LIVE NEWS: The Hollywood Writers Guild ends its strike after securing a new 3-year contract

Oil prices rose on Wednesday on concerns about tight supplies and rising interest rates.

Global benchmark Brent crude added 0.9 percent to $94.78, while West Texas Intermediate crude, the US equivalent, rose by the same margin to $91.18.

OPEC, the oil producers’ cartel, expects supply shortages this year, while signs of improving economic performance in the United States and China have raised expectations for global demand.

These considerations have overshadowed concerns about the US Federal Reserve’s hawkish warnings that interest rates will need to remain higher for longer than initially expected.

The Writers Guild of America has secured a new three-year contract after a bitter work stoppage that lasted nearly 150 days, meaning Hollywood will now focus on ending the actors’ strike.

The union’s western and eastern units voted to accept a deal with the studios. She later said that the strike would end one minute after midnight on Wednesday.

The book has achieved pioneering victories in the use of artificial intelligence. Studios and streamers have agreed to pay writers residual amounts or higher royalties, based on how well the streamers’ shows perform.

The 160,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild are still on strike, but hopes are rising that talks will resume after the writers’ strike ends.

Australia’s inflation rate accelerated in the 12 months to August as food and petrol costs rose, according to official data released on Wednesday.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics said the consumer price index rose to 5.2 per cent from 4.9 per cent in July. The ABS noted that annual inflation remains below the December 2022 peak of 8.4 per cent.

Robert Carnell, head of Asia-Pacific research at ING, said a “combination of fading fundamental influences, higher gasoline and food prices” were responsible for the rise after a “sudden drop” in July from 5.4 per cent in June. June).

Money markets: Dubai Financial Market, a stock exchange in the United Arab Emirates, is hosting its third roadshow for international investors this year in Singapore. “We are seeing an increasingly strong appetite from global investors who want to access Dubai’s growing capital markets,” said Hamed Ali, CEO of Dubai Financial Market and Nasdaq Dubai. “That is why we decided to host our third roadshow this year in Singapore.” The DFM presented to investors in New York in January and London in June.

Events: Howard Lee, deputy chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, is the keynote speaker at ABS Asia, the structured products finance conference, which returns post-Covid to the JW Marriott Hotel in Hong Kong. The two-day fintech festival opens at Siam Paragon in Bangkok. The Bank of Japan releases minutes of its July monetary policy meeting.

Economic data: Australia releases inflation figures for August, while Chinese industrial profits and Japanese machine tool orders are released for the same month.

US Senate leaders have reached an agreement to continue funding the federal government and avoid a shutdown before a looming deadline this weekend, but the compromise measure faces an uncertain future in the Republican-controlled House.

Chuck Schumer, Senate Democratic leader, announced the agreement late Tuesday. The “temporary solution” would keep the government funded until mid-November, providing billions of dollars to support the war effort in Ukraine and disaster relief for parts of the United States devastated by wildfires and floods.

Democrats, who control the Senate by a very narrow margin, are expected to approve the agreement in the coming days.

Retail theft is not a “major issue” at Costco, the company said Tuesday, after it beat Wall Street expectations for earnings.

Shrinkage — an industry term that covers shoplifting, employee theft, organized retail crime and operations errors — has increased by a few percentage points year over year, likely due to increased use of technology, Richard Galanti, the company’s chief financial officer, told analysts. Self checkout technology. He said theft levels were already low.

These comments come as Target announced on Tuesday the closure of nine stores due to rising levels of “theft and organized retail crime.”

Costco earned $4.86 per share in the fourth quarter and revenue of $78.9 billion, an increase of 8.6 percent year over year.

Donald Trump, his eldest sons and his business organization are responsible for inflating the value of properties in Manhattan and Mar-a-Lago, as well as golf courses in the United States and Scotland, a New York judge ruled Tuesday.

Judge Arthur Engoron said on Tuesday that the former president and his associates engaged in activity that “can only be considered fraud,” and issued sanctions against Trump’s lawyers. A jury will determine the penalties, he said.

The order was issued days before a case brought by the New York Attorney General was to go to trial.

Read more about Trump’s properties here.

Global stocks saw a sell-off on Tuesday, as investors braced for an extended period of higher interest rates, while the dollar jumped to a 10-month high and Treasuries sold off.

Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index closed down 1.5 percent, while the technology-focused Nasdaq Composite index fell 1.6 percent, both reaching their lowest levels since early June.

The recent decline in stocks comes as investors have raised their expectations that the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates high for longer. While traders are mixed on whether the US central bank will raise interest rates by an additional quarter point in this policy tightening cycle, bets on interest rate cuts next year have declined.

Read more about market movements here.