China, Japan and the rest of Asia — growth, policy and the export channel.
46 report(s) in the archive
Automakers including Tesla began pulling vehicles from Chinese roads after regulators flagged a door-handle safety flaw, triggering a broad selloff in EV shares.
Tesla and other automakers began a record vehicle recall in China over door-handle safety, and EV shares fell in response.
Michael Burry's Scion Asset Management dropped Alibaba for JD.com just as Alibaba priced a massive stock placement to fund AI spending.
Alibaba shares fell in Hong Kong after Michael Burry disclosed he had exited his Alibaba stake in favor of JD.com, compounding pressure from a $10.2 billion share placement the company launched to fund AI investment.
The e-commerce giant is turning to equity markets for what would be one of the largest share placements in the city's history.
Alibaba is planning a Hong Kong share sale of $10.2 billion, up from an initial proposal of $10 billion, to fund artificial-intelligence investment.
Alibaba's quarterly earnings came in ¥2.20 below estimates even as revenue topped forecasts; NetEase shares fell on a profit shortfall
Alibaba missed profit estimates by ¥2.20 per share while beating on revenue, and NetEase shares slid after its own profit miss, leaving the sector's quarter mixed rather than uniformly weak.
Eight additional operators join this week, bringing 2026 additions to twenty and marking Beijing's most aggressive push yet to embed the e-CNY across the domestic banking system.
The People's Bank of China added eight banks to its digital yuan operator network this week, the second expansion round of the year and part of a tripling of the roster year-to-date. The buildout signals a strategic shift from pilot phase to systemic infrastructure, with implications for cross-border settlement and payments incumbents.
Memory maker to repurchase and cancel treasury shares in one of Asia's largest-ever shareholder return programs, signaling confidence in the AI-driven HBM supercycle
SK Hynix announced plans to buy back and cancel approximately $28–29 billion of treasury shares, a scale of capital return with few precedents in Asian technology. The move underscores management's confidence in sustained high-bandwidth memory demand and marks a structural shift in Korean corporate governance toward shareholder value.
Sovereign yields retreat from multi-decade highs, but Tokyo's shrinking policy toolkit leaves JGB market exposed as ECB's Rehn signals benign wage dynamics in the euro area
A synchronized global sovereign bond selloff paused as long-end yields backed off multi-decade highs, but the reprieve looks tactical rather than structural. Japan sits at the epicenter, with policymakers offering few credible answers as the rout threatens fiscal spending plans. In Europe, ECB Governing Council member Olli Rehn struck a dovish note, saying wage growth remains moderate with no evidence of second-round inflation effects — a divergence that keeps the transatlantic and trans-Pacific rate complex unstable.
Xiaomi's second-quarter print eases fears of smartphone-driven margin compression while Baidu and China Unicom slide, and reports of small Nvidia H200 shipments reaching China reopen the export-control question.
Chinese technology equities are dispersing violently on fundamentals rather than trading as a single macro block. Xiaomi rallied after handset pressure eased, while Baidu and China Unicom fell sharply. Separately, the Financial Times reports Nvidia H200 chips are arriving in China in small volumes, a potentially significant shift in the AI hardware access equation.
Beijing's flagship memory champion becomes the world's third-largest flash supplier while Google prepares to exit Pixel manufacturing in China by 2027, evidencing a two-way decoupling that is reshaping semiconductor pricing power.
YMTC's rise to third place in global NAND flash with a 14% share represents a durable structural shift in memory supply, threatening incumbent pricing discipline. Simultaneously, Google's reported plan to end Pixel production in China by 2027 illustrates that the decoupling is bidirectional, with Western OEMs relocating assembly as Chinese suppliers scale.
Anthropic's IPO valuation is reportedly anchored to a $190-200 billion 2028 revenue forecast, while Shein targets roughly $25 billion in a Hong Kong listing — a steep markdown from prior private marks that frames the coming primary-issuance window.
Two of the highest-profile pending listings are converging on the public market with radically different narratives: Anthropic is underwriting its valuation on an aggressive multi-year AI revenue ramp, while Shein has reset expectations toward a $25 billion Hong Kong debut. Together they define the boundaries of investor tolerance for growth duration versus present-day cash generation.
