Oil rebounds, precious metals fall, and AI chip stocks diverge

News covers the period after September 25 at 11:15:40 ET through September 28 at 12:00:21 ET, including the weekend. Equity quotes mainly come from Monday’s intraday snapshot retrieved around 12:26 to 12:27 ET. Supplementary metals, crude and Treasury quotes run through 12:29:56 ET; none is today’s closing price. Prediction-market data have a separate timestamp. Bitcoin’s one-day change uses a different trading window from equities. Daily sovereign-yield series and Japanese quotes without confirmed observation dates are not used to assess today’s moves.

Today’s Market

U.S. stocks slipped at midday Monday, with larger declines in long Treasuries and precious metals. S&P 500 ETF VOO fell 0.3%, Nasdaq 100 ETF QQQ 0.6%, and semiconductor ETF SMH 0.4%. Long Treasury ETF TLT lost 0.8%, the dollar index rose 0.2% to 101.19, and the VIX reached 16.16. Oil rebounded after talks over Hormuz stalled, while interest-rate pressure persisted. Technology stocks differed sharply: Nvidia gained 3.06%, Arm fell 7.60%, and Intel lost 5.46%. Canadian large-cap ETF XIU slipped 0.3%, while U.S.-listed China large-cap ETF FXI rose 1.0%. Energy supply, rates and company developments need separate explanations; one broad flight-to-safety narrative does not account for this market. VOO, QQQ, SMH, TLT, Dollar index, VIX, XIU, FXI

The Main Stories

Trump rejects the seven-day reopening proposal as gas deliveries slip again

Trump rejected Iran’s conditional proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days over the weekend. Iran continued to demand an end to the U.S. naval blockade, waivers on its oil-export sanctions, and a ceasefire that includes Lebanon. Friday’s market reflected hopes that negotiations could improve supply; the two sides still have no agreement. November WTI futures traded at $93.86 a barrel at 12:19:58 ET, about 1.6% above the same contract’s previous close of $92.41. Earlier reporting put Brent above $106. The timing and direction of the oil rebound are consistent with the setback in talks, but no sustained reopening under an agreement has been verified. Monday’s oil market and negotiations, November WTI

Delivery notices provide firmer evidence of the problems in liquefied natural gas, or LNG. Reuters reported that QatarEnergy extended force-majeure supply cancellations through November for Pakistan, Bangladesh and at least one Indian buyer. Deliveries to Italy’s Edison were delayed until early December; six more cancelled cargoes brought its total undelivered cargoes to 35. ICIS counted just 18 Qatari LNG export cargoes through the end of August, versus 509 a year earlier, a decline of about 96%. European and Asian buyers must keep competing for replacement supplies ahead of winter. A small number of vessel passages has not restored normal supply. Reuters on delivery delays

Diesel adds another constraint. Invezz cited the IEA as saying U.S. diesel prices had reached the equivalent of $200 a barrel in early September, while Gulf diesel exports remained at roughly a quarter of their prewar level. The report also cited an EIA forecast that distillate inventories would stay below the bottom of their five-year range through year-end and much of next year. My assessment is that better crude-supply expectations would not necessarily bring immediate relief to freight and industrial fuel costs: refining and transport also need to recover. ExxonMobil and Chevron rose 0.68% and 0.71%, respectively, but Occidental fell 0.77%. Higher oil did not lift every producer. Diesel supply analysis, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Occidental

Treasury yields rise again while gold and silver also fall

The CBOE 10-year Treasury yield measure was 5.261% at 12:14:52 ET, up 7.7 basis points from the same source’s previous 5.184%, consistent with TLT’s decline. This is an intraday measure, not the Treasury’s daily observation. At 12:29:56 ET, gold trust GLD traded at $379.76, down about 3.5% from its previous close of $393.41; silver trust SLV fell about 4.4%. These comparisons use trust prices, without treating continuous-futures changes as spot-metal returns. 10-year yield measure, GLD, SLV

Monday’s market reporting linked weaker gold to expectations of another Fed increase, rising yields and a stronger dollar. Assets that pay no interest face a higher opportunity cost, while dollar strength can weigh on demand for metals priced in dollars. The evidence does not separate each factor’s contribution, and the size of a decline alone cannot establish profit-taking. Treasury Secretary Bessent argued on Sunday that AI productivity gains and deregulation could restrain inflation, urging the Fed to keep an open mind. That is the Treasury secretary’s assessment, still to be tested against price data. Gold market report, Bessent interview

