Oil whipsawed as Trump told the UN he must choose between a deal with Iran or moving to "annihilate" the country, hours before US and Iranian officials held a 3-hour meeting on the sidelines. OpenAI, Anthropic and Hugging Face brief the UN Security Council on AI safety today, IonQ jumped 12% on a Quantum Computing breakthrough, and McDonald's unveiled a sweeping turnaround plan at its investor day.

1. IRAN/OIL: Trump Threatens to "Annihilate" Iran, Then Holds a 3-Hour Meeting With Its Officials as Oil Whipsaws

Trump told the UN General Assembly he faces a choice between striking a deal with Iran or moving to "annihilate the Islamic Republic, and do it quickly," calling on all nations to enforce Iran's complete economic isolation, before telling reporters US and Iranian officials held a "very good" 3-hour meeting on the sidelines and that he expects a deal after November's midterm elections. Iran's military called the threat a sign of "strategic desperation," warning it stands ready to inflict strikes "more crushing" than earlier in the nearly 7-month conflict, while Iran's foreign ministry laid out conditions for ending the war: a halt to US "acts of aggression," an end to the naval blockade and economic warfare, and the release of Iranian assets. A senior Iranian official separately said Tehran could reopen the Strait of Hormuz within a week if the US eases military pressure and lifts its blockade. Oil moved in both directions on the headlines: Brent traded near $100.32, up about 1%, and WTI near $90.88, up 0.3%, after both had fallen overnight on hopes the talks would ease Supply risk; shipping through Hormuz remains far below normal, with confirmed transits averaging 6.98 million barrels a day in the 7 days to September 20, about 38% of the pre-war baseline. Bessent separately said the US is deciding whether to ban diesel exports, with the fuel already averaging $6.53 a gallon nationally.

  • A president threatening annihilation and then confirming a 3-hour meeting on the same day shows both sides using maximalist rhetoric as Leverage heading into talks rather than as a genuine closing of the diplomatic door.
  • Risk note: with Iran's reopening offer conditioned on the blockade lifting first and Bessent weighing a diesel export ban in the other direction, the next round of talks will decide whether oil's whipsaw resolves toward de-escalation or another supply shock.

2. AI SAFETY: OpenAI, Anthropic and Hugging Face Brief the UN Security Council as Trump Rejects Global AI Rules

Executives from OpenAI, Anthropic and Hugging Face are set to brief the UN Security Council's 15 members today amid warnings that increasingly powerful AI systems could soon improve themselves, slip beyond human control and threaten international security, with OpenAI's chief executive planning to urge leaders to adopt benchmarks for measuring AI capabilities and safeguards. The session comes as the US and China discuss a notification system for AI incidents that rise to a national security level ahead of Thursday's Trump-Xi summit in Washington. Trump told world leaders at the UN on Tuesday that he "rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control" AI, saying the US leads China "by a lot" and pledging to "encourage it, not rein it in," while UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned the technology's risks cannot be ignored, a stance directly at odds with Trump's. The Security Council first took up AI risk in 2023; Yoshua Bengio, co-chair of a UN scientific advisory panel created last year, is also set to brief the council today.

  • A Security Council briefing on AI losing control landing the same week Trump rejects global AI rules shows safety governance moving to the UN track precisely because it has no traction in Washington.
  • Risk note: with the US and China only discussing an incident-notification system rather than binding rules, a Security Council session with no enforcement power behind it risks becoming a record of warnings rather than a step toward oversight.

