What mattered on Sunday, 25 October 2026

01

OIL

Brent Tops $116 as US and Israel Reportedly Draw Up Plans to Strike Iran After the Midterms

Yahoo Finance · finance.yahoo.com ↗

Brent crude touched $116.72 a barrel and WTI $103.27 on Friday — a fresh six-month high and a third straight weekly gain — as traders priced in reports that the US and Israel have drawn up plans to resume strikes on Iran once the November 3 midterm elections are past, on top of continued Houthi attacks on Saudi targets and a Chicago-area refinery outage. Gulf Oil analyst Tom Kloza warned the squeeze could push pump prices above $5 a gallon in parts of the US Midwest. Energy buyers and anyone pricing US political-calendar risk should treat November 3 itself as the trigger date markets are now watching, not just the general level of Middle East tension.

02

UKRAINE

Putin and Zelenskyy Both Back Three-Way US Peace Talks as Witkoff Holds a Ninth Kremlin Meeting

Al Jazeera · aljazeera.com ↗

US envoy Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg for three hours on October 21 — his ninth in-person meeting with the Russian leader — as Moscow released American retiree Stephen Hubbard in a goodwill gesture and Putin signaled “in principle” openness to negotiate. President Zelenskyy, fresh from talks in Oslo with Norway’s and Finland’s prime ministers and EU and NATO officials, said Russia now backs trilateral negotiating-team talks “no later than early November,” though Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov dismissed new Kyiv and European proposals as having “not really much substance” and floated mid-November in Abu Dhabi instead. Boards and allocators with Russia-sanctions or Ukraine-reconstruction exposure should watch the gap between Kyiv’s “early November” and Moscow’s “mid-November” as the real signal — both sides now want talks on the record, but neither has conceded on substance, and strikes killed civilians on both sides the same day.

03

ISRAEL

Deadly Hebron Attack Disrupts Final Weekend Before Israel’s October 27 Vote as Final Poll Shows Dead Heat

Times of Israel · timesofisrael.com ↗

Two Israeli soldiers were killed in a shooting attack by Palestinian gunmen near Hebron on October 23, prompting an IDF operation in the city and forcing Prime Minister Netanyahu to cancel Friday campaign events five days before Israel’s October 27 election. The final Times of Israel/Zman Yisrael poll put Jewish-led blocs tied at 51-51 seats, with retired general Gadi Eisenkot’s new Yashar party (23 seats) essentially even with Netanyahu’s own Likud (21), and 87% of respondents say their vote is now locked in. Executives and investors tracking Israeli policy continuity should expect the Hebron attack to harden turnout rather than shift undecided voters, and should plan for the multi-week coalition scramble that a near-exact seat split makes all but certain.

04

FEDERAL RESERVE

Fed Futures Price 88% Odds of an October 28 Hold, Up From 29% a Month Ago, as BofA Dissents

Kiplinger · kiplinger.com ↗

CME FedWatch futures now price an 88% probability that the Federal Reserve holds rates at its October 28 meeting, up sharply from just 29% a month ago, with Chair Kevin Warsh set to hold a press conference at 2:30pm ET. BofA Securities economist Aditya Bhave is pushing back on that consensus, arguing the Fed should hike instead because “the inflation picture has gotten worse on net since the September meeting.” Rate-sensitive desks should treat the remaining 12% tail risk of a surprise hike as worth hedging explicitly this week, given how fast the market’s own odds have moved in the other direction over just four weeks.

05

AI INFRASTRUCTURE

Short Sellers Pocket $6 Billion Betting Against AI ‘Neoclouds’ as Debt Fears Mount

Reuters · investing.com ↗

Short sellers have booked roughly $6 billion in paper profits this October betting against five AI “neocloud” infrastructure firms — CoreWeave, Nebius, Core Scientific, IREN, and Applied Digital — with short interest on each now running 20-26% of free float, per ORTEX data, and roughly $17 billion of their combined stock sold short. CoreWeave shares are down about 30% this month alone, generating an estimated $1.7 billion in short-seller profit, as investors grow more skeptical that the debt-fueled AI infrastructure buildout can keep pace with its own leverage. Anyone with exposure to AI-infrastructure credit, equity, or vendor financing — Nvidia included, given its financing ties to several of these firms — should treat this as the first real market test of whether the AI capex cycle can keep outrunning its own debt.

