ember

Due to an increase in imports, the U.S. goods trade deficit widened by 2.1% in September to $134.9 billion, exceeding economists' forecast of $130.2 billion. Last month's goods imports rose by $8.1 billion to $344.1 billion, while goods exports increased by $5.3 billion to $209.2 billion.The AI investment boom has driven imports, and trade has not contributed to GDP growth for three consecutive quarters. Economists predict a year-on-year GDP growth rate of 3.2% for the third quarter.

The Federal Reserve will announce its October interest rate decision at 2 AM Beijing time on the 29th. The market generally expects the federal funds rate target range to remain unchanged at 3.75%--4.00%, with a probability of maintaining the status quo at over 90%. The wording of the statement and whether Chair Waller's press conference will release more hawkish signals, as well as how this will affect the market's significantly priced probability of a 25 basis point rate hike in December, have become the focus of attention.Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Credit Agricole all expect a pause in October and a 25 basis point hike in December. Goldman Sachs stated that if rate hikes continue every other meeting through 2027, a hike in March may be considered, but the baseline forecast does not expect a hike in March. Citigroup mentioned that if the stock market continues to weaken, leading to a sharp tightening of financial conditions, the likelihood of a shift to rate cuts will significantly increase. Moody's believes there will not and should not be another rate hike this week. Nomura Securities expects no change in October and stated that while the Federal Reserve guides expectations for a pause, it retains flexibility for a rate hike in December.TD Securities expects no change in October and anticipates two more hikes in December and March. Huatai Securities expects no change in October, with two hawkish voters possibly casting dissenting votes, with the baseline scenario being one rate hike in December this year and two hikes next year. Morgan Stanley expects a 25 basis point hike in both December and March next year. Bank of New York Mellon expects rates to peak slightly above 4.5%. Bank of America believes there is ample reason to raise rates in October; if they remain unchanged, they will only retain one option for a future hike.

In September, new orders for core manufacturing capital goods in the United States increased, and shipments surged significantly. The U.S. Department of Commerce stated that in September, non-defense capital goods orders excluding aircraft rose by 0.5%, up from 1.6% in August. Shipments of core capital goods increased by 1.2%, higher than the 0.6% in August. Economists expect the annualized GDP growth rate for the third quarter to exceed 3%.

The Kremlin announced that the trilateral talks between the United States, Russia, and Ukraine will resume in Abu Dhabi in November.

The perpetual trading platform Hibachi posted on X that its points program will end on November 8. Hibachi stated that the project was initially aimed at providing privacy, speed, and performance for perpetual trading, with a cumulative trading volume reaching 10 billion dollars, and related goals have expanded to a larger scope.Hibachi noted that the daily trading volume in the foreign exchange market is approximately 10 trillion dollars, with a settlement cycle of T+2, and liquidity acquisition is limited by credit limits and a centralized banking system. The settlement volume for stablecoins last year was 46 trillion dollars, which can be completed almost instantly and around the clock. The two systems are converging, but the trading infrastructure connecting them does not yet exist.Hibachi stated that the venue it is building is an institutional-level exchange aimed at stablecoin-native foreign exchange, covering perpetual and spot trading. The project thanked early traders, referrers, and participants in product stress tests, stating that the related activities form the foundation for the next phase. Hibachi also explained that after the points program ends, rewards may still be associated with social or trading activities.

On the decentralized options platform Derive, a wallet purchased 800 Bitcoin call options with a strike price of $90,000 expiring on November 6, on October 20, with a nominal value of approximately $68 million, and netted about $940,000 by selling call options expiring in March and October 2027.Derive stated that this is the platform's largest open position in Bitcoin; the market's implied probability of Bitcoin breaking $100,000 before Christmas rose from 9.7% to 12%, indicating that some traders are betting on a rise in Bitcoin after the U.S. midterm elections.

According to The Washington Post, AI cybersecurity startup Cathedral, founded by former members of the U.S. "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE), claims that its AI agent breached Anthropic's internal systems in less than 12 hours, obtaining content such as meeting notes, salary and hiring information, and Slack messages. Anthropic confirmed that the intruder accessed parts of its sales, human resources, and IT systems, involving business contact information of clients and partners, as well as some basic user account records, but did not involve Claude user conversations, source code, or model weights.This test was conducted under Anthropic's vulnerability bounty program, with the intrusion achieved through vulnerabilities in third-party commercial software; Anthropic accused Cathedral of not fully disclosing its actions, violating program rules. Cathedral is valued at $1.4 billion and has secured $160 million in funding from a16z, Sequoia Capital, and others.

SpaceX plans to launch the USSF-432 mission using the Falcon 9 rocket on Sunday, November 1, local time.

As of September 30, Anthropic had approximately 5,300 employees. The company's total operating expenses for the first half of the year as of June 30 were $16.98 billion.

