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.

Rebound rally
U.S. stocks rebounded on Tuesday, with all major indexes rising. Technology stocks, in particular, rallied to lift the Nasdaq Composite. The pan-European Stoxx 600 index lost 0.55%. European liquor producers like LVMH, Pernod Ricard and Diageo slumped after China announced anti-dumping measures on brandy products imported from the European Union.

Cooling oil prices
Crude oil prices fell on Tuesday amid reports Israel might focus on striking Iran’s military sites in retaliation for its missile attacks, according to reports by The New York Times and The Jerusalem Post.  Both West Texas Intermediate and Brent futures retreated 4.63% yesterday, halting the red-hot rally oil prices have experienced the past week. 

GM’s not slowing down
General Motors aims to bring in between $13 billion and $15 billion in adjusted earnings before interest and taxes for 2024. The Detroit automaker also expects its 2025 adjusted earnings to be in a “similar range,” said CFO Paul Jacobson during the company’s investor day. That’d be an accomplishment, given the slowdown in the industry.

Shorting Roblox
Short seller Hindenburg Research alleged on Tuesday that Roblox conflated daily active users with the number of people visiting its platform. This distorts the true number of people accessing Roblox because DAUs could include bots or alternate accounts, Hindenburg said. Roblox denies all claims in the report. 

[PRO] Slower earnings growth
Third-quarter earnings season ramps up this week, with banking giant JPMorgan Chase slated to announce its financial results on Friday. Investors might want to temper expectations. For companies in the S&P 500, Wall Street projects a slower pace of earnings growth compared with its estimate in June, according to FactSet data. 

After falling 0.96% on Monday, the S&P 500 added 0.97% on Tuesday. (Though it should be noted that doesn’t necessarily mean the S&P erased its losses and is up 1 basis point from Monday to Tuesday. Percentages are hard.)

Likewise, the Nasdaq Composite slipped 1.18% Monday but climbed 1.45% yesterday, zapped higher by a rally in tech stocks like Nvidia, Palo Alto Networks and Meta. The Dow Jones Industrial Average didn’t have that dramatic a swing, losing 0.94% Monday but advancing 0.3% Tuesday.

October, then, is truly living up to its reputation as the most volatile month for stocks. But investors should keep in mind the uncomfortable swings in markets aren’t always a good signal for the underlying health of stocks.  

“While our expectation is for October to remain choppy, we don’t view the overall market action to be bearish and encourage investors to maintain perspective on the longer-term trends,” Robert Sluymer, technical strategist at RBC Wealth Management, wrote to clients in a Tuesday note.

Investment bank Piper Sandler has the same opinion on October’s turbulence. “October is historically a ‘backing and filling’ month as investors react to Q3 earnings results,” Craig Johnson, chief market technician, wrote in a Tuesday note.

In fact, when stocks dip because of mild repricing or a correction, that’s a good opportunity for investors to swoop in, according to Johnson.

The see-saw motion of stocks in October isn’t all that bad, then, if investors can seize the right time to enter the market or solidify their positions further. It doesn’t have to be spooky season all the time. 

– CNBC’s Hakyung Kim, Samantha Subin and Alex Harring contributed to this story.   

Nearly 16% of gas stations in Florida had run out of fuel as of late morning Tuesday as people flee north to escape the path of Hurricane Milton, according to data from GasBuddy.

Many stations simply can’t keep up with gasoline demand as millions of Floridians collectively evacuate, said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy. About 1,200 of the state’s 7,900 gas stations are currently without fuel, according to the data.

“The sheer bulk of this is simply people getting out of harm’s way,” De Haan told CNBC. Prices should not rise as a consequence of the storm because infrastructure and refineries are not expected to be impacted, he said.

Milton is forecast to make landfall on the west-central coast of Florida on Wednesday night and then move east-northeastward across the central part of the state through Thursday, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Milton is currently a Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 150 miles per hour. The storm is forecast to remain “an extremely dangerous hurricane” through landfall in Florida, according to the forecasters.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday morning that the state was stockpiling fuel ahead of the storm. Gas stations are running out of fuel and lines are long but there is not a shortage in the state, DeSantis said.

Fuel continues to arrive in Florida by port and trucks have been dispatching supplies to stations in the anticipated impact area, the governor said. The Port of Tampa and other Gulf Coast ports are not receiving ships but the facilities have fuel on hand and dockside operations will continue, he said.

There are no oil refineries in Florida and only 2,000 barrels of oil per day are produced in the state, said Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates. However, there are several terminals along the waterfront in Tampa that could be impacted by Milton, Lipow said.

“They are at risk from storm surge, flooding, and power outages,” Lipow said in a Tuesday note. “Significant damage to these facilities will impact on the ability to get gasoline and diesel back into the area for distribution.”

Gasoline delivery by tanker likely will not be possible in Tampa until Sunday at the earliest, Lipow said. Terminals with power, however, could begin distribution of fuel Saturday and Sunday depending on worker and truck driver availability as well as whether local gas stations are working, he said.

American Water, the largest water utility in the U.S., disclosed that it had been hit by a cyberattack.

The Camden, New Jersey-based company said in a security statement on its website that it had learned of “unauthorized activity in our computer networks and systems” last Thursday, which it determined “to be the result of a cybersecurity incident.”

The company said on Tuesday that it shut down its customer service portal, and as a result, its billing function “until further notice” and will not charge any late fees or other fees related to billing as long as the system is down.

Some recent hacks of major U.S. companies have brought key online systems to a halt and created chaos for consumers and businesses, such as the hack of UnitedHealth which led to nationwide difficulty among patients needs prescriptions filled and health-care professionals needing to be paid for services.

