Thematic (Sector/Industry)

• US stocks closed modestly lower on Monday, with losses concentrated in technology and semiconductors
• Overall, it was a risk-off session driven by AI caution and energy-related rate concerns rather than a broad market rout.
• Bank of America shares fell -5% after CEO Brian Moynihan forecast a 10%–20% year-over-year drop in Q3 investment banking fees

• Every single day there is another signal that the money printer is warming up, we see it in higher rates, bigger deficits, and now in some outlandish promises.
• The president’s speech on September 9th night in Dallas gave us the loudest one yet.
• Here is what was said At the Republican midterm convention, Donald Trump promised a $5,000 “dividend” to every adult US citizen, on two conditions: Republicans have to hold both the House and the Senate in November and the money would have to be spent inside the US.

• Hyperscale outbidding: Data centre developers are paying up to 182.1% industrial land premiums, breaking traditional logistics feasibility and creating a peak-valuation capital recycling opportunity for incumbent landlords.
• Grid exhaustion: Australia’s 16.2 GW data centre pipeline faces severe grid constraints by 2029, forcing a structural pivot toward regional Renewable Energy Zones and private transmission infrastructure.
• Strategic trades: Go long Goodman Group and NextDC for moat-protected yields and land-banking arbitrage, while shorting unhedged secondary logistics developers exposed to margin erosion and stranded pipelines.

• “Pacing” is evaluators, standards and diplomacy, not a capex cut. It will not slow US capability, but it permanently raises the risk premium on US frontier labs. 
• Beijing calls it fear-mongering; Trump says whoever wins AI wins. Only private US labs are slowing, Beijing and Trump both refused to slow. 
• When the industry throttles back in unison, alpha investors will sell the derating. Value investors will buy the opportunity.

• Sticky US inflation: Core CPI forces an 85% probability of a Fed rate hike, fundamentally shifting global liquidity and ending hopes of an imminent easing cycle.
• Divergent APAC impacts: Hong Kong and Australia face severe cap rate pressures, while Japan and China offer isolated growth driven by local monetary autonomy and inbound tourism.
• Strategic rotation: Short vulnerable retail assets like Link REIT facing structural decay, and go long on resilient cash-flow generators including CapitaLand Ascendas REIT and Japan Hotel REIT.

• SAC Capital lowers ISOTeam target price to 7.1 cents after disappointing FY2026 results.
• UOBKH keeps ‘buy’ on Singtel, values Nxera at up to $4.5 billion for listing.
• CGS International stays positive on Pan-United’s prospects.

• Rava’s Barwon has successfully acquired Peninsula Private Hospital for $208 million from Australian Unity.
• Blackstone’s Horizon has reported a significant 36% increase in EBITDA and reduced losses post-IPO in India.
• NFD Korea has begun construction on a substantial 300MW AI data center campus located in Danjin.

• I have a fascination for complex words derived by stitching together two or more existing ones, which then become a part of our lexicon as if that new word existed since time immemorial.

• Schadenfreude: Happiness gained from someone else’s misfortune. Schaden – damage, or injury; freude – joy or delight

• Tsundoku: Buying books and piling them up unread. Tsunde-oku – To pile things up ready for later and leave them; dokusho – reading books.

• Singapore’s Dubai cracking margin turned negative on 9 September (–US$2.93) while the USGC LLS margin sits at US$53.18, the top of its five-year range.
• Cause: Dubai crude now trades above Dated Brent. Asia carries the Hormuz scarcity in its feedstock; the Atlantic basin carries it only in its products.
• Next: Asian run cuts, cheap Asian diesel dragged west, freight stays bid. The gap closes from the Singapore side, but only after the cuts, and only until the Strait reopens.

• US stocks closed higher on Friday snapping a four-day losing streak
• The rally was driven by a pullback in oil prices and August CPI data that largely matched expectations
• Oil-Supply risks from the Middle East remain the clearest near-term catalyst that could drive volatility at the open or through the session

• OpenAI’s Morgan Stanley and Evercore ‘design partnership’ is Act I of the Amazon, Google and Bloomberg playbook: embrace the incumbent, own the workflow, take the client.
• Banks are paying the tuition twice: teaching the model their craft while cutting the junior classes that supply 62% of their AI talent and every future MD.
• Own the toll roads, not the trucks: BULLISH memory, foundry and exchanges; BEARISH boutique advisers, terminal vendors, Indian IT; NEUTRAL banks; AVOID the lab IPOs.

