• US equity markets advanced, bolstered by a rebound for semiconductor and memory stocks and a fall in oil prices – Dow added +139-points or 0.27%. Cisco Systems Inc (+3.94%) and American Express Co (+3.07%) rallied over >3%. Goldman Sachs Group Inc rose +2.56% after the investment bank won deals to manage a combined US$70B in retirement assets for Verizon Communications Inc (down -0.49%) and Lockheed Martin Corp (-1.84%). International Business Machines (IBM) Corp (down -2.23%) and Salesforce Inc (-2.45%) fell over >2%. A Bloomberg report said Starbucks Corp (up +2.45%) had tapped artificial intelligence (AI) to replace applications it currently purchases from IBM and Microsoft Corp (+0.27%). Starbucks spends ~US$400M annually on software, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Anand Varadarajan told workers in an internal forum earlier this year, adding that "There's clear opportunities to reduce the spend in software,"