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US sellers outnumber buyers by record 57.9% as rates freeze demand
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[1] US Housing Market Is Breaking. Will It Impact Stocks and Bitcoin Prices? (https://beincrypto.com/american-housing-crisi ...)[2] Why a record buyer's market still isn't helping buyers qualify | Mortgage Professional (https://www.mpamag.com/us/specialty/wholesale ...)[3] It's Now The Strongest Buyer's Market on Record, Driven by the Sun Belt | Morningstar (https://www.morningstar.com/news/pr-newswire/ ...)
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Sep 13 2026, 10:03
Houthis seize 3 Bab-el-Mandeb points as 129 Saudi strikes hit Yemen
Houthi forces took the Red Sea port of Mocha on Sept. 10, the government army's last major Bab-el-Mandeb outpost at Zubab on Sept. 11 and Perim Island, giving the militia artillery range over a waterway that carried roughly 12 percent of global seaborne oil before the current war. "The Houthis now hold enough ground that artillery alone can control this waterway," Li Zixin, an assistant research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, said in a CCTV commentary. "Houthi maritime restrictions on Saudi Arabia continue, and the kingdom's east-west pipeline has been shut by drone strikes." Saudi warplanes flew 129 sorties across seven Yemeni provinces in the 48 hours to Sept. 12, hitting Taiz, Marib, Hodeida, Al-Jawf, Saada, Al-Bayda and Hajjah, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said. Saudi Arabia's civil defense directorate said a Houthi strike on Tuwal district in Jizan province wounded two people and damaged buildings and vehicles, calling the targeting of civilian sites "a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law." The Saudi-led coalition separately accused the Houthis of missile and drone attacks on Abha, Khamis Mushait and Jazan. Brent crude has held a war-risk premium since the U.S.-Iran conflict began throttling Hormuz traffic, and the Bab-el-Mandeb seizure compounds it: with Hormuz constrained and the Saudi east-west pipeline offline, the kingdom's two export routes are simultaneously impaired. Red Sea war-risk insurance premiums and Cape of Good Hope rerouting costs rise with each escalation, extending voyage lengths and lifting freight rates for refiners in Europe and Asia. ## Washington declines to strike, and Riyadh's options narrow President Donald Trump said on Sept. 12 that Washington had spoken with the Houthis, who told U.S. officials they do not want war with America. The Houthis have not publicly confirmed the call. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman telephoned Trump twice on Sept. 10 to request U.S. airstrikes on Houthi targets, according to reports; Washington declined direct military action and offered intelligence and targeting support instead. The White House and Saudi officials have not publicly confirmed the calls. That restraint caps Riyadh's escalation ladder. Saudi Arabia can sustain airstrikes, but its ground partners are the weak link: the Yemeni government army lost Mocha, the Hanish islands and other positions within nine days, with some units withdrawing before contact. A full civil war restart is a real risk, and the Houthis are likely to convert battlefield gains into negotiating leverage rather than pursue total victory. Iran's position is deliberately narrow. President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Sept. 12 in India that Iran and Saudi Arabia "are not in a state of war" and that regional states should build security together. Three days earlier, Reuters reported, Pakistan conveyed a Saudi warning to Tehran: restrain the Houthis or the conflict becomes a wider regional security crisis. A senior Iranian official confirmed the message and said Iran "cannot control the Houthis." ## The Mecca pact faces its first test That exchange matters because Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey signed a defense agreement in August treating an attack on one as an attack on all three. Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said on Sept. 8 that any unprovoked attack on Yemen, or spillover from Yemen into Saudi territory, would trigger the pact. Israel's Jerusalem Post called it the first test of the Mecca defense alliance. Turkey's foreign ministry urged the Houthis to halt "aggressive actions immediately," while Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Qatar's foreign ministry condemned the strikes on Saudi energy sites. The historical template is the 2019 Abqaiq-Khurais attack, when drones knocked out 5.7 million barrels a day of Saudi processing capacity — about half the kingdom's output — and Brent jumped 14.6 percent in a single session, the largest one-day gain in the contract's history. That spike faded within two weeks because capacity was restored. A chokepoint seizure is harder to reverse than a damaged processing plant: it requires ground forces to retake terrain, not repair crews. For markets, the transmission chain runs from Houthi guns at Perim to war-risk premia on Red Sea transits, then to freight rates, then to delivered crude costs for European and Asian refiners, and finally to headline inflation prints that constrain central bank easing. Gold and Treasuries draw haven bids; tanker equities and defense names outperform while airlines and refiners with Red Sea exposure lag. The next markers are whether Saudi Arabia launches a ground offensive in Taiz and Marib, whether Pakistan's pact language is tested by further Houthi strikes inside the kingdom, and whether Washington's diplomatic channel produces any Houthi commitment on shipping. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