• DeepSeek released V4.1-Flash and hired underwriters for a Shanghai IPO. US agencies and Anthropic separately accused Chinese labs of extracting US model outputs.
• OpenAI published a proposed Navier-Stokes proof and opened its Agents API beta. Xiaomi introduced MiMo Desktop for invited users.
• Zhipu proposed USD 5bn of financing. Cognition announced a larger USD 2bn round, while Nvidia discussed an Anthropic IPO anchor investment.

• The 30 sector ETFs in Korea were down on average 2.1% in the past two weeks, underperforming KOSPI which was up 1.8% in the same period.
• Seven sector ETFs (out of 30) outperformed KOSPI in the past two weeks including KODEX Nuclear SMR ETF (up 6.7%) and TIGER Korea Humanoid Robotics Industry (up 5.1%). 
• Top 3 worst performing sector ETFs in the past two weeks include Mirae Asset TIGER Health Care (down 10.1%), KoAct Bio Healthcare Active (down 11.9%), and TIGER Cosmetics (down 15.6%).

• Hansoh’s risvutatug rezetecan for second-line treatment of SCLC has been included in NMPA’s Priority Review. InSilico completed first patient enrollment and dosing in Phase 3 trial evaluating rentosertib in IPF.
• Shionogi received approval in Australia for cefiderocol for the treatment of carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative bacterial infections. Kyowa Kirin’s Phase 2 trial for ophthalmic drug candidate did not meet primary endpoint.
• Samsung Biologics signed a new CMO contract worth $262M with a European pharmaceutical company. SK Biopharmaceutical received notification regarding FDA’s partial clinical hold on its epilepsy drug candidate, opakalim.

• Apple’s Tim Cook: “For September, we expect to pay even higher memory costs” — only three DRAM suppliers, sourcing flexibility is thin. Ultimately good for Memory players. 
• Goldman Sachs flips constructive (Sep 9): “the worst may be over.” Hedge fund positioning at historical lows. DeepSeek V4.1 
• Rating change: Nanya downgraded to NEUTRAL, TP NT$490 (from NT$600) — thesis played out, DDR4 scarcity fully priced. TP revisions: SK Hynix ₩2,700,000; Micron $1,375; SanDisk $2,050.

• Insilico Medicine’s AI-discovered drug rentosertib reverses aging markers in a 42-patient trial. GenScript Biotech proposes US$300m share placing for capex of AI drug discovery (AIDD).
• Early/Mid-Stage asthma results updates from two long-acting TSLP-targeting monoclonal and bispecific antibody: 1) Windward/HBM: ultra-long-acting TSLP mab HBM9378; 2) Belenos/Keymed: TSLP/IL-13 bispecific BEL512
• SBP to buy additional 5% equity stake in its core subsidiary CTTQ; SMMT, BeOne, Ollin/Innovent updated phase 3 studies in clnicaltrial.gov for ivonescimab, B7H4 ADC, and VEGF/Ang blab, respectively…

• The steel market is tightening fast: demand is running ahead of production, while higher coking coal costs strengthen the case for price hikes.
• Export momentum is broadening mills’ demand pool, with Asian markets emerging as an increasingly important outlet for Indian steelmakers.
• Imports are the catch: rising Chinese inflows could put a ceiling on domestic prices, limiting how far mills can push realizations.

• Japanese equities sold off this week as an old-fashioned energy shock drove the market.
• WTI crude rose 10% to >$100 as the US-Iran conflict escalated
• The 10-year JGB yield rose a further 8bp to 2.98%, near multi-decade highs. The Nikkei 225 fell 1.6%

• AUCTUS PUBLICATIONS ________________________________________ Criterium Energy (CEQ CN)C; Target price of C$0.40 per share: Facility sharing contract signed – Criterium has signed a facility sharing agreement with Jindi, granting access to the 30 mmcf/d TRGP and 60 km pipeline to the Sekernan gas sales point.
• This represents the last commercial hurdle to reach first gas.
• Corcel (CRCL LN)C; Target price of 1.40p per share: Angola approves increased position in KON-16.

