European stock markets opened higher, with the FTSE 100 up about 0.4 per and Dax and Cac both up close to 1 per cent. Taiwan and South Korea notched fresh record highs overnight, while Tokyo was closed for a holiday.

Wall Street closed higher despite a soft open – all three major indices posting record intra-day and closing highs. AI is the driver of course – this time Nvidia’s plan to invest $100bn in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Nvidia rose almost 4 per cent, while fellow AI name Oracle jumped another 6 per cent, taking its gain this month to 45 per cent, after naming two new co-CEOs. Apple rallied 4 per cent on strong iPhone demand signs. Wedbush raised its price target to $310, while JPMorgan raised it to $280, both citing better-than-expected sales. Apple plans to boost production of the entry-level iPhone 17 model by 30 per cent following strong pre-orders.

Some interesting divergence is opening up. Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (Tips) yields and the dollar bottomed around 16 September and have bounced quite a bit since, with the 10-year Tips yield up over 10 bps and the dollar up about 1 per cent. This ought to be negative for gold and while it did sell off briefly in tandem, it’s since rocketed past where it was to a fresh record high this morning with spot gold to $3,759. US treasury yields climbed again yesterday, with the benchmark two-year treasury yield this morning at a more than two-week high near 3.6 per cent and the 10-year yield also climbing to near 4.15 per cent this morning, though this is still below the low of the May-September range. Gold is rallying because of physical demand from central banks but mainly because investors don’t buy monetary policy decisions being made chiefly to lower debt interest payments by governments that spend way beyond their means.

Trump’s new Federal Reserve governor, Stephen Miran, called for rates to be much lower. Surprise, surprise; he’s the outlier. Chair Jercome Powell will give a more balanced view later today.

By Neil Wilson, investor strategist at Saxo UK