Blackstone Group LP ’s new infrastructure fund allows Saudi Arabia to invest at a discount.What it gets in return is massive funding from the kingdom. For every dollar that an investor pays Blackstone to manage its cash, Saudi Arabia gets to pay 15 cents less.

Shares of Cathy Pacific fell today as a result of a major data breach of about 9.4 million passengers.  Cathay and its unit, Hong Kong Dragon Airlines Ltd, said information had been accessed without authorization and that in addition to 860,000 passport numbers and about 245,000 Hong Kong identity card numbers, the hackers accessed 403 expired credit card numbers and 27 credit card numbers with no card verification value (CVV). There was no announcement on who breached the airline's data and Cathay said the Hong Kong Police had been notified about the breach, and that there was no evidence that any personal information had been misused.

AT&T reported mixed results for Q3 and indicated better days to come following its acquisition of media giant Time Warner this year. The telecommunications company’s Q3 adjusted earnings came in at 90 cents per share, which is below average analyst expectations of earnings of 94 cents per share.The growth was “primarily due to the Time Warner acquisition,” as suggested by the company. As for revenues, they were $45.7 billion for the quarter, beating average expectations of $45.63 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Mirroring a general decline in Americans’ preference for traditional pay-TV, AT&T experienced a 346,000 net loss in traditional video customers.

Google parent Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOGL) is set to report earnings Thursday after the closing bell and the stock has hit a technical support level ahead of the report. Like the rest of the tech sector, Google has been trending lower over the last few months and it is testing its 52-week moving average.In this case though, Google has another support level in addition to the moving average. Over the last two years, all of the major dips in the stock can be connected with one trendline.

The New York State Attorney General says they will be suing Exxon Mobil alleging the company has misled investors and has understated risks from climate change regulations. NY Attorney General Barbara Underwood, in an announcement, also alleges that former CEO and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson "keen of the misrepresentations for years." The statement also says, "Exxon built a facade to deceive investors into believing that the company was managing the risks of climate change regulation to its business when, in fact, it was intentionally and systematically underestimating or ignoring them, contrary to its public representations.

Blockchain’s immutable ledger is what makes digital currencies tick.While the Ethereum blockchain software has an existing API for “commonly used random-access functions”, including frequent activities like monitoring transaction statuses and checking wallet balances, it doesn’t offer API endpoints “for easy access to all of the data stored on-chain”. BigQuery’s features allow users to glean insights from the Ethereum blockchain that were previously unobtainable.

Principia Biopharma continued its impressive progress with its recent initial public offering on September 14, 2018.Principia Biopharma (Nasdaq: PRNB) has developed three drug candidates in immunology, central nervous system disorders, and oncology. The company is utilizing 'Tailored Covalency,' its proprietary drug discovery platform, to discover new drugs that combine the dosing ability of an oral small molecule drug with the specificity of an antibody. Standard small molecule drugs have a short duration of time that the drug binds to its target, called residence time, that require dosing regimens to maintain target concentration levels in the blood to get the desired result. Principia has designed its drugs to remain bound to the target, and clear the body rapidly, to optimize residence time.

Russia’s Rosneft and U.S.'s Exxon Mobil plan to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in a consortium with Indian and Japanese partners. Rosneft and Exxon unveiled plans in 2013 to build a LNG production site in Russia’s Far East, but the plan failed to materialize owing to a number of reasons, including sanctions against Moscow for its role in the Ukraine conflict. However, recent talks between these two companies has given indication that they are finally ready to go ahead with this estimated $15 billion project.Although nothing to date has been officially confirmed by any of the companies, it is expected that the financing of the LNG plant would be shared between the participants and the project could start in Q1 2019.

Caterpillar Inc.’s (CAT) shares fell more than 8% on Tuesday, as the mining and construction equipment maker again showed signs of weakness tied to rising steel and input costs -- which ultimately bear connection to U.S. tariffs. Caterpillar has already lost nearly 21% of its market value in October, as analysts were disappointed with earnings and its outlook for the rest of the year.As tariffs boosted metal costs and trade frictions fueled demand concerns, Caterpillar was largely unable to pass these costs on -- eroding profitability. Caterpillar in its recent government filing revealed that the company lost nearly $40 million in third quarter of 2018 owing solely to the recently imposed tariffs.

Oil giant Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) has been moving higher since hitting a multi-year low in April.This led to a bullish crossover from the stochastic readings. Exxon will announce earnings on November 2, so there is only about 10 days for this bounce to play out before the earnings report will affect the stock. The company’s sales and earnings have been declining over the last three years, but the company did report earnings growth of 18% in its last quarterly report and sales were up 27% from the previous year in that report. The sentiment toward Exxon is interesting, especially the analysts’ ratings.

Among the patterns that the Tickeron Pattern Search Engine identifies is one called Three Rising Valleys.In those instances, the success rate was 54.5%. The average gain on successful trades was 14.13%.