Industrial production undershoots consensus while retail sales grow just 0.6% year-on-year, reinforcing expectations of further policy support even as Chinese and Hong Kong equities rallied on a technology-led bid.
China's July activity data came in weaker than expected across both production and consumption, with industrial output up 4.5% y/y and retail sales advancing a bare 0.6%. The soft print sharpens the debate over the scale and timing of additional fiscal and monetary support, though equity markets in Shanghai and Hong Kong looked through the miss, led higher by technology names.
President frames joint exercises as sending a 'hostile' signal to Pyongyang, a policy pivot with implications for defence spending assumptions and regional risk premia.
President Trump has asked the Pentagon to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea, characterising them as provocative toward North Korea. The move injects fresh uncertainty into North Asian security arrangements and the alliance-linked defence procurement outlook.
New Zealand infant formula group's FY earnings slump on China distribution disruptions, sending shares sharply lower and reframing the ANZ consumer-staples China exposure debate.
a2 Milk reported a 44% slide in full-year profit as supply disruptions in its critical China channel undercut margins, triggering a steep single-day selloff. The result reasserts China execution risk as the dominant variable for Australasian branded consumer exporters.
Strategists warn that a decisive break above the 160 threshold would represent a credibility event rather than a mere valuation move, raising the odds of intervention and complicating global carry-trade positioning.
Analysts flagged that a move above 160 in USD/JPY would mean Japanese policy 'credibility falls further,' setting up a binary risk event for global funding markets and carry trades that have underwritten a broad swathe of risk-asset positioning.
Strong July purchases by China's official sector, combined with technical analysis pointing to the completion of the current advance's first leg, reinforce the structural case for bullion as a reserve-diversification and credibility hedge.
China Gold Market data showed robust official sector accumulation in July, while precious metals strategists argue the first phase of the cycle is completing ahead of a second, potentially more aggressive leg. The bid is being reinforced by currency credibility concerns, notably around a yen approaching the 160 threshold.
An attack on an ADNOC-linked vessel in the Strait of Hormuz coincides with extended U.S. carrier deployment and a U.K. crackdown on Chinese components in naval drone supply chains, pushing geopolitical risk back to the front of the macro agenda.
A vessel tied to ADNOC was attacked in the Strait of Hormuz as President Trump defended an extended carrier deployment in the region, while the U.K. stepped up defense supply-chain vetting after Chinese-origin signals were detected in naval drones. The twin developments reassert a security premium across energy and defense-linked assets.
Dozens of transcripts and results decks from Orora, Aumovio, Japan Display, Stratec, iHeartMedia and OPAL Fuels underscore a fragmented, idiosyncratic reporting session
With no dominant macro catalyst, the session was defined by a broad small- and mid-cap earnings flow spanning European industrials, Japanese display manufacturing, US media and renewable fuels, leaving index-level direction to AI infrastructure headlines.
Bernstein lifts Wayfair on a revenue growth outlook while Macquarie upgrades DiDi Global on improved earnings, with two Outperform-rated Chinese EV names added to the conviction list.
Research desks are re-rating cyclically exposed consumer and Chinese mobility equities, signalling growing confidence that the earnings trough is behind these names. The clustering of upgrades across Wayfair, DiDi and Chinese EV manufacturers points to a coordinated shift in sell-side risk appetite.
Strategists highlight the renewed sensitivity of long-end Treasury yields to Japanese currency and rate moves, while the New York Fed confirms no reserve management purchases in the month to mid-September.
Fixed income desks are refocusing on the yen–Treasury linkage as Japanese policy normalization alters the marginal buyer base for U.S. duration. The New York Fed separately disclosed it conducted no reserve management purchases through mid-September, leaving the liquidity backdrop tighter than some money-market participants had assumed.
Semiconductor Manufacturing International shares climb on stronger-than-expected Q2 earnings and price increases, lifting the broader Asian chipmaking complex as AI-driven order books absorb legacy foundry supply.
SMIC posted robust second-quarter results and is raising prices amid surging AI-linked demand, a signal that pricing power is spreading beyond leading-edge logic into mature-node foundry capacity. Chip peers traded higher in sympathy, while a separate LG–Nvidia robotics and AI-factory partnership underscored the widening industrial reach of the AI capex cycle.