06

CANADA BUDGET

Parliamentary Budget Officer Warns Ottawa’s Deficit Will Blow Past $63 Billion Ahead of November 5 Budget

CTV News · ctvnews.ca ↗

Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer, Annette Ryan, is warning that the federal deficit will run above $63 billion — well past the Carney government’s own $53 billion projection — and that Ottawa will miss both its target of a balanced operating budget by 2027-28 and its declining deficit-to-GDP anchor, ahead of Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne’s budget on November 5. The warning lands as defence spending is set to climb from roughly $75 billion toward $95.7 billion by 2030-31 to meet NATO’s 5%-of-GDP target. Canadian bond investors, provincial finance officials, and anyone pricing federal borrowing costs should treat the PBO’s numbers, not the government’s, as the operative baseline heading into the budget — the gap between the two is now the story.

07

CHINA

China’s Economy Grows 4.5% in Q3, Beating Forecasts on Export Strength

Al Jazeera · aljazeera.com ↗

China’s economy grew 4.5% year-over-year in the third quarter of 2026, beating consensus forecasts, with export strength doing most of the work even as domestic-demand concerns persist. For multinational executives weighing China exposure, the export-led composition of the beat matters as much as the headline number — it signals Beijing is still leaning on global demand rather than a genuine consumption recovery, a posture that leaves China more exposed to trade-policy shocks from Washington and others than the growth figure alone suggests.

08

TORONTO

Toronto’s Mayoral Race Tightens Into a Dead Heat Ahead of Monday’s Vote

CP24 · cp24.com ↗

Toronto’s mayoral race has collapsed from a roughly 10-point lead for incumbent Olivia Chow in early October to a near-tie heading into Monday’s vote, with a Nanos poll for CP24/CTV (October 15-18, n=762) showing Chow at 49.8% to challenger Brad Bradford’s 46.6%, while a separate Liaison Strategies poll (October 18-19) has Bradford actually ahead, 49% to 47% — a result pollster David Valentin called a “statistical dead heat.” Chow dominates downtown, Scarborough, and voters under 35; Bradford leads the suburbs and every age group over 35, with Nanos’ Nik Nanos saying the outcome now hinges on “debate performance and organizational muscle to deliver supporters.” Business and real-estate interests with Toronto exposure should prepare for either outcome on roughly equal footing — this is no longer a safe-incumbent race.

09

ANTHROPIC

Anthropic to Commit 5% of Shares to New Public Benefit Fund as It Preps a Possible $2 Trillion-Plus IPO

Al Jazeera · aljazeera.com ↗

Anthropic announced it will commit 5% of its shares to a new public benefit fund, scaling up by two percentage points for every 50% increase in the company’s valuation at the board’s discretion, with the fund barred from lobbying or political donations. The move comes as the company is reportedly preparing for an IPO before the end of 2026 at a potential valuation above $2 trillion. Executives and investors tracking AI-sector governance norms should note this is the clearest signal yet that a frontier AI lab is structuring its equity ahead of a public listing while trying to pre-empt scrutiny of its political influence — a template rivals preparing their own IPOs will now have to match or explain why they haven’t.

10

CYBERSECURITY

Canada’s Cyber Centre Flags Two Critical, Unauthenticated PHP Remote-Code-Execution Flaws

Canadian Centre for Cyber Security · cyber.gc.ca ↗

The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security issued an alert (AL26-026, updated October 23) on two critical, unauthenticated remote-code-execution vulnerabilities — CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 — affecting PHP versions 8.1 through 8.5.x across PHP-FPM, mod_php, php-cgi, FrankenPHP, and LiteSpeed deployments, with proof-of-concept code already circulating though no confirmed active exploitation yet. Given how much enterprise infrastructure runs on affected PHP stacks, CISOs and IT leaders should treat patching as urgent now, before proof-of-concept code matures into exploitation in the wild, rather than waiting for a confirmed-breach headline to force the issue.

Compiled from primary reporting across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, cross-checked against outlet sources and targeted web search. Ranked by decision impact, not by section. Every item links to its originating source.