Marketnews

Volkswagen closed 5.6% lower on Friday after slashing its 2026 profit guidance. The number that did the damage isn't the share price — it's the margin. VW now expects a full-year operating margin of "1% at the most" , down from the 4.0–5.5% it was guiding to. That's the profit of Europe's biggest carmaker compressed into a rounding error. The cause: €10bn (about $11.5bn) of one-off charges, roughly €6bn of it an impairment written off Porsche AG . It's the biggest single entry on today's movers board . Why Porsche is the €6bn hole Porsche's own operating margin was 1.1% last year — for a company whose entire investment case was that s…

The Bank of Japan raised its policy rate by 25 basis points to 1.25% on Friday — the highest Japanese rates have been in 31 years. Then everything that was supposed to follow didn't. The yen fell , with the dollar pushing past 157 yen. The Nikkei 225 rose about 1.4% . Ten-year JGB yields dropped to roughly 2.98%, a third straight session lower. The textbook says a rate hike lifts the currency. Here's why this one did the opposite. The hike was the least surprising part of the day 1.25% had been priced in for weeks — Nikkei Asia flagged it as effectively settled a week before the meeting. What traders were actually waiting on was the guidance,…

The numbers The Bank of England left Bank Rate at 3.75% on Thursday — but the vote was 6–3 , with chief economist Huw Pill, Megan Greene and Catherine Mann all voting to raise it to 4.00% immediately, as reported by Reuters and Euronews. A third of the committee now wants a hike. The print that set this up: UK CPI inflation rose to 3.1% in August from 2.9% in July, per the Office for National Statistics. Underneath, core CPI was unchanged at 2.6% and services inflation unchanged at 3.4% . Goods did the work, jumping to 2.7% from 2.2%, with motor fuel up 23.0% year-on-year and petrol at 161.3p a litre — the highest since November 2022. Food in…

Soitec (Euronext Paris: SOI) closed up 11.6% at €137.30 in Tuesday's Paris session — Saxo's morning wrap logged the move at +13.4% — after JPMorgan moved the French wafer maker from Neutral to Overweight and doubled its price target from €98 to €200 . An upgrade on its own doesn't do that. The revisions underneath it do. Analyst Craig McDowell raised his FY28 revenue forecast by nearly 32% to €1.057bn and took adjusted EPS to €6.63 from €1.42 — that's a 4.7x change to the earnings line, not a nudge. The whole case is one segment Silicon photonics. McDowell sees Photonics-SOI revenue clearing €1bn by fiscal 2030 , hitting a ~€450m run rate by…

The Fed raised the federal funds target by 25 basis points to 3.75%–4.00% this afternoon — its first hike since July 2023 , on a unanimous 12–0 vote , as reported by Fox Business. Stocks went up anyway: the S&P 500 added about 0.3% and the Nasdaq about 0.7% , per Yahoo Finance's live coverage. That's not a puzzle. Futures had the hike at 92.5% odds going in. A fully-priced move isn't news. The news was in the dots The new projections show 12 of 18 FOMC members at 4.125% by year-end — one more hike. Four want 50bps more . Only two see nothing further. So 16 of 18 policymakers think rates are still too low. Kiplinger also reports the Fed pushed…

The US 10-year Treasury yield topped 5% on Tuesday — a level it hasn't seen since July 2007 . Investing.com put the peak at 5.0266% , up roughly 86 basis points this year . The 30-year went with it to 5.3858% , and the 2-year hit 4.6819% , its highest since mid-2024. Trading Economics still had the 10-year around 5.01% this morning, so this isn't a spike that already unwound. Why it broke now Two separate things are pushing, and they're worth keeping apart. The front end is a Fed story. Futures put 92–94.5% odds on a 25bp hike when the FOMC wraps today , taking the target from 3.50–3.75% to 3.75–4.00% . That would be the Fed's first increase…

China put out its monthly activity dump this morning, and it told two completely different stories depending on which line you read. The factories are humming. The shoppers and the builders are not. That gap is now the single most important number in the world's second-largest economy — and it reaches a lot further than Shanghai. The numbers Industrial output: +5.2% YoY in August, up from +4.5% in July and ahead of the +4.8% a Reuters poll of 42 analysts had penciled in. Retail sales: +0.4% YoY , slowing from +0.6% in July and missing the +0.8% consensus. Fixed-asset investment: −7.2% YoY for January–August, deepening from −6.7% through July.…

