European equities had a strong week, with Stoxx 600 companies on track to post a 22% increase in second-quarter profits. The earnings momentum appears to be overriding earlier anxiety about an Iran-linked risk premium — which matters for positioning given how elevated that premium had become since the Hormuz situation developed.

On that front, Iran’s position hardened over the weekend. The supreme national security council said the strait will not reopen until the US “corrects its behaviour” — language that suggests no near-term deal. The UAE separately confirmed one of its ships was struck by an Iranian missile. With Hormuz still effectively closed and Iran broadening its demands beyond nuclear terms, the disruption to energy shipping looks more durable than markets may have priced at the end of last week.

Greg Abel has broken Berkshire Hathaway’s three-year net selling streak, deploying around $20bn into equities. That’s a meaningful signal from the most watched cash pile in institutional investing. It doesn’t tell you what he bought, but the scale and timing — after a prolonged period of accumulation — will get attention.

France’s budget situation is deteriorating ahead of the presidential cycle. Finance minister David Amiel is publicly urging the opposition to cooperate on deficit reduction, framing it as a question of not leaving a fiscal mess for the next administration. That’s an unusual appeal and suggests the current government’s room for manoeuvre is narrowing. Worth watching for spread widening on OATs if the political temperature rises.

On AI infrastructure, Amazon is reportedly planning a Texas data centre with an on-site gas-fired power plant that could become the single largest source of climate pollution in the United States. The energy demand story for AI buildout is not new, but the scale here is striking and will likely attract regulatory and ESG scrutiny.

DeepMind’s WeatherNext model is drawing genuine surprise from meteorologists — the open-source system is producing accurate forecasts from lower-resolution input data than conventional models require. Practically, that reduces the compute cost of high-quality weather prediction significantly, with implications for energy trading, agriculture, and insurance underwriting.

US Democratic primary results from Michigan show Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive candidate, defeating the establishment-backed incumbent congresswoman for the Senate nomination. Michigan is a genuine swing state. The result adds to evidence that the Democratic coalition is shifting leftward ahead of the midterms, which has implications for the policy environment if that translates into the general.

UK solar eclipse on Wednesday evening — 90 to 96% coverage across Britain, first since 1999. Not a market event, but worth knowing if you have afternoon meetings scheduled outdoors.

Sources

Al Jazeera, Guardian, BBC News, FT, TechCrunch, Politico, The Economist, Ars Technica — 2026-08-09