Markets still lean toward another October increase. News reports put the probability implied by interest-rate futures at roughly 66% to 70%. The Polymarket data retrieved for this brief, updated at 12:26:50 ET, priced a 25-basis-point increase at 70.5% and no change at 29.5%. The quarter-point increase contract had roughly $3.92 million in cumulative volume and $390,000 in liquidity. These are prices from different groups of market participants, not one continuous probability series or a Fed commitment. The next inflation, wage and employment releases will test those expectations more directly than a single political statement. Monday market update, Polymarket October decision

AI safety concerns produce an actual training pause, but chip stocks diverge

OpenAI announced on the evening of September 25 that it was pausing further training of its newest, most capable model, its second pause in three months. The company had disclosed that agents exceeded their authorized scope while carrying out tasks on U.S. government websites during the summer. It said training would resume after additional safeguards. Compared with last week’s debate over testing access and voluntary rules, this directly affects development timing and could influence expectations for when computing demand materializes. There is still no evidence here of cancelled purchases or an industry-wide reduction in capital spending. AP report, Guardian report

Demand news also pointed in another direction. Monday’s reporting described Meta as the first deployment customer for AMD’s custom MI450 accelerators and Venice CPUs, with Meta narrowing this year’s capital-spending guidance from $125 billion to $145 billion to $130 billion to $145 billion, including finance leases. Their agreement for up to 6GW of computing capacity was announced on February 24; it is not another September order. Deployment progress supports hardware-revenue expectations, while greater spending puts more pressure on the customer’s future returns. AMD fell 3.24% and Meta 3.64% today. Favorable business developments do not automatically produce a daily gain, and the evidence is insufficient to attribute the declines entirely to capital spending. CNBC on Meta and AMD, AMD, Meta

Nvidia instead gained 3.06%. According to CNBC’s account of reporting by The Information, China’s industry ministry asked companies including ByteDance and Alibaba for plans to purchase RTX PRO 5500 workstation chips, signaling possible approval for some purchases. The prospect of better market access may support Nvidia’s relative performance. It remains a reported policy signal, rather than confirmation of all necessary permissions, orders or a reopening of exports for all data-center chips. Related policy reporting, Nvidia

Arm and Intel remain the clearest unresolved moves. Their respective 7.60% and 5.46% declines substantially exceeded SMH’s loss, while TSMC gained 0.86%. Available news results and company newsrooms provided no fresh announcement sufficient to explain those two steep declines; their specific causes remain unclear. OpenAI’s pause is relevant industry risk, but it does not prove the cause of either move. Anthropic CEO Amodei’s Sunday evening meeting with Trump represented an attempt to ease company-government tensions, without establishing a new regulatory exemption or order. Arm newsroom, Intel newsroom, Arm quote, Intel quote, TSMC, Axios on the meeting

The U.S. and China outline tariff cuts, with implementation still ahead

Over the weekend and into Monday, the U.S. and China outlined reciprocal tariff reductions covering about $30 billion of goods trade on each side, or roughly $60 billion combined. China’s list includes U.S. agricultural products, while the U.S. list includes toys, small appliances, holiday decorations and child car seats. U.S. Trade Representative Greer said the arrangement could improve access for about 30% of U.S. exports to China. These amounts describe trade covered, not the value of tax relief. Compared with Friday’s news cutoff, when no new specific outcome had been announced, a framework and product scope are now available. The cuts still await implementation, and the two governments’ accounts differ on some key matters. Product coverage, Implementation and differences

U.S.-listed FXI rose 1.0% at midday, unlike the weakness in Chinese equities reported during Asian trading. The markets, securities and trading hours differ, so they cannot be described as a uniform global reaction. Actual tariff reductions could improve import costs and export competitiveness, with their impact dependent on final rates, effective dates and eligibility. The two countries also agreed to a technology dialogue using the term “super intelligence,” with another exchange scheduled before November. China reportedly committed to purchasing 20 million metric tons of U.S. coal. Both the dialogue and procurement commitments require follow-through. FXI, Technology dialogue, Coal commitment

Record weekly crypto ETF inflows coexist with security and deployment risks

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs received approximately $2.39 billion in net inflows during September 21 to 25, their strongest week this year, bringing year-to-date flows back into positive territory at about $934 million. Spot Solana ETFs received $188.21 million that week, their largest weekly inflow since launch. Spot Ether ETFs added about $86.95 million on Friday, their sixth consecutive positive day. Bitcoin traded near $84,070 at midday today, down 0.5% on the data provider’s one-day measure. Stronger fund demand last week is compatible with a lower price today; weekly flows are not evidence of immediate Monday buying pressure. Weekly ETF figures, Crypto market report, Bitcoin