Sep 13 2026, 10:02
Prudential targets $3B capital boost in insurance footprint overhaul
Prudential Financial plans to cut the number of insurance and retirement markets it operates in by roughly half, a retreat Chairman and CEO Andy Sullivan said will free "well north of $3 billion" in capital for global retirement, asset management and select protection businesses. "Our goal, as we've said, is to be category leaders in those businesses," Sullivan said at a company event, describing the geographic reduction as a way to concentrate talent, capital and investment rather than a simple cost exercise. The Newark, New Jersey-based insurer, which trades on the NYSE under PRU, currently operates in more than a dozen markets. Alongside the exits, it targets $750 million in cost reductions by the end of 2028, with a first $150 million tranche due by the end of 2027. The savings come from four buckets: fewer management layers, technology spending on infrastructure consolidation, automation and artificial intelligence, expanded global capability centers in Ireland and India, and operational changes across all businesses including Japan. The company also wants PGIM, its $1.3 trillion asset-management arm, to lift its share of Prudential's earnings from about 12% to 25% over roughly five years. Sullivan said about half of that gain should come organically, mainly in direct lending, asset-backed finance and other private-credit capabilities, with acquisitions supplying the rest. Asset-management margins are targeted at 30% and eventually above that level, while Prudential aims for a further 150-basis-point cut in insurance operating expense ratios over three years. ## Exits and deals run in parallel, not in sequence Sullivan said Prudential is pursuing divestitures and acquisitions at the same time. Beyond asset-sale proceeds, the company could use reinsurance — third-party arrangements or its affiliated Prismic platform — to generate capital for transactions. Suspending share repurchases and issuing equity remain available but face high thresholds, he said. The acquisition net has widened beyond small and mid-sized asset-management deals. Prudential is evaluating targets in asset management, group insurance and a selective build-out of U.K. retirement capabilities. Within asset management it is looking at specialized buys such as infrastructure equity and broader multi-asset platforms that could deliver revenue and expense savings, with private alternatives and private credit of particular interest. In group insurance, it sees room to add dental and vision products and to reach employers below its current 1,000-employee sweet spot. In the U.K., Prudential recently announced a partnership involving Standard Life and CVC to enter the bulk purchase annuity market. PGIM's shift from a multi-manager structure to a single integrated platform was driven by client demand for fewer, broader relationships, Sullivan said. Only about 10% of PGIM clients currently use more than one asset class, which he called a significant cross-selling opportunity. The integrated distribution operation has already sold cross-asset mandates, and Prudential has not lost distribution talent it wanted to keep. He expects more than $150 million of costs to come out of the asset-management business over time, as previously separate units had carried duplicative leadership and functional roles. Public equities remain a drag. Sullivan said PGIM's Jennison business has seen systemic outflows, though earnings have been supported by equity-market performance. Outside public equities, management is encouraged by flow opportunities and mandate wins. ## Japan remediation runs in phases over 12 to 18 months Prudential remains on track with remediation at Prudential of Japan after halting sales to address sales-practice and conduct issues, but the precise date for resuming sales depends partly on talks with regulators and other stakeholders. Sullivan said the reopening will happen in phases over 12 to 18 months to test new controls, and that the company believes it is performing better than the assumptions already baked into its outlook. At Gibraltar, Prudential's other major Japanese life operation, Sullivan said the company found no systemic issues. Prudential contacted more than 6 million customers in Japan during the review, and responses pointed to fewer problems than management had expected. He described Japan as a long-term retirement opportunity given the country's wealth, longevity and retirement-income needs, adding that higher interest rates are helping Prudential offer more attractive yen-denominated products and should provide a natural portfolio tailwind over time. The objective, Sullivan said, is top-quartile earnings growth over a five-year strategic period, excluding the runoff of variable annuities, driven by global retirement, global asset management and select protection. For holders, the plan's value hinges on whether the $3 billion in released capital is redeployed above Prudential's cost of capital rather than returned, since Sullivan said every dollar deployed must clear that bar. The $750 million savings target is the nearer-term proof point: the first $150 million tranche lands by the end of 2027, and the pace of divestiture announcements between now and then will show whether the footprint reduction is moving on schedule. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
