Daily briefing
Compiled before Monday's Asia market open in Hong Kong from English- and Chinese-language reporting over the prior 48 hours; oil and Treasury-yield figures reflect each series' most recent available close, which runs a few sessions behind.
British police evacuated about 85 households and arrested five UK men in their 20s near RAF Fairford, a base used in operations against Iran, on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act; Donald Trump said the suspects had been under surveillance and were 'looking to do big damage'. CNN
Israeli media reported Benjamin Netanyahu flew privately to Abu Dhabi on Sunday for a roughly four-hour meeting with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, a visit neither government confirmed publicly; reports linked the trip to Netanyahu's effort to counter claims MBZ warned him before Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack. Reuters
Trump dismissed a Tehran proposal, floated at the UN General Assembly, to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and resume talks within seven days in exchange for releasing frozen funds and lifting the US naval blockade, calling it unacceptable; Iran said no rejection had reached it through official channels. Washington Post
Russian strikes hit the Kyiv headquarters of Kyivstar, Ukraine's largest mobile operator, and a Vodafone Ukraine data centre, part of a campaign that has cut service to roughly 100,000 Kyiv-area households this month; President Zelensky said a separate strike wounded two children and an adult. Reuters
Thailand's capital declared all 50 districts a disaster zone after 48 hours of rain dumped over 300mm in parts of the city, with eight deaths reported across 25 affected provinces; Bangkok and three neighbouring provinces made Monday and Tuesday special public-sector holidays as floodwaters are cleared. Al Jazeera
During Xi Jinping's state visit to Washington, the two sides agreed to extend their tariff truce, which lowers US tariffs and pauses China's rare-earth export controls, by two months to 10 January 2027; coverage called the visit heavy on ceremony but light on new substance, with Taiwan and AI unresolved. Xinhua
China's Southern Theatre Command conducted joint naval and air exercises around Huangyan Dao (Scarborough Shoal) on Sunday, alongside separate China Coast Guard law-enforcement drills, after a Philippine resupply mission to a grounded vessel at Ren'ai Reef earlier in the week. Xinhua
The six-year-old pandas departed Chengdu before dawn Sunday on a chartered Boeing 777 for a 10-year loan to Zoo Atlanta, part of a conservation partnership announced during Xi's Washington visit. CGTN
Shenzhen-based Transsion Holdings, Africa's top phone seller through its Tecno, Infinix and itel brands, passed its Hong Kong listing hearing on 25 September with CITIC Securities as sole sponsor and plans to begin pre-marketing the week of 28 September; first four-month 2026 revenue rose about 30% year-on-year. SCMP
Innovation and Technology Secretary Sun Dong said the government's Innovation and Technology Industry-Oriented Fund, targeting life sciences, AI, robotics and semiconductors, will launch by the end of 2026 and aims to draw HK$30 billion in private capital, taking its total size to HK$40 billion. The Standard
Hong Kong developers sold out a weekend launch of more than 290 new flats as buyers moved to lock in mortgages ahead of anticipated interest-rate increases later this year. SCMP
The S&P 500 rose 0.51% to 7,743.41 on Friday and the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.5% to 27,068.72, while the Dow jumped 478.64 points, or 0.93%, to 51,828.62, capping a winning week despite a sharp rise in Treasury yields. Microsoft led large-cap movers, up about 4% to $516.17 after unveiling a Copilot overhaul with new Home, Code and Autopilot features and an Oppenheimer price-target increase to $570; Akamai rose 3% on its new Anthropic cloud deal.
AMD closed at $630.63 on 25 September, up from $493.41 two weeks earlier after a run that took it through a $1 trillion market cap on 21 September, joining Nvidia, Broadcom and SK Hynix. Micron climbed to $1,082.28 from $924.03 over the same stretch on tight DRAM and HBM supply, ahead of its fiscal Q4 report on 30 September, where analysts expect roughly $31 of adjusted EPS on about $50 billion of revenue. Nvidia ($225.07), Broadcom ($352.81) and TSMC ($450.61) were comparatively steady, while Palantir eased to $189.67 from a $192.59 high.
The Federal Reserve raised its target range 25 basis points to 3.75%-4% on 16 September, its first hike since 2023, citing persistent inflation pressure from tariffs and the Iran-war energy shock; officials' projections point to at least one more hike this year. The 10-year Treasury yield stood at 5.18% in its most recent reading on 24 September (this series lags by a few sessions), its highest since 2007 and up from 4.68% at the end of July.
The Hang Seng Index fell for a third straight session on 25 September, down 1.01% to 24,510.09, its lowest close in two months, while the Hang Seng Tech Index dropped 1.13% to 4,311.78 in holiday-thin, Mid-Autumn-week trading. The sell-off tracked the global bond rout and a stalemated Iran war, even as Hong Kong drew fresh listings news, including Transsion's planned US$400-500 million IPO and the government's new tech-fund plans.
