Musk takes Twitter

A US court issued a deadline of 28 October for Elon Musk to complete his $44 billion bid for Twitter. And he agreed. The question remained as to why, after months spent refusing to pay up for the allegedly bot-ridden social media platform, the deal was suddenly back on. One clue is Musk’s dream to create an ‘everything app’. Meanwhile rival billionaire Jeff Bezos warned that, as Tesla now relies on Chinese manufacturing for one third of its business, both Musk and Twitter could become exposed to threats of censorship.

Oil head to head

As if this year’s oil price surge wasn’t bad enough, with Brent crude up over 20% year to date, the OPEC+ group of oil producing nations attempted to push the price even higher. Production cuts of up to 2 million barrels per day were announced, or roughly 2% of global production. But cutting supply is only one side of the equation. The weight of falling growth and demand pulled prices back again. And they fell further as President Biden released 15 million barrels of oil from the US emergency stockpile.

Inflation targeted

Major central banks doubled down on their promises to tackle ‘unacceptably high inflation’, even at the expense of growth. ‘Higher for longer’ is the clear message, as market forecasts for the US federal funds rate target a peak of 5% by next spring. Elsewhere, the Bank of England was forced to step in, after turmoil in the government bond or gilts market followed the announcement of an inflationary fiscal boost. The appointment of Rishi Sunak as the new UK prime minister, promising fiscal responsibility and economic stability, restored calm to the markets.