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By Ashitha Shivaprasad and Sam Li (Reuters) -Oil prices declined for a second day on Tuesday as concerns about supply and risks to demand from the trade dispute between the U.S. and China, the world's top two oil consumers, weigh on the markets. Brent crude futures fell 30 cents, or 0.49%, at $60.71 a barrel at 0746 GMT. The U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) contract for November delivery, set to expire on Tuesday, down 29 cents, or 0.5% to $57.23. The more active December contract was down 31 cents, or 0.54%, at $56.71. Prices declined to their lowest since early May in Monday's session on the concerns about slowing economic growth from the recent escalations in the U.S.-China trade dispute. Both WTI and Brent have shifted to contango market structures, where prices for immediate supply are lower than for later delivery and which typically indicates that near-term supply is abundant and demand is declining. Prices have slumped as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies including Russia, known as OPEC+, have pushed ahead with plans to add more oil to the market. This has led analysts to predict a surplus of crude this year and next, with the International Energy Agency last week projecting a global surplus of nearly 4 million barrels per day in 2026. "The continued weakening of Brent's monthly spread structure indicates that the pressure from oversupply in the crude oil market is gradually materializing," analysts from China's Haitong Securities said in a note on Tuesday. "This will dampen market expectations and curb investors' willingness to chase gains, limiting the potential for oil prices to rebound." The current pessimistic outlook for oil is likely to extend into 2026, with analysts at Goldman Sachs saying on Tuesday they forecast Brent prices may drop to $52 a barrel by the fourth quarter of next year. The Goldman analysts attributed the past week's slump in Brent prices to indications "the long-anticipated global surplus has started to show" in satellite data on global oil stockpiles and inventory data from the IEA and the Energy Information Administration in the U.S. Still, if the U.S. and China reach some broader agreement in their trade dispute, that could provide a boost, or at least a floor, for prices. Investors are pinning their hopes on a planned meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping next week in South Korea but disputes over tariffs, technology, and market access remain unresolved. "As long as there's no new bearish news, oil prices have a natural need to rebound from oversold levels. At present, if there are expectations of improvement in China–U.S. economic and trade talks, the probability of a rebound increases," said Yang An, analyst at Haitong Securities. Overall though, the market remains watchful for further signs of inventory builds. Expectations are that U.S. crude oil stockpiles likely rose last week, a preliminary Reuters poll on Monday showed, ahead of weekly reports from the American Petroleum Institute and the EIA. [EIA/S] (Reporting by Ashitha Shivaprasad in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonali Paul and Christian Schmollinger)

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By Andrea Shalal, Steve Holland and Ernest Scheyder WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed a critical minerals agreement aimed at countering China on Monday at a meeting marked by Trump's jab at Australia's envoy to the United States over past criticism. China loomed large at the first White House summit between Trump and Albanese, with the U.S. president also backing a strategic nuclear-powered submarine deal with Australia to bolster security in the Indo-Pacific. While Trump and Albanese greeted each other warmly, the U.S. president expressed ire about past criticism of him by Australia's U.S. ambassador Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister. Rudd in 2020 called Trump "the most destructive president in history," later deleting the comment from social media. Trump said he was not aware of the critical comments and asked where the envoy was now. Upon seeing him across the table, Trump said, "I don't like you either, and I probably never will." The visit otherwise appeared to go smoothly, with Albanese and Trump signing a minerals deal that Trump said had been negotiated in recent months. Albanese described it as an $8.5 billion pipeline "that we have ready to go." A copy of the agreement released by both governments said the two countries will each invest $1 billion over the next six months into mining and processing projects as well as set a minimum price floor for critical minerals, a move that Western miners have long sought. A White House statement on the agreement added that the investments would target deposits of critical minerals worth $53 billion, although it did not provide details on which types or locations.  "In about a year from now, we'll have so much critical mineral and rare earths that you won't know what to do with them," Trump told reporters. China's foreign ministry did not comment directly on the deal but said on Tuesday that market and business choices form the global production and supply chain. "Key mineral resource countries should play an active role in ensuring the safety and stability of the industrial and supply chain, and ensure normal economic and trade cooperation," ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told a regular news briefing. EXIM ANNOUNCES OVER $2.2 BILLION IN INVESTMENTS The U.S. Export-Import Bank, which acts as the U.S. government's export credit agency, later announced seven letters of interest totaling more than $2.2 billion to advance critical minerals projects in Australia. It said the letters went to Arafura Rare Earths, Northern Minerals, Graphinex, Latrobe Magnesium, VHM, RZ Resources, and Sunrise Energy Metals. EXIM said the projects span a range of critical minerals essential to advanced defense systems, aerospace components, communications equipment, and next-generation industrial technologies. The investments would help support the re-industrialization of America’s high-tech manufacturing base, while helping to "counter China's export dominance and ensure Western supply-chain resilience," it said. Additionally, the Pentagon plans to build a gallium refinery in Western Australia. China blocked gallium exports to the United States last December. The United States has been looking to boost its access to critical minerals around the world as China takes steps to strengthen control over global supply. Trade tensions between the United States and China have escalated ahead of Trump's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea next week. The term critical minerals applies to a range of minerals, including rare earths, lithium and nickel. China has the world's largest rare earths reserves, according to U.S. Geological Survey data, but Australia also has significant reserves. The minerals are used for products ranging from electric vehicles to aircraft engines and military radars. TRUMP SIGNALS SUPPORT FOR SUBMARINE DEAL Albanese got welcome support from Trump for the A$368 billion ($239.46 billion) AUKUS agreement, reached in 2023 under then-President Joe Biden. Under the deal, Australia is to buy U.S. nuclear-powered submarines in 2032 before building a new submarine class with Britain. While Trump has been eager to roll back Biden-era policies, he signaled his intent to back the AUKUS submarine agreement, months after his team launched a review of the deal over concerns about the ability of the United States to meet its own submarine needs. Navy Secretary John Phelan told the meeting the United States and Australia were working closely to improve the original AUKUS framework for all three parties "and clarify some of the ambiguity that was in the prior agreement." Trump said these were "just minor details," adding that "there shouldn't be any more clarifications, because we're just – we're just going now full steam ahead, building." Ahead of Monday's meeting, Australian officials emphasized that their country is paying its way under AUKUS, contributing $2 billion this year to boost production rates at U.S. submarine shipyards, and preparing to maintain U.S. Virginia-class submarines at its Indian Ocean naval base from 2027. The delay of 10 months in an official meeting since Trump took office had caused some anxiety in Australia as the Pentagon urged the Australian government to increase defense spending. The two leaders met briefly on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month. The rare earths agreement came a week after U.S. officials condemned China's expansion of rare earth export controls as a threat to global supply chains. Resource-rich Australia, wanting to extract and process rare earths, put preferential access to its strategic reserve on the table in U.S. trade negotiations in April.  As part of the rare earths agreement, Trump and Albanese agreed to cut permitting for mines, processing facilities and related operations in order to boost production. The deal called for cooperation on the mapping of geological resources, minerals recycling and efforts to stop the sale of critical minerals assets "on national security grounds." This was an oblique reference to China, which has bought major mining assets across the planet in the past decade, including the world's largest cobalt mine in Congo, from U.S.-based Freeport-McMoRan in 2016. $1 = 1.5368 Australian dollars) (Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney, Andrea Shalal, Steve Holland, Jarrett Renshaw and David Brunnstrom in Washington, and Ernest Scheyder in Houston; Additional reporting by Liz Lee in Beijing; Editing by Kate Mayberry, Colleen Jenkins, Will Dunham and Nick Zieminski)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By Amanda Cooper LONDON (Reuters) -Stocks rose on Tuesday, taking comfort from a possible easing in trade tensions between the U.S. and China and as nerves over credit risks in the banking sector ebbed, which in turn nudged gold lower. In Asia, the near-certainty of Sanae Takaichi becoming Japan's next prime minister briefly sent Tokyo's Nikkei to a record high and dented the yen. U.S. President Donald Trump said he expected to reach a fair trade deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping when the two meet next week in South Korea, and played down the risks of a clash over the issue of Taiwan. The prospect of a resolution helped bolster investor sentiment, along with a deal between Australia and the United States for the supply of rare earth materials. INVESTORS BUY THE DIP Investor confidence was hit hard last week as a clutch of bad loans at U.S. regional banks ignited concern over credit risks that threatened to spill into the broader markets. The prolonged U.S. government shutdown also weighed on risk assets. But these worries have abated somewhat and prompted investors to buy the dip ahead of earnings from several large firms. "The market has hurdled the wall of