Anthropic aims to go public in the week of November 16.

According to a Goldman Sachs report, the Federal Reserve is expected to pause interest rate hikes at the October meeting, but may implement the last rate hike of this cycle in December. Goldman Sachs pointed out that since September, the financial conditions index has tightened by about 30 basis points, which is insufficient to replace further rate hikes; the market should not interpret the tightening of financial conditions as a signal that the rate hike cycle is about to end.Goldman Sachs expects that as the impacts of tariffs, energy shocks, and AI-related price pressures gradually dissipate, U.S. inflation will improve by 2027, and under the baseline scenario, the Federal Reserve will not raise rates in March 2027. However, if the situation in the Middle East escalates and drives oil prices further up, the inflationary pressures may still change the subsequent policy path.

Stellar updates the Bell upgrade guide in preparation for Protocol 30. Wallets, exchanges, and infrastructure operators need to upgrade their software before the network vote in November to support new contract addresses starting with W; JavaScript SDK v17.3.0 has been released, providing encoding, decoding, and verification tools.Bell supports contract addresses carrying customer identifiers, and indexers and browsers also need to adapt to the changes in ledger header format; this upgrade also adds ML-DSA post-quantum signature verification and millisecond-level ledger timestamps, while regular transactions still use Ed25519, and the current block interval remains unchanged. The testnet validator vote is scheduled for November 3 at 17:00 UTC, and the mainnet vote is scheduled for November 23 at 17:00 UTC, effective upon approval, with dates subject to change.

According to Catcher Predict monitoring, in the Polymarket prediction market for the event "NATO and Russia Military Conflict," the sub-market "December 31" option "Yes" has experienced a dramatic fluctuation in winning probability, dropping from 49% an hour ago to the current 17.5% (a fluctuation of 31.5%). Please note the impact of related breaking news.

According to Bloomberg, the prediction market platform Kalshi plans to launch exchange-traded futures contracts tracking the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) and core CPI in December. They are promoting related products to major banks and hedge funds and have hired former Barclays trader Michael Ashton, known as "Mr. Inflation," to design the contracts and expand institutional clients.If launched, this would become a unique futures product directly tracking the CPI, helping institutional investors hedge against inflation and the risks of changes in Federal Reserve interest rates, and allowing Kalshi to further enter the traditional derivatives market dominated by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). Kalshi has confirmed that it is developing CPI futures but has not disclosed specific launch details.

The press secretary of the President of Russia, Dmitry Peskov, stated that in the first half of November, Russia, the United States, and Ukraine will hold negotiations in Abu Dhabi regarding security guarantees for Russia and Ukraine. Currently, a trilateral format is being discussed, but future European participation is not ruled out.

The artificial intelligence company Anthropic plans to go public as early as mid-November, with market discussions giving it an IPO valuation of about $1.5 trillion, approximately 55% higher than the $965 billion valuation from financing in May this year. Based on this potential valuation, Spark Capital invested $75 million in 2023, with a stake now valued at around $10.9 billion, having a valuation of about $5 billion that year and securing a board seat, making it the only known venture capital firm with a board seat. After an initial investment of $35 million, Sound Ventures added $400 million, co-founded by Guy Oseary and Ashton Kutcher, entering the market in 2023, with a stake valued at several billion dollars. Menlo Ventures has invested over $1 billion in total, with a stake valued at about $21.8 billion, including a $500 million Series D round, entering the market for the first time in May 2023.Iconiq entered the market in 2025, investing over $6 billion in total, with a stake potentially valued at around $26.4 billion, with the valuation reaching $183 billion at the time of its first investment. Sequoia Capital began investing this year, with a total of about $3 billion, holding approximately 1% of the shares, valued at about $15 billion, having previously invested in OpenAI and xAI. The Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC made its first investment in 2025, accumulating over $4.5 billion, holding about 1% of the shares, valued at around $15 billion. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt invested tens of millions of dollars in 2021, holding about 1% of the shares, valued at around $15 billion.FTX invested $500 million in 2021, initially holding 13.56% of the shares, which diluted to 7.84% in 2024. After bankruptcy liquidation, it sold all its shares, recovering about $1.3 billion, with actual earnings around $800 million. Based on the undiluted 7.84% and the $1.5 trillion valuation, the theoretical value is about $117.6 billion, approximately $116.3 billion higher than the actual selling price, with calculations not accounting for subsequent financing dilution. In 2024, FTX sold all its Anthropic shares in batches, with the first batch involving about $884 million in transactions with 24 buyers. The Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala's affiliate ATIC bought about $500 million, Jane Street purchased $100 million, and a Fidelity fund bought $45 million. Lightspeed holds less than 2%, and Google, Amazon, NVIDIA, Microsoft, as well as Founders Fund, Coatue, Altimeter, and others have also invested, but public holding data is not complete enough to accurately calculate returns for each.