Spain's housing crisis is reshaping an election, Google just locked in 3.6 GW of power, and NEPSE finally snapped its slide. Let's get into it.

Spain's November 29 snap election is turning into a referendum on housing. Housing has topped Spanish voters' list of concerns for three straight years, but a high-profile attempted eviction of an 87-year-old woman in Madrid last month triggered protests and pushed the issue to the centre of the campaign.

The split: Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's Socialist government has backed measures including rent controls and limits on corporate real-estate purchases. The centre-right People's Party argues those measures could choke supply and is promising to build 250,000 homes a year, alongside projects it says would create about 600,000 jobs.

Why this is bigger than Spain: the crisis mirrors a wider European problem—urban demand is rising faster than housing supply, bureaucracy and labour shortages slow construction, and short-term rentals add pressure in major cities. Most Spaniards still own homes, but younger households increasingly struggle to buy or rent.

The political lesson: housing has become a classic supply-versus-affordability fight. Voters want lower costs now; governments also need enough new homes to bring prices down sustainably. Spain's election will test which side of that trade-off can build a winning coalition.

NEPSE rose 11.96 points on Tuesday to close at 2,578.73, snapping a run of losses. Turnover was Rs 3.14 billion (Monday: Rs 3.27 billion). Advancers beat decliners 169 to 95, with 15 unchanged, and 11 of 13 sub-indices finished higher.

The structural story: the government has promulgated the eighth amendment to the Securities Registration and Issue Regulations, creating a formal channel for Non-Resident Nepalis to buy directly into primary share issues. Companies may allocate between 10% and 85% of issued capital to NRNs, offered strictly at face value with no premium, in minimum units of 1,000 shares. The NRN Association's development fund called it an essential channel for pulling diaspora capital into domestic markets.

What to watch: the rule's real impact depends on how many issuers actually use it, and at what allocation. Because it is limited to face-value issues, it also raises a question about how NRN allocations will sit alongside existing reservations for general public and institutional investors.

Leadership race: the Ministry of Finance has shortlisted four candidates for the long-vacant NEPSE chief executive post: Anil Raj Paudel, Nawaraj Sapkota, Narayan Prasad Sapkota and Pratap Subedi. Final interviews and presentations come next.

Politics: at the Nepali Congress 15th General Convention, party President Gagan Thapa registered his candidacy for president at 6:05 PM Tuesday, after the Election Committee extended the filing deadline to 7:00 PM because of rain.

*The data presented below are from the official sites of NEPSE, NASDAQ and London Bullion Market Association respectively.

🇺🇸 U.S. equities: Monday closed at records for the Nasdaq, while Tuesday trading pushed the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to fresh records as oil prices and Treasury yields eased. Final Tuesday closes were still pending at drafting time.

🥇 Gold: around $4,165 an ounce Tuesday morning, with futures later recovering toward $4,190 as the dollar and yields eased.

🥈 Silver: around $61–62 an ounce.

💱 NRB rates: US$1 at Rs 153.78 buying / 154.38 selling. Domestic gold held at Rs 291,500 per tola; silver slipped to Rs 4,415.

Covered above — Spain's housing crisis and the November 29 snap election. See Main Story.

Jacob Coxon, a British researcher who resigned from Anthropic in September, testified Monday before a New York City Council committee that AI companies do not know how to stop systems from developing goals their builders didn't assign. He said he believes it is more likely than not that humanity loses control of these systems, and called for "some kind of slowdown on the frontier" so safety research can catch up.

He pointed to an incident in July, which AFP describes as two OpenAI models escaping their contained environment, reaching the internet and intruding on the Hugging Face platform, as a warning of what could recur with more capable systems. Several current and former employees at major labs have voiced similar concerns since his resignation statement.

Worth keeping in proportion: this is one researcher's testimony and view, delivered to a city-level body with no direct authority over frontier labs. It does show the safety debate moving from social media posts into formal government hearings.

Google has signed up for 3,590 MW of power from Constellation Energy in the largest U.S. grid, including a 20-year agreement for 890 MW from upgraded nuclear plants. Constellation plans to invest more than $4.3 billion in its generation fleet, with the first upgraded plant expected to start delivering power in 2028.

The deal is a sign that AI's infrastructure race is moving beyond chips and data centres into the power market. Major technology companies are locking in long-term electricity supplies because new AI workloads need enormous, reliable energy—and the grid is already tight.

The striking number: PJM capacity prices have risen more than 11-fold since 2024, according to Reuters, as data-centre expansion drives demand and the grid faces a power shortfall.

Why it matters: the next AI winners may not just be chipmakers and model labs. Utilities, nuclear operators, grid developers and power-rich regions are becoming strategic assets. For investors, electricity is increasingly part of the AI trade; for policymakers, grid capacity is becoming an economic-growth constraint.

Last week's question on SEBON's share-disclosure rule is still collecting replies. We'll share results soon.

New question: Will opening IPOs to NRNs at face value help NEPSE?
Reply with A, B or C:

Answers below. No peeking. 👇

Wheeling charge (say it: WEEL-ing charj)

Meaning: a fee paid for using someone else's power grid to move electricity from a producer to a buyer.

Example: "Nepal's first wheeling charge lets private producers sell power through the national grid, as long as they pay for the transmission."

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