worry with ease, with new capital injected into risk and fresh oxygen into the market’s lungs," said Chris Weston, head of research at Pepperstone. That said, European Central Bank chief economist Philip Lane on Tuesday issued a stark warning for euro zone banks, saying they could come under pressure in a scenario in which dollar funding dries up. "The combined presence of substantial USD-denominated off-balance sheet exposures and volatile funding means that sudden changes in these net exposures cannot be ruled out," he said. He cited April's extreme market turmoil, in which the dollar and safe-haven U.S. Treasuries sold off hard, which he said made it more difficult for euro zone banks to rely on their dollar-denominated liquid assets. Daiwa Capital Markets economist Chris Scicluna said Lane's remarks spoke to the concern among investors about pockets of risk building across the U.S. financial sector, as investors pile into areas such as AI or credit, and what may happen if those trends reverse. "One of the big focuses has been on the private credit strains recently in the regional banks. And quite clearly, if there's a sudden pullback in or sudden problems in the U.S. financial sector, it will have a significant impact on European banks and others," he said. "The tone of the speeches out of the (ECB) Governing Council has been, on balance, becoming more cautious, more attuned to risks and downside risks," he added. The ECB, which meets next week, is not expected to deliver a rate cut any time soon, compared with the Federal Reserve, which could deliver as many as three rate cuts in the next six months, based on market-based expectations. INVESTORS JUMP BACK IN The chances of a series of U.S. rate cuts, along with comments from White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett that the federal government shutdown is likely to end this week also encouraged investors to dive back into equities. A broad rally sent all three major U.S. stock indexes to a sharply higher close overnight with chip stocks hitting a record high. Analysts currently expect third-quarter S&P 500 earnings growth, on aggregate, of 9.3% year-on-year, marking an improvement over their 8.8% growth estimate as of October 1. In currencies, the dollar rose 0.25% against the yen to 151.14. Takaichi is expected to be pro-stimulus and against further hikes in interest rates, a negative for the Japanese currency and bonds but a plus for equities. The Nikkei hit a record peak just shy of a landmark 50,000 points. The Bank of Japan meets next week. Traders are attaching a 20% chance to a hike, although Governor Kazuo Ueda has so far left his options open by offering few clues on the timing of a rate hike. Gold prices slipped 0.6% on the day, but were not far off Monday's record high of $4,381.21 an ounce. (Reporting by Ankur Banerjee; Editing by Sam Holmes, Kim Coghill and Alison Williams)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By Andrea Shalal, Steve Holland and Ernest Scheyder WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed a critical minerals agreement aimed at countering China on Monday at a meeting marked by Trump's jab at Australia's envoy to the United States over past criticism. China loomed large at the first White House summit between Trump and Albanese, with the U.S. president also backing a strategic nuclear-powered submarine deal with Australia to bolster security in the Indo-Pacific. While Trump and Albanese greeted each other warmly, the U.S. president expressed ire about past criticism of him by Australia's U.S. ambassador Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister. Rudd in 2020 called Trump "the most destructive president in history," later deleting the comment from social media. Trump said he was not aware of the critical comments and asked where the envoy was now. Upon seeing him across the table, Trump said, "I don't like you either, and I probably never will." The visit otherwise appeared to go smoothly, with Albanese and Trump signing a minerals deal that Trump said had been negotiated in recent months. Albanese described it as an $8.5 billion pipeline "that we have ready to go." A copy of the agreement released by both governments said the two countries will each invest $1 billion over the next six months into mining and processing projects as well as set a minimum price floor for critical minerals, a move that Western miners have long sought. A White House statement on the agreement added that the investments would target deposits of critical minerals worth $53 billion, although it did not provide details on which types or locations.  "In about a year from now, we'll have so much critical mineral and rare earths that you won't know what to do with them," Trump told reporters. China's foreign ministry did not comment directly on the deal but said on Tuesday that market and business choices form the global production and supply chain. "Key mineral resource countries should play an active role in ensuring the safety and stability of the industrial and supply chain, and ensure normal economic and trade cooperation," ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told a regular news briefing. EXIM ANNOUNCES OVER $2.2 BILLION IN INVESTMENTS The U.S. Export-Import Bank, which acts as the U.S. government's export credit agency, later announced seven letters of interest totaling more than $2.2 billion to advance critical minerals projects in Australia. It said the letters went to Arafura Rare Earths, Northern Minerals, Graphinex, Latrobe Magnesium, VHM, RZ Resources, and Sunrise Energy Metals. EXIM said the projects span a range of critical minerals essential to advanced defense systems, aerospace components, communications equipment, and next-generation industrial technologies. The investments would help support the re-industrialization of America’s high-tech manufacturing base, while helping to "counter China's export dominance and ensure Western supply-chain resilience," it said. Additionally, the Pentagon plans to build a gallium refinery in Western Australia. China blocked gallium exports to the United States last December. The United States has been looking to boost its access to critical minerals around the world as China takes steps to strengthen control over global supply. Trade tensions between the United States and China have escalated ahead of Trump's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea next week. The term critical minerals applies to a range of minerals, including rare earths, lithium and nickel. China has the world's largest rare earths reserves, according to U.S. Geological Survey data, but Australia also has significant reserves. The minerals are used for products ranging from electric vehicles to aircraft engines and military radars. TRUMP SIGNALS SUPPORT FOR SUBMARINE DEAL Albanese got welcome support from Trump for the A$368 billion ($239.46 billion) AUKUS agreement, reached in 2023 under then-President Joe Biden. Under the deal, Australia is to buy U.S. nuclear-powered submarines in 2032 before building a new submarine class with Britain. While Trump has been eager to roll back Biden-era policies, he signaled his intent to back the AUKUS submarine agreement, months after his team launched a review of the deal over concerns about the ability of the United States to meet its own submarine needs. Navy Secretary John Phelan told the meeting the United States and Australia were working closely to improve the original AUKUS framework for all three parties "and clarify some of the ambiguity that was in the prior agreement." Trump said these were "just minor details," adding that "there shouldn't be any more clarifications, because we're just – we're just going now full steam ahead, building." Ahead of Monday's meeting, Australian officials emphasized that their country is paying its way under AUKUS, contributing $2 billion this year to boost production rates at U.S. submarine shipyards, and preparing to maintain U.S. Virginia-class submarines at its Indian Ocean naval base from 2027. The delay of 10 months in an official meeting since Trump took office had caused some anxiety in Australia as the Pentagon urged the Australian government to increase defense spending. The two leaders met briefly on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month. The rare earths agreement came a week after U.S. officials condemned China's expansion of rare earth export controls as a threat to global supply chains. Resource-rich Australia, wanting to extract and process rare earths, put preferential access to its strategic reserve on the table in U.S. trade negotiations in April.  As part of the rare earths agreement, Trump and Albanese agreed to cut permitting for mines, processing facilities and related operations in order to boost production. The deal called for cooperation on the mapping of geological resources, minerals recycling and efforts to stop the sale of critical minerals assets "on national security grounds." This was an oblique reference to China, which has bought major mining assets across the planet in the past decade, including the world's largest cobalt mine in Congo, from U.S.-based Freeport-McMoRan in 2016. $1 = 1.5368 Australian dollars) (Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney, Andrea Shalal, Steve Holland, Jarrett Renshaw and David Brunnstrom in Washington, and Ernest Scheyder in Houston; Additional reporting by Liz Lee in Beijing; Editing by Kate Mayberry, Colleen Jenkins, Will Dunham and Nick Zieminski)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By Ashitha Shivaprasad and Sam Li (Reuters) -Oil prices declined for a second day on Tuesday as concerns about supply and risks to demand from the trade dispute between the U.S. and China, the world's top two oil consumers, weigh on the markets. Brent crude futures fell 30 cents, or 0.49%, at $60.71 a barrel at 0746 GMT. The U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) contract for November delivery, set to expire on Tuesday, down 29 cents, or 0.5% to $57.23. The more active December contract was down 31 cents, or 0.54%, at $56.71. Prices declined to their lowest since early May in Monday's session on the concerns about slowing economic growth from the recent escalations in the U.S.