South Korea’s Kospi hit a new record Friday as Asia-Pacific markets kicked off the new year trading mixed. The Kospi was up 1.96%, and hit a record high. Heavyweight Samsung Electronics was about 6% higher after the company reportedly claimed that customers praised its high memory bandwidth, or HBM chips. The small-cap Kosdaq was 1.84% higher. Some Asian markets were still closed for the holidays, including Japan and mainland China. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index climbed 2.43%, with educational services stocks leading gains. Artificial intelligence chip designer Shanghai Biren surged over 100% after it made its debut on the HSI, off a 5.58 billion ($717 million) Hong Kong dollar IPO.
The S&P 500 pulled back on Wednesday, though the index still closed out a bumper year. The broad market S&P 500 dipped 0.74% and closed at 6,845.50, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.76% and ended at 23,241.99. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 303.77 points, or 0.63%, and settled at 48,063.29. Stocks posted a four-session losing streak, although the declines were mild and the S&P 500 still locked in a 16.39% gain for the year, its third straight double-digit annual advance. The Nasdaq Composite rode AI enthusiasm to a 20.36% advance. The Dow advanced 12.97% in 2025, hindered a bit by its lack of tech representation. That marks an impressive recovery from the rout seen in early April following President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs announcement.
The metal gained about 65% last year, fuelled by sweeping global US tariffs, expectations of lower US borrowing costs, persistent geopolitical uncertainty, sustained central bank buying, and renewed inflows into gold-backed exchange-traded funds. Early this week, minutes from the FOMC’s December meeting, showed growing openness among policymakers to easing monetary policy if inflation continues to cool, although officials remained divided over the timing and scale of potential rate cuts. On the geopolitical front, the US recently stepped-up enforcement against Venezuela’s oil trade, while renewed Russia-Ukraine strikes over the New Year period targeted Black Sea ports and key energy infrastructure.
WTI crude oil futures rose to around $57.7 on the first trading day of 2026, after posting their biggest annual decline in five years, as markets weighed upcoming OPEC+ talks and ongoing geopolitical developments. The cartel is set to meet virtually on January 4, with expectations that the group will maintain its November agreement to pause further production increases. Geopolitical developments remained a backdrop, as Washington stepped up pressure on Venezuela’s energy sector by targeting China and Hong Kong based firms and vessels allegedly involved in bypassing export restrictions.
Singapore’s economy expanded 5.7% year on year for the fourth quarter, the highest since 2021, driven mainly by a sharp increase in manufacturing output during the three months through December. The Ministry of Trade and Industry said that Singapore’s manufacturing sector posted a 15% expansion, a massive jump compared to the 4.9% growth in the third quarter. Growth during the quarter was largely driven by the biomedical manufacturing and electronics clusters, the ministry said. Manufacturing makes up about 20% of the city-state’s GDP. Most other sectors contracted during the quarter, including construction and services. The advance estimate was higher than the revised 4.3% growth in the previous quarter, lifting full-year GDP growth to 4.8%, as announced by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong in his New Year’s message.
Democrat Zohran Mamdani became New York City’s mayor on Thursday, vowing during a public swearing-in ceremony on the steps of City Hall to enact an aggressive agenda aimed at making the nation’s largest city more affordable for working people. Mamdani, a member of his party’s left-wing democratic socialist faction, was elected in November in a prominent victory that could influence this year’s midterm elections that will determine control of the U.S. Congress. Some Democrats have embraced his style while Republicans portray him as a foil on the national political stage. In a speech following his public swearing-in, Mamdani promoted core campaign promises of universal childcare, affordable rents and free bus service.
President Donald Trump issued the first vetoes of his second term Tuesday, blocking bills that would support a pair of bipartisan infrastructure projects in Colorado and Florida. Trump’s veto of the Colorado bill, the Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act, which Congress unanimously approved earlier in December, enraged the state’s lawmakers. The bill would reduce the payments local communities must provide to the federal government for the construction of the Arkansas Valley Conduit, a pipeline poised to provide clean drinking water to rural communities in Colorado. “Enough is enough. My Administration is committed to preventing American taxpayers from funding expensive and unreliable policies,” he said.
