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Morning edition · Wednesday, 28 October 2026 · 08:30 CET

A still day costs more than a stormy one; the meter noticed before the speeches did.

The wind left Germany on Tuesday and Wednesday's power cleared at €249.21 a megawatt hour. Israel's count gives no bloc 61 yet, the Fed decides tonight with the three-month bill above its ceiling, and two storms left Britain counting reconnections. Eleven desks, every number sourced.

Morning 08:30 · Evening 17:30 · Sunday 10:00, Berlin time

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ENERGY · LEAD Chart

The wind left on Tuesday, and Wednesday's bill came due

Germany's day-ahead power price rose from €13 on a stormy Sunday to €249 for today. The grid did exactly what it was built to do. The question is what you build so that it has to do it less often.

On Sunday, a storm blew across Germany and power was almost free. Today it is not. The German-Luxembourg day-ahead price for delivery on Wednesday 28 October averages €249.21 per megawatt hour, according to SMARD, the Bundesnetzagentur's data portal. On Sunday 25 October it averaged €13.12. It is the dearest day since 14 September, when the average reached €256.55. Desk arithmetic: today's power costs about nineteen times Sunday's.

Yesterday evening's note reported the auction result. This morning SMARD has added the other half of the story: what the plants actually did on Tuesday, the day the wind dropped. It explains the price better than any speech will today.

Energy & Industry · 3 min · Read the piece →

Desk notes

GEO-ECON · DESK NOTE

Two maps of the same water

On Sunday CENTCOM's commander said Hormuz's main lanes were free of Iranian mines. On Tuesday Iran said another tanker hit one. Shipowners have to plan against both statements at once.

Geo-economics · 2 min · Read the piece →

ORDINARY · DESK NOTE

Ordinary Ledger: 25,900 unpaid endings

Allianz Trade now expects 8% more company insolvencies in Germany this year, the most in 13 years, and no fall before 2028. Every one of them starts as an invoice that is not paid.

Ordinary & Inherited Life · 2 min · Read the piece →

TECH · DESK NOTE

A door held open for 60,000

Microsoft is offering voluntary exit packages to about 60,000 people, roughly a quarter of its staff, on the eve of its quarterly results. Read the payroll line beside the capital-spending line.

Tech & Compute · 2 min · Read the piece →

End of edition · added

Before you close the tab

One thing you can do this week

This week, if you owe a small business money, a plumber, a printer, the café that did the catering, pay the invoice on the day it is due rather than at the last possible moment. Allianz Trade expects 25,900 company insolvencies in Germany this year, the most in 13 years 2. An invoice paid on time is the cheapest support a local firm can get.

A habit, not advice.

What went right

Scientists at The Wertheim UF Scripps Institute have found new compounds, sphaeriaurantins, made by rare soil bacteria, that in laboratory tests cleared 99.9% of a multidrug-resistant malaria parasite from blood and liver cells 1. They came from a collection of 122,550 microbial strains gathered over 80 years 1. The road to a medicine is long, the researchers say, but old freezers full of patient collecting are still paying out 1.

The day in one sentence

The wind dropped and Wednesday's German power cost €249 a megawatt hour, Israel's count has handed no one 61 seats yet, and the Fed decides tonight: a day for meters and tallies, not speeches.

In euros at home

Super E10 cost €2.059 a litre on the German average at 17:01 on Tuesday, 3.0 cents less than the day before, according to Tankerkönig's market briefing on official MTS-K data 3. Over the month, the daily average fell from €2.261 on 28 September to €2.049 on 27 October, a drop of 21.2 cents, mainly because the fuel-price brake cut energy tax by 17 cents a litre from 1 October 3. Desk arithmetic: a 50-litre tank at Tuesday's daily average costs about €102.45, some €10.60 less than four weeks earlier.

Desk arithmetic on the cited national averages. Prices differ by station, region and time of day. Nothing here is advice.

Small words

Credit insurance

A policy a supplier buys so that, if a customer fails to pay an invoice, the insurer covers much of the loss. It is why credit insurers watch insolvencies so closely: Allianz Trade insured business transactions worth €1,400 billion worldwide in 2025 and tracks more than 83 million companies 2. When its forecast moves, it is because its own invoices are on the line.

Sources for this section

  1. Potential antimalarial compound discovered in natural products collection — UF Health, 27 Oct 2026
  2. Deutsche Insolvenzen steigen 2026 um 8 % auf höchsten Stand seit 2013 und bleiben 2027 unvermindert hoch — Allianz Trade, 27 Oct 2026
  3. Marktbriefing — Tankerkönig (MTS-K data), 27 Oct 2026, data 04:01 and 17:01 CET, retrieved 28 Oct 2026, 05:20 CET

Commentary for information only. Not investment, legal, tax, medical or political advice. "Desk arithmetic" is our own calculation from the cited figures.

Charts and data in this edition