Nothing sours a voter quite like soaring living costs and a war nobody asked for.
asserted
nobody → sour → costs
Donald Trump found that out the hard way this week as Democrats swept the midterms, taking both the House and the Senate.
asserted
Democrats → find → House
Even his own Vice President, JD Vance, pinned the loss on the war in Iran, which has dragged on since February and sent petrol and power bills through the roof.
asserted
which → pin → roof
Oil got the memo first, with Brent sliding almost 9 per cent in a day to just under US$95 a barrel as traders bet a Democrat-run Congress will push for peace in the Middle East.
asserted
Congress → get → East
Wall Street, meanwhile, partied for about 24 hours before Thursday came and the penny dropped.
asserted
penny → partie → hours
The extremely AI-heavy Wall Street has been running on the AI trade almost single-handedly for the last four months.
asserted
Street → run → months
AI needs data centres, data centres need electricity and voters furious about their electricity bills have just handed power to a party swearing to slow the whole build-out.
asserted
voters → need → out
The Nasdaq fell a massive 5.5 per cent Thursday, with the S&P 500 shedding 4.4 per cent, its worst day since Trump’s tariff tantrum back in April.
asserted
Nasdaq → fall → April
That left the Nasdaq in correction territory and US$2 trillion lighter.
asserted
That → leave → territory
Copper, the metal that wires all those data centres together, copped it too.
asserted
that → wire → it
Then came the so-called Magnificent Seven, which could no longer hold the NASDAQ on its shoulders, shedding more than US$1 trillion in market value in a single session.
uncertain
which → come → session
Nvidia, the poster child of the AI boom, sank more than 9 per cent, with Tesla diving almost 11 per cent.
asserted
Tesla → sink → boom
Back home, the cost of living wasn’t getting any government reprieve at all.
asserted
cost → get → reprieve
The RBA turned up on Melbourne Cup Day and said its tired old ‘please stop spending’ line, but this time, not to the consumer.
asserted
RBA → turn → consumer
With the rate rise Aussies feared arriving, cash rates were lifted to 4.85 per cent, hitting an 18-year high.
asserted
rates → fear → high
The problem is domestic demand outrunning supply – cough government spending.
asserted
demand → outrun → supply
Awkward, then, for Treasurer Dr Jim Chalmers and Albo, who spent the week pointing the finger at oil.
asserted
who → spend → oil
Fresh off 18 holes at the newly $6 million revamped Marrickville Golf Club, where, after previously denying he ever played golf, Albo defended his grant - worth 76 times all Australian golf grants combined this year - as a sewage fix, before admitting he “was not correct”.
asserted
he → revamp → fix
Hard to see how crude prices did that.
asserted
prices → see → that
Now the PM has suddenly discovered the need for “hard decisions” on government spending.
asserted
PM → discover → spending
Apparently, it only took a trillion dollars in debt for the penny to drop.
asserted
penny → take → debt
After a budget that landed a body blow to industry and small business, Dr Jim’s much-promised cost-of-living relief is looking increasingly like another round of higher mortgage repayments.
asserted
relief → land → repayments
And just when you thought tech couldn’t look more toppy, Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange, lost a record US$6.3 billion to the North Koreans last Friday, following a fake job interview and a tampered AI tool to one of its employees.
asserted
Binance → think → employees
It seems Rocket Man’s boys have been having a very good week.
asserted
boys → seem → week
Unconfirmed hackers have also been cooking the fridges and freezers of European supermarkets, with one Swedish store hitting 50 degrees Celsius on overdrive.
uncertain
store → cook → overdrive
UK cyber officials say the French units were plugged straight into the internet with default passwords.
asserted
units → say → passwords
Which raises the question: why is a fridge connected to hackable infrastructure at all?
asserted
fridge → raise → infrastructure
Apparently so head office can check the temperature from afar, which is handy right up until someone else wants to turn the dial.
asserted
someone → check → dial
Gold jumped more than three per cent on the midterms, its biggest one-day gain since August, to reclaim US$4,000 an ounce and sit roughly six per cent higher on the week.
asserted
Gold → jump → week
Our Runner of the Week is back on old faithful too, with a geologist’s favourite words, “greenfields discovery”, coming out of WA’s Eastern Goldfields.
asserted
words → come → Goldfields
There’s something reassuring about a hole in the ground: nobody has found a way to hack one yet.
asserted
nobody → ’ → one
Nothing gets the imagination firing quite like that headline.
asserted
imagination → get → headline
BPM MINERALS LTD (ASX: BPM)
Up 117% (18c – 39c)
Bulls N’ Bears Runner of the Week is BPM Minerals, which delivered the sort of maiden drilling result that gets rock lickers’ hearts racing.
asserted
hearts → deliver → result
The junior goldie made a cracking high-grade greenfields gold discovery in the first two holes ever drilled at its Bonnie & Clyde Prospect, part of the Forelands gold project in WA’s Eastern Goldfields.
asserted
goldie → make → Goldfields
The hits came from a sprawling six-kilometre-long gold-in-soil anomaly.
asserted
hits → come → anomaly
After punching through 15 to 30 metres of paleochannel sands, the company says the bit intersected the richly mineralised metamorphic basement, with one hole returning two standout intervals of 4m at a whopping 20.57 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 39m, including a bonanza one metre at 73.33g/t, followed by 8m at 9.23g/t from 71m.
The second hole failed to return anything significant, but one maiden hole like that is plenty for the market to stew about.
The company says its gold sits in an oxidised, quartz-veined shear zone along the Yellow Dam shear, where a major structural flexure appears to have created a prime trap for mineralisation.
Management says the host rocks are the same broad geological setting as AngloGold Ashanti’s multi-million-ounce Tropicana deposit, giving the discovery some serious regional credentials.
asserted
rocks → punch → credentials
Better still, the shallow mineralisation remains open along strike and down-dip, two of the sweetest words in the exploration business.
asserted
mineralisation → remain → business
For a company built around the broader Forelands project, the timing was perfect, with gold surging back above US$4000 an ounce.
asserted
gold → build → 4000
BPM says it has completed 38 reverse circulation (RC) holes for 5272m at Bonnie & Clyde, with samples from dozens of them due through the December quarter and into early 2027.
asserted
samples → say → 2027
A further 27 holes for 4700m remain in the 65-hole program, with diamond drilling now lined up to define the system’s direction beneath the cover.
asserted
drilling → remain → cover
…and 27 more, not listed.
The Aporia
