LME Nickel Stocks down 192 MT to 280,674 MT

A bug, identified by AI, could take down 70% of the internet

Your IT manager doesn’t have time to recover your email password this week, since over half of the internet needs to be fixed. Yesterday, developers released vital patches for PHP, a programming language that powers roughly 70% of the world’s websites, warning that if those patches aren’t manually deployed ASAP, hackers could cause serious damage.

What happened (for those of us with a BA)? Multiple researchers using AI independently discovered the bug over the summer, and they formed a secret, informal group to try and patch it. They announced the patch on Monday and released it yesterday at 10am ET. The overhaul of PHP was a huge undertaking, with developers writing over 10,000 lines of code to fix the bug. But that’s just the beginning, because now hackers can try to reverse engineer the patch and target other vulnerable parts of the system:

• Experts said hackers could use the vulnerability to alter websites, run their own code on servers, and steal data.
• Developers ranked the severity of the threat a 9.2 out of 10.

AI is solving the problems it created

Researchers discovered and helped patch the bug with AI’s help so that hackers using supercharged AI models won’t be able to exploit it. The bug found in PHP was actually first flagged years ago, but it was considered low priority, as it was deemed too complicated for hackers to manually access. Now, with AI, they could untangle the system in hours or even seconds.

Ami Luttwak, co-founder of Google’s Wiz cybersecurity team, which helped identify the PHP bug, said this was “the most severe AI vulnerability that was ever found.”

Who should be worried? Basically any WordPress site is at risk. Some providers urged users to take down their sites if they weren’t able to immediately make updates. Finland and the Netherlands took some government sites offline to prevent attacks. Some Wikipedia pages, 4Chan, and BBC sites that host episodes of Doctor Who went dark this week, but the sites’ owners haven’t confirmed whether or not it was to protect the sites. Cybersecurity experts are waiting to see if hackers manage to disrupt any major sites over the next few days.—MM

Holiday air travel could be the most expensive in a decade

What’s causing the surge?

Everyone is getting coupon books for Secret Santa this year. Holiday air travel is shaking out to be its most expensive in 10 years, according to Hopper’s 2026 Holiday Travel Index. The average domestic round-trip flight for Thanksgiving is hovering around $402, a 31% jump from last year, while Christmas flights cost $452, up 23%.

What’s causing the surge? The biggest culprit is the ballooning cost of jet fuel. The Iran war has rapidly driven up energy prices: The average monthly spot price for jet fuel is at $4.50 per gallon, a 91% increase from February, before the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran. United Airlines cut its profit outlook yesterday for this year because of fuel prices.

Airlines are betting that you’ll still pay

Delta CEO Ed Bastian told analysts this month that there has been “limited amount of resistance” to price increases, likely because the top 40% of US households (most of Delta’s customers) have more money than they did a few years ago. 

There are a few things you can do to try and protect your wallet during the holidays besides the old hack of buying flights in incognito mode. (And AI assistants may cause more grief than they’re worth.)

• Book flights three to five weeks in advance, so for Thanksgiving, that’s…now. Travel site Kayak found that airfare jumped 16% the week before Thanksgiving and 21% during the week of Turkey Day.
• Avoid high-traffic days if you can, or even fly on the holiday itself. Sunday, Nov. 29 is expected to be one of the busiest and most expensive travel days of the year: A round-trip flight returning Sunday averages about $604 but drops to $473 with a Monday flight home.
• Flying direct and booking a flight departing before 9am can also decrease the chance of expensive delays and last-minute changes.

It could continue into 2027. Ryanair’s CEO warned yesterday that fuel costs could push European fares up by another 20% over the next year. —MM

Nickel Rallies Past $16,000 on Prospect of Indonesia Output Cuts
2026-10-21 10:23:04 GMT


By Bloomberg News
(Bloomberg) -- Nickel rose for a fourth day as the prospect
of coordinated output cuts by Chinese producers in Indonesia
raised expectations of tighter supply. Copper dropped after a
large delivery into exchange warehouses. 
Futures for nickel climbed as much as 2.9% to exceed
$16,000 a ton on the London Metal Exchange, building on gains
since hitting a nine-month low last Thursday.
Executives from several major Chinese nickel producers are
considering potential output curbs at their Indonesian
operations, including plants that produce a key feedstock for
batteries. A previous attempt to agree on cuts in August was
unsuccessful.
Read More: China Nickel Firms Plan to Discuss Cutting
Indonesian Output
“What everyone is really focused on right now is the size
of the production cuts,” said Gao Yin, an analyst at Shuohe
Asset Management Co. “The numbers being circulated in the market
are quite significant.” 
Producers in Indonesia have been grappling with weaker
prices and rising costs, while tighter mining quotas have also
constrained ore supplies. The Southeast Asian nation dominates
global nickel production, making changes to output there a key
driver for the market.
In copper, prices dropped as much as 1% after 38,350 tons
of metal was warranted in LME warehouses, lifting readily
available stocks to 188,400 tons, the highest level since July.
Spot copper prices have rallied above futures over recent
weeks, in a condition known as backwardation that creates an
incentive for stockholders to deliver metal against short
positions they hold against their inventories, rather than
rolling those hedges forward at a loss. 
The bulk of the inflows were seen in the US, where futures
prices on Comex have fallen to trade near parity with the LME
over recent sessions. The collapse in the spread has come into
sharp focus in the copper market, because it reduces the
incentive to ship metal into the US and deliver it into Comex
warehouses. Traders have moved record volumes of copper to the
US over the past 18 months due to the possibility that President
Donald Trump will impose tariffs on the metal, but there are
growing doubts about whether he will. 
Even so, traders including Hartree Partners LP have built
large positions in nearby LME contracts that could prove
lucrative if tariffs are imposed, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.
If tariffs are announced, traders could make a profit by buying
near-dated LME contracts, and then withdrawing metal from LME
warehouses in the US and delivering it against New York futures
contracts once the new duties are implemented. 

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