• European growth remains subdued, but large-cap software vendors are proving resilient, with Top 10 lfl revenue growth reaching 9.7%, versus 3.0% for the broader market.
• North America continues to outperform Europe, with lfl revenue growth accelerating to 13.3% and reaching 25.9% among the ten largest software companies.
• Software M&A remains strong but concentrated, with USD 145bn of transactions above USD 200m year-to-date, driven primarily by strategic buyers rather than private equity.

• AED, CAD, GBP, EUR, CHF, USD; up to USD 3,000/transaction (notes)
• No critical or major observations; plant ~30% of international business
• Magnet winding wires; 28,800 MTPA; valid till 31 Aug 2027

• India’s 178 big reservoirs are 70.7 percent full, a fifth less water than a year ago, with the South at just 54.5 percent.
• Brent closed back above $100 on 9 September, 110 days after its March crossing and up about 65 percent since January.
• BSE mainboard IPOs are near 62 by 8 September, matching the 2021 boom and chasing 2025’s record of about 103.

• U.S. stocks closed lower for a fourth straight session as surging oil prices and rising Treasury yields amplified inflation concerns and increased bets on a Fed rate hike next week.
• Brent crude climbed above $108/barrel amid ongoing Middle East tensions and supply risks through the Strait of Hormuz
• The 10-year Treasury yield jumped to 4.97%, its highest since late 2023

• RHB sees Raffles Medical’s 52-week low as a buying opportunity.
• Citi starts ‘buy/high risk’ rating on SMID global leader CSE Global.
• Maybank’s Seet is bullish on Frencken, lowers target price after $100M placement.

• Last week a Citadel quant interview question went viral.
• According to the post, candidates were given a ninety-second time limit with a $650,000 starting salary sitting on the other side of it.
• Result: a 3% pass rate. So… as the math teacher that I am, it’s only natural for me to throw the question out to you: I watched thousands of smart people argue about it in the comments, and it made me think about something that has almost nothing to do with getting hired at a hedge fund and almost everything to do with investing and life: most of us are terrible at probability, and it can cost us.

• Brookfield has acquired an 11-hectare former Ford site in Melbourne for an industrial estate development.
• Blackstone has appointed Levine and Cutaia as co-heads of real estate following Meghji’s departure.
• Centurion plans to acquire a $53 million worker dormitory in Johor, boosting its capacity in Malaysia by 22%.

• AI that draws conclusions from many documents at once has to rank news and company filings differently.
• Recency matters most for news, document type matters more for filings, and perspective matters across both.
• Bloomberg’s answer is ASKB, a conversational AI interface for the Terminal built on specialized agents rather than one massive model.

• Two regulatory clocks are diverging – the ISA’s exploitation code slipped into 2027 after the July 2026 session, while the U.S. domestic route advanced.
• Commercialization is maturing but unproven. May 2026 brought the TMC-Allseas production agreement and a $1bn AOMC-Odyssey merger, yet no operator has demonstrated sustained commercial nodule recovery at scale.
• Opposition is widening. 46 countries now back a moratorium or pause (up from 32 in 2024), keeping social license and international law legitimacy as material gating risks for investors.

• India-Russia meeting to focus on trade, defence and nuclear energy
• India has robust data infrastructure for double deflation: Saurabh Garg
• India’s annual average per-capita protein consumption to triple to 30 kg by 2070

• Singapore pays its leader more than any nation, over eleven times local income
• Mobile data use rose about a quarter to 285 billion gigabytes in fiscal 2026
• New fintech firms have fallen since 2021, yet India’s global share nears 14 percent

• US equities fell for a third straight session: Dow -0.8%, S&P 500 -0.5%, Nasdaq -0.6%.
• The 10-year Treasury yield rose 5bp to 4.85%, its highest since October 2023
• Meta (+6.5%) as analysts responded positively to its AI assistant

• The Taiwan equity market possesses a rare institutional advantage globally: under the Securities and Exchange Act, listed companies are required to announce and report their operational results for the preceding month by the 10th of each month (Exception: starting from FY2026, insurance companies and entities with insurance subsidiaries may extend their disclosure deadline to the 15th of each month).
• This is commonly referred to in the market as “Monthly Revenue”.
• Benefiting from this regulation, investors can update the latest corporate revenue information every month at a frequency far higher than quarterly financial report fundamental data.

