Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer John Tarnas holds the iPhone Duo foldable smartphone during a product launch event at Apple Park on Wednesday, September 9, 2026 in Cupertino, California, USA.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Hello, my name is Hui Jie from Singapore. Welcome to another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open.
Apple has released new devices including its first foldable phone and new colors of the iPhone18.
Elsewhere, the U.S. Treasury announced it would triple its normal buyback operations and re-enter the bond market.
And amid the market turmoil caused by the Hormuz conflict, US President Donald Trump’s energy portfolio soared by millions of dollars, a CNBC analysis found.
What you need to know today
Seven years after rival Samsung launched its first foldable phone, Apple did the same with the iPhone Duo.
Marketing materials promised a number of new features, including external and internal screens, a side-mounted fingerprint sensor, and a titanium case, but social media comments seemed to focus on just one thing. The question is whether or not there will be noticeable creases.
A lot of (digital) ink has been spilled about how much you can see, how different the screen looks at the crease, how many times you can open and close it before the problem gets worse, etc. Overall, it looked like there were creases, but they were less noticeable.
Besides Duo, Apple also rolled out the rest of its lineup, offering new iPhones, watches, and Airpods. The iPhone 18 Pro and Max cost $100 more than last year’s models, while the foldable Duo starts at $1,999.
government bond buyback
Less than a month after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the U.S. Treasury would double its bond buybacks to $4 billion, the department announced it would buy up to $6 billion in an operation on Thursday. This is three times the normal purchase price.
The Treasury also said future operations will be at least $4 billion, with a focus on 10-year and 20-year bonds.
The operation is said to be aimed at maintaining liquidity in the government bond market, but the unusual move is also seen as an attempt to stem U.S. bond yields, which have reached their highest level since before the 2008 global financial crisis.
However, the market reaction was negative. U.S. Treasury yields rose further, but long-term bonds were volatile, rising by up to 5 basis points each before easing.
All three major indexes fell for the third day in a row as rising yields and soaring oil prices pushed down stock prices.
Brent, the international benchmark, surpassed the $100 per barrel mark on Wednesday at $101.21. U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures rose 3.3% to close at $96.05, both the highest since May. Crude oil rose in early Asian trading on Thursday.
Trump and oil
His personal energy portfolio soared as President Trump’s wartime directives against Iran repeatedly rattled global markets.
From the eve of the war on Feb. 27 to Aug. 31, his nine largest oil and gas holdings increased by about $1.5 million to $4.4 million, according to a CNBC analysis of his annual financial disclosures, quarterly company reports and FactSet market data.
Although there is no evidence that Trump or his investment managers traded with advance knowledge of Trump’s decisions or that Trump’s financial interests influenced policy, the filing is the latest example of Trump owning multimillion-dollar holdings in industries directly affected by his administration’s military and diplomatic decisions.
President Trump said Wednesday that energy prices, which have risen due to the Iran war, will not come down until after the midterm elections, scheduled for November.
“Right after the election, oil prices are going to go down,” President Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews before heading to Texas to attend the Republican midterm convention.
This statement seems to indicate an unusual recognition that the Iran war is unlikely to be resolved in the near future.
— Lim Huijie
And finally…
Researchers say there is a 10% or more chance that AI will “kill all humanity”, and experts also express their opinions
An artificial intelligence researcher quit his job at Anthropic on Tuesday, accusing the company and its biggest rival OpenAI of irresponsible behavior, sparking a frenzy of concern on social media about the rapid pace of technology development.
Jacob Coxon, who has worked as a researcher at both companies, said in a post on X that he resigned because he was concerned that Anthropic and OpenAI were “putting our lives on the line.” He said those developing AI “seriously believe that AI could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
“Don’t underestimate the power of this technology,” Coxon wrote. “These will soon become superhuman systems capable of hacking anything, revolutionizing any field overnight, and gaining real power and resources.”
— Ashley Caputo, Arjun Karpal
