Economy

Oil Market
Oil Price Falls as Supply Increases More Than Necessary

The price of a barrel of Brent crude is close to falling below $70 for the first time since the Iran war began in February. Since its peak in early May, the price has fallen by almost 40 percent.

Saudi Arabia’s supplies are now up to 90 percent of pre-war levels, Bloomberg reports. At the same time, the United Arab Emirates’ oil exports are back to pre-war levels.

“A wave of oil is coming into the market,” Natasha Kaneva, chief commodities analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co, told the newspaper.

The problem, she says, is that the market doesn’t need this oil right now.

The massive influx of oil into the market is not needed at the moment because many of the temporary supply solutions introduced in the spring are still in place.

Strait of Hormuz
European countries reportedly accept fees in Hormuz

Several leading European countries have in practice accepted that ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz may have to pay fees to Iran and Oman. This is reported by Bloomberg sources.

According to two of the sources, some form of fee is seen as essentially inevitable in the aftermath of the US and Israel's war on Iran.

Some officials in the Gulf states share that assessment, although it is not necessarily the official position of their governments, the news agency writes.

The US continues to oppose any fees and refers to international maritime law.

The future of Open AI
Sources: Open AI wants to give the government 5 percent of the company

OpenAI has held talks with the Trump administration about giving the US government a 5 percent stake in the AI ​​giant in an attempt to remove obstacles and criticism from political quarters, sources told the Financial Times.

In the proposed arrangement, other American AI companies would also transfer a similar ownership stake to the government.

ChatGPT developer Sam Altman is reported to have argued that the best way to let the public share in the economic benefits from AI is to give it an ownership interest in the company.

AI companies have faced an increasingly challenging political climate in Washington, the newspaper writes.

The chip battle
Big Short-Burry's latest move – shorting chip stocks

Big Short profile Michael Burry is by now a well-known skeptic of the AI ​​hype. Now he has taken new short positions in the semiconductor company Applied Materials and in an exchange-traded fund focusing on chip stocks. This is according to the WSJ.

The fund includes chip giants such as AMD and this year's price winner Micron.

Burry was particularly skeptical after the news that Samsung and SK Hynix are planning to build a “chip cluster” for the equivalent of 4.8 trillion kronor, which caused the stock markets to rise. He believes that it again raises the question of whether AI investments will ever yield a return.

– I see this as the beginning of the end, he wrote in a post earlier this week.

Tesla’s future
Tesla falls despite surprisingly strong sales

Electric car manufacturer Tesla delivered 480,000 cars in the second quarter, writes Bloomberg. This was clearly above analysts’ expectations, which were around 396,000 vehicles.

Compared to the same period last year, deliveries have risen by 25 percent, as the company’s confidence in Europe was low due to CEO Elon Musk’s criticized work for the Trump administration.

The stock traded up in pre-trade but has since fallen back. After half an hour of trading, the price was down 3 percent.

SAS's future
Information: SAS CEO up for new top job

SAS CEO Anko van der Werff is one of the top candidates to take over the CEO role at Air Canada. This is what sources tell Bloomberg.

He is expected to succeed Michael Rousseau, who announced in March that he was leaving the post. Rousseau was heavily criticized for not speaking French in connection with a plane crash at La Guardia Airport in New York, where two Air Canada pilots died.

Van der Werff has been CEO of SAS for almost five years. Before that, he was CEO of the Colombian airline Avianca.