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How Saudi Arabia could create a crisis for Russia’s economy

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How Saudi Arabia could create a crisis for Russia's economy


Saudi Arabia's crown prince sitting left of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

credit should read JACQUES WITT/AFP via Getty Images
  • Saudi Arabia could flood the market with oil to regain control of prices.

  • This would create a difficult situation for Russia, which is reliant on higher crude prices.

  • One analyst suggests the market could see a repeat of the 2020 oil price war.

Russia’s wartime economy could face a tougher time securing needed oil revenue if Saudi Arabia tanks global crude prices.

The kingdom has reportedly signaled that crude could drop as low as $50 a barrel if the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries does not commit to reducing oil output.

In other words, Riyadh is hinting that it could flood the market with oil supply, analysts say. The move would slash prices and penalize OPEC members who have not cooperated in reducing oil flows — including Russia.

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“With Russia already selling its oil at discounted rates and with higher production costs, a low-price environment in oil markets may impact its ability to finance its aggression in Ukraine,” Luke Cooper, a research fellow at the London School of Economics, wrote for the IPS Journal.

Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader of OPEC, has been trying to keep oil above $100 per barrel by pushing for member states to cut production.

But with international crude hovering below the $80 mark, this hasn’t worked. To shift strategy sources told the Financial Times that Riyadh now plans to turn on its taps by December.

“Saudi Arabia is fed up,” Simon Henderson, director of the Bernstein Program on Gulf and Energy Policy at The Washington Institute, told Business Insider. “Leadership of OPEC is a multifaceted responsibility. It can work well, but it’s also like herding cats — pretty damn impossible, at least some of the time.”

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S&P Global Ratings data counts Russia among the overproducers in OPEC+. According to its last available data, Moscow produced 122,000 barrels above its daily quota in July. Iran and Kazakhstan also breached agreed-upon thresholds.

The Kremlin’s dilemma

Henderson suggested that some coalition members might be doing this to maximize profits.

In Russia’s case, Moscow is facing pressure to rake in as much as it can, as its war in Ukraine has ballooned defense and security spending in three years of war. These sectors will collectively account for 40% of all federal expenditures in Russia next year.

Russia’s finances, meanwhile, are heavily dependent on oil revenue. A few years ago, gas and oil production made up 35%-40% of the nation’s budget revenue, the country’s finance minister said this week.

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It’s for this reason that the West has been so focused on curbing Russian oil profits. Consider the Group of Seven’s $60 price cap on Moscow’s crude: though the two-year initiative has not panned out as hoped, it was considered to be a key to keeping oil supply stable while denying the Kremlin much needed revenue.

Russia has been able to circumvent these caps using unregistered “shadow” tankers, but Riyadh’s $50 per barrel threat might be harder to overcome.

Things could turn sour if Saudia Arabia’s supply dump reignites an oil price war between Russia and the kingdom. Henderson suggested this could happen, referring to a similar event that occurred in 2020.

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That year, production cut disagreements prompted both nations to unleash supply, testing who could survive this low-price environment longer.

In these situations, foreign exchange reserves become essential, which is problematic for Russia.

Since invading Ukraine, the country’s insurance against low oil prices has dissipated. Russia’s National Wealth fund was nearly halved at the start of this year, and it is no longer able to source Western currencies to diversify its foreign exchange reserves.

It remains to be seen whether President Vladimir Putin will want to engage in a price war with Riyadh, given his other, more immediate priorities, Henderson said.

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Predicting the Kremlin’s moves is hard, he said, given many unknowns tied to Russia’s oil sales.

However, some kind of confrontation with Saudi Arabia may be stirring. This week, Russia’s deputy prime minister Alexander Novak said it’s unclear whether OPEC should increase oil output at its December meeting, as signaled by Saudi Arabia.

If things do take a turn for the worst, Cooper sees a potential price war as bad news for Russia.

“Unlike Saudi Arabia, its oil is not cheap to extract, making it poorly equipped to deal with low-price conditions. This drives a short-term escalatory logic for Russia’s war on Ukraine, requiring rapid battlefield successes prior to the emergence of low-price oil market conditions.”

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Read the original article on Business Insider



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Time to Hit Buy on These 2 Software Stocks, Says Daniel Ives

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Time to Hit Buy on These 2 Software Stocks, Says Daniel Ives


It’s no secret that tech stocks have been powering the market gains over the past few years, and software stocks were among the biggest drivers of this growth.

Multiple factors are propelling the software industry forward, such as the rapid advancement of AI technology, high demand for IT solutions, and the ongoing expansion of the global digital economy.

Wedbush tech expert Daniel Ives has been watching the tech industry, and his take on it points to continued strength supported by AI and cloud expansion.

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“Solid enterprise spending, digital advertising rebound, and the AI Revolution will drive tech stocks higher into year-end in our view,” Ives opined. “We believe 70% of global workloads will be on the cloud by the end of 2025, up from less than 50% today.”

Keeping that in mind, Ives goes on to add that the time has come to hit buy on two software stocks. They may not be household names, but according to the TipRanks data, both stocks are Buy-rated – and Ives sees significantly more upside to each than the consensus on the Street. Let’s take a closer look.

Couchbase (BASE)

We’ll start with Couchbase, a modern database platform provider that offers users and developers everything they need to support a wide range of applications – from cloud, to edge, to AI. Couchbase bills itself as a one-stop-shop for data developers and architects, making its services available through its powerful database-as-a-service platform, Capella. Organizations using the service can quickly create applications and services that deliver premium customer experiences, giving top-end performance at affordable prices.

