In today’s briefing:
- Ohayo Japan | US Stocks Rise as Tech Gains
- SEMICONDUCTOR MEMORY CYCLE MONITOR — Issue #13 | 20–26 Sep 2026
- This Week in AI (Sep 20-26): Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Launch Cheaper; Data Center IPO Delays
- Miners, Not Compounders: Japan’s SME M&A Brokers Six Years On
- How Saudi Arabia’s Supply Crisis Is Rerouting Capital to North America?
Ohayo Japan | US Stocks Rise as Tech Gains
- US equities ended higher on Friday, closing a volatile week positively, with the Dow outperforming and technology led sector gains
- Microsoft unveiled major Copilot upgrades, including code generation, persistent agentic AI, deeper Office integration and enterprise automation, positioning it as a workplace-focused AI platform.
- WTI fell ~2% on reports of potential US-Iran progress on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, despite Iranian pushback.
SEMICONDUCTOR MEMORY CYCLE MONITOR — Issue #13 | 20–26 Sep 2026
- Solidigm’s potential US$150bn IPO is Monday’s key Korea catalyst: SK Hynix’s NAND unit is reportedly pitching a 2027 US listing at up to US$150bn, implying ~15% of SK Hynix’s MCAP.
- Micron enters 30 September results with the Street above guidance: consensus is US$50.97bn revenue / US$31.35 EPS versus US$50bn / US$31 guidance, while Goldman’s whisper sits at US$51.9bn / US$32.54.
- The sector remains earnings-led but increasingly crowded. We favour Micron tactically, half-sized into the print, with SK Hynix moving to alternative after the Solidigm catalyst fired.
This Week in AI (Sep 20-26): Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Launch Cheaper; Data Center IPO Delays
- Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Xiaomi and Stepfun all shipped model updates, with price cuts and open weights at the center of the week.
- AI infrastructure financing stayed active across Akamai, Nscale, Firmus, Oracle-linked data centers, CoreWeave facilities and SoftBank debt.
- Regulatory and security news focused on Pentagon supply-chain controls, OpenAI evaluation incidents and US review before UK model testing.
Miners, Not Compounders: Japan’s SME M&A Brokers Six Years On
- Our 2020 valuation caution held: the three leaders lost 10–77% of market value while TOPIX more than doubled, and M&A Research Institute repeated the cycle faster.
- The deeper error was classification: sell-side brokers mine a finite stock of successor-less owners, each served once, yet traded at compounder multiples of 50–90×.
- Japan is solving succession faster than assumed, mostly without brokers; the winners will convert extraction profits into repeatable businesses before the ore thins.
How Saudi Arabia’s Supply Crisis Is Rerouting Capital to North America?
- Drone strikes shut Saudi Arabia’s 4 mb/d East-West pipeline on 11 September; a partial, still-incomplete restart began 22 September, with full capacity roughly six weeks out.
- With Hormuz still constrained and Qatari LNG structurally impaired, US-shale and Gulf Coast LNG, plus Canadian-oil sands and Pacific LNG, are absorbing displaced barrels and cargoes at a durable premium.
- The pipeline’s repair timeline and Iran’s untested offer to reopen Hormuz within seven days are the two variables that decide whether this windfall compounds or fades into 2027.
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