Finance, in brief

ExxonMobil and Chevron, the two biggest US oil companies, reported soaring profits on Friday. [1]

Exxon earned $15.4 billion from July to September, against $7.5 billion a year earlier. [1]

Chevron earned $9.9 billion, up from $3.5 billion a year earlier. [1]

Both companies' shares touched their highest prices ever on Friday. [1]

US diesel averaged $6.32 a gallon on Friday, more than 70% above a year earlier. [1]

Ordinary petrol averaged $4.20 a gallon, nearly $1.20 more than a year earlier. [3]

Diesel passed $6 a gallon last month for the first time, AP reports. [41]

Some US states have offered fuel tax breaks to drivers. [41]

In a Harris poll for the Guardian, 36% of voters named living costs the top issue. [3]

Americans vote in midterm elections for Congress on 3 November. [2]

In energy economics, the refining margin is what a refinery earns turning crude into fuel. [4]

Those margins are far higher than anything the industry has seen in ten years, MarketWatch says. [5]

Refiners earn more on every gallon while fuel stays short. [4]

Ordinary buyers pay that gap in higher prices for petrol and diesel. [4]

Exxon's boss, Darren Woods, expects things to stay far from normal "well through next year". [2]

Exxon plans to make another 100,000 barrels a day of diesel-type fuel at its US refineries. [6]

A settlement in the Strait of Hormuz would cut margins fast, Wood Mackenzie's Raphael Portela says. [4]

About a tenth of the world's refining capacity is shut by the Iran war and Ukraine's drone strikes on Russia, so diesel in the US costs $6.32 a gallon. [1][2]

Exxon, Chevron, Valero and India's Reliance, whose refineries are still running, are earning some of their biggest profits in years on that gap. [1][2][27]

When President Trump says "we're making a freaking fortune", the oil companies' profit is framed as the whole country's win, and the drivers paying for diesel drop out of the sentence. [2]

Exxon raised its quarterly dividend to $1.07 and set aside $20 billion to buy back shares. [3]

Diesel averaged $6.32 a gallon on Friday, more than 70% above a year earlier. [1]

How long the gap between crude and fuel stays this wide.

Exxon's boss expects things to stay far from normal well through next year. [2] Wood Mackenzie says a Hormuz settlement would cut margins fast, but low fuel stocks could keep supply tight into 2027. [4]

How much of the oil companies' profit came from dearer crude rather than refining.

MarketWatch says crude prices are close to their ten-year average. [5] AP says Brent and US crude both traded above $100 a barrel on Friday. [41]

The Nasdaq 100, an index of big US tech companies, fell more than 3% on Friday. [9]

It ended October down more than 7%, its worst month since March 2025. [9]

More than $2 trillion of share value was set to be wiped off it this month. [10]

Investors call a fall of 10% from a peak a correction; this is 2026's third. [11]

The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.9%, the S&P 500 1.8% and the Dow 1.1% on Friday. [12]

Amazon fell as much as 7% before ending 1.75% down. [9]

It earned $1.89 a share, against the $1.96 analysts expected. [14]

Investors are asking whether hundreds of billions spent on AI will earn enough back. [10]

Many tech firms have turned from cash machines into big borrowers, Bloomberg reports. [11]

Strategists quoted by Business Insider split on whether this is a turn or a pause. [9]

Apple reports results on Monday, and the US jobs report comes on Friday. [12]

Shares in Intel, a big US chipmaker, fell 29% on Friday. [8]

It was the stock's worst day since the 1970s. [8]

Intel expects $15 billion to $16 billion of sales this quarter. [8]

Analysts had expected $17.1 billion. [8]

Chips for PCs make up about half of Intel's sales. [13]

Intel blamed weak PC sales and an explosion that shut a plant in Israel. [8]

The explosion killed two workers and will cost about $600 million in lost sales. [8]

The US government took a 10% stake in Intel over a year ago. [8]

Friday's fall cut the value of that stake by about $12 billion. [8]

US taxpayers carry part of Intel's risk; the stake is still in profit, CNBC says. [8]

Intel expects the PC slowdown to last at least through the first half of 2027. [8]

When Intel's PC sales recover.

