1. Taiwan stocks hit record high amid mixed regional trading
Taiwan benchmark Taiex rose 1.42% to a record high Tuesday, amid broader gains in Asia, fueled by a tech rally on Wall Street after Nvidia announced a partnership with OpenAI. The index closed at 26,247.37. Australia’s ASX/S&P 200 rose 0.4% to 8,845.9. South Korea’s Kospi climbed 0.51% to close at 3,486.19 while the small-cap Kosdaq slipped 0.25% to 872.21. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index slipped 0.99%. Hong Kong is bracing for a severe typhoon. The Hong Kong Observatory warned that conditions will begin to worsen later Tuesday, with Super Typhoon Ragasa expected to make its closest approach to the Pearl River Estuary Wednesday morning. Mainland China’s CSI 300 was flat at 4,519.78.
2. S&P 500 closes lower, snapping 3-day winning streak, as AI trade in Nvidia fizzles; Powell hints stocks are overvalued
The S&P 500 took a pause from its recent gains on Tuesday as doubts about the sustainability of the artificial intelligence bull trend worried investors. The broad market index closed down 0.6% at 6,656.92, after reaching a new all-time intraday high earlier in the session and posting a record close on Monday. The Nasdaq Composite fell nearly 1% to settle at 22,573.47, with the losses led by AI names like Nvidia, Oracle and Amazon. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished 88.76 points, or 0.2%, lower at 46,292.78. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell furthered valuation concerns Tuesday, noting “equity prices are fairly highly valued.” Powell also signalled that the rate-cutting path wasn’t clear and that it was a “challenging situation.”
3. Gold hits record high after Powell speaks
Gold prices hit record highs Tuesday after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell raised concern over the state of the U.S. economy. Spot gold climbed 0.9% to 3,778.54 per ounce. Gold futures for December delivery scaled 1% to $3,811.30 per ounce. “Near-term risks to inflation are tilted to the upside and risks to employment to the downside — a challenging situation,” Powell said at the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce 2025 Economic Outlook Luncheon. “Two-sided risks mean that there is no risk-free path.”
4. Oil rises more than $1 a barrel as restart of Kurdish oil export stalls
Oil prices rose by more than $1 a barrel on Tuesday after a deal to resume exports from Iraq’s Kurdistan stalled, pacifying some investor concerns that the restart would add to global oversupply fears. Brent crude futures rose $1.06, 1.59%, to close at $67.63 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude gained $1.13, or 1.81%, to settle at at $63.41 a barrel, both recouping modest earlier losses. Brent and WTI had fallen for the previous four sessions, dropping around 3%. Pipeline oil exports from Iraq’s Kurdistan region to Turkey had yet to restart on Tuesday despite hopes of a deal to end the deadlock, as two key producers asked for debt repayment guarantees. The deal between Iraq’s federal and Kurdish regional governments and oil firms aims to resume exports of about 230,000 barrels per day of oil from Kurdistan to the global market via Turkey, halted since March 2023.
5. Fed Chief Powell says stock prices appear ‘fairly highly valued’
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Tuesday noted that asset prices, a category that typically includes stocks and other risk instruments, are at elevated levels. During a speech in Providence, Rhode Island, the central bank leader was asked how much emphasis he and his colleagues place on market prices and whether they have a higher tolerance for higher values. “We do look at overall financial conditions, and we ask ourselves whether our policies are affecting financial conditions in a way that is what we’re trying to achieve,” Powell said. “But you’re right, by many measures, for example, equity prices are fairly highly valued.” In the run-up to last week’s policy meetings, stocks and other assets rallied strongly as conviction grew that that the Federal Open Market Committee would be lowering its benchmark overnight borrowing rate. Though Powell noted the lofty equity values, he said this is “not a time of elevated financial stability risks.”
6. U.S. and global growth forecast lifted by OECD as economies surprise to the upside
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development upgraded its global economic growth forecast on Tuesday, with many economies appearing more resilient than expected so far this year. The OECD now expects global growth of 3.2% this year, compared to the 2.9% expansion it had forecast in June. Expectations for 2026 were unchanged at 2.9%. This would mark a slowdown from the 3.3% growth seen in 2024. Growth expectations for the U.S. were also lifted, to 1.8% for 2025, compared to June’s 1.6% estimate. This still marks a significant fall from 2024′s 2.8% growth, however. The organization forecasts 1.5% growth for the U.S. in 2026. “Global growth was more resilient than anticipated in the first half of 2025, especially in many emerging-market economies,” the organisation said in a new report.
7. Trump-Xi meeting likely to happen next year, says U.S. ambassador to China
A highly anticipated meeting between the U.S. and Chinese presidents is more likely to take place next year than this fall, U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue said Tuesday. “We’re looking forward to getting together, as President Trump said, and potentially in the near future, but certainly next year,” Perdue said. His comments came during a press conference with a group of U.S. lawmakers on a rare visit to Beijing — the first since 2019. After a call Friday with Chinese President Xi Jinping, U.S. President Donald Trump said on social media that the two agreed to meet around a multilateral summit in South Korea next month. Trump also said he would visit China early next year, followed by a visit from Xi to the U.S. The Chinese readout of the call did not include such details.