In both of those instances, the stock rallied over 10% in the month to month and a half that followed. What is interesting is that when Aetna reported earnings in early August, the earnings were flat from the second quarter of 2017.Sales were also flat on a quarterly year-over-year basis. Aetna is scheduled to report earnings again on October 30 and analysts are expecting the company to show earnings growth of 15.5% for the third quarter.

Enforcing a 1973-style oil embargo is not in the cards for Saudi Arabia, confirmed by the Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih in an interview to Russia's TASS news agency.Amidst the roaring controversy surrounding the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and the impending U.S. sanctions on Iran, this comes as a big relief for the global economy. October 1973’s oil crisis, where OPEC nations joined hands to squeeze supplies to the U.S. and Europe in retaliation for their support for Israel, resulted in the oil price quadrupling to US$12 per barrel in just a couple of months. Khalid al-Falih also added that for decades they have adopted an oil policy which is being used as a responsible economic tool, and Saudi Arabia has no intention of using its oil wealth as a political tool. He further emphasized on continuing the joint work between the OPEC nations and the non-OPEC nations to maintain the equilibrium of supply and demand, and gave assurance that if r

Oil prices hit a nearly four-year high at the start of October 2018, as demand rose and as U.S. sanctions resulted in declining Iranian crude exports. However, the last two weeks have seen the oil market undergoing an incredible reversal in price movement, despite the backdrop of looming U.S. sanctions on Iran, OPEC's third-largest crude producer, and rising tensions between Washington and Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter. U.S.crude prices declined by ~11% from peak to trough while Brent Crude was down more than 9%.

The recently announced multibillion-dollar deal between the Iraq government and Siemens and General Electric (GE, $12.42) is a big boost for the struggling power division of both companies, as it lays the foundation for both companies to win many such contracts in the near future. Slow demand growth in developing nations coupled with an increasing importance of renewable energy had hit both companies hard in the recent times.But this contract to sell power equipment to the nation’s ailing power infrastructure industry is a big win for both. Despite a closely fought battle between GE and Munich-based Siemens, the latter was in a pole position to win the entire contract worth US$15 billion.

The latest move in the ongoing trade war between U.S. and China saw the Trump administration announce that the U.S. would be withdrawing from the Universal Postal Union, a 144-year-old-treaty among 192 nations that helps set international postage rates. The trading community considered this move as a bullish decision for international shipping rates.Shipping stocks soared high on Monday and also helped garner a heavy dose of investor’s interest in overseas shipping stocks. Top Ships Inc. (TOPS, $1.97) was the most notable runner amongst all the shipping stocks, as it recorded a +56% gain.

WhatsApp banned more than 100,000 user accounts in Brazil, as parent company Facebook is taking a step further in curbing hate speech, abuse and misinformation ahead of an election in the nation. Facebook indicated that deleting malicious messages/fake news on its main social networking platform is easier than doing so on WhatsApp, since the latter encrypted and nearly impossible to monitor. According to a Bloomberg report, a WhatsApp spokesperson wrote in an email, “We have cutting-edge technology to detect spam that identifies accounts with abnormal behavior so that they can’t be used to spread spam or misinformation," and added, "We are also taking immediate legal measures to prevent companies from sending mass messages via WhatsApp and have already banned accounts associated with those companies."  

After claiming that President Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel imports hurt its profits by $1 billion, Ford Motor has reiterated its displeasure with the levies. Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of global operations, said Monday at an event, “U.S.With U.S. steel currently costlier than China-made steel by $150 per metric ton, Ford seems to be concerned about the impact on price of its cars and therefore the demand for them.  

On Monday, Netflix announced that it will issue new debt of $2 billion. As the online video-streaming giant continues to up the ante on content (up to $8 billion could be spent on content this year) amidst prolonged cash outflows, the company seems to be relying on even more debt to for its operations.This year’s interest costs (excluding those on the latest debt issue) has climbed to $291 million from $238 million of full year 2018. However, Netflix chief financial officer David Wells tried to sprinkle some hope for investors during the third-quarter earnings call with analysts where he said, “Netflix is approaching a point where the growth in operating profit is going to grow faster than our growth in content cash spend, and that’s really going to drive the free cash flow towards improvement – it will eventually break even,” and added that he projects a “material improvement” in cash flow by 2020.  

Japan's Calsonic Kansei has agreed to buy Fiat Chrysler’s auto parts business Magneti Marelli for more than $7 billion. Fiat Chrysler's CEO Mike Manley said that the automaker considered "a range of options" for Magneti Marelli before deciding to sell it to U.S. private equity firm KKR-owned automotive company Calsonic Kansei. The deal between the two auto parts manufacturers is expected to rake in total annual revenues of €15.2 billion ($17.5 billion) and have nearly 200 facilities and research centers  globally for the combined business, as suggested by Fiat Chrysler. The deal could close in the first half of 2019, subject to regulatory approvals. The announcement comes amidst  rapid evolution in the auto industry landscape, with electric cars and self-driving vehicles among major technologies at the forefront of the shift.Maybe, selling off its auto parts unit would allow Fiat to focus more on leveraging the new trends in the vehicles market.