-China trade dispute. Both WTI and Brent have shifted to contango market structures, where prices for immediate supply are lower than for later delivery and which typically indicates that near-term supply is abundant and demand is declining. Prices have slumped as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies including Russia, known as OPEC+, have pushed ahead with plans to add more oil to the market. This has led analysts to predict a surplus of crude this year and next, with the International Energy Agency last week projecting a global surplus of nearly 4 million barrels per day in 2026. "The continued weakening of Brent's monthly spread structure indicates that the pressure from oversupply in the crude oil market is gradually materializing," analysts from China's Haitong Securities said in a note on Tuesday. "This will dampen market expectations and curb investors' willingness to chase gains, limiting the potential for oil prices to rebound." The current pessimistic outlook for oil is likely to extend into 2026, with analysts at Goldman Sachs saying on Tuesday they forecast Brent prices may drop to $52 a barrel by the fourth quarter of next year. The Goldman analysts attributed the past week's slump in Brent prices to indications "the long-anticipated global surplus has started to show" in satellite data on global oil stockpiles and inventory data from the IEA and the Energy Information Administration in the U.S. Still, if the U.S. and China reach some broader agreement in their trade dispute, that could provide a boost, or at least a floor, for prices. Investors are pinning their hopes on a planned meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping next week in South Korea but disputes over tariffs, technology, and market access remain unresolved. "As long as there's no new bearish news, oil prices have a natural need to rebound from oversold levels. At present, if there are expectations of improvement in China–U.S. economic and trade talks, the probability of a rebound increases," said Yang An, analyst at Haitong Securities. Overall though, the market remains watchful for further signs of inventory builds. Expectations are that U.S. crude oil stockpiles likely rose last week, a preliminary Reuters poll on Monday showed, ahead of weekly reports from the American Petroleum Institute and the EIA. [EIA/S] (Reporting by Ashitha Shivaprasad in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonali Paul and Christian Schmollinger)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By Liam Mo, Che Pan and Fanny Potkin BEIJING/SINGAPORE (Reuters) -Chinese memory chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) plans an initial public offer in Shanghai as soon as the first quarter of next year, eyeing a valuation of up to 300 billion yuan ($42.12 billion), two sources briefed on the matter said. Founded in 2016 with government backing, CXMT leads China’s strategic push to build a foothold in a global DRAM market long dominated by companies from Japan, South Korea and the United States. China's leading manufacturer of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) aims to raise between 20 billion and 40 billion yuan from the offering, the two sources said. A third source said it aimed to raise about 30 billion yuan and could unveil its prospectus to investors as early as November. The sources, who sought anonymity because the plan is not yet public, cautioned that IPO details such as timeline, offer size, and valuation, could change depending on market demand. The IPO plans come as China's semiconductor stocks have surged, with the benchmark CSI CN semiconductor index rallying about 49% year-to-date. The company's parent kicked off preparations in July known as the "counselling process" for an initial public offer and hired state-owned investment banks China International Capital Corporation and CSC Financial. However, that disclosure did not say where and when the company would go public. CXMT did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Two of the sources said they expected CXMT's IPO to attract strong demand from domestic investors looking to throw their bets behind China's quest for self-sufficiency. CXMT is investing heavily in catching up with market leaders such as South Korea's SK Hynix and Samsung, particularly on high bandwidth memory. This is a specialised type of DRAM crucial to developing advanced processors such as Nvidia's graphics processing units that can be used for generative AI work. PROGRESS IS CRUCIAL TO CHINA AFTER U.S. CURBS CXMT's progress has become more crucial to China after the U.S. curbed its access to HBM chips in December in a bid to hobble the country's AI progress. The timing of its offering comes amid significant shifts in the global memory market. U.S. memory maker Micron Technology plans to exit China's server chip business two years after Beijing banned its products from critical infrastructure, Reuters reported last week. The global rush to produce AI chips is tightening supply of memory chips used in smartphones, computers and servers, giving makers of such chips an unexpected boost. CXMT's capital expenditure, or capex, was estimated at about $6 billion to $7 billion in 2023 and 2024, with an increase of 5% expected in 2025, should the United States impose no further curbs, Canadian research firm TechInsights said. The firm is building an HBM back-end packaging fab in the commercial hub of Shanghai and aims to start production by the end of next year. Initial monthly output capacity of HBM wafers will be about 30,000, or slightly less than a fifth of South Korean's SK Hynix, said the third source, and a fourth, familiar with the matter. CXMT aims to start mass production of fourth-generation high bandwidth memory or HBM3 chips in 2026, two of the sources said. In September SK Hynix said it had completed its internal certification process for HBM4 chips and planned to complete preparations for mass production by the end of this year. "If it succeeds in the fourth quarter of 2026, they will use the G4 (16nm) generation for HBM3, which is still four years behind SK Hynix," said Choe Jeongdong, a senior analyst at TechInsights. ($1=7.1230 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Liam Mo, Che Pan and Fanny Potkin; Editing by Brenda Goh and Clarence Fernandez)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)