Good morning, you're listening to Markets Desk.
Oil is giving back yesterday's sharp gains, with West Texas Intermediate falling nearly three percent after the International Energy Agency issued a warning of significantly weaker demand ahead. Thursday's rally of nearly seven percent had lifted crude to a three-and-a-half month high, but the IEA's outlook cut that momentum cleanly at the knees, dragging gasoline futures lower alongside.
Turning to the Fed, and the hiking cycle that Wall Street thought was finished may not be. Chair Kevin Warsh is facing mounting pressure as producer prices come in hotter than expected, bond yields surge, and oil above one hundred dollars adds fresh inflationary weight. Economists are now flagging the possibility of three additional rate increases, with markets facing their stiffest test at each decision point. Warsh's ambiguity on the path forward is doing little to calm nerves on the floor.
And in the AI debate drawing sharp lines across Silicon Valley, Hugging Face CEO Clement Delangue pushed back hard on a former Anthropic researcher's public resignation over extinction risk, comparing his fears to an air conditioning technician weighing in on climate change. The remark cuts to a deeper tension in the industry over who holds legitimate authority to sound the alarm on AI's most catastrophic possibilities.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