China is on track to meet its growth target of around 5% this year and will roll out more proactive policies in 2026, President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday, amplifying promises for more stimulus to power economic growth. China’s gross domestic product is expected to have reached 140 trillion yuan ($20 trillion) this year, with defence and science and technology in particular having reached new levels, Xi said in a New Year’s address televised by state broadcaster CCTV. The country’s GDP growth rate is expected to be around 5% after an “extraordinary” year, Xi told a New Year’s tea party of top Chinese Communist Party officials on the same day, CCTV reported. That means the economy will have hit this year’s growth target set by policymakers, buoyed partly by goods exports, which proved resilient despite a heated trade war with the United States. Xi did not unveil any specific policies in his New Year’s messages, but vowed to improve the quality of the economy while maintaining “reasonable growth”, and reiterated his “common prosperity” pledge.
The U.S. on Tuesday announced sanctions on a group of 10 individuals and entities based in Iran and Venezuela that are allegedly linked to the weapons trade between the two countries. Those targeted include a Venezuelan company, Empresa Aeronautica Nacional, which is allegedly linked to millions of dollars of Iranian drone sales to Venezuela. The sanctions also target three Iran-based individuals who are allegedly part of an effort to procure chemicals used for ballistic missiles, according to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. “Iran’s ongoing provision of conventional weapons to Caracas constitutes a threat to U.S. interests in the Western Hemisphere, including the Homeland, and the United States will use all available measures to prevent this trade,” the Treasury Department said in a statement.
Chinese tech giant Baidu has announced plans to spin off its artificial intelligence chip subsidiary, Kunlunxin, and list it in Hong Kong, as more domestic chipmakers seek funds amid Beijing’s push for semiconductor self-sufficiency. The company said in an announcement Friday that it had confidentially filed a listing application on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, though details of the offering, including size and structure, remain undecided. The move would still require regulatory approvals, including from China’s securities watchdog. Baidu emphasized there is no guarantee the spin-off will proceed. The company reportedly owns about 59% of Kunlunxin. Baidu, a major player in China’s growing AI space, is both a buyer of specialized AI chips for data centers and cloud computing, as well as a designer of them through Kunlunxin.
The U.S. government has granted an annual licence to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing to import U.S. chip manufacturing equipment to its facilities in Nanjing, China, the chipmaker said on Thursday. The approval “ensures uninterrupted fab operations and product deliveries,” the company said in a statement to Reuters. South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have also received similar import licences. Previously, the Asian companies had benefited from exemptions from Washington’s sweeping restrictions on chip-related exports to China, part of U.S. efforts to try to stay ahead of China in technological development. But those privileges - known as validated end-user status - expired on December 31 and the companies had to seek U.S. export licences instead for 2026. The Nanjing plant makes 16-nanometre and other mature node chips - not TSMC’s most-advanced semiconductors. TSMC also has a chipmaking plant in Shanghai.
India’s KFC and Pizza Hut operators, Sapphire Foods India and Devyani International, said on Thursday they will merge in a $934 million deal, creating a fast-food franchisee powerhouse in the world’s most populous country. The deal comes as India’s fast-food franchisees grapple with higher costs, slowing same-store sales and margin pressure, while facing stiff competition from McDonald’s and Domino’s Pizza operators in a market where consumers are cutting back on non-essential spending. Devyani will issue 177 shares for every 100 shares of Sapphire as part of the deal and it expects annual synergies of 2.1 billion to 2.25 billion rupees ($23.34 million to $25.01 million) from the second full year of operations of the combined entity.
Bitcoin is on track to post its first annual loss since 2022, as macroeconomic pressures and fading momentum weighed on the world’s largest cryptocurrency. Despite reaching a fresh record high this year, bitcoin has struggled to regain its footing since October, and last month experienced its biggest monthly drop since mid-2021. Now, it is on track to end the year more than 6% lower, after posting yearly gains the previous two years. It was last trading at $87,474.2. After soaring earlier this year with the election of crypto-friendly U.S. President Donald Trump, cryptocurrencies - along with stocks - plummeted in April on his tariff announcements. They quickly rebounded, with bitcoin hitting an all-time peak above $126,000 in early October.
Drugmakers plan to raise U.S. prices on at least 350 branded medications including vaccines against COVID, RSV and shingles and blockbuster cancer treatment Ibrance, even as the Trump administration pressures them for cuts, according to data provided exclusively by healthcare research firm 3 Axis Advisors. The number of price increases for 2026 is up from the same point last year, when drugmakers unveiled plans for raises on more than 250 drugs. The median of this year’s price hikes is around 4% - in line with 2025. The increases do not reflect any rebates to pharmacy benefit managers and other discounts. Drugmakers also plan to cut the list prices on around nine drugs. That includes a more than 40% cut for Boehringer Ingelheim’s diabetes drug Jardiance and three related treatments. Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly, which sell Jardiance together, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the reason for the price cuts.