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The federal government has officially announced the end of fuel and foreign exchange subsidies.

Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, made this declaration during the presentation of the Nigeria Development Update by the World Bank in Abuja on Thursday, October 17.

Edun revealed that these subsidies had drained the country’s economy, costing over N10 trillion, which amounts to five percent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

“Fuel and FX subsidy are extinguished. The key thing here is that for the first time in 40 years, the vex tissue of fuel subsidy, and linked to it, the foreign exchange subsidy, costing five percent of GDP has gone,” he said.

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U.S.-listed Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSM) shares jumped 9% Thursday morning after the chipmaker posted robust quarterly earnings and projected a buoyant outlook on the back of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom.

The company, which supplies tech heavyweights such as Apple (AAPL) and Nvidia (NVDA), reported a 54% year-over-year rise in third-quarter net income of 325.26 billion New Taiwan dollars ($10.12 billion), up from NT$211 billion. The profit figure by the world's largest contract chip manufacturer beat the NT$300.78 billion consensus estimate of analysts polled by Visible Alpha. 

TSMC also reported a 39% jump in revenue to NT$759.69 billion ($23.64 billion) for the quarter and a 57.8% gross margin, above analysts' estimates and the guidance it gave for both in the second quarter.

"Our business in the third quarter was supported by strong smartphone and AI-related demand for our industry-leading 3nm and 5nm technologies," TSMC Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Wendell Huang said. "Moving into fourth quarter 2024, we expect our business to continue to be supported by strong demand for our leading-edge process technologies."

TSMC's upbeat earnings, in contrast to Dutch semiconductor-gear manufacturer ASML Holding's (ASML) downbeat outlook earlier in the week, restored investor faith in the AI boom Thursday. Shares of AI chip giants Nvidia (NVDA), Arm Holdings (ARM) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) all rose.

TSMC Chief Executive Officer (CEO) C.C. Wei called the demand for AI “real" in the earnings call, according to a transcript provided by AlphaSense.

TSMC American depositary receipts (ADRs) have almost doubled this year.

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The World Bank has said that Nigeria is seeing positive results from the economic reforms by President Bola Tinubu’s administration.

World Bank’s lead economist, Alex Sienaert, said this during a presentation in Abuja on Thursday, October 17, 2024.

Sienaert said Nigeria’s fiscal deficit has reduced from 6.2 percent in the first half of last year to 4.4 percent in the first half of this year.

He said the reforms have led to robust growth in service sectors, stability in the oil sector, and improvements in the foreign exchange market.

According to him, “We are seeing a fiscal consolidation underway with the fiscal deficit shrinking from 6.2% of GDP in the first half of last year to 4.4% in the first half of this year and that’s driven by a combination of expenditure being roughly constant in real terms, and revenues which are surging.

This surge in revenues is largely due to the removal of the implicit FX subsidy that was happening before, which was even larger than the petrol subsidy, which we talk a lot about.”

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Bitcoin (BTC) could make more headlines today as the leading cryptocurrency’s price hovers around a three-month high just below the closely watched $67,000 mark.

The digital asset, currently around 6% higher this week, has received a boost in recent days from significant inflows into spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds (ETFs). So far this week, the 12 U.S. funds have amassed nearly $1.4 billion in net inflows, with the ETFs on track to record strong weekly inflows.

The surge in ETF inflows indicate that the Federal Reserve’s half-percentage-point cut to its benchmark funds rate last month may be renewing investor optimism for the broader asset class.

Below, we’ll take a close look at the technicals on Bitcoin’s chart and point out key price levels to watch for.

Since topping out in early March, Bitcoin’s price has oscillated within a symmetrical triangle, potentially consolidating before breaking out above the pattern to continue a longer-term uptrend.

However, it’s worth pointing out that trading volumes on Coinbase (COIN), the largest U.S crypto exchange, have trended lower in recent months, indicating that many investors may still be on the sidelines, waiting for a decisive breakout.

Let’s turn to Bitcoin’s chart to forecast several potential price targets above the cryptocurrency’s record high and identify two key support levels investors may be watching.

To project our first upside target, we’ll use the measuring principle. This works by calculating the distance between the symmetrical triangle’s two trendlines near their widest point and adding that figure to the pattern’s top trendline. For example, we add $24,000 to $68,500, which forecasts a price target of $92,500, around 38% above Bitcoin’s current price.

