Welcome to Markets Desk, here's what's moving the tape this Thursday.
Crude oil surged more than six percent on the session, with WTI settling at a three-and-a-half month high on mounting global supply concerns. That move rippled straight into the currency market, lifting the dollar index by roughly a quarter percent as traders repriced inflation expectations higher, raising fresh questions about whether the Fed has room to hold rates where they are. Treasury yields climbed in tandem, reinforcing the dollar's bid and tightening financial conditions in a way that equity markets will need to digest carefully heading into the next session.
Turning to tech, Oracle delivered a quarter that validated its aggressive push into artificial intelligence infrastructure. Cloud momentum drove a stronger forward outlook, and crucially, the company's backlog expanded further, signaling that enterprise demand for AI capacity is not softening. That backlog figure is the number analysts will be watching most closely, because it speaks to the durability of the revenue pipeline, not just the current print.
And in the AI talent wars, Anthropic has pulled Andrew Tulloch away from Meta after less than a year. Tulloch, who previously worked at OpenAI, will focus on training and inference optimization. The move underscores how fiercely the frontier labs are competing for the engineers who can actually close the gap between raw model capability and real-world efficiency.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