• Based on preceding results, SURPS3MTA demonstrates clear return monotonicity and significant long-short portfolio Alpha.
• REVOPY possesses strong ranking predictive power distributed across the full cross-section.
• This study evaluates 7 backtesting strategies utilizing these two factors plus MOM52WH to test real-world execution feasibility and multi-factor fusion value.

• Maybank’s Seet stays positive on Frencken, lowers target price post $100M placement.
• UOBKH cuts Delfi’s target price due to rising cocoa prices and forex issues.
• Maybank’s Seet keeps ‘buy’ rating with 24-cent target on Marco Polo Marine post-RTO.

• Gen Z accounts for 43% of India’s consumption spending: BCG-Snap report
• Consumer goods companies considering price hikes to offset rising sugar pricesUK recognises India’s CCTS under its carbon tax mechanism
• Plea in SC seeks stricter FSSAI warning labels for excess sugar, salt & fat

• Peak demand holds near 257 GW as the daily shortfall spikes to 28 million units
• India has never sustained 8 percent growth, the decadal average stuck near 6
• G20 travel emissions could fall a fifth by 2050 on hybrid work and more buses

• Global oil supplies have experienced massive disruptions in 2026. 
• A major news agency published a report last week stating that nearly half the world’s oil is supplied by countries affected by conflicts this year, including the ongoing Iran war and the expansion into other Middle East countries (which has resulted in the largest oil supply crisis on record), the Russia-Ukraine war, conflicts in Libya, and US restrictions on Venezuelan oil exports at ?the start of the year. 
• Reuters calculated that countries affected by those conflicts together produced ~45 million barrels of oil per day based on 2025 output, representing more than 43% of the global oil supply (Figure 1).

• GA-Courtenay Special Situations Fund declined 13.8% in July, taking its year-to-date return to -10.0%, as an unusual liquidity-driven dislocation hit higher-growth equities.
• Ex-Odey star and fund manager Adrian Courtenay said the sell-off showed no corresponding deterioration in the fundamentals of the hedge fund’s holdings, while the merger arbitrage book contributed positively during the month.
• The fund responded cautiously by reducing equity gross exposure while increasing its merger arbitrage allocation and adding selectively to SpaceX and Tesla.

• US stocks declined on Tuesday amid escalating US-Canada trade tensions and rising oil prices
• West Texas Intermediate crude climbed above $94 a barrel while Brent approached $100,
• OpenAI’s recent launch of GPT-6 Astra reignited AI disruption fears for specialized software while reinforcing demand for data-centre/AI infrastructure

• With Intelligence , S&P Global released Hedge Fund Trends 2026: Demand Strengthens as Capital Returns, a new report that looks at what’s been happening in the first half of 2026.
• Among the key points: North America dominates first half launch activity Macro continues to dominate launches by type of strategy The first half of 2026 was the best first half for hedge funds on an asset-weighted basis since 2009 (Figure 3, seen below) CTAs have regained their hedge over macro for the first time since 2022 regarding performance Consolidation in the multi-strat space has picked up, as predicted in With’s 2026 outlook Macro remains a favored strategy even with recent stumbles Overall hedge fund inflows are continuing to grow (Figure 8, seen below) Public pensions are closing hedge funds gaps You can find more information here or at With Intelligence .
• See also: Hedge Fund Trends 2026 .

• ChipAgents is moving agentic EDA into production, with Andes Tech reporting major cycle-time reductions and ChipAgents reaching 120+ semiconductor customers after roughly 6x ARR growth in H12026.
• EDA-Maxxing depends on agents creating more paid design activity through additional projects and deeper exploration than they eliminate through fewer expensive tool runs.
• Cadence and Synopsys have early monetisation advantages, but investors still need evidence that higher agent-driven tool usage translates into larger EDA budgets and incremental revenue.

• Maybank’s Seet keeps ‘buy’ and 24-cent TP for Marco Polo Marine post-RTO.
• CGSI and Prime Asia Asset Management view Tai Sin Electric positively after FY2026 earnings.
• STI inclusion may boost First Resources’ share price, says Aletheia Capital.

