Oil settles sharply lower as bitcoin rebounds and AI stocks split
Wednesday's Chain, Crude & Chips: crude settlements, a timestamped bitcoin rebound and an uneven AI trade.
Oil closed sharply lower on Wednesday, bitcoin recovered from overnight losses, and the AI trade split between large platforms and the companies building more capacity.
Crude: an 8% settlement decline
WTI settled at $88.12 a barrel, down 8.3%, while Brent settled at $94.62, down 8.7%. The move followed the election as traders raised their expectations for diplomacy over Iran. It does not establish that a peace deal has been reached. Our earlier oil article records the intraday selloff; these are the later settlements.
Chain: bitcoin returns above $80,000
Bitcoin traded around $80,000 in the afternoon after recovering from overnight losses. At 3:31 PM ET, CoinDesk placed it just above $80,000, up about 3% over 24 hours. That is a timestamped snapshot, not a closing price: bitcoin keeps trading after the stock-market bell.
Chips: a rally did not lift every AI stock
Micron fell 7%, while Nvidia and data-center operators also fell even as Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta rose. Analysts tied the split to expectations for greater scrutiny of data-center expansion after the election. Those expectations may change, and a campaign position is not the same as a final restriction.
AMD finished higher after reporting growth in its data-center business. The AMD results story separates the reported numbers from management's forecast. The wider market's final levels are in today's Dusk Ledger.
