On November 2, 2016, a foreign exchange trader works in the foreign exchange dealing room of KEB Hana Bank’s main branch in Seoul, South Korea. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index fell 1.8% to 17,118.29 as the yen strengthened against the dollar. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1.4% to 22,819.92 and South Korea’s Kospi fell 1.4% to 1,979.13. Australia’s S&P ASX/200 fell 1.2% to 5,229.00 and the Shanghai Composite fell 0.5% to 3,106.66. Stock prices also fell in Southeast Asia and Taiwan. (Photo provided by Ryu Seung Il/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Null Photo | Null Photo | Getty Images
Hello, my name is Anique Bao from Singapore. Welcome to another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open.
Six months into the Iran war, the US government has stopped talking about when it will end.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in Panama that the U.S. Navy could maintain a blockade of Iranian ports indefinitely and send warships in and out of the region as needed.
Wall Street heard that and bought the stock anyway. The S&P 500 set an intraday record of more than 7,800, also set a new closing price record, and is on track for its third straight week of gains.
What you need to know today
Markets often overcome walls of fear. On Thursday, they broke through the naval blockade.
The S&P 500 closed at an all-time high of 7,798.99 after setting an intraday high. Nasdaq Composite 0.81% addition to 26,803.03. Futures were little changed, with two of the three major benchmarks heading for a third consecutive week of wins.
brent crude oil Prices for October delivery fell more than 2% to settle at $87.07 per barrel on Thursday, but rose slightly in early Asian trading on Friday. West Texas Intermediate Futures fell to $81.25 overnight, but traded slightly higher on Friday.
The small gain followed Hegseth’s latest statement on the Iranian port blockade. “The U.S. Navy can maintain a blockade like this indefinitely, because we will continue to rotate ships in and out, as we have in the past, and we will continue to do so,” Hegseth told reporters on Thursday, according to Reuters.
The cost of war still lurks
The UK economy is showing further signs of a long-awaited recovery, but the outlook is complicated by the impact of the Iran war and rising energy prices.
GDP expanded by 0.4% in the second quarter, following a 0.6% increase in the first quarter, maintaining the country’s trajectory as the fastest growing economy in the G7 for the second consecutive quarter. Sanjay Raja, Deutsche Bank’s chief UK economist, said the annual rate of 2% in the first half was a “breakneck” pace.
But can it stay hot for a long time? The IMF warned in April that a war with Iran would hurt growth in the UK more than any other rich country – the UK imports so much oil and gas that pump prices are already squeezing household incomes.
Seoul round trip
Apart from the war, Asia’s chip trade has just accomplished something remarkable and a little disturbing.
After falling partially last month due to leveraged positions and forced selling, pushing it into bear market territory, the Kospi entered a technical bull market on Thursday, rebounding more than 20% from its July 30 low.
The speed of the reversal highlights the volatility of tech stocks and raises questions about how long the rally will last.
“Right now, the Korean stock market is basically synonymous with AI hardware trading,” said Philip Uhl, head of research at Rayliant Global Advisors.
AI musical chairs game
Investor meetings and executive resignations have dominated AI news this week, with attention shifting from model capabilities to industry funding and leadership.
Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao is leading early meetings with potential investors ahead of a potential IPO, but those conversations do not cover financials or valuation, people told CNBC’s David Faber. The company secretly filed for an IPO in June after being valued at $965 billion in a May round.
Meanwhile, OpenAI lost chief revenue officer Dennis Dresser eight months later, days after longtime executive Brad Lightcap announced his resignation.
And Mark Zuckerberg open sourced it. meta The most powerful model, which claims that concentrating AI in the hands of a few is “inherently problematic,” is aimed squarely at OpenAI and Anthropic.
Tim Cook cut the ribbon Thursday with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at a factory in Houston that has already shipped its first AI servers.
For now, the Iran war has become like the weather. Traders check the weather forecast every morning to decide whether they need to prepare for bad weather or whether they can march without umbrellas.
— Anique Bao
And finally…
A look inside SK Hynix’s $720 billion AI-powered expansion to take over South Korea
In mountainous South Korea, where building large-scale projects is an incredible undertaking, the world’s leading manufacturer of high-bandwidth computer memory is investing $720 billion in what it claims will be the world’s largest network of memory factories.
SK Hynix, whose market capitalization has more than quintupled in the past year and is now worth more than $1 trillion, is making a big bet that the extreme demand for artificial intelligence will continue. Rising prices, exacerbated by capacity constraints, are changing the structure of the classic boom-and-bust industry, and the AI chip giants are Nvidia In the rush to secure supply, they are willing to take on more risks.
— Katie Tarasoff