• Long Solar Industries from 13 March at Rs14,251 has returned +57% in rupees, +52% in dollars, at the 8 September close. We take profit on half and hold the balance.
• The policy thesis delivered and accelerated, with tactical missile production opened to private firms and transfer of DRDO’s conventional missile technologies to industry approved. The France-Pinaka order did not arrive. 
• Key risks: the defence book is flat at Rs18,000 crore while coverage compressed from 13x to 5.7x, free cash flow turned negative and the stock trades at 102x trailing earnings.

• It’s probably not a groundbreaking revelation to you that Germany’s natural gas storage is dangerously low and has been dangerously low for a long time.

• There is quite a bit of media coverage on that.

• But why is that so? Natural gas is not scarce. It’s abundant, even in Europe via LNG ships. 

• Total US EV charging station locations dipped 0.7% month-over-month to 88,394 as of August 31, 2026, even as total EVSE ports rose to 259,530 (up 7.2% versus end of 2025).
• Active DC Fast ports climbed 1.2% month-on-month to 75,257, a third straight monthly gain. Tesla commands nearly 50.5% of the US DC Fast base, ChargePoint 32.5% of all ports.
• NREL sees a need for 1.0 million Level 2 chargers and 182,000 DC Fast points by 2030, at current growth rates, the US is likely to fall short.

• Period: September 7–11, 2026 Coverage: Traditional U.S.
• operating-company IPOs and consequential ECM transactions of at least $100 million There are no qualifying U.S.
• IPOs of at least $100 million scheduled to price this week.

• Software rebounded in August, outperforming Semiconductors. 
• The WTR AI Index rose 7.3% M/M, ahead of the S&P 500 (up 2.6%), the Russell 2000 (up 0.9%), and the Nasdaq (up 4.2%).
•  Software (24% of the index) gained 11.0% while Semiconductors (18% of the index) slipped 1.2%, reversing the Semis-led pattern that has dominated most of 2026.

• Markets are closed for Labour Day; This week, August CPI is the key focus, with headline inflation expected at 3.4% YoY and core at 2.4%. 
• Copper hit a record $14,533/t amid tariff fears and tight LME availability; Treasury long-end buybacks begin Wednesday. 
• Canada’s counter-tariffs start Tuesday, while Trump threatened Bombardier with US sales restrictions; Oracle earnings will provide an AI capex read-through.

• The U.S. Economy in Real-Time via another sleek and even better high frequency data point which is highly complementary — it confirms or not the 2 from above.
• Weekly Economic Index (WEI) by Dallas Fed, a good GDP proxy as the index is scaled to align with year-over-year GDP growth, which gives it a concrete interpretive anchor beyond just being a directional signal:
• 3.06% (blue) for the week ended August 29th, and 2.84%t for August 22nd, according to the latest release from just 3 days ago, the 3rd of September — basically, it is equivalent to a +3% year‑over‑year rise in GDP

• CME’s GPU futures could make compute-price risk hedgeable, but standardised contracts will still leave material basis risk across clusters, customers and service bundles.
• Relative H100/B200 pricing may help separate broad oversupply from technological substitution, making the economic decay of older GPU capacity easier to observe.
• The net read is bearish for GPU-capacity owners: hedging may improve financing, but more visible obsolescence and increasing capacity pressure rental economics.

Last week I ran a poll, given today’s market would you rather rent or own. It pulled 125 votes and 44 comments. Own won, 66 to 34. Based on the comments in the thread, it seems like most of the people chose to ignore the current conditions and went with their own personal view of which is better.

• The channel now clears 9.5mn orders/day across six platforms. Blinkit leads at 3.4-3.6mn, with Zepto (2.4-2.6mn) now ahead of Swiggy Instamart (1.3-1.45mn) on daily volume.
• Maharashtra’s FDA suspended food licences at Blinkit and Zepto dark stores in Mumbai over hygiene and storage violations, the first real compliance overhang for the sector.
• Swiggy shareholders approved a 49.5% foreign-ownership cap (IOCC status), clearing the path for Instamart to move marketplace to inventory-led.