3. TECH/QUANTUM: IonQ Jumps 12% on a Real-Time Quantum Error-Correction Breakthrough, Lifting the Whole Sector

IonQ (NYSE:IONQ) shares jumped as much as 12% pre-market after the company said it successfully tested the industry's first real-time quantum error-correction decoder, validated across simulations of up to 408 logical qubits and 31.5 million logical operations, a capability that corrects errors without slowing execution and, unlike prior approaches, runs on a single off-the-shelf CPU. IonQ's quantum research lead called the decoder a practical path toward commercial-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing, and the announcement followed Monday's news of a hardware Partnership with South Korea's SDT to deploy IonQ's Superior 256 system. The breakthrough lifted the broader quantum sector, with Rigetti Computing (NASDAQ:RGTI) and D-Wave Quantum (NYSE:QBTS) both up more than 5.5% and Infleqtion gaining a similar amount; Webush reiterated an outperform rating on IonQ with a $75 price target. The move extends Monday's AI-driven rally, in which the Nasdaq Composite closed at a record for a 4th straight positive session.

  • A decoder that runs on a single standard CPU, rather than specialized hardware, is the kind of practical detail that separates a research milestone from a commercial one, which is likely why the whole sector, not just IonQ, moved on the news.
  • Risk note: IonQ shares closed little changed in the regular session before surging after hours, and the stock carries significant cash burn and dilution from recent share issuance, so the rally's durability depends on the error-correction claim holding up under independent scrutiny.

4. MCDONALD'S: Chain Targets Low-to-Mid-50% Operating Margins by 2030 in a Sweeping Investor Day Turnaround Plan

McDonald's (NYSE:MCD) used its Wednesday investor day in Chicago to detail its "McDonald's > NEXT" strategy, targeting an Operating Margin in the low-to-mid 50% range by 2030, up from 46.1% in 2025, with general and administrative spending falling to about 1.9% of system-wide sales by 2030 from 2.2% forecast for 2026. The plan includes "Restaurant > NEXT," equipment and technology upgrades featuring an AI-powered operating system called ArchIQ, and up to $8.5 billion in Franchisee support through 2036, including about $5 billion by 2030, on top of roughly $3 billion in typical annual Capital spending; the upgrades are projected to add about $100,000 in annual Cash Flow per average US restaurant, paying back franchisees' Investment in about 4 years. McDonald's also plans "Make It Golden," a multi-year employee Training program launching October 5, and is targeting 1.5 percentage points of global market-share growth each in chicken and beverages by 2030. The plan follows a quarter in which US same-store sales grew just 0.8%.

  • Funding franchisee upgrades directly, rather than mandating them unfunded, shows McDonald's treating its own margin targets as inseparable from franchisee financial health, a shift from past remodel cycles that left more of the cost with operators.
  • Risk note: the plan asks franchisees to add investment on top of standard remodels while beef and labor costs already pressure their margins, so the payback math needs to hold in practice for the rollout to avoid franchisee pushback.

5. EARNINGS: General Mills Reaffirms Its Outlook Despite a 67% Profit Drop Tied to Last Year's Yogurt Sale Gain

General Mills (NYSE:GIS) reported fiscal first-quarter net sales of $4.4 billion, down 3%, largely reflecting last year's US yogurt divestiture, with organic net sales essentially flat; diluted Earnings per share fell 67% to $0.74, driven mainly by a $1 billion gain on that divestiture a year earlier, while adjusted Diluted Earnings per Share fell 13% in constant currency to $0.75. Results were mixed by segment: North America Retail net sales fell 7% including the yogurt impact, North America Pet was flat, North America Foodservice organic net sales rose 4% on cereal and frozen-meal growth, and International organic net sales rose 4% on distributor markets, India and China. The company reaffirmed its full-year fiscal 2027 outlook, still expecting organic net sales between down 1.5% and up 0.5%, adjusted operating profit down 8% to 13% in constant currency, and adjusted diluted earnings per share between $3.00 and $3.20, while continuing to target at least $750 million in cost savings from its margin-management and transformation programs.

  • A 67% headline profit decline that is almost entirely a prior-year divestiture comparison, with Organic Sales flat and guidance reaffirmed, shows the underlying Business tracking management's plan even though the reported numbers look sharply worse.
  • Risk note: North America Retail's organic sales fell 3% and lagged retail-sales data by about a point on inventory timing, so the reaffirmed guidance depends on that segment's 2-point sequential improvement continuing rather than stalling.