Korea's Kospi opened Monday in a heap. The index was down 3.37% at 6,677.23 as of 9:03 a.m. Seoul time after gapping 217 points lower, and touched 6,669.34 — a 3.48% fall — inside the first hour. The KOSDAQ fell 1.75% to 806.27. Two separate things landed at once, and they did two different jobs. Worth keeping them apart. 1. The AI "slow down" call — this is what cracked the chip names On Sept 12, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote on his blog that "the pace of improvement in AI model capabilities should be slowed," adding: "Progress will still feel fast, but we need to use the time we gain wisely." Sam Altman agreed on…

Sam Altman says OpenAI won't list in 2026. In a Fortune interview published Sept 12 he said that "given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public" — and, asked directly about this year, "I would say not 2026. Yeah, we got a lot of stuff to do." The company has already filed confidentially. The number it's holding out for is a $1 trillion valuation; it had been eyeing a Q3/Q4 2026 listing and is now leaning 2027. Why he can afford to wait now The strongest "OpenAI has to IPO this year" argument was never Altman — it was SoftBank . It took a $40bn bridge loan to fund its Open…

The numbers The ECB raised all three of its policy rates by 25 basis points today, as markets had largely priced in. The deposit facility rate — the one that actually sets the floor for euro money markets — goes from 2.25% to 2.50% . Main refinancing operations move to 2.65% , the marginal lending facility to 2.90% . All effective 16 September 2026 . It's the second hike since June. What forced it, from the August euro area inflation data the Council was looking at: Headline inflation 3.3% , up from 2.9% in July Energy inflation 14.3% , up from 10.3% Core inflation 2.4% — down from 2.5% The staff projections moved up too. Headline inflation i…

China's August inflation numbers landed this morning and, on the headline, they look like the reflation story finally getting its legs back. Dig one layer down and it's mostly a barrel of oil and a shortage of memory chips. The numbers Consumer prices rose 0.8% year-on-year in August, up from 0.5% in July and exactly in line with the market forecast of 0.8% . Month-on-month, CPI rose 0.4% — the first monthly increase after three straight declines. Core CPI, which strips out food and energy, edged up to 1.0% from 0.9% . The bigger surprise was at the factory gate. Producer prices rose 3.8% year-on-year against a consensus of 3.6% , up from 3.5…

China's customs administration put out its August trade numbers early Tuesday, and the headline did exactly what economists had pencilled in. The interesting part is underneath it. The numbers Exports rose 25.0% year-on-year in August, matching the 25% Reuters poll consensus and accelerating from July's 23.9% , as reported by Reuters and FXStreet. In dollars that's $401.44 billion of goods shipped in a single month, per Trading Economics. Imports rose 28.2% against a 30% forecast — the one line that missed — up from 27.5% in July. The trade surplus widened to $119.09 billion from July's $112.5 billion , essentially bang on the $119.1 billion…

The won touched 1,334.7 per dollar in Seoul on Tuesday — the strongest the currency has been against the dollar since 4 October 2024, per the Seoul Economic Daily . It closed Friday at 1,345, and it was sitting in the high 1,400s in mid-July. That's a move of more than 220 won in roughly two months. The cause isn't a rate decision. It's memory chips. Korea's August exports came in at $98.25bn, up 68.7% year on year — the third-biggest month on record — and semiconductor exports alone were $46.65bn, up 209% , a fresh record and the third straight month above $40bn. That's a wall of dollars landing in Korean corporate accounts, and when exporte…

SoftBank Group (TYO: 9984) closed up 6.82%, just under ¥6,000 , on a day the US was shut for Labor Day. TS2 had it at ¥6,052 by midday — +8.26% on the day and +21.02% across two sessions , which added roughly ¥5.99 trillion of market cap in two days, about six times the face value of the bond that caused it . Two separate things happened. Don't mash them together. One: the bond. On Friday SoftBank priced a ¥1 trillion seven-year retail bond at a 4.75% coupon — the top of the 4.3–4.9% guidance range — per Bloomberg. Subscriptions opened Friday and close 16 September; the paper matures 16 September 2033. Proceeds go to AI investments and to ref…

