Headlines · 2026-08-01

The 30-year U.S. Treasury yield climbed to 5.27% intraday, the highest since June 2007. The 10-year yield also rose as high as 4.737%, marking its strongest level since January 2025.

The move followed fresh comments from Federal Reserve officials backing a 25-basis-point hike, which traders read as a sign that near-term tightening remains on the table. CNA reported that rising oil prices and firmer inflation expectations also helped push long-dated yields higher.

Higher long-term rates kept pressure on equities, especially growth and technology stocks whose valuations are more sensitive to discount rates. Tech earnings initially supported the market, but the jump in yields limited gains and helped leave major indexes under pressure.

The bond selloff has also fed back into rate expectations, with traders pricing a higher chance of a near-term hike. Business Insider reported that the 30-year yield touched 5.24% and that the Nasdaq 100 was more than 10% below its record high, underscoring how quickly the rate shock has spread beyond bonds.

Multiple outlets reported that the U.S. Treasury told banks it could intervene in the yen market on Friday and should stand ready for further action. The Financial Times later said the Treasury bought yen, with the New York Fed executing the trades via Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

The move came after Japanese authorities had already stepped into the market to support the currency, which had been hovering near a four-decade low around ¥164 to the dollar. A photo of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s notepad also appeared to show a plan to buy $5 billion to $10 billion of yen, adding to speculation that Washington was prepared to back Tokyo’s efforts.

The yen strengthened sharply into the close, with LSEG data showing the dollar falling from about ¥158.9 to roughly ¥157.6 late on Friday. Reuters also cited Japanese central bank data indicating Tokyo may have sold as much as $58.97 billion to buy yen, a scale that would make it one of Japan’s largest single-day interventions.

The U.S. Treasury, New York Fed, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley had not immediately commented on the FT report, while Japan’s finance ministry said it remained prepared to use available tools to maintain orderly markets. The yen’s rebound matters for global FX traders because it can quickly ripple through equity, rates and cross-border funding markets.

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Amazon said second-quarter revenue rose 20% year over year to $200.6 billion, while operating income climbed to $27.5 billion. The standout was AWS, where sales jumped 37% to $42.2 billion, helping lift the stock 15.3% to $271.58 in Friday trading, its largest one-day gain since 2012.

The results mattered because investors had been questioning whether Amazon’s heavy AI infrastructure spending would pay off fast enough. Management raised expected 2026 capital spending by 10% to $220 billion and said existing customer commitments already cover most available AWS capacity in 2027, with some demand extending into 2028.

The market response centered on the cloud business and the visibility of future demand. AWS operating income reached $16.6 billion, accounting for more than half of Amazon’s total operating profit, while the unit’s backlog climbed to $496 billion, according to reports that cited the company’s earnings call and filings.

Analysts and investors highlighted the combination of faster cloud growth and a still-robust backlog as the key offset to negative free cash flow. Reports estimated Amazon’s market value rose by roughly $300 billion to $390 billion on the session, underscoring how quickly sentiment can shift when AI spending is matched by revenue acceleration.

Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness fund, which had climbed to roughly $45 billion in assets earlier in July, was forced to dump much of its listed stock book after sharp losses in AI-linked longs and software shorts. By Thursday, people familiar with the matter said the fund’s holdings had fallen to about $10 billion, with Citadel buying the leveraged positions at a discount.

Aschenbrenner rose to prominence after publishing a 165-page essay arguing that artificial intelligence would trigger massive demand for chips, memory, data centers and power infrastructure. That thesis helped shape the fund’s portfolio, which had disclosed large stakes in names such as Nebius, Sandisk, Micron and CoreWeave, while the short book included software stocks like Adobe.

The unwind underscores how leverage can turn a sector rotation into a forced-sale spiral. Morgan Stanley’s sector-neutral Momentum Index fell 17.4% in four trading days, and AI infrastructure names were hit hard even as the S&P 500 stayed near record highs.

Reports said Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase were among the prime brokers working with the fund as collateral calls mounted. Aschenbrenner has reportedly said he takes responsibility and plans to run his public equity book without leverage while learning from the episode.

South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI closed at 6,595.45 on Friday, up 1,001.89 points, or 17.91%, the largest single-day gain in both point and percentage terms on record. Samsung Electronics jumped 26.81% to 262,500 won, while SK hynix rose 29.95% to 1.72 million won.

