Volatile White House meeting: Donald Trump pressured Volodymyr Zelenskyy to accept Russia's terms for ending the war during a Friday meeting that descended into a “shouting match,” with Trump cursing repeatedly and tossing aside Ukrainian battlefield maps.

Echoing Putin's demands: Trump warned that Putin would “destroy” Ukraine if it didn't agree to a deal, repeated the Russian leader's talking points verbatim, and insisted Zelenskyy surrender the entire Donbas region—demands he made just one day after speaking with Putin.

Refused military aid: Trump declined Ukraine's request for long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, and his willingness to endorse Putin's maximalist demands dashed European allies' hopes that he might increase support for Kyiv.

With the war in Ukraine approaching its third year, the battlefield remains locked in a bloody stalemate, suggesting that a military victory for either side is remote and politically costly. This intractable situation elevates negotiations as the only viable path to ending the conflict, a role President Donald Trump is actively seeking to leverage. However, any lasting diplomatic resolution, such as the widely discussed “managed freeze” along current battle lines, must be approached cautiously, as historical ceasefires in the region have proven fragile without credible security guarantees and international monitoring.

OpenAI driving chip market diversification: OpenAI's recent deals with AMD and Broadcom are reshaping the AI chip landscape, with AMD's stock soaring over 40% since their partnership announcement and Broadcom jumping 10% in a single session—while Nvidia has fallen 3.5% despite maintaining roughly 95% market dominance.

OpenAI becomes tech kingmaker: The ChatGPT operator's voracious appetite for computing power is forcing it to diversify beyond Nvidia, making OpenAI the new kingmaker in tech as its spending decisions create opportunities for competitors and validate alternative chip providers.

Financial sustainability concerns: Investors are growing skeptical about whether OpenAI can deliver on its more than $1 trillion in commitments through 2030, especially since the private company doesn't disclose its financial health, creating significant risk for AMD, Broadcom, and other partners heavily exposed to OpenAI's spending.

The AI market's remarkable expansion, despite a slight slowdown, continues to generate a voracious and surprising demand for compute power. OpenAI's strategic deals with AMD and Broadcom underscore this continuous need, allowing the company to secure massive hardware resources. Crucially, OpenAI has financed these deals by effectively tying its success to that of its partners, ensuring their deep commitment to its long-term goals.

Slowest growth in a year: China's economy likely grew just 4.7% in Q3, down from 5.2% the previous quarter, with retail sales forecast at only 3% growth and industrial output at 5%—both the weakest outcomes this year—despite a record $875 billion trade surplus from booming exports.

Investment collapse across the board: Fixed-asset investment is forecast to be unchanged from a year earlier despite massive government borrowing, as foreign direct investment has plunged almost 13% in the first eight months and housing investment continues to slump, putting China on track for three straight years of FDI declines.

Structural crisis demands rebalancing: The IMF warns China faces deep structural headwinds including a protracted property downturn and entrenched deflation, with the upcoming Communist Party plenum expected to address the urgent need to shift from export-driven growth toward domestic consumption amid escalating US trade tensions.

The longer-term picture for China's economy reveals a deep-seated structural crisis where the traditional investment- and export-driven model is exhausted. The core dysfunction is an extreme reliance on exports and state-directed manufacturing, resulting in massive overcapacity in sectors like EVs, which sparks domestic price wars and forces deflationary pressures onto the global market. This is compounded by the persistent, self-inflicted contraction of the gargantuan real estate sector, which has severely eroded household wealth and confidence, thus preventing the necessary shift toward sustained domestic consumption, the only viable long-term growth engine.