• STI inclusion may boost First Resources’ share price, says Aletheia Capital.
• UOBKH’s Mahtani cuts Soon Hock’s target price after weaker 1HFY2026 earnings.
• Chew keeps ‘buy’ at Q&M Dental, target price 71 cents, despite 1HFY2026 miss.

• US equities closed lower: S&P 500 fell 0.4% and Dow 272 points, while Nasdaq -0.3%.
• Payrolls rose 162,000 versus just over 50,000 expected, driving a hawkish repricing, higher Treasury yields and increased expectations of a September Fed hike.
• Semiconductors rallied on optimism around OpenAI’s new GPT model, led by Sandisk (+11.9%),

• SanDisk joins the S&P 100 effective 21 September — the first memory company ever admitted to the index. The stock surged +11.9% on Friday to $1,740 post-announcement; week-total +17.3%.
• Micron +9.3% WoW — the tariff footprint premium from Issue #9 is pricing in real time. The pair trade (long MU / short 285A JP) is working in week one.
• Taiwan’s MSCI unwind confirmed: Nanya −5.2% exactly as predicted. CXMT −6.5% post-results; our Reduce/FV RMB31.40 call is on track at 4.7x our TP.

• We tracked AI models, infrastructure, and M&A this week: OpenAI and Anthropic refreshed frontier models while Moonshot started its Hong Kong IPO process.
• MiniMax powered HUMAIN’s Arabic sovereign model, Alibaba refreshed Qwen, and Artificial Analysis kept new US frontier releases at the top of the ranking.
• Nvidia agreed to buy Hugging Face, Anthropic expanded compute financing, and AI infrastructure demand flowed through hyperscalers, hardware vendors, chips and memory.

• JGB yields surged: The 10-year yield breached 3.0%, driven by oil prices, fiscal concerns and rising expectations of a BOJ rate hike. 
• Yen reversed sharply: The currency strengthened to ¥156.25/$ amid intervention speculation and broad dollar weakness, despite earlier falling towards ¥160/$. 
• Equities whipsawed: The Nikkei fell 2.1% as higher yields and a stronger yen pressured growth stocks, while strong domestic data offered some support.

• Simcere inks outlicensing agreement with Roche for tri-specific antibody in total deal value of $2B+. Hutchmed enters outlicense agreement with GSK for first-in-class drug candidate for upfront payment of $110M.
• Akeso’s ivonescimab demonstrates significant overall survival benefit in Keytruda head-to-head trial in NSCLC. Daiichi Sankyo’s Enhertu has been approved in EU for the first-line treatment of HER2 positive breast cancer.
• Alteogen inked agreement with Novartis for the development and commercialization of subcutaneous products utilizing ALT-B4. Pharmaessentia secured FDA approval of Besremi for the treatment of essential thrombocythemia.

• Hutchmed licensed out ex-China rights of KRAS-EGFR cancer asset to GSK for US$1.3bn and Simcere licensed out a B-cell targeting trispecific to Roche for US$1.5bn. Both assets are preclinical
• Hengrui presented phase 3 results of SHR-1918 (ANGPTL3) and phase 2 results of HRS-5346 (Lp(a)) at ESC Congress. Separately, for Lp(a), Novartis yesterday said pelacarsen failed in a phase 3
• Other updates/news include BeOne, Sino Biopharma, Genscript, Akeso, Hansoh, MediLink…

• FY26 Construction Equipment exports rose 31.5% to 17,394 units even as domestic volumes fell 6.7% to 113,229 units.
• CEV Stage V compliance and lower trade barriers widen India’s addressable market beyond price-sensitive emerging economies.
• Action Construction Equipment (ACCE IN) and Carraro India (CARRARO IN) offer the clearest export-leverage; Escorts Kubota Limited (ESCORTS IN) and Beml Ltd (BEML IN) retain stronger domestic or segment-mix dependence.

• UltraTech has launched Ultravolt from a 10.98 lakh-km Gujarat facility, backed by Rs. 1,800 crore and a top-two ambition within five years.
• The entrant can fund channel incentives, advertising and rapid distribution without depending on early profitability, raising competitive intensity in retail wires.
• Polycab’s leadership remains defensible, but its margin-of-safety narrows: future share gains may require higher dealer support and brand spending.