8. Singapore core inflation rate comes in softer than expected, hits fresh four-year lows
Singapore’s core inflation posted its softest rise since February 2021, coming in at 0.3% for August as services costs eased. The figure — which strips out prices of private transport and accommodation — was lower than the 0.5% expected by economists, and lower than the 0.5% seen in the month before. Headline inflation in Singapore came in at 0.5%, down from the 0.6% in July. The Monetary Authority of Singapore said that services inflation fell due to cheaper holiday expenses, airfares and inpatient services. The largest driver of inflation in August came from private transport, as car prices rose while petrol prices dropped at a slower pace. The MAS also kept its full-year inflation forecast for 2025 at between 0.5% and 1.5% for 2025, compared to 2.8% in 2024.
9. Powell says slowing labour market prompted rate cut, sees ‘challenging situation’ ahead
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Tuesday that weakness in the labour market is outweighing concerns about stubborn inflation, leading to a decision he backed to lower the central bank’s key interest rate last week. The Federal Open Market Committee’s first cut of the year came amid signs that both supply and demand of workers is waning at the same time that near-term impact from tariffs has pushed inflation higher. At such times, Powell said, during a speech to business leaders in Providence, Rhode Island, the Fed’s job is to “balance both sides of our dual mandate” for stable prices and low unemployment. “Near-term risks to inflation are tilted to the upside and risks to employment to the downside — a challenging situation,” he said. “Two-sided risks mean that there is no risk-free path.”
10. In major shift, Trump says he now thinks Ukraine can win back all of its territory taken by Russia
President Donald Trump said Tuesday afternoon that he thinks Ukraine, with help from the European Union, could win back its territory from Russia and return the country to its original borders. The president had suggested numerous times that giving up some land would be a key component of resolving Ukraine’s war with Russia. “After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” Trump said in a lengthy post on Truth Social. The president said that with the financial support of NATO, returning Ukraine to its original borders is “very much an option.” He added that Russia has been “fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a War that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win. This is not distinguishing Russia.”
11. Trump cancels meeting with top Democrats as government shutdown looms
President Donald Trump on Tuesday cancelled a planned meeting with the two top Democrats in Congress to address issues holding up a funding deal that could avoid a federal government shutdown. Trump scrapped the sit-down set for Thursday just a day after people familiar with the situation said that his meeting with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries would happen. Trump’s move increases the likelihood of a shutdown. The two New York lawmakers are insisting that any stopgap deal to avoid a Sept. 30 shutdown include protections for health-care programs, including by extending Affordable Care Act enhanced tax credits. Those credits, which are usable for health insurance plans purchased on Obamacare marketplaces, are due to expire at the end of the year.
12. Chinese EV giant BYD says it has a backup plan if it’s cut off from Nvidia chips
BYD has a backup plan if it gets cut off from the Nvidia chips it currently uses in its cars, a top executive at the Chinese electric carmaker told media on Tuesday. Stella Li, executive vice president at BYD, said the company had not received any directive from the Chinese government to stop using Nvidia chips — but if it did, it has a plan B. Li declined to expand on what the plan is, but she pointed to the Covid-19 pandemic during which there was a global shortage of semiconductors which badly affected the auto sector. BYD had “no issue” at the time because it developed a lot of its technology in-house, he said, so it was able to source alternatives quickly. “We have a lot of strong … even deeper technology in-house, so we always have backup,” Li said.
13. Micron beats on earnings as company sales rise 46% on AI boom
Micron reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue on Tuesday as well as a robust forecast for the current quarter. The stock rose in extended trading. Micron said revenue in the current period, its fiscal first quarter, will be about $12.5 billion, versus the $11.94 billion average analyst estimate per LSEG. The company said it had $3.2 billion, or $2.83 per share in net income, versus $887 million, or 79 cents in the year-ago period. Micron shares have nearly doubled so far in 2025. The company makes memory and storage, which are important components for computers. Micron has been one of the winners of the artificial intelligence boom. That’s because high-end AI chips like those made by Nvidia require increasing amounts of high-tech memory called high-bandwidth memory, which Micron makes.
14. Alibaba launches Qwen3-Max AI model with more than 1 trillion parameters
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba announced on Wednesday its largest ever artificial intelligence language model, the Qwen3-Max, doubling down on AI as a core business strategy. The model, Alibaba’s most powerful to date, contains more than 1 trillion parameters, or variables that determine how an AI system processes information, and shows particular strength in code generation and autonomous agent capabilities, Zhou Jingren, chief technology officer at Alibaba Cloud, said at the company’s annual conference. Autonomous agent capabilities mean the AI system requires fewer human prompts than a chatbot like ChatGPT, and can make decisions and take action independently towards a goal set by the human user. Alibaba cited third-party benchmarks, such as Tau2-Bench, saying the model outperformed rival products including Anthropic’s Claude and DeepSeek-V3.1 in certain metrics. Alibaba has made AI a priority alongside its traditional e-commerce operations.
