This content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Always do your own research. Not financial advice (NFA).
👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance
🛢️ Saudi oil tankers hit in Hormuz: Both struck by projectiles near Khasab late Monday, each carrying 2 million barrels. Brent cleared $92.
🔥 Energy drags euro inflation to 3.3%: Eurozone prices rose 3.3% in August as energy jumped 14.3%, and the ECB decides in 9 days.
🇯🇵 Japan’s 10-year clears 3%: Its first reading above 3% since 1996, and the US 30-year is on its worst run since 2006.
💸 Nvidia writes MediaTek a $3.5bn cheque: Convertible bonds, roughly 90% of MediaTek’s offering, and the shares hit Taipei’s 10% daily limit.
⚡ California knocks 23% off Edison: A wildfire bill left out the liability cap and PG&E fell 18% alongside it, in a single session.
🍏 Apple accuses OpenAI of destroying evidence: A former engineer allegedly took a circuit schematic, on John Ternus’s first day as chief executive.
🛍️ Shein breaks its own IPO price: The shares fell as low as HK$43.72 against an offer price