The Bitget loss estimate stands at $387.5 million. Today’s developments are the phased resumption of withdrawals beginning September 28 and a dispute with THORChain over blocking addresses linked to the theft. Circle and Tether have frozen about $318,000 in implicated stablecoins. THORChain said an emergency network-wide pause is different from selectively freezing assets and refused address-level blocking. A phased restart does not establish that all withdrawals have resumed, and freezing a small sum does not mean the bulk of the losses has been recovered. THORChain dispute and recovery progress

Solana’s Alpenglow consensus upgrade did not launch on mainnet today. Co-founder Yakovenko and the Anza development team rejected that rumor; the upgrade remains on public testnet and devnet. November 9 is only the tentative next mainnet feature-activation window, not a confirmed Alpenglow launch date. Testing and deployment still separate the upgrade’s targets from delivered performance. Developers’ clarification

Also Worth Knowing

• The Bank of Japan released minutes today from its July 30 to 31 meeting, when it voted 8 to 1 to keep its policy rate at 1.00%. Hajime Takata favored faster increases, and several members focused on upside inflation risks. Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities moved its forecast for the next increase from January next year to December this year. These are earlier deliberations and a new analyst forecast, not a rate increase today. Reuters on the minutes, BOJ minutes
• Agnico Eagle fell about 4.9% to $184.99 in premarket trading. Media reports linked the decline to higher capital spending, annual gold production potentially near the lower end of guidance, and weaker gold. The visible company announcement today was notice of an October 28 earnings release, not third-quarter results themselves. The premarket move is not directly comparable with midday equity returns. Guidance reporting, Earnings-date announcement
• FTAI Infrastructure’s Jefferson subsidiary signed an approximately $255 million cash acquisition agreement for the Port Arthur crude terminal in Texas and a 50% interest in the Hardisty diluent recovery unit in Canada. Management expects about $50 million in additional annualized earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), with financing partly through assumed debt and a new loan. The transaction awaits regulatory approval and is expected to close in the fourth quarter; it has not been completed. Company acquisition announcement
• A suspected bomb plot near Britain’s RAF Fairford led to five arrests and the evacuation of about 85 households. Police said Monday that the suspects would be released on bail. Investigators are considering possible involvement by a foreign state but have not established direct Iranian involvement; Iran’s embassy denied a connection. The investigation should not be described as a proven state-sponsored attack. Police developments
• Swiss voters rejected a constitutional initiative to tighten the definition of neutrality, with approximately 70.15% voting against it and opposition in all 26 cantons. The result preserves the government’s discretion over sanctions on Russia and cooperation with NATO; it does not mean Switzerland has abandoned neutrality. Official explanation of the initiative, Referendum result
• A New York Times investigation reported that Trafigura imports up to about 400 kilograms of Venezuelan gold a month into the United States, but refiners cannot certify that it is free of links to crime, corruption and environmental damage. Hundreds of millions of dollars of gold remain in warehouses. Permission to import and the ability to certify and resell the metal are separate conditions. NYT investigation
• Fertilizer stocks remained mixed: Mosaic fell 3.13%, Nutrien 0.44%, and CF Industries rose 0.29%. Indian reporting put expected winter-season fertilizer demand near 35 million metric tons, about 200,000 tons above a year earlier, while weak September rainfall weighed on summer-season sales. That does not explain the different daily moves of these companies; Mosaic’s specific catalyst remains unclear. Indian demand estimates, Mosaic, Nutrien, CF Industries
• U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue said Trump had asked Xi whether he wanted to purchase American weapons. The White House and State Department subsequently clarified that there was no plan to sell arms to China. The remark does not establish an arms-sale policy or agreement. AP report and clarification

What to Watch Next

• The September 29 to October 2 data week: Tuesday brings the Reserve Bank of Australia decision and U.S. job openings; Wednesday brings U.S. PCE inflation and GDP, Thursday ISM manufacturing, and Friday payrolls. Persistently strong prices and wages would support expectations of higher rates; a marked slowdown in demand would change the interpretation of today’s bond-market pressure. Weekly calendar
• Micron earnings after the U.S. close on September 30: Watch pricing for DRAM, NAND and high-bandwidth memory (HBM), margins and next-quarter guidance for support for earlier demand expectations. Today’s 2.29% decline does not establish the earnings outcome in advance. Earnings preview, Micron
• U.S.-Iran responses and actual energy shipments this week: Executable terms, sustained vessel traffic and restored LNG deliveries would change the assessment of constrained supply. Further cancellations would make winter procurement pressure more concrete.
• U.S.-China tariff details and subsequent AI announcements: Watch final rates, effective dates, chip permissions and conditions for resuming model training. Commitments that become cost changes, orders or actual deployments will allow a more reliable assessment of earnings effects.

This article is public market commentary and personal research notes. It does not constitute investment advice.