Britain's new Prime Minister Andy Burnham appears to have room to juggle some popular economic policies without dropping the ball on the bond markets. Investors are likely cheering him on so that they don't have to dodge much bigger risks down the line.

After weeks of speculation and intrigue, Burnham was finally confirmed as premier on Monday, replacing Keir Starmer as the country's seventh ​PM in a decade. Compared with Starmer's careful — some might say overly careful — stewardship of the economy, Burnham is seen as something of a maverick, someone potentially willing to take more risks to underline ‌his "man of the people" image and burnish his credentials among the left wing of the ruling Labour Party.

(Continue Reading – RTRS)

As the United States and Israel went to war with Iran at the end of ​February, analysts predicted the price of crude oil could hit $150 a barrel or even rise as far as $200, with the fifth ‌of global supply that transits the vital Strait of Hormuz suddenly cut off from world markets.

But, Brent crude futures peaked around $126 - comfortably below 2008's all-time high of $147 - and averaged just $101 a barrel between the start of the conflict on February 28 and June 11 when U.S. President Donald Trump called off strikes on Iran, before ​briefly retreating to pre-war levels of $70 in early July.

(Continue Reading – RTRS)

More than a hundred protestors marched between the San Francisco headquarters of Anthropic PBC and OpenAI earlier this month, calling for a pause on the race to improve artificial intelligence. Take one look at their paint-scrawled signs — “Pls do not kill me” and “QuitGPT” — and some might think them crackpots with a surface-level understanding of the technology. But their fears point to one of the hottest new trends in the field: so-called recursive self improvement, or AI that can develop itself.

(Continue Reading – BBG)