Intel says the slowdown lasts at least through the first half of 2027, and that dear memory chips are part of the cause. [8]

ChangXin Memory, CXMT, a Chinese memory-chip maker, said quarterly sales rose more than sevenfold. [13]

Its sales reached $16.7 billion, and profit $8.17 billion, after a loss a year earlier. [13]

Demand for memory chips is strong and world supply is tight, CXMT said. [13]

Higher memory-chip prices lifted its profit, the company said. [13]

Mint said CXMT's jump set off another chip sell-off on Friday. [13]

AMD and Qualcomm fell 12%, Broadcom 5% and Nvidia 4.86%. [13]

Dear memory is also why fewer PCs are selling, CNBC reports. [8]

Economists call it a seller's market: when supply is tight, makers can charge more. [13]

Memory makers like CXMT gain from the tight supply. [13]

PC makers pay more for memory, and PC sales are falling as a result. [8]

S&P Global Ratings, which grades how safely companies repay debt, cut Meta's outlook on Friday. [15]

Meta, the owner of Facebook, keeps its AA- grade, but now on a negative outlook. [15]

S&P's top grade is AAA; anything below BBB counts as junk. [15]

S&P is unsure when Meta's AI spending will earn more than it costs. [15]

Meta expects to spend $135 billion to $145 billion on buildings and equipment this year. [15]

After that spending, its cash flow went negative for the first time: minus $2.12 billion. [15]

Meta's shares fell 15% in October, their worst month in four years. [15]

Meta said: "We respectfully disagree with S&P's assertion." [15]

In credit analysis, a lower grade means lenders ask a higher interest rate. [38]

SpaceX, rated BBB, will pay as much as 8.75% on its new bonds this week. [38]

Meta also plans to raise $95 billion by selling new shares to pay for AI. [15]

Nobody yet knows when Meta's AI products will earn more than they cost, S&P says. [15]

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, cut the target for its latest fundraising by $10 billion. [16]

Last month it sought $30 billion, valuing the company at $1.4 trillion. [16]

It now seeks about $20 billion at a $1.25 trillion value, the Financial Times reports. [16]

The first close, on Friday, was expected to bring in less than $20 billion. [16]

Some backers lowered what they had pledged after the tech share sell-off. [16]

A group of UAE investors, including the state-backed fund MGX, is set to be largest. [16]

OpenAI raised $122 billion in March this year. [16]

Its rival Anthropic plans to list its shares next month at $1.5 trillion or more. [16]

Its value was $852 billion before this round. [16]

Startup investors judge a round by its valuation: what the company is said to be worth. [16]

Late backers now buy in cheaper than the price OpenAI asked a month ago. [16]

How much OpenAI actually raised on Friday.

The Financial Times says the first close was expected to bring in less than $20 billion, and OpenAI declined to comment. [16]

Two leaders at the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, said rates must rise again. [18]

Alberto Musalem runs the US central bank's St. Louis branch; Lorie Logan runs its Dallas branch. [18]

Musalem said more tightening "will be necessary, and soon". [18]

Logan wants at least two more rises of a quarter of a percentage point each. [18]

The US central bank held its rate at 3.75% to 4% on Wednesday. [21]

Traders put the chance of a rise in December at roughly 76%. [18]

Musalem said inflation, the pace prices rise, is "too high". [18]

Central bankers want inflation expectations "anchored": people trusting prices will stay steady. [18]

Logan votes at the December meeting; Musalem does not vote until 2028. [18]

No rise is decided: the December vote has not happened, and futures prices are bets. [18]

Whether the US central bank raises rates in December.

Traders put the chance at about 76%, but that is a market bet, not a decision. [18] The December vote has not happened.

Gold fell to its lowest price in a year on Friday, MarketWatch reported. [20]

Silver fell 5.9% in a day to $49.09 an ounce, by one dealer's count. [19]

The same count put gold at $3,897.48 an ounce. [19]

Silver was $60.53 on 13 October, so it has fallen 18.9% since. [19]

In India, silver has lost 57% of its value since its record high. [21]

Strong US growth and 3.6% inflation kept a December rate rise in play. [19]

Investors call it the cost of holding: metal pays no interest, so higher rates hurt it. [19]

Gold fell even as fears of new fighting with Iran rose, MarketWatch notes. [20]

Silver's next big test is the US central bank's December meeting, one analyst writes. [19]

How low gold really went on Friday.

MarketWatch called it gold's lowest price in a year. [20] Reuters, quoted by Mint, had spot gold at its lowest since mid-July, at $3,980.40. [22] One dealer's count put it at $3,897.48. [19]

France's economy shrank 0.1% from July to September, official figures showed on Friday. [23]

It had stood still in the spring and shrunk 0.2% in the first three months. [23]

The euro zone, the countries that share the euro, grew 0.4%, twice what economists expected. [23]

French prices rose 3.8% in the year to October, up from 3.4% in September. [23]

France's 10-year borrowing rate briefly rose to about 4.98% after the figures. [23]

Protests over living costs and public services have spread across France. [23]

Weaker growth brings in less tax, which makes the deficit harder to close, Axios notes. [23]

Cutting the deficit could fuel more unrest and weaken growth again, Axios says. [23]

The euro zone, the countries that share the euro, grew 0.4% from July to September, twice what economists had expected.