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The Capella platform brings the popular as-a-service subscription model to the database industry. The company can support database services for a wide range of AI applications, including the latest gen-AI tech, as well as database search, mobile access, and analytic functions. Customers can also choose self-managed services through Couchbase’s servers, with on-premises management for both multicloud and community apps.

Couchbase’s database service has found success in a wide range of fields, including the gaming, healthcare, entertainment, retail, travel, and utility sectors. The company’s customer base includes such major names as Verizon, UPS, Walmart, Cisco, Comcast, GE, and PayPal.

Turning to the financial results, we see that Couchbase reported its fiscal 2Q25 figures at the start of last month. The top line of $51.6 million was up almost 20% year-over-year and came in just over the forecast, beating expectations by nearly a half-million dollars. At the bottom line, the company ran a net loss of 6 cents per share in non-GAAP measures, but that was 3 cents per share better than had been anticipated.

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Ripple files Form C, appeals SEC ruling on XRP institutional sales

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Ripple files Form C, appeals SEC ruling on XRP institutional sales


Ripple challenges SEC’s ruling on institutional XRP sales, claiming the Howey test was misapplied.



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Bitcoin analyst: $100K BTC price by February 'completely within reason'

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Bitcoin analyst: $100K BTC price by February 'completely within reason'


BTC price trajectory appears all but destined for six figures in the mid term — despite nearly eight months of Bitcoin market consolidation.



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1 Top Stock to Buy Hand Over Fist Before That Happens

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1 Top Stock to Buy Hand Over Fist Before That Happens


2024 is turning out to be a solid year for the global semiconductor industry, driven by multiple catalysts. These include the booming demand for chips that can manage artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, a turnaround in the smartphone market’s fortunes, and a recovery in the personal computer (PC) market.

These factors explain why the global semiconductor industry’s revenue is expected to jump 16% in 2024 to $611.2 billion, according to World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS). That points toward a nice turnaround from last year, when the semiconductor industry’s revenue fell 8%. Even better, the semiconductor space is expected to keep growing in 2025 as well, with WSTS projecting a 12.5% increase in the industry’s earnings to $687.4 billion next year.

More specifically, WSTS predicts a whopping 25% increase in the memory market’s revenue in 2025 to $204.3 billion. As it turns out, memory is expected to be the fastest-growing semiconductor segment next year as well, following an estimated jump of almost 77% in this segment’s revenue in 2024.

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There’s one company that could help investors tap this fast-growing niche of the semiconductor market next year: Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU). Let’s look at the reasons why buying this semiconductor stock could turn out to be a smart move right now.

WSTS isn’t the only forecaster expecting the memory market to surge higher next year. Market research firm TrendForce estimates that the sales of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) could jump 51% in 2025, while the NAND flash storage market could clock 29% growth. Both these markets are expected to reach record highs next year.

The growth in these memory markets will be driven by a combination of strong demand and improved pricing. TrendForce is forecasting a 35% year-over-year increase in DRAM prices next year, driven by the increasing demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) that’s used in AI processors, as well as the growth in DRAM deployed in servers. Meanwhile, the growing demand for enterprise-class solid-state drives (SSDs) and the growth in smartphone storage will be tailwinds for the NAND flash market.

These positive trends explain why Micron is set to begin its new fiscal year on a bright note. The company’s revenue in fiscal 2024 (which ended on Aug. 29) increased 61% year over year to $25.1 billion. The company posted a non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) profit of $1.30 per share, compared to a loss of $4.45 per share in fiscal 2023, driven by a big jump in its operating margin on account of recovering memory prices.

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A truly decentralized system would decentralize authority — Cardano exec

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A truly decentralized system would decentralize authority — Cardano exec


Cardano Foundation chief technology officer Giorgio Zinetti told Cointelegraph that centralized authority is good for speed, but decentralized governance would give long-term sustainability. 



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Intel’s former CEO tried to buy Nvidia almost 2 decades ago

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Intel's former CEO tried to buy Nvidia almost 2 decades ago


Tech pioneer Intel (INTC) has seemingly missed out on the artificial intelligence boom — and part of it can reportedly be traced back to a decision not to buy the chipmaker at the center of it all almost two decades ago.

Intel’s former chief executive Paul Otellini wanted to buy Nvidia in 2005 when the chipmaker was mostly known for making computer graphics chips, which some executives thought had potential for data centers, The New York Times (NYT) reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter. However, Intel’s board did not approve of the $20 billion acquisition — which would’ve been the company’s most expensive yet — and Otellini dropped the effort, according to The New York Times.

Instead, the board was reportedly more interested in an in-house graphics project called Larrabee, which was led by now-chief executive Pat Gelsinger.

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Almost two decades later, Nvidia (NVDA) has become the second-most valuable public company in the world and continuously exceeds Wall Street’s high expectations. Intel, on the other hand, has seen its shares fall around 53% so far this year and is now worth less than $100 billion — around 30 times less than Nvidia’s $3.4 trillion market cap.

In August, Intel shares fell 27% after it missed revenue expectations with its second-quarter earnings and announced layoffs. The company missed profit expectations partly due to its decision to “more quickly ramp” its Core Ultra artificial intelligence CPUs, or core processing units, that can handle AI applications, Gelsinger said on the company’s earnings call.

And Nvidia wasn’t the only AI darling Intel missed out on.

Over a decade after passing on Nvidia, Intel made another strategic miss by reportedly deciding not to buy a stake in OpenAI, which had not yet kicked off the current AI hype with the release of ChatGPT in November 2022.

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Former Intel chief executive Bob Swan didn’t think OpenAI’s generative AI models would come to market soon enough for the investment to be worth it, Reuters reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter. The AI startup had been interested in Intel, sources told Reuters (TRI), so it could depend less on Nvidia and build its own infrastructure.

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