Here's your midday brief for Tuesday, October 7th. I'm Zoe Colkin for the Wall Street Journal.

Goldsword passed $4,000 a Troy ounce for the first time today, signaling that investors are

increasingly rushing into alternative assets amid concerns about the U.S. economy and anxiety

that President Trump could upend the post-war economic order underpinned by the U.S. dollar.

The precious metals futures this year have outpaced rallies seen during the pandemic and the

Great Recession and is the highest yearly jump since the inflationary shock of 1979.

The World Trade Organization said today that global trade in goods will increase 2.4% in 2025,

more rapidly than previously expected, as purchases of goods related to artificial intelligence

surge and a build-up in inventories in the U.S.

softens the impact of higher tariffs. However, the Geneva-based dispute resolution body

expects exports and imports of goods to grow at a slower pace in 2026.

Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, is investing up to

$2 billion in

Polymarket in a deal that values the crypto-based prediction market at roughly $8 billion.

This investment by one of the world's leading exchange operators is offering a big

vote of confidence in the platform's growth prospects.

Anne John Clark, Michelle DeVaree, and John Martinus have been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in

Physics for their discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization

in an electric circuit. The Nobel Committee for Physics states that this work provides

opportunities for developing the next generation of quantum technology, including quantum computers and quantum cryptography.

Heads up, an artificial intelligence tool helped us make this episode by creating summaries that were based on WSJ reporting and then reviewed and adapted by an editor.

We'll have more coverage of the day's news on the WSJ's What's News podcast.

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