The rally came after three straight sessions of steep losses. Local reports said stronger-than-expected earnings from major U.S. tech firms, including Microsoft, helped ease worries about a slowdown in AI spending and reignited buying in semiconductor shares.

The move spread across the broader market, with SK Square and Samsung Electro-Mechanics also hitting daily upper limits. Foreign investors were net buyers of 7.24 trillion won, while institutions bought 1.14 trillion won and retail investors sold 8.27 trillion won.

New rules on single-stock leveraged ETFs took effect the same day, and traders are watching whether tighter leverage controls can damp volatility. Korean media also noted that July saw repeated sidecar triggers and circuit breakers, underscoring how unstable the market has been.

Novo Nordisk said on July 31 that ziltivekimab, its experimental cardiovascular drug, failed to meet the primary endpoint in the phase 3 ZEUS trial. The study did not deliver a statistically meaningful reduction in major adverse cardiovascular events versus placebo, even though the drug showed target engagement in the IL-6 pathway.

The trial enrolled more than 6,300 patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease and elevated inflammation. Investors had viewed the program as one of Novo’s more credible growth avenues beyond Ozempic and Wegovy, making the miss strategically important.

Shares in Copenhagen fell as much as 10.5% intraday, while the U.S.-listed ADRs dropped more than 8% in premarket trading. Reuters and other reports said the move wiped about $30.7 billion from Novo Nordisk’s market value, reflecting renewed concerns about the company’s pipeline and reliance on obesity drugs.

Chief scientific officer Martin Holst Lange said the result does not change Novo’s strategic commitment to cardiovascular disease. The company said two other outcomes trials for heart failure and post-heart-attack patients will continue, with results expected in the first half of next year.

Roblox shares fell as much as 29% on Friday to $34.50 after the company reported second-quarter results and withdrew its full-year outlook. Management guided third-quarter bookings to $1.576 billion-$1.653 billion and revenue to $1.413 billion-$1.490 billion.

The second-quarter print showed bookings of $1.57 billion, up 8% from a year earlier, but investors focused on softer monetization and a weaker near-term outlook. Roblox said younger users in the U.S. and Canada were spending less, while changes to its recommendation algorithm also weighed on results.

The guidance reset triggered a sharp reaction from Wall Street, with BTIG and Benchmark cutting their ratings and Morgan Stanley lowering its price target. The stock also fell to a roughly two-year low, underscoring how sensitive the market is to Roblox’s monetization trend.

Roblox said it is prioritizing longer-term engagement and a broader content mix, but did not provide full-year guidance. Investors will now watch whether third-quarter bookings land within the new range and whether algorithm changes continue to pressure near-term monetization.

Chevron reported second-quarter net income of $12 billion, up from $2.5 billion a year earlier, while ExxonMobil posted $14.5 billion, more than doubling from about $7.1 billion. The results were driven by stronger crude prices and wider refining margins.

Benchmark crude prices rose sharply in the quarter as the Middle East conflict disrupted supply and shipping. Reuters and CNBC said Brent averaged about 23% higher than in the first quarter, while U.S. crude futures averaged $92.45 a barrel from April through June.

Chevron beat Wall Street estimates with adjusted earnings of $6.06 per share versus $5.56 expected, helped by downstream earnings of $4.9 billion. Exxon, by contrast, missed consensus at $3.52 per share versus $3.60 expected, with management citing extreme swings in commodity prices and margins that were hard to model.

Chevron CFO Eimear Bonner said fuel-making margins should stay elevated while energy markets remain under stress. Exxon said the quarter was shaped by disruption, but that its teams moved products where they were needed.

Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad said the CLARITY Act has ethics and nominations “nailed down” and that the substance of the bill already has bipartisan support. He argued that only edge-case disputes remain, while younger Democrats are increasingly comfortable with the legislation.

The bill is a major bid to set a federal market structure for digital assets in the U.S. House lawmakers passed an earlier version last year, and Senate committees have advanced related pieces, but final passage is still being held up by ethics language, stablecoin-yield provisions and White House concerns.

For markets, the bill matters because it shapes the regulatory outlook for Coinbase and other crypto-linked companies, while also influencing trading sentiment around bitcoin and ether. Banks are pushing for tighter limits on stablecoin yield products, arguing they could pull deposits away from the traditional banking system.

