Google Buys 3,590 Megawatts Of Power As The S&P 500 Sets A Record

Google agreed on Tuesday to buy 3,590 megawatts of electricity from Constellation Energy, and the S&P 500 closed at its first record since August the same day. The artificial-intelligence build-out behind that contract showed up in Washington's numbers too, where imports of chips and equipment helped push the August trade deficit to $105.6 billion. Overnight, India's central bank raised interest rates for the first time since 2023 as expensive oil leaned on the rupee.

Fast Facts

• McKesson and the private-equity firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice agreed to buy the home-infusion company Option Care Health for about $5.8 billion including debt, 37% above Monday's closing price (Read More)
• Marvell Technology lifted its fiscal 2028 revenue forecast to about $20 billion, above the $18.2 billion analysts had expected, on demand for its data center chips, and the shares rose about 6% (Read More)
• $2.3 billion is what Uber agreed to pay for the business-catering platform ezCater, whose network of more than 140,000 U.S. restaurants generates over $2.5 billion a year in gross bookings (Read More)
• Shares of ArriVent BioPharma closed down nearly 47% on Tuesday after its cancer drug firmonertinib, licensed from a Chinese developer, missed its main goal in a late-stage trial (Read More)
• San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly told Axios that AI-driven demand for chips, tariffs and higher energy costs could last longer than expected or compound one another, keeping inflation up (Read More)
• The nonprofit Common Sense Media urged OpenAI to keep teenagers off ChatGPT, saying its testing found the new teen version poses an "unacceptable risk" (Read More)

Global News

• Canada ran a sixth straight monthly surplus in goods trade in August, its largest since May 2022 and well above the roughly C$1.5 billion economists expected, ahead of fresh tariffs (Read More)
• The world economy is caught in a tug of war between an energy shock and an artificial-intelligence boom, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told economic leaders (Read More)
• Transsion, the Shenzhen company that sells more phones in Africa than anyone else, opened orders for a Hong Kong listing that could raise up to HK$3.36 billion (US$428.1 million), with trading expected to start October 15 (Read More)
• Hong Kong's Mandatory Provident Fund, the city's compulsory retirement savings system, returned an average 6.2% over the first nine months of 2026, nearly HK$100 billion, despite losing 1.47% in September (Read More)

Google Locked In 3,590 Megawatts From Constellation, And The Stock Jumped 12%

Google has contracted for 3,590 megawatts of electricity from Constellation Energy in PJM, the largest U.S. power grid, which covers 13 states. The total has two parts. The first is a 20-year power purchase agreement (a contract to buy a plant's output) for 890 megawatts that Constellation will add by upgrading nuclear reactors it already owns: 11 units in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, backed by more than $4.3 billion of new investment, with power from the first upgraded plant expected in 2028. The second is a long-term supply agreement for another 2,700 megawatts that is not tied to any particular source.

Constellation shares rose 12.3% on Tuesday and closed at $300.40, which still leaves them about 15% down for the year. The VanEck Uranium and Nuclear ETF gained 5.5%; an ETF is a fund that trades like a single stock. The S&P 500, an index of 500 large U.S. companies, gained 0.58% to a record close of 7,818.95, passing its August high, and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.45% to a record 27,599.79. Every S&P 500 sector rose except healthcare, and utilities did best. The Russell 2000, an index of smaller companies, fell 0.6%. The 10-year Treasury yield, what the government pays to borrow for ten years, eased 4 basis points (hundredths of a percentage point) to 5.27% for the October 6 session, a day after touching a 24-year high.

So how does one contract justify more than $4.3 billion? A 20-year agreement with a buyer like Google gives Constellation revenue it can predict for two decades, and lenders and investors will put money up front against revenue they can count on. Upgrading reactors that already exist also adds supply faster than building a new plant, because the site, the reactor and the grid connection are already there. For Google, the deal is about access. AI data centers need power around the clock, and they share PJM's grid with homes across those 13 states. PJM's management has proposed that data center customers bring their own power or face being cut off remotely at peak demand, and the companies said this deal responds to that proposal.

New nuclear is only about a quarter of the headline number, and none of it arrives before 2028. The model isn't new either: Constellation had already agreed to restart its Three Mile Island reactor for Microsoft's data centers, and Google to restart NextEra Energy's nuclear plant in Iowa. PJM's bring-your-own-power plan is still a proposal from management, not a rule.

