This report is from today’s CNBC Daily Open, our international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.

New high for Nasdaq
On Friday, the Nasdaq Composite hit an all-time high, but the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average fell and snapped their six-week winning streaks. Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed Monday. Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped about 1.8% and the yen weakened to a three-month low against the dollar on the back of the country’s election results.

Steepest drop since pandemic
China’s industrial profits in September slumped 27.1% from a year ago, according to the country’s National Bureau of Statistics. That’s the steepest drop since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, based on data from Wind Information – which excludes statistics from most of 2022 when China was under strict zero-Covid policies.

Oil prices dropped on ‘limited damage’
Prices for both Brent and West Texas Intermediate oil futures dropped more than 4% on Monday. This comes after Iranian media described Israel’s strikes over the weekend on its military installations as causing “limited damage.” Citi lowered its forecast for Brent oil prices by $4 to $70 per barrel over the next three months.

Japan’s ruling coalition loses parliamentary majority
Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party and its Komeito partner will lose their parliamentary majority, according to projections from public broadcaster NHK and publication Nikkei Asia, while the opposition camp made significant gains. The Japanese yen fell against the U.S. dollar on the political uncertainty.

[PRO] Very, very busy week for markets
This week is jam-packed with important earnings and economic data. Five of the Magnificent Seven companies report earnings. The personal consumption expenditures index report for September and the key jobs report for October will also be released this week.

The Nasdaq Composite managed to log a seventh consecutive winning week.

After adding 0.56% on Friday, the index closed at an all-time high, ending the week 0.2% higher.

Other major U.S. indexes, however, didn’t do so well. Both the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average shattered their six-week positive streak following their falls on Friday.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq was boosted by Tesla’s monster rally. Investors also looked ahead to Big Tech earnings coming out this week: shares of Meta, Amazon and Microsoft added as much as 1%.

Earnings season has been a mixed bag so far. Even though almost three-quarters of S&P companies have beaten expectations, according to FactSet data, the rate of profit growth has not met expectations, disappointing investors.

Tesla had a monster rally over two days last week, which helped it regain all its losses for the year. But more than half of the 20-largest companies saw their stocks fall after they announced their financials last week, notes CNBC’s Pia Singh.

As those companies were mostly from sectors outside tech, their losses dragged down the S&P and the Dow, especially, since a good proportion were constituents of the 30-stock index. In fact, around 90% of Dow members ended the week in the red.

For instance, Coca-Cola surpassed Wall Street’s estimates of its earnings and revenue, but its shares still fell. Investors were perhaps disappointed by news that consumers are buying fewer packs of Coke products, as CEO James Quincey said during the post-earnings conference call, and troubled by the headwinds that the company thinks will hamper its growth in 2025.

With five of the Magnificent Seven companies reporting earnings and crucial economic data coming out this week, investors will hope all the numbers line up for a payout – if not of the jackpot magnitude, then at least one that jolts the S&P and Dow back into the green again.

— CNBC’s Brian Evans, Pia Singh and Alex Harring contributed to this report.   

Thousands of financiers, founders and investors are set to descend on the Saudi capital of Riyadh for the eighth edition of the kingdom’s Future Investment Initiative, the flagship economic conference at the heart of Vision 2030 — the multi-trillion dollar plan to modernize and diversify Saudi Arabia’s economy.

Described in past years by some attendees as a bonanza for Saudi cash, fund managers who spoke to CNBC this year draw a distinctly different picture as the kingdom simultaneously upholds more requirements for prospective fundraisers and investors, while also facing a revenue crunch amid lower oil prices and production.

“Without question, it’s gotten way more competitive to attract money from the kingdom,” Omar Yacoub, a partner at U.S.-based investment firm ABS Global, which manages nearly $8 billion in assets, told CNBC. “Everyone and anyone has been going to ‘kiss the rings,’ so to speak, in Riyadh.”

“Competition for capital has heated up, combined with other factors such as Saudis always having a ‘home bias’ towards investing, plus the broader dynamic of a tighter budget throughout the kingdom due to lower oil prices,” Yacoub said. “This has meant that investing internationally has become much more selective.”

As Saudi Arabia moves full steam ahead with its focus on domestic investment, it’s introduced more stringent conditions for foreigners coming to the kingdom to take capital elsewhere. The kingdom’s $925 billion sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, saw its assets jump 29% to 2.87 trillion Saudi riyals ($765.2 billion) in 2023 — and local investment was a major driver.

