministry counted 410,000 demonstrators across 289 actions and nearly 1,000 arrests, with the Paris rally turning violent after it ended. The prime minister put telecoms operators on alert for a nationwide social media blackout as rioting spread, and Rome, Turin, Bologna and Barcelona all saw clashes the same weekend. Bulgarians vote for a president on Sunday under heightened security after drone attacks on Black Sea shipping.
Macroeconomics
Oil / Energy Markets — Brent traded at $116.72, its highest since April, and Polymarket odds that WTI hits $105 in October jumped 26 points in a week to 74%. Supply is loosening underneath the price: Russia offered unlimited diesel, Libya restarted the Brega refinery and gas processing unit adding 60 million cubic feet a day, and US natural gas futures fell 15% on the week.
US Economic Data — The S&P Global US Manufacturing PMI rose 0.1 point to 56.0 in October, its highest since May 2022 and a beat against expectations of a decline. Home sellers are at their highest since 2020, per Redfin, while the median household under 35 holds $33,000 of net worth against $505,000 for the 75-plus cohort.
Markets
US Indices — The share of S&P 500 stocks above their 50-day average jumped 5 points Friday to 61%, the highest since mid-year, with more than $7 billion into Vanguard's VOO in a week. The S&P is up 11.39% year to date, the Nasdaq 100 14.67%, and the test lands Wednesday with the Fed decision and Microsoft and Alphabet earnings.
AI Chips / Semiconductors — US chip prices are up 26% over the past year on AI demand, and Nvidia has committed more than $170 billion to investments that help pay for its own chips. The Memory ETF, $DRAM, has lost $2.0 billion in October, on track for its largest monthly outflow since launching in April.
Earnings / Corporate — Bon Secours Mercy Health is in late talks to buy a majority stake in Bain-backed Surgery Partners at about $20 a share, near a $6 billion valuation, with an announcement possible Monday, and Couche-Tard has proposed up to $8 billion for Cumberland Farms. JetBlue creditors have called in restructuring advisers and Volkswagen plans 12,000 more cuts on top of 35,000 already proposed.
AI
China AI Labs — Nanbeige released Nanbeige4.3-33B, a 33B open-weight model that beat similarly sized Qwen 3.8 27B and Gemma models on most benchmarks and runs at 4-bit in about 24GB of memory on RTX 5090/3090/4090 and Mac hardware. Early users compared its output at that footprint to GLM-5.3, a far larger class of model, making it a direct local alternative to hosted Qwen.
AI Products / Adoption — Andy Jassy said AWS is sold out for 2026 and "largely sold out" for 2027, and JPMorgan's private bank is deploying AI to onboard clients and run investment research. Microsoft has put a Surface Laptop Ultra with 128GB of unified memory into reviewers' hands, a spec that previously required a MacBook Pro.
AI Companies — Anthropic has begun developing its own custom chip, aiming to do it in half the time it took OpenAI, while OpenAI is winning Anthropic customers with steep discounts, picking up coding workloads at Rippling and Replit. Bloomberg-reported warnings that the boom runs on circular money — chipmakers and cloud giants funding the companies that buy their capacity — have investors drawing 2008 comparisons.