The Senate’s procedural window before the August recess remains the key test. Coinbase is publicly optimistic, but the final text will still depend on last-minute bargaining among the White House, crypto lobbyists and banking advocates.

Bloomberg reported that Moonshot AI has access to roughly 20,000 Nvidia chips through a computing agreement with Alibaba, using that capacity to support its Kimi models. Reuters separately said the chips were described as Hopper-generation parts, with multiple sources identifying them as H200 accelerators, while Alibaba denied providing H200-powered computing services.

The report lands after Moonshot unveiled Kimi K3 earlier this month, saying the model has 2.8 trillion parameters. It also comes as Washington keeps tightening controls on advanced AI semiconductors, prompting Chinese developers to lean more heavily on cloud partnerships and overseas compute channels.

For investors, the story keeps Alibaba’s cloud and AI infrastructure business in focus, while reinforcing Nvidia’s central role in the China AI compute debate. Any confirmation that restricted or near-restricted chips are involved would also keep compliance and export-control risks in the spotlight.

Alibaba denied supplying Moonshot with H200-based computing capacity, but did not dispute the existence of a compute relationship. Moonshot, Alibaba and Nvidia had not provided further public comment at the time of the reports.

KKR is nearing a deal to take medical-device outsourcing company Integer Holdings private at $127 a share, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter. Reuters calculated the offer would value Integer at about $4.3 billion based on 33.95 million shares outstanding.

Integer, based in Plano, Texas, designs and manufactures components for other medical-device makers. The company launched a strategic review in April after receiving interest from potential buyers and said it would consider options including a sale or merger.

The news sent Integer shares up more than 20% on Thursday. Reuters said Integer’s market value was about $3.42 billion, underscoring the premium implied by the reported offer; KKR and Integer did not immediately comment.

The potential transaction adds to a wave of private-equity dealmaking in healthcare, a segment that has drawn buyout interest for its recurring demand and specialized manufacturing exposure. KKR already has healthcare investments spanning dental services, drug development and healthcare analytics.

Reddit fell as much as 23% after reporting second-quarter results that beat on revenue and came with upbeat guidance. The company said search referrals were “choppy” during the quarter and more volatile later on, while U.S. daily active unique users slipped to 53.2 million from 53.5 million in Q1.

The headline numbers were solid: Reddit said Q2 revenue was $812 million. But investors looked past the beat and centered on the traffic mix, especially the risk that Google’s search changes and AI summaries are reducing the need for users to click through to Reddit.

The selloff rippled across the social and search complex, with Alphabet moving sharply higher while Reddit sold off. Management also said it sees more possible buyers for its data beyond OpenAI and Google, but it did not announce a new licensing deal.

For now, the market is weighing whether Reddit can keep converting search-driven visitors into logged-in users and higher-value advertisers. The company said it remains focused on building habits rather than “drive-by traffic.”

Canada’s Finance Department said the federal budget balance for May 2026 was a deficit of C$310 million, compared with a deficit of C$29.73 billion a year earlier. For the 2025-26 fiscal year to date, the budget deficit stood at C$1.36 billion, down from C$55.28 billion in the same period last year.

The figures come from the department’s monthly fiscal monitor and are not the final year-end numbers. Ottawa said the fiscal-year result will still include end-of-year adjustments and be finalized later in the public accounts.

For markets, the report matters most for Canadian bonds, the loonie and rate expectations because it helps frame Ottawa’s near-term borrowing needs. The data point is a snapshot of public finances, not a forecast of where the deficit will end up.

The X signal matched the official monthly report on both the May balance and the year-to-date deficit. The key caveat is that the finance ministry has already warned the annual figure remains provisional until the public accounts are published.

SpaceX closed Wednesday at $135.27, a record low for the stock since listing, and slipped below its $135 IPO price. The shares had reached an intraday high of $225.64 on June 16, putting the decline from peak at more than 50%.

Recent reports point to softer trading sentiment and the coming expiration of a lock-up period as key pressures on the stock. The company is also due to post its first quarterly earnings report after going public on or around Aug. 4, adding another event risk to the name.

The selloff matters because SpaceX had been priced at a very rich valuation, making the shares more sensitive to any change in expectations. Analysts and traders are now watching whether revenue momentum can offset the near-term pressure from earnings, lock-up supply and weaker risk appetite.

No fresh company response was reported in the coverage reviewed.