The Kospi was at 6,910.78, up 3.34% (+223.57 points) in Monday morning trade in Seoul, per Seoul Economic Daily — back within touching distance of 7,000 after closing Friday at 6,687.21. Who actually did the lifting Two names. SK hynix +5.95% (₩1,745,000) and Samsung Electronics +4.21% (₩266,250), both as of 9:10 a.m. KST. Those two are more than half the Kospi's total market cap — so on weight alone they account for roughly 2.3 of the day's 3.3 percentage points. Nearly 70% of the move is just the memory duo. SK Square (+6.44%) and EO Technics (+6.32%) came along for the ride. The flows say the same thing: foreigners net bought ₩441.6bn and…

Volkswagen preference shares (XETRA: VOW3) rose ~5.9% on Friday to their highest level in eleven weeks, topping the Stoxx 600 — this on the day the company confirmed it is cutting 50,000 more jobs . Investing.com had the prefs +5.79% and the ordinaries +5.10% in early German trade. What the board actually approved "Future Plan 2030" got a unanimous sign-off. The 50,000 cuts sit on top of roughly 50,000 already agreed in late 2024 — call it 100,000 positions in total, with about 37,000 separation contracts already signed under the earlier round. Four German plants — Emden, Zwickau, Hanover and Neckarsulm — wind production down between…

The loudest thing in global markets today isn't a stock — it's a currency. USD/JPY is at 155.85, down 1.80% on the day per Trading Economics, a second straight session of yen gains. FXStreet had the pair at 155.40, off 2.07% in late London hours — its weakest dollar reading in about a month. For a G10 pair, a 2% day is enormous. Why it moved: the BoJ changed its own script BoJ board member Hajime Takata , speaking in Sapporo on Sep 2, said 2026 is a “regime change” and the Bank should hike in a “nimble and data-dependent manner” instead of the market's assumed metronome of 25bp every six months — Trading Economics says he floated outsized or…

Japan's five big trading houses — the sogo shosha — all ripped on Thursday. Mitsubishi Corp (TYO: 8058) rose as much as ~5.4% to ¥5,122 , per Investing.com, and was still up ~4.2% in a later session snapshot. Sumitomo +3.7%, Mitsui +3.1%, Marubeni +2.7%, Itochu +2.4%. They were among the biggest gainers on the Topix — and the Nikkei 225 still closed down 0.18%, which tells you how narrow the move was. What actually happened Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel sat down with Nikkei and said Berkshire is considering deepening its stakes in all five, and intends to hold them "for many decades." Berkshire already owns roughly $35.37bn across…

Korea's benchmark snapped a three-day rally hard. The Kospi closed at 6,562.72, down 273.08 points or 3.99% , and the Kosdaq fell 2.10% to 803.98, as reported by Seoul Economic Daily. Japan's Nikkei lost 2.9% and MSCI's Asia-Pacific ex-Japan index dropped 2%, per Reuters. Two names did most of the damage Samsung Electronics closed at ₩250,500, down 4.02% . SK hynix closed at ₩1,613,000, down 4.73% . Those two are now more than half the Kospi's entire market cap, so on the arithmetic alone they explain a bit over half the index's 3.99% fall. The rest came from SK Square -7.97% — a holding company whose main asset is its SK hynix stake, which i…

Oil spiking 4.6% on Middle East supply fears dragged US indices lower while Indian benchmarks barely budged. The real story is how quickly higher crude and rising bond yields feed into each other. Why the move happened US-Iran strikes raised worries about oil supply, sending Brent to $94.65. That immediately stoked inflation concerns, so the US 10Y yield climbed toward 4.79% and Japan’s 10Y hit 3% (highest since 1996). Higher yields make future earnings less attractive, especially for growth stocks, which is why Nasdaq fell ~1% and the S&P 500 dropped ~0.7%. Who gets squeezed first US tech felt the double hit from expensive oil and dearer bor…