Fitch, one of three big agencies that grade government debt, turned France's outlook negative. [25]

France keeps its A+ grade for now. [25]

Fitch now expects France's debt to reach 124% of its yearly output by 2028. [24]

In August it had forecast 122.7%. [24]

It expects interest costs to reach 3.3% of output in 2028, from 2.5% in 2025. [25]

France holds a presidential election in April and May next year. [24]

Fitch doubts the divided parties can agree a credible plan to cut the deficit. [24]

Fitch will review the grade by the end of February 2027 at the latest. [25]

As France's interest bill climbs to 3.3% of output, more tax money goes to its lenders. [25]

Whether Moody's is about to follow Fitch on France.

Moody's kept France at Aa3 with a negative outlook, and Fitch will review its own grade by the end of February 2027. [24][25] The two reports give different days for Moody's decision. [24][25]

Valero, a big US refining company, bought a closed refinery in Houston for $320 million. [2]

The seller is LyondellBasell, a chemicals maker that had shut the plant. [2]

Valero and Phillips 66, which mostly refine, just had their most profitable quarters ever. [2]

Valero earned $6.8 billion and Phillips 66 earned $5.6 billion. [2]

Valero's share value rose 140% in a year, and Phillips 66's rose 104%. [2]

Companies that mostly refine gained even more than Exxon and Chevron from the fuel crunch. [2]

In economics, high profits pull idle plants back to work; this refinery is one. [2]

Why oil companies earn most when fuel, not crude, runs short

A refinery buys crude oil and sells diesel, petrol and jet fuel

Its profit is the gap between the two prices: the refining margin

War and drone strikes shut about a tenth of the world's refining capacity

Fuel runs shorter than crude, so fuel prices jump further

Every refinery still running earns the wider gap on each barrel

Buyers who cannot quickly use less fuel, like airlines, pay it

A refinery's profit does not follow crude oil. It follows the gap between crude and fuel, and every refinery knocked out widens that gap for the ones still running.

From July to September, Exxon's refineries earned more than its wells. The money was in turning crude into fuel.

its Indian refineries earned the same wide gap between crude and fuel, and that arm's earnings rose 67.9%

the other end of the chain: the airline buys the fuel, its fuel bill rose 67%, and it raised fares to pass part of it on

with the gap this wide, a closed plant is worth $320 million to a refiner, so idle capacity starts coming back

The gap shrinks when shut refineries restart or buyers use less fuel. Chevron's boss expects that to happen, but slowly.

A truck driver paying $6.32 for diesel, an IndiGo passenger paying a higher fare and an Exxon shareholder getting a bigger dividend are all on the same chain.

They had their most profitable quarters ever, $6.8 billion and $5.6 billion, as every barrel they process earns the wider gap. [2]

Chevron is investing $7 billion in Venezuela to double its oil output there by 2031. [7]

It wants to go from 300,000 to 600,000 barrels a day. [7]

This quarter Chevron counted its Venezuela results for the first time, after an accounting change. [3]

Chevron has worked in Venezuela since 1923. [3]

Exxon's boss, Darren Woods, urged caution and said reforms must come first. [7]

Venezuela took over Exxon's oil assets twice, most recently in 2007. [7]

The US military removed Venezuela's leader, Nicolas Maduro, Fortune notes. [7]

Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves, at least on paper. [7]

Chevron says its new contracts let it, not the state oil firm, control its oil. [7]

AstraZeneca, Britain's biggest drug company, said its profit rose 23% to $3.12 billion. [40]

In the quarter before, its profit had risen just over 2%. [40]

Sales grew 7% to $16.2 billion. [40]

Cancer medicines were 48% of sales, up 17% to $7.8 billion. [40]

Its lung cancer drug Tagrisso and Imfinzi, an immune treatment, led its cancer sales. [40]

Its shares rose more than 4.5% in early trading on Friday. [40]

It aims for $80 billion of yearly sales by 2030, against almost $59 billion in 2025. [40]

It expects half of that 2030 total to come from the US. [40]

AstraZeneca's sales of cancer medicines rose 17% to $7.8 billion in three months, led by its lung cancer drug Tagrisso.

BP, the British oil company, also reported sharply higher refining margins this week. [4]

Shell and TotalEnergies reported the same, CNBC found. [4]

BP's refineries were available to run 96.5% of the time. [5]

BP's shares in New York are up 45% this year. [5]

Like Chevron, BP plans to use the profits mostly to cut its debt. [5]

BP and Chevron chose debt cuts over bigger payouts to shareholders, MarketWatch notes. [5]

Evonik, a German chemicals maker, refused takeover talks with its bigger rival BASF on Friday. [26]