Hacks targeting U.S. water infrastructure, in particular, have been increasing, with some of the attacks linked to geopolitical rivals of the U.S., including Iran, Russia and China.

Taking out critical national infrastructure has become a top priority for foreign-linked cybercriminals. “All drinking water and wastewater systems are at risk — large and small, urban and rural,” an EPA spokesman recently told CNBC.

American Water provides drinking water and wastewater services to more than 14 million people with regulated operations in 14 states and on 18 military installations.

One recent Russian-linked hack in January of a water filtration plant in a small Texas town, Muleshoe was located near a U.S. Air Force base. “Water is among the least mature in terms of security,” Adam Isles, head of cybersecurity practice for Chertoff Group, recently told CNBC.

The FBI warned Congress in February that Chinese hackers had penetrated deeply into United States’ cyber infrastructure in an attempt to cause damage, targeting water treatment plans, the electrical grid, transportation systems and other critical infrastructure.

America Water said it remains early in the investigation and “currently believes” that no water or wastewater facilities or operations have been impacted and water remains safe to drink.

Law enforcement and third-party cybersecurity experts are now involved, the company said.

American Water did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment.

The rising cybercrime wave targeting key water infrastructure led the Environmental Protection Agency to issue an enforcement alert warning that 70% of water systems it inspected do not fully comply with requirements in the Safe Drinking Water Act. Without quantifying an exact number, the EPA said some have “alarming cybersecurity vulnerabilities” — default passwords that have not been updated, vulnerable single login setups and former employees who retained systems access.

American Water said it first learned of the unauthorized computer access on October 3, and was subsequently able to determine it was a cyberattack. It said turning off customer systems was intended to protect data, though it added that it is too soon to know whether any customer information is at risk.

Crude oil futures fell about 2% on Tuesday, as the rally on geopolitical risk took a pause while the market waits for Israel to strike back against Iran.

“Oil can keep ascending only for so long purely based on perceptions and not actual supply disruption,” Tamas Varga, an analyst at oil broker PVM, said in a Tuesday note.

Oil prices have surged about 13% through Monday’s close since Iran fired 180 ballistic missiles at Israel last week, raising fears that Israel might retaliate by hitting Iran’s crude industry.

Here are Tuesday’s energy prices at around 7:39 a.m. ET:

• West Texas Intermediate November contract: $75.52 per barrel, down $1.62, or 2.1%. Year to date, U.S. crude has gained about 5%.
• Brent December contract: $79.31 per barrel, down $1.62, or 2%. Year to date, the global bench mark has risen more than 2%.
• RBOB Gasoline November contract: $2.1149 per gallon, down 1.81%. Year to date, gasoline has advanced more than 2%.
• Natural Gas November contract: $2.772 per thousand cubic feet, up 0.95%. Year to date, gas is ahead about 9%.

The global economy is entering a “dangerous time” like never before as Middle East tensions remain elevated, said S&P Global’s vice chairman Daniel Yergin.

Since the Israel-Hamas conflict began on Oct. 7 of last year, the oil market has experienced minimal disruptions, with prices remaining under pressure as a result of increased U.S. production and weak demand from China. However, this sentiment has been shifting. Oil prices spiked last week on fears that Israel could target Iran’s oil industry in retaliation for Tehran’s ballistic missile attack, with industry analysts raising concerns about a genuine threat to supply.

“The Israelis have not concluded what they’re going to do in terms of a strike — that’s under discussion,” U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters at a White House press briefing last week, adding that he discouraged Israel from striking Iranian oil facilities.

Last week, both oil benchmarks saw their biggest weekly gain since March 2023. During Asia trading on Tuesday, global benchmark Brent slipped 1.77% to $79.50 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate traded 1.83% lower at $75.77 per barrel.

Yergin told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” that he expects Israeli retaliation will not just be a replay of last April, but something “much stronger.”

In April, Iran and Israel came to blows but ultimately avoided a full-scale war. Iran fired hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel in retaliation for an attack on an Iranian diplomatic facility in Syria.

When asked if the global economy is on the precipice of another supply shock resulting from Middle East tensions, Yergin said it’s a precarious time for markets.

“I think it’s a very dangerous time, one that we haven’t seen,” he said. 

Additionally, while Yergin maintained that it is not certain whether Iranians have operational nuclear weapons, that is still “certainly in the backdrop,” particularly through the lens of the Israelis.

“The betting is that the Israelis would not attack, try to attack, the nuclear facilities at this time. But a few months from now, a few weeks from now, whatever it is, Iran would have the capacity — it’s thought — to deliver a nuclear weapon, and that raises the stakes,” he said, likening the moment to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

That said, Israel is a lot more concerned about Iran’s nuclear facilities than the Iranian oil industry, said Pavel Molchanov, managing director of investment services firm Raymond James. Iran’s nuclear program has progressed to a stage where, in approximately one week, the country could potentially enrich enough uranium for five fission weapons, according to estimates by Iran Watch, a website published by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.

“The worst-case scenario would be something that Iran can do on its own, which is a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. So this is not directly related to Israeli airstrikes or missiles. 

The strait, between Oman and Iran, is a vital channel where about one fifth of global oil production flows daily, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It is a strategically important waterway linking crude producers in the Middle East with key markets across the world.

The inability of oil to traverse through the strait, even temporarily, can increase shipping costs, lead to considerable supply delays and ratchet up global energy prices, with some surmising that a worst-case scenario could prompt oil prices to surge above $100 a barrel.