Sep 13 2026, 04:12
Oracle's GPU fleet ran 97.9% full after adding 300,000 chips
Oracle installed more than 300,000 GPUs in the three months through August and still could not keep a spare one on the shelf. Fleet-wide utilization across its AI infrastructure ended the quarter at 97.9%, the company said on its fiscal first-quarter 2027 earnings call, a figure that describes demand outrunning supply rather than a business running out of customers. "Of all the GPUs that came up for renewal in Q1, that capacity was renewed or resold at a 20% premium to prior contracts," co-CEO Clay Magouyrk said on the call. "The majority of those GPUs are 4 years or older." That second sentence is the one that matters for Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA). Computing hardware depreciates. Four-year-old accelerators predate the Blackwell generation entirely, and in a market with adequate supply they would rent at a discount to new capacity. Oracle's fleet repriced 20% higher instead. ## 850 megawatts, and a fleet that stayed full Oracle delivered 850 megawatts of AI capacity in the quarter, containing more than 300,000 GPUs — nearly triple the prior quarter's total and 73% of everything it delivered across all of fiscal 2026. Its Abilene, Texas campus, which serves OpenAI, took delivery of 131,000 GPUs on its own. The utilization number is the one to hold onto because of what it survived. A fleet can run near-full for a trivial reason: its owner stopped buying. Oracle's ran at 97.9% while capacity arrived at a record pace, which means the hardware was absorbed as fast as it could be racked. Cloud infrastructure revenue rose 121% year over year to $7.4 billion, accelerating from 93% in the fiscal fourth quarter and 77% for fiscal 2026 as a whole — the ninth consecutive quarter of acceleration. Customers are also committing ahead of the hardware. Oracle booked more than $30 billion of new AI contracts in the quarter, and remaining performance obligations — contracted revenue not yet delivered — reached $664 billion, up $209 billion year over year. Most of that growth came through prepayments or bring-your-own-hardware arrangements, which shifts some of the capital burden onto customers while Oracle builds. The scale of the build is visible in the cash flow statement. Operating cash flow hit a record $23 billion, but capital expenditure of $28 billion left free cash flow at negative $5 billion. Oracle raised $20 billion in an at-the-market equity issuance during the quarter and maintained full-year capex guidance of $90 billion to $95 billion, with net cash capex expected to stay at or below $70 billion after customer prepayments and supplier financing. ## Nvidia's own numbers point the same way Oracle's disclosure is customer-side evidence, and it has limits. The 97.9% figure covers one operator's fleet, not the industry's, and Oracle does not break it out by chipmaker. Oracle also presells most of that capacity under long-term contracts, so a full fleet partly reflects commitments signed quarters earlier. The seller's numbers, though, run in the same direction. Nvidia reported revenue of $96.2 billion for its fiscal second quarter of 2027, up 106% year over year, with data center revenue accounting for $89 billion of that. Chief financial officer Colette Kress told analysts to expect roughly 70% revenue growth in fiscal 2028 and said supply, not demand, would cap the figure. She also said Nvidia compute was running fully utilized across every cloud it serves. Kress put a number on what each gigawatt of installed capacity is worth to Nvidia. A gigawatt of Hopper systems represented about $18 billion of revenue opportunity, Blackwell runs about $25 billion, and the new Vera Rubin platform is about $40 billion. Customers paying a premium to keep four-year-old chips are unlikely to balk at those step-ups. The arithmetic also fits at the system level. Nvidia's $89 billion data center quarter works out to roughly 3.5 gigawatts of systems at Kress's figures. Oracle alone took delivery of 850 megawatts — about a quarter of that pace. The comparison is loose, since megawatts include power and cooling beyond the chips and Oracle buys from more than one vendor, but it shows how much of the build a single customer can absorb. ## What the market is paying for Nvidia shares traded around $218 as of Sept. 12, roughly 8% below their 52-week high of $236.54, at about 28 times earnings. Micron (NASDAQ: MU) fell 4.9% and Lam Research (NASDAQ: LRCX) dropped 5.7% in the same session, while CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) lost 6.1% — a reminder that the AI infrastructure trade is not moving in one direction on any given day even as the underlying capacity data stays tight. The bull case rests on a simple asymmetry. If Oracle's four-year-old GPUs keep repricing higher, the constraint on Nvidia is manufacturing capacity, not appetite, and the $40 billion-per-gigawatt Vera Rubin economics have room to run. If a future quarter shows that same vintage of hardware renewing at a discount, the shortage is easing — and that will show up in Oracle's renewal premium before it shows up in Nvidia's order book. Oracle holds its AI World event Oct. 25-28 in Las Vegas, with an investor day on Oct. 28, where management is expected to detail product strategy and long-term financial targets. The next utilization print is the one to watch. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.