Attendees take photos of the new iPhone Duo during an Apple event at the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple Park in Cupertino, California, on September 9, 2026. Karl Mondon | AFP | Getty ImagesHi, I’m Anniek Bao, writing to you from Singapore. Welcome to another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open. Apple arrives at a party that Samsung has mostly had to itself. And the South Korean firm did not wait long to upset its biggest rival. Hours after Apple revealed the biggest shakeup to its iPhone release cadence in seven years (including its first foldable phone), Samsung launched a campaign aimed squarely at iPhone loyalists. Elsewhere, markets have bigger things on their minds than the shapes of phones. US crude rose as traders quietly gave up on a quick end to the war with Iran. What you need to know todayUSA Crude rose above $100 a barrel again this week, its highest level in more than three months, as the war between the United States and Iran rages on and new attacks hit oil tankers and infrastructure in the region. Rising oil prices have raised the odds that the Fed will raise rates next week and provided fresh impetus to the European Central Bank’s decision to raise its own rate to 2.5%, as policymakers signal higher inflation and weaker growth are on the horizon. Meanwhile, U.S. stock futures were little changed ahead of Friday’s consumer inflation report, the last major data before the Federal Reserve meeting. ‘So far, same thing’ Trump’s $1 trillion ‘dividend’ plan hits a wall President Trump’s proposal to send checks to Americans (about $5,000 each) tied to a Republican victory in next year’s midterm elections sparked immediate bipartisan pushback, with critics on both sides pointing out the price tag in the face of an already swollen federal debt load. At first glance, the plan would be staggeringly expensive. According to 2024 census data, there are approximately 245.3 million adult American citizens. Giving each of them $5,000 would cost more than $1.2 trillion. New Delhi’s push to shore up energy security with solar and battery capacity is running into an uncomfortable dependency: Much of the critical hardware and minerals behind that development still originate in China, complicating India’s parallel effort to de-risk its economy from its northern neighbor. This is a “critical advantage” China has over India, and in the past Beijing has used its access to key resources and technology as a “geopolitical tool” to secure better trade deals, Ankita Chauhan, director at Wood Mackenzie, told CNBC. Ford leans into Kentucky Ford said it will invest $1 billion in a new paint shop at its Kentucky truck plant. The announcement came days after the Department of Transportation criticized automakers for their reliance on Chinese supply chains. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy expressed “deep concern” about Ford’s “manufacturing integrity” in the United States and its ties to Chinese companies that the Trump administration believes could be detrimental to the Detroit automaker and the American auto industry. Oracle Cloud Trades Higher Oracle shares rose after fiscal first-quarter results beat expectations, and cloud infrastructure revenue doubled from a year earlier due to AI-driven demand. Its shares added 4% in extended overnight trading. Investors have been rewarded with the same story all year: The only question that remains is how long triple-digit growth can continue from an ever-growing base. — Anniek Bao And finally… AI is losing its dominance in the US stock market. Here’s why a key tech stock volatility metric that traders have been watching all year is reversing, sending a signal to investors that the U.S. bond market may now be usurping AI optimism as the stock market’s main driver. The spread between the volatility of big tech names and the rest of the stock market, most often measured by the difference between Cboe’s VIXEQ and VIX indexes, reached record levels this summer as the tech giants behind the AI boom regularly moved hundreds of billions of dollars of market capitalization per day while the rest of the market remained stagnant.—Oliver Renick