When forecasting a longer-term bullish move, we can apply a bars pattern. Such a technique uses historical trends on the chart to speculate how a future directional move may play out. In this case, we’ll take Bitcoin’s strong trend higher that preceded the symmetrical triangle and reposition it from last month’s low, which projects an upside target of around $135,000.

Investors should monitor how the price responds to the key psychological $60,000 level. This area on the chart could find support from the symmetrical triangle’s lower trendline and a range of comparable trading levels positioned around the cryptocurrency’s 2021 peak.

A breakdown below the symmetrical triangle could see Bitcoin’s price drop to around $44,000, where investors may look for buying opportunities near a horizontal line linking a series of price action from February 2021 to January this year.

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United Airlines (UAL) was the best-performing stock in the S&P 500 on Wednesday after the carrier's executives said the airline industry had reached a long-awaited "inflection point," supporting the company's rosy business outlook.

Wednesday’s 12% advance put United shares at their highest level since February 2020, when the spread of Covid-19 first began to rattle travel stocks. The last few years have been a rollercoaster ride for airlines and their shareholders, who've weathered a global pandemic, soaring inflation, and the highest oil prices in nearly a decade.

United executives say the tide is turning in their favor, vindicating the bulls who have bid up airline stocks in recent months. The U.S. Global Jets ETF (JETS), composed of airlines, jet makers, and other travel stocks, has risen more than 30% since slumping amid a broad stock market sell-off in early August.

Delta Air Lines (DAL) shares rose nearly 7% on Wednesday, putting them, like United, at their highest level since February 2020.  

Airfare pricing trends improved throughout the third quarter as the air travel industry reached the "inflection point" United executives had forecast.

"We're seeing unprofitable capacity begin to exit the market, leading to the expected domestic yield improvement," CEO Scott Kirby told analysts Wednesday morning on the company's earnings call, a transcript of which obtained from AlphaSense.

Tough competition between America's largest carriers and budget airlines has put pressure on airfares, which have declined nearly 5% this year according to official inflation data.

United executives are optimistic that the worst of the industry's oversupply problem is behind them. Domestic passenger revenue per average seat mile (PRASM), a key performance measure for airlines, was positive in August and September after declining by more than 4% in July, according to chief commercial officer Andrew Nocella.

Nocella attributed much of the company's third-quarter revenue challenges to "weak yields" on domestic leisure travel. "As we look into Q1, we're selling these very same tickets at yields that are much higher," he said.

Travel demand has slowed from the heyday of post-pandemic "revenge travel" in 2022, but remains robust. U.S. airports have seen record-high traffic this year, according to TSA throughput data.

Healthy leisure travel has been supplemented by a pick-up in business travel as companies have either implemented return-to-office mandates or embraced hybrid work and encouraged remote employees to make occasional trips to offices. Contracted corporate revenue increased 13% in September, putting sales to corporate clients on track to fall just short of their 2019 level.

Improving corporate travel demand, which executives said was strongest at coastal hubs serving the tech, finance, and professional services industries, were "creating a great setup for 2025," said Nocella.

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The former deputy national chair (South) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Bode George, has disclosed that he would have left Nigeria if President Bola Tinubu had not sent Femi Gbajabiamila to appeal to him.

Recall that in January 2022, after Tinubu announced his presidential bid, George vowed to flee Nigeria, stating that: “I will move away from Nigeria. I’ll leave because he will be your representative in the international plane. Which investment will he bring here?

This is not the kind of person we can hand over this massive country to manage. He will be the greatest jok£ on the international plane. We should bother who should lead us.

If by whatever chance he gets to the villa, I won’t be part of this country. And I am not joking. I can go to Ghana and be watching with binoculars from afar. You will see what will happen.”

However, speaking in an interview with Arise TV on Wednesday, October 16, George said: “During the campaign period I stated it and I meant it; that if by whatever measure Bola Tinubu wins this election, I was going to get out.

Once they heard that, Tinubu sent his chief of staff, who is my little brother from Lagos state, Femi Gbajabiamila, to appeal to me.

“He came to say: ‘my boss said I should tell you, please be calm’. They knew they had wronged me. They said they were sorry.”

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