The infoshot to help kick-start your week
Oracle sets off good week in US markets before big Fed meeting
While waiting for the outcome of this week’s Federal Reserve meeting, US markets performed well last week.
A huge 30% boost in the price of Oracle shares drove markets up and generated some fresh AI enthusiasm. The database software maker has seen demand for its cloud services increase as AI companies seek the vast datacentres they need to power their technology. Oracle showed off some hefty growth prospects in their annual earnings reports. They actually missed their earnings and revenue estimates, but what got investors really excited was the prospect of 77% growth in cloud infrastructure revenue in 2026. On the back of this, Oracle have set new cloud infrastructure revenue targets of $32bn, $73bn, $114bn and $144bn subsequently over the next four years.
Oracle’s initial spike also meant Larry Ellison briefly overtook Elon Musk as the world’s richest person. Ellison owns 41% of Oracle. Both his and Musk’s wealth piles now stand much taller than those owned by Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos.
A much-anticipated US CPI report suggested inflation is contained for now. CPI inflation rose as expected to 2.9% and core CPI, which excludes more volatile goods such as food and oil, held steady at 3.1%. These numbers will do nothing to dissuade Fed committee members from voting for the widely expected rate cut on Wednesday.
China’s good run continues
More AI enthusiasm helped China maintain its post-April stock market rally. On Thursday, it was reported that Alibaba and Baidu have started using internally designed semi-conductor chips to train their AI models. In part at least, replacing the chips made by Nvidia. Chinese firms have been very reliant on Nvidia’s chips, and the move marks a significant shift in the global tech landscape.
With the official “anti-involution” policy to discourage price wars now in full swing, market sentiment was high enough on Thursday to lead the CSI 300 index to its best day since March.
ECB holds rates as expected as French government collapses
As expected, the European Central Bank (ECB) held its benchmark interest rate at 2% for the second month in a row. ECB president Christine Lagarde said, “The domestic economy is showing resilience” adding that inflation was “where we want it to be.” Now the EU has struck its tariff deal with the US, Lagarde thinks trade uncertainty has “clearly diminished”.
The ECB now expect the Eurozone to grow by 1.2% this year, up from June’s 0.9% forecast.
Following the collapse of the French government, French 10-year bond yields went higher than Italy’s for the first time since 1998. Over the last 12 months French 10-year bond yields have gone from 2.9% to 3.51%. Lagarde didn’t comment on the collapse or France’s debt crisis, and it remains to be seen whether the ECB will step in and help bail out the second biggest economy in the Eurozone.
Coming Up:
- FOMC Economic Projections, Wednesday 17 September at 14:00pm
- Fed Interest Rate Decision, Wednesday 17 September 2025 at 14:00pm
- BoE Interest Rate Decision, Thursday 18 September 2025 at 14:30pm
Notice:
For regulated financial advisers and investment professionals only, Copia does not provide financial advice, and the contents of this document should not be taken as such. The performance of each asset class is represented by certain Exchange Traded Funds available to UK investors and expressed in GBP terms selected by Copia Capital Management to represent that asset class, as reported at previous Thursday 4:30pm UK close. Reference to a particular asset class does not represent a recommendation to seek exposure to that asset class. This information is included for comparison purposes for the period stated but is not an indicator of potential maximum loss for other periods or in the future.