6. PRE-MARKET MOVERS: Worthington Surges 16% on an Earnings Beat as TriSalus, Cracker Barrel and On Holding Also Jump

Worthington Enterprises (NYSE:WOR) shares surged as much as 18.76%, indicated near $70, after fiscal first-quarter adjusted earnings per share of $0.82 topped the $0.75 consensus on Revenue of $343.9 million against roughly $331 million expected, with chief executive Joseph Hayek citing rapidly growing Demand for the company's engineered tanks used in data-center liquid cooling. TriSalus Life Sciences (NASDAQ:TLSI) jumped more than 15% after the FDA cleared its TriNav Advance device, expanding its Pressure-Enabled Drug Delivery portfolio for liver embolization procedures. Cracker Barrel (NASDAQ:CBRL) rose nearly 9%, and On Holding (NYSE:ONON) added about 1% after Tuesday's investor-day surge, when the company set 2029 targets including at least 5.6 billion Swiss francs in net sales and authorized a $1 billion buyback. KB Home (NYSE:KBH) fell more than 1% after guiding fourth-quarter housing gross margins to 16% to 16.6%, below the 17.2% analysts expected. Six Flags Entertainment (NYSE:FUN) rose 1% on a report that activist fund Jana Partners is pushing for a sale, and Maplebear (NASDAQ:CART), Instacart's parent, gained more than 3% after adding Meta's Muse AI agent to its grocery platform, joining existing partnerships with ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.

  • Worthington's beat citing data-center cooling demand alongside IonQ's quantum breakthrough shows AI-adjacent infrastructure spending now surfacing in industrial earnings well beyond the chip and hyperscaler names that usually carry the theme.
  • Risk note: KB Home's margin miss lands as Mortgage rates sit at a 2-year high, and any further rate increase would pressure the same housing demand that guidance already assumes is softening.

7. MARKET SETUP: Futures Flat as Yields Ease, Fed Officials Warn on Sticky Inflation and the OECD Cuts Its Growth Outlook

US Equity futures were little changed early Wednesday, with S&P 500 futures marginally higher, Nasdaq-100 futures down 0.1% and Dow futures down 25 points, following a session in which the Nasdaq gained 0.5% for a 4th straight positive session and a record close while the S&P 500 finished marginally lower, about 0.7% off its all-time high, and the Dow fell 0.4%. The 10-year Treasury Yield held little changed near 4.94% to 4.98%, the 2-year near 4.72% to 4.79% and the 30-year near 5.27% to 5.32%. Boston Fed President Susan Collins wrote that she sees "an increased likelihood" inflation stays notably above the 2% target even as the labor market looks a bit stronger, while ECB board member Philip Lane warned a "second wave of rising energy prices" will likely keep inflation higher for longer; markets currently assign a 53.1% probability to another quarter-point Fed hike in October. Mortgage rates rose to a 2-year high of 7.12%, and mortgage applications fell for a 3rd straight week, down 1.5%. The OECD trimmed its 2026 global growth forecast to 2.9% from 3.4% last year, crediting AI-related infrastructure spending with offsetting a worsening energy shock, but warned that shock could still cut 2027 growth by 0.7 percentage points and add 1.1 percentage points to inflation if it deepens; the OECD raised its US 2026 growth forecast to 2.2% on heavy AI investment even as it projects US inflation at 3.6% this year. Asian markets were mixed, with South Korea's Kospi up 0.9% and mainland China's CSI 300 down 0.6%, while Japan's markets were closed for a holiday. Traders await earnings from General Mills, Paychex and H.B. Fuller, along with September flash PMI data.

  • The OECD crediting AI spending with propping up growth while warning the energy shock could erase 2027 gains shows the same AI investment wave now functioning as the global economy's main offset to a geopolitical risk it cannot otherwise absorb.
  • Risk note: with markets split roughly 53-47 on an October hike and 2 Fed officials already flagging sticky inflation, any hawkish surprise from Wednesday's PMI data or Barr's remarks could push yields back up just as mortgage rates sit at a 2-year high.