Sources: Reuters on the Google deal · Reuters on the record close · Business Insider · La Nacion · U.S. Treasury · Rapunzl on the 24-year high

The Trade Deficit Hit Its Widest In More Than A Year On Oil, Gold And Chips

In August the United States bought $105.6 billion more from the rest of the world than it sold, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Tuesday. That gap is the trade deficit. It grew $12.7 billion, or 13.7%, from a revised $92.8 billion in July, and the Wall Street Journal called it the largest in more than a year. Exports, what Americans sell abroad, rose 1.4% to $315.2 billion. Imports, what they buy from abroad, rose 4.3% to $420.8 billion, which Reuters reported was a record. Three lines on the import bill did most of the work: crude oil, up $3.3 billion; nonmonetary gold, meaning gold traded as a commodity or investment rather than held as a government reserve, up $3.1 billion; and capital goods, the equipment businesses buy to produce things, up $6.2 billion, with semiconductors alone adding $2.4 billion.

Gross domestic product (GDP), the total value of what the U.S. economy produces, is tallied by adding up spending and then subtracting imports. A chip imported for an American data center is added in as business investment and, because it was made abroad, subtracted again as an import, so the two cancel. The wider gap weighs on the trade part of the third-quarter growth figure without meaning the U.S. made less. Reuters linked the rise in capital goods to spending on artificial-intelligence infrastructure, the same build-out that has Google shopping for electricity. Read that way, part of August's deficit is the AI boom arriving by ship. Gold works differently. A jump like that is mostly investors moving a financial asset from one country's vaults to another's, and nobody consumes a gold bar.

The longer view looks calmer than one month does. Over the past three months the deficit averaged $89.9 billion, and so far this year it is $138.2 billion smaller than over the same months of 2025, down 19.9%. Goods on their own ran a $136.6 billion deficit, while services such as travel and software sold to foreigners ran a $31.0 billion surplus.

Sources: BEA · WSJ · Reuters

India's Central Bank Raised Interest Rates For The First Time Since 2023

The Reserve Bank of India raised its repo rate on Wednesday. That is the rate it charges commercial banks to borrow from it, and it went up 25 basis points (a quarter of a percentage point) to 5.5% from 5.25%. It was the bank's first increase since 2023, and all six members of the rate committee voted for it. They also changed the bank's stance, its public signal about which way policy is leaning, from "neutral" to "calibrated tightening." Governor Sanjay Malhotra called that a milder version of tightening that depends on the data. Consumer prices in August were 4.82% higher than a year earlier, the third straight month above the bank's 4% target. After the decision the rupee sat near record lows at about 96.43 per U.S. dollar, and the Nifty 50 stock index was down 0.3%.

Oil connects all of it. India imports much of its oil and pays for it in dollars. With the Middle East conflict keeping energy expensive, more rupees get sold to buy those dollars. A weaker rupee makes every imported good cost more in rupees, and that shows up as inflation; Malhotra expects it to average almost 5.8% over the next three quarters. A higher rate pushes back in two ways: borrowing costs more, which cools spending, and rupee deposits pay more, which gives savers a reason to hold the currency. Reuters counted India among the major central banks now raising rates as oil stays expensive. Australia's central bank raised its rate to a 15-year high on September 29. Two economists quoted by Reuters expect more increases. HDFC Bank's Sakshi Gupta forecasts another 50 to 75 basis points in coming months, and Krishna Bhimavarapu of State Street Investment Management has a base case of 100 basis points across this cycle.

Sources: WSJ · Reuters · Rapunzl on Australia's rate increase

What To Watch

The Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed's rate-setting group, is scheduled to publish the minutes of its September 15-16 meeting today at 2:00pm ET. Minutes are the committee's written account of the discussion behind a decision, in this case September's rate increase, and these arrive three weeks before the next meeting on October 27 and 28. Fed Governor Christopher Waller is scheduled to speak on the economic outlook on Thursday.

Levi Strauss is expected to report today, with analysts' average estimate at $0.36 in earnings per share; Applied Digital, which builds data centers, is expected to post a loss of $0.26 a share. PepsiCo is expected Thursday at $2.29 a share, and Delta Air Lines on Friday.

The Classroom Takeaway

Every month the government counts what crosses the border in each direction, and August's count showed the AI build-out arriving as imported chips and machinery. That trade report feeds the GDP calculation, which you can follow next to rates and inflation on our live market data page.