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With the Clarity Act stalled in the Senate, the SEC and CFTC are writing crypto rules themselves. The SEC opened a five-year path for trading tokenized versions of US stocks on blockchains. That favors brokers like Interactive Brokers (IBKR), which already runs crypto and traditional assets on one platform.

Microsoft said on Monday October 12 it will make its own Maia 300 chip the main engine for serving AI answers from 2027, cutting into NVIDIA (NVDA) sales for that work. Nvidia still handles the harder training step, and Microsoft's chips lean on the same TSMC factories Nvidia uses. Analysts see Maia as roughly a tenth of Microsoft's AI chip budget by early 2027.

After last week's power reprieve, the fight over AI data centers that Meta Platforms (META) is racing to build has gone political. On October 13 Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon warned of local volatility heading into the midterms. In Nevada, where Washington owns about 80% of the land, the governor's race now turns on whether these sites belong on federal ground.

Russian strikes damaged dozens of power facilities and killed three in Ukraine on October 13, breaking Trump's claimed energy truce. His Russian diesel deal covers about 10 days of US demand, and Goldman sees only $1 to $2 a barrel of relief. Little lasting pressure lifts off tanker owners DHT Holdings (DHT) and Frontline (FRO), or Chevron (CVX), ExxonMobil (XOM) and USO.

Brussels proposed delaying its methane import rules by a year, pushing the start to January 2028, so tighter supply does not scare off cargoes this winter. Washington and France pushed for it, and it eases a worry for exporters like ExxonMobil (XOM) and Cheniere Energy Inc (LNG). Equinor ASA (EQNR) also locked in a fresh five-year Dutch gas deal, with TTF prices near 87 euros.