Saudi Arabia’s recently-updated Investment Law seeks to attract more foreign investment as well — and it’s set itself a lofty target of $100 billion in annual foreign direct investment by 2030. Currently, that figure is still a long way from that goal as foreign investment has averaged around $12 billion per year since Vision 2030 was announced in 2017.

“It’s no longer about ‘take our money and leave’ — it’s about adding value,” said Fadi Arbid, founding partner and chief investment officer of Dubai-based investment manager Amwal Capital Partners. “Value meaning hiring, developing the asset management ecosystem, creating new products, bringing in talent, and investing in Saudi capital markets also. So it’s multi-faceted investment, not only a pure financial transaction. It’s beyond that.”

The IMF’s latest forecast in April, put that breakeven figure at $96.20 for 2024; a roughly 19% increase on the year before, and about 28% higher than the current price of a barrel of Brent crude, which was trading at around $72.75 as of Monday morning.

“I don’t think Saudi has the same means that they had literally two years ago,” one regional investor, who requested anonymity in order to speak freely, said. Nonetheless, they added, the kingdom “remains one of the very few countries that still have money to give. It might be somewhat on pause today, but … now it’s more disciplined, more rational.”

Some fund managers with years of experience in the Gulf suggested it may be too little too late for many of the investors making their first forays to the kingdom.

“You should have started that process two, three, four years ago,” Arbid said. However, he added, “For those that are coming in queue now, that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t position — because it’s a cycle, right? But now, I think they’re more deliberate about it — they say you need to commit to the country.”

One example is the kingdom’s headquarters law, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 2024, and requires foreign companies operating in the Gulf to base their Middle Eastern HQ offices in Riyadh if they want contracts with the Saudi government.

Oil prices and the Saudi economy appear to so far have stayed largely unscathed, dropping 4% early Monday after Israel’s weekend strike on Iran. A key reason for that may be the rapprochement deal the kingdom signed with Iran, brokered by China, in March 2023.

“Saudi has done a phenomenal job recently of shielding itself from geopolitical events,” Arbid said.

That is also aided by the fact that local investors make up the majority of market participants, and local investor confidence is strong. The Tadawul All Shares Index, Saudi Arabia’s leading stock market index, is up 16.48% in the last year.

Still, some analysts in the region warn that the expanding crises in the Middle East have the potential to cause further instability.

“The war has gradually escalated to the point where there is a de-facto regional war,” Aziz Alghashian, director of research at the Observer Research Foundation Middle East, told CNBC. “The ongoing war is not only a geopolitical crisis, but the continuation of it has potential to create more radicalization in and around the region.”

“Attracting FDI and tourism, while maintaining oil prices at a desired level, are key for keeping Saudi Arabia’s mega projects and diversification plans on track,” Alghashian said.

“This of course is complicated by regional war, and so economy and security go very much hand in hand.”

“The recent Israel military action is unlikely to be seen by the market as leading to an escalation that impacts oil supply,” Citi analysts wrote in a note on Monday, cutting the bank’s Brent oil forecast by $4 to $70 per barrel over the next three months.

Oil markets are also staring at an oversupply. “With Israel deliberately, and perhaps with some American encouragement, avoiding the targeting of crude oil facilities, the oil market is back to looking at an oversupplied market,” said Andy Lipow, president at Lipow Oil Associates.

Oil production has been increasing not just in key countries such as U.S., Canada and Brazil, but even among smaller players such as Argentina and Senegal, he added.

“Oil prices will remain under pressure for the rest of this year, it may be difficult to see Brent crude oil prices reaching $80 in the foreseeable future,” Lipow told CNBC via email.

The risk premium has come off a few dollars a barrel as the more limited nature of the strikes, including avoiding oil infrastructure, have raised hopes for a de-escalatory pathway, said Saul Kavonic, an energy analyst at MST Marquee.

The spotlight now will be on whether Iran will counter the attack in the coming weeks, which would see risk premium rise again, Kavonic told CNBC, noting that the overall trend still remains one of escalation, with the scope for another round of attacks remaining high.

During a cabinet meeting on Sunday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian emphasized Iran’s right to react to Israel’s attack, but maintained that they do not seek war.

“We do not seek war, but we will defend our country and the rights of our people. We will give a proportionate response to the aggression,” he said.

Market attention will turn to Hamas‑Israel and Israel‑Hezbollah ceasefire talks that resumed over the weekend, director of mining and energy commodities research at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Vivek Dhar said.

“Despite Israel’s choice of a low‑aggression response to Iran, we have doubts that Israel and Iran’s proxies (i.e. Hamas and Hezbollah) are on track for an enduring ceasefire,” Dhar wrote in a note.