TREE NEWS reports: The S&P 500 briefly rose more than 2% on Wednesday, marking its largest intraday gain in three months. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 828 points, or 1.6%, while the Nasdaq gained over 2.5% and the Nasdaq 100 added 2.9%. The semiconductor index surged 5.7% and the bank index rose 2.3%.
TREE NEWS update: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Group of Seven (G7) wants safeguards against the misuse of frontier AI models and called for industry-led partnerships rather than more regulatory regimes, including from the European Union. Rubio made the remarks in comments on the G7’s approach to frontier model abuse.
TREE NEWS update: SoftBank Group will contribute $800 million under an agreement with Grap that builds on the Kuching framework agreement reached on October 8. The Japanese conglomerate said the new deal is based on that earlier framework. No further terms were disclosed.
TREE NEWS update: APG, the investment manager for Europe’s largest pension fund Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP, is terminating its active equity strategy after it failed to deliver satisfactory returns. The firm, which manages about €639 billion ($715 billion) largely for ABP, said the move will cut 40 jobs — 29 in the Netherlands, 7 in the US and 4 in Asia. Its asset management arm had 1,211 employees and €33 billion in active equity assets last year.
TREE NEWS reports: Sharplink reported third-quarter net income of $751.4 million, driven by unrealized gains on its ether holdings, alongside revenue of $13.5 million. The Ethereum treasury company’s results reflect the mark-to-market effect of its ETH position rather than operating cash flow.
TREE NEWS update: SoftBank Group and Grab signed a joint development agreement to build artificial intelligence infrastructure in Malaysia’s Sarawak state. SoftBank will invest $1 billion, Grab $750 million and Petros $100 million in the project. SoftBank will lead the Sarawak AI infrastructure project and hold a majority stake, with Grab and Petros as strategic partners.
TREE NEWS update: Iran will not hold any negotiations with the United States unless Washington takes concrete action on the seven conditions put forward by Tehran, a senior Iranian official said, responding to reports that Supreme National Security Council Secretary Rezaei would meet US Vice President Vance in Doha. Iran’s policy on talks with the US remains unchanged.
TREE NEWS update: About 2,000 people marched in Dublin and around 1,300 gathered in Helsinki on Saturday as protests against data centers spread across Europe, with smaller demonstrations also held in several Finnish towns. The coalition Stop Dirty Data Centers, made up of local democracy and climate groups, said its aim is to curb the unchecked expansion of AI data centers and prevent democracy from being held hostage by big tech interests.
TREE NEWS update: Coinbase Wallet is building a web-first trading terminal for active traders that will sit alongside its mobile app, with plans to add AI agents by the end of the year, trading lead Ox Bid said. Cross-chain transactions on the wallet have jumped 10x over three months, he added. The terminal targets traders who want more than the mobile experience.
TREE NEWS update: Egypt has signed an offshore natural gas exploration agreement with Chevron, a government official said. The official gave no further details on the terms, the location of the blocks or the value of the deal. Egypt has in recent years sought to attract foreign energy companies to develop its offshore gas reserves.
TREE NEWS update: Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said employment and economic growth are both “quite stable,” while inflation remains the big problem. He said the Fed must confront a “failure on inflation” and is beginning to study rising services inflation. Consumer spending has been the main driver of growth, he added.
TREE NEWS update: Qatar will host talks between U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Secretary Rezaei in Doha next week, Turkey’s intelligence chief said. The meeting is seen as a good opportunity for a breakthrough in negotiations.
TREE NEWS update: The European Union plans to require social media platforms to offer adult users the option to disable features designed to induce compulsive or excessive use, under a draft Digital Fairness Act. The rules, due to be published Wednesday, would also target AI systems that simulate relationships to keep users engaged. Non-compliance could bring fines of up to 6% of global annual revenue, affecting companies including Meta Platforms and Alphabet’s Google.
TREE NEWS reports: The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose more than 5%, with Broadcom up 7.69%, Micron up 5.37%, Intel up 3.15%, AMD up 8.41%, Qualcomm up 3.77%, TSMC up 4.09%, and ASML up 5.44%. Nvidia was the outlier, falling 3.89%.
TREE NEWS update: US President Donald Trump has questioned the legitimacy of the 2026 election, stating that voting machines are “more important than voters.” The remarks, made without further detail, raise concerns about the integrity of the upcoming midterm elections. No specific evidence was cited for the claim.
TREE NEWS update: Ukraine’s negotiating team departed on the afternoon of the 9th for Abu Dhabi to attend scheduled trilateral talks with the United States and Russia, said Ukrainska Pravda chief Umerov in a social media post. Umerov said representatives from the UK, France, Germany and Italy, as well as NATO and the EU, will also arrive in Abu Dhabi during the talks, and that Ukraine will hold separate meetings with European partners to coordinate positions.
TREE NEWS update: Norway’s transmission system operator Statnett AS has paused further reservations of new grid connection capacity for data centers, including a temporary stop on new capacity reservations. The pause is expected to be lifted no later than August 1, 2027. Some 800 MW of data centers are currently connected, 4,200 MW of capacity is already reserved, 9,100 MW is in the capacity queue, and a further 18,000 MW of new connection applications have been filed, against a national peak load of just over 25,000 MW.
TREE NEWS update: River Markets’ affiliate has registered with the CFTC as a futures commission merchant as the firm builds a prime brokerage for institutional prediction market traders. The registration gives the affiliate a regulated status for handling futures and derivatives business. River Markets is positioning the service around institutional clients active in prediction markets.
TREE NEWS update: Sequoia Capital Operations LLC closed its European business last week, ending a six-year foray into the region and folding its investment team into Silicon Valley. The firm’s core partners had questioned the need for a European base, and Sequoia said European startups will receive “world-class support from our home base in the Bay Area.” The decision to shut the London office has unsettled some local founders, with one serial entrepreneur calling it a “negative signal” for European tech.
TREE NEWS update: The Dabousieh-Aboudieh border crossing between Syria and Lebanon reopened on the 9th, nearly two years after it was forced shut by an Israeli airstrike in November 2024. Qutaiba Badawi, head of the Syrian transitional government’s border crossings and customs authority, said on social media that the reopening follows months of repair work and advances Syria’s efforts to develop border crossings and improve their services.