Key Takeaway:
Oil prices rose, U.S. stocks fell back, the U.S. dollar edged down slightly. The U.S. Treasury repo operations and inflation data remain key variables to watch in the equity-bond-FX markets.
【Today’s Main Theme】
Main Line 1: International crude oil futures closed higher; domestic crude oil also rose in tandem during the night session. Ongoing changes in energy supply and demand still need continued monitoring.
Main Line 2: The size of U.S. Treasury repo operations is about to be released. Long-end yields and the U.S. dollar trend remain influenced by signals from the Ministry of the Treasury on its debt management.
Main Line 3: U.S. stocks pulled back, but the AI hardware supply chain showed divergence and remained active. Intel, Qualcomm, and SK hynix outperformed the broader market.
Main Line 4: Supply constraints in resource products such as copper, antimony, and tungsten are strengthening. AI data centers, the new energy sector, and the manufacturing supply chain together are lifting attention on industrial metals.
Main theme: The domestic market focuses on CPI, financing balances, foreign trade growth, and technology venture capital investment policies. The corresponding A-share sectors include storage test and measurement, the copper supply chain, shipping, AI power infrastructure, and the venture capital ecosystem.
【U.S. Stocks】
Three major U.S. stock indexes closed lower. The Dow fell 1.18% to 52,786.07; the S&P 500 dropped 0.58% to 7,673.62; the Nasdaq fell 0.32% to 26,421.41.
Technology stocks diverged in performance. Nvidia fell 2%, Qualcomm rose 3%, Intel rose 9%, and SK hynix rose 4.8%. The Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index closed down 1.7%; iQIYI jumped nearly 12%; Baidu fell 7%.
【Macro】
The U.S. Dollar Index fell 0.13% to 98.787. The euro and the British pound rose slightly versus the U.S. dollar. The U.S. dollar against the Japanese yen fell to 153.61, and the U.S. dollar against the Canadian dollar fell to 1.3781.
The U.S. August New York Fed 1-year inflation expectation was 3.58%, below the prior reading of 3.63%. The 3-year inflation expectation was 3.2%, and the 5-year expectation held at 3%. The expected unemployment rate rose to 44.4%, the highest since April 2020. U.S. consumer credit in July was $18.06 billion, above the forecast of $11.65 billion.
The U.S. Treasury market remains the focus. The auction yield for 3-month U.S. Treasuries was 3.8%, 6-month was 3.89%, and the 3-year was 4.474%. The market is waiting for the U.S. Treasury to announce the size of its next round of long-term Treasury buybacks; the expected per-auction size is concentrated in the tens of billions of dollars, with a maximum potentially approaching $10 billion.
【AI Storage Chain】
AI computing power and the AI storage chain remain in high focus. Qualcomm and Amazon are pushing forward with multi-generation product collaboration. For next-generation AI data center infrastructure, Qualcomm’s management said relevant transactions will start contributing revenue in the quarter in December, and they remain confident about the $5 billion data center target.
In the storage equipment direction, the domestic storage test equipment market’s space is estimated to grow from RMB 4.8 billion in 2026 to RMB 15.5 billion in 2027, an increase of about 223%. The domestic localization rate remains low. Capacity expansion by Navis Hynix and CXMT (ChangXin Memory) and increased demand for testing of high-end DRAM and HBM are key areas to watch next.
Samsung and Mistral AI have established a strategic partnership and, together with ASML, are developing next-generation High-NA EUV lithography mask blanks. They plan to start applying them to DRAM production in 2028. Apple has signed a long-term NAND flash supply agreement with Japan’s Kioxia (Kairush/Keisei?). Supply-demand and pricing across the storage chain remain important variables for technology hardware.
【Technology Industry】
OpenAI released ChatGPT Images 2.5, emphasizing generation speed, the ability to maintain characteristics of people and pets, and localized editing precision. It also disclosed that the next-generation internal model-driven multi-agent system will complete mathematical proofs related to Navier–Stokes equations.
Meta launched Muse, a personal AI agent, offering a free version and subscription tiers of $20/month and $100/month. It covers digital tasks such as booking appointments and monitoring via home cameras, and it emphasizes confirmation for sensitive actions and a segregated environment.
A $5 billion AI cloud data center project in cooperation between Google and Blackstone has been delayed. The bottlenecks are concentrated in the supply of power equipment such as construction and delivery, permits, and transformers. South Korea has confirmed a natural-gas power generation project in Texas worth about $22 billion to serve electricity demand for AI data centers.
DeepSeek will cut the call prices for the Flash series models starting at 12:00 on September 10. The maximum price reduction for cache-hit queries is 60%; for cache-miss queries, the maximum reduction is 33.33%; and the maximum reduction for output prices is 11.11%.
【Crude Oil】
International oil prices rose. On the NYMEX, October West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures closed at $93.03 per barrel, up 1.69%; November Brent crude futures closed at $97.92 per barrel, up 0.95%. During the day, both WTI and Brent briefly surged; Brent’s intraday gain expanded to 2%.
U.S. strategic petroleum reserves fell by about 1.2 million barrels last week to 285.4 million barrels, the lowest level since 1982.
【Precious Metals】
Spot gold weakened. It fell below $4,370 per ounce intraday, then touched $4,350 per ounce. The intraday decline widened to 1.37%. The holdings of the world’s largest gold ETF, SPDR Gold Trust, decreased by 1.426 tons from the previous day; current holdings are 1,050.63 tons.
In China’s night trading, precious metals fell in sync. Shanghai gold main contract closed down 0.70% to RMB 949 per gram. Shanghai silver main contract closed down 0.25% to RMB 16,157 per kilogram. Shanghai Gold Exchange Gold T+D late session fell 0.77%, and Silver T+D fell 0.46%.
【Domestic Leads】
China’s Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.2%; the Shenzhen Component Index fell 0.52%; the CSI 300 fell 0.36%; the ChiNext Index fell 1.15%; and the STAR 50 Index fell 1.52%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell 0.38%, and the Hang Seng Tech Index fell 1.61%. Hang Seng Index futures in the night session closed up 0.22% at 25,281 points.
The total margin financing balance across the two markets increased by RMB 1.914 billion to RMB 261.4217 billion. Financing balance on the Shanghai Stock Exchange increased by RMB 0.499 billion, while that on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange increased by RMB 1.415 billion.
Customs data from the General Administration of Customs: China’s foreign trade grew 17.6% year-on-year in the first eight months. Wuhan has proposed measures to promote the development of the private equity investment industry, aiming to reach a total fund management scale of RMB 300 billion by 2028.
In bulk commodities, London copper hit a new record high, rising to $14,617 per ton intraday, while Shanghai copper moved above the RMB 110,000 per-ton threshold. Disruptions in copper supply, the United States’ early stockpiling, and strengthened attention to the copper supply chain from AI data centers and demand for new energy all contribute. Zimbabwe has immediately banned the export of antimony and tungsten; constraints on resource supply remain a key area to watch.
【Key Schedule】
09:30 China August CPI (YoY)
14:45 France July Industrial Production (MoM)
20:15 United States Weekly ADP Employment Change for the week ending August 22
23:00 U.S. Treasury releases the maximum amount for debt buybacks
【Risk Warning】
Changes in energy supply and demand, the scale of U.S. Treasury buybacks, U.S. inflation and employment data, Canada trade frictions, bottlenecks in AI data center construction, and resource export restrictions may all amplify cross-asset volatility.
For research and study only and does not constitute investment advice.