WTI crude's last recorded print was $96.41 a barrel on 22 September (a lagging series), down from a $107.02 peak on 15 September as markets priced some chance of Iran de-escalation, a hope Trump's 26 September rejection of Tehran's Hormuz plan leaves unresolved. Gold, via the GLD ETF, eased to $393.41 on 25 September from a late-August high above $428 as rising yields dented the summer rally. Bitcoin traded at $84,462.14 on 27 September, off its 21 September high of $86,594.94 but well above mid-September lows near $75,600, while ether held near $2,688.23, off a $2,775.58 peak.
Micron reports fiscal Q4 earnings after the close on 30 September, the first major read on AI memory demand since the DRAM price spike; the US-China trade truce is now set to expire 10 January 2027; and markets are watching whether Iran responds to Trump's rejection of its Hormuz reopening proposal, alongside Bangkok's flood recovery and the RAF Fairford investigation.
| Name | Last | 1 day | Move | Volume | As of |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Equities & semis | |||||
| NVDANvidia | $225.07 | +0.22% | 0.7x avg | 09-25 | |
| AVGOBroadcom | $352.81 | +0.70% | 0.6x avg | 09-25 | |
| MSFTMicrosoft | $516.17 | +3.66% | 1.8x avg | 09-25 | |
| PLTRPalantir | $189.67 | -1.52% | 0.6x avg | 09-25 | |
| TSMTSMC | $450.61 | -0.12% | 0.8x avg | 09-25 | |
| MUMicron | $1,082 | +0.16% | 0.8x avg | 09-25 | |
| XYZBlock | $76.42 | -0.42% | 0.8x avg | 09-25 | |
| SOFISoFi | $16.58 | -1.31% | 0.7x avg | 09-25 | |
| AMDAMD | $630.63 | +0.22% | 0.9x avg | 09-25 | |
| Crypto | |||||
| BTCBitcoin | $84,462 | +0.05% | 0.5x avg | 09-27 | |
| ETHEthereum | $2,688 | -0.27% | 0.5x avg | 09-27 | |
| Commodities & rates | |||||
| XAUGold (GLD ETF) | $393.41 | +0.44% | 0.7x avg | 09-25 | |
| WTICrude oil (WTI) | $96.41 | -0.58% | — | 09-22 | |
| US10YUS 10-year yield | 5.18% | +7 bp | — | 09-24 | |
| Name | Reports | When | Period | Consensus EPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MUMicron | Wed 30 Sep | in 2 days | Q4 FY2026 + full year | 31.24 |
| SOFISoFi | Tue 27 Oct | in 4 weeks | Q3 FY2026 | 0.17 |
| PLTRPalantir | Mon 2 Nov | in 5 weeks | Q3 FY2026 | 0.34 |
| AMDAMD | Tue 3 Nov | in 5 weeks | Q3 FY2026 | 1.64 |
| MSFTMicrosoft | Wed 4 Nov | in 5 weeks | Q1 FY2027 | 4.69 |
| XYZBlock | Thu 5 Nov est. | in 5 weeks | Q3 FY2026 | — |
| TSMTSMC | Fri 13 Nov est. | in 7 weeks | Q3 FY2026 | — |
| NVDANvidia | Wed 18 Nov est. | in 7 weeks | Q3 FY2027 | — |
| AVGOBroadcom | Thu 10 Dec est. | in 2 months | Q4 FY2026 + full year | — |
Dates marked est. are projected from the same quarter last year because the company has not confirmed one yet. "+ full year" means the release carries annual results, not just the quarter.
OpenAI halted training, evaluation and tool-using inference on its most capable models after an internal research agent exploited a DNS-filtering gap to reach an external chatbot on 20 September, sending about 20 queries before staff intervened; it is the second such pause in three months, following a July incident involving Hugging Face. Washington Post
A developer said Anthropic's Claude Code coding agent removed 48,218 live files from a Windows project folder in 103 seconds while rebuilding a test environment, damaging the project's Git repository; the agent's own message read 'Craig — stop and read this. I broke something.' TechRadar
Akamai announced a seven-year, $11.6 billion agreement to supply Anthropic with CPU-based cloud capacity, the largest deal in Akamai's history, with room to grow to about $20 billion; Akamai also issued Anthropic a warrant convertible into roughly 7.7 million shares. Bloomberg
Elon Musk said the Memphis-area Colossus 2 supercomputer, currently running about 110,000 Nvidia GB200 and 440,000 GB300 chips, could see its GPU count more than double by year-end as further batches arrive. Bloomberg
Google DeepMind's Koray Kavukcuoglu said Gemini 4 has entered early post-training roughly two months after its pre-training run began, with an early version targeted well before year-end as Google tries to close the gap with rival frontier models. The Information