Samsung Mocks Apple Over Delayed Entry Into Foldable Phones

Hello from Singapore — Anniek Bao here. Thanks for joining another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open.

Apple has finally stepped into a foldable phone arena that Samsung has long dominated — and Samsung wasted no time turning the moment into a jab at its biggest smartphone rival.

Just hours after Apple announced its most significant iPhone launch shake-up in seven years, headlined by the company’s first foldable iPhone, Samsung responded with a marketing push clearly designed to tempt longtime iPhone users.

Beyond the smartphone rivalry, global markets are focused on a far more urgent concern: oil. U.S. crude prices jumped as investors increasingly priced out hopes for a swift resolution to the Iran war.

U.S. crude oil climbed back above $100 a barrel this week, reaching its highest level in more than three months, as the conflict between the U.S. and Iran dragged on and new attacks struck tankers and energy infrastructure across the region.

The sharp rise in oil prices has increased expectations that the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates next week. It has also added weight to the European Central Bank’s move to lift its benchmark rate to 2.5%, as officials warned of a difficult mix of hotter inflation and slowing growth.

U.S. stock futures, meanwhile, were little changed ahead of Friday’s consumer inflation report — the last major data point before the Fed meets.

President Trump’s proposal to send Americans checks — reportedly around $5,000 apiece — tied to a Republican win in next year’s midterms drew immediate bipartisan pushback, with critics on both sides flagging the price tag against an already-swollen federal debt load.

At face value, the plan would be staggeringly expensive. There are roughly 245.3 million U.S. adult citizens, according to 2024 Census data. Giving each of them $5,000 would cost north of $1.2 trillion.

New Delhi’s push to shore up energy security with solar and battery capacity is running into an uncomfortable dependency: much of the hardware and critical minerals behind that build-out still originate from China, complicating India’s parallel effort to de-risk its economy from its northern neighbor.

This is a “critical advantage” that China holds over India, and in the past Beijing has used its access to key resources and technology as a “geopolitical tool” to get better trade deals, Ankita Chauhan, director at Wood Mackenzie, told CNBC.

Ford said it will invest $1 billion in a new paint shop at its Kentucky Truck Plant. The announcement came days after the Department of Transportation needled automakers over their reliance on Chinese supply chains.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy expressed “profound concern” about Ford’s U.S. “manufacturing integrity” and ties to Chinese companies that the Trump administration believes could be detrimental to the Detroit carmaker and U.S. automotive industry.

Oracle shares edged higher after fiscal first-quarter results beat expectations, with cloud infrastructure revenue more than doubling from a year earlier on the back of AI-driven demand. Its shares added 4% in extended trading overnight.

Investors have been rewarded with the same story all year — the only question left is how long triple-digit growth off an increasingly large base can continue.

— Anniek Bao

AI is losing its stranglehold on the U.S. stock market. Here’s why

A key tech-stock volatility metric options traders have been watching all year is reversing, sending a sign to investors that the U.S. bond market may now be usurping AI optimism as the primary driver of the stock market.

The spread between the volatility of big tech names and the rest of the stock market – measured most frequently by the difference between the Cboe’s VIXEQ and VIX indexes – blew out to record highs this summer as tech giants behind the AI boom regularly moved hundreds of billions of dollars of market cap per day while the rest of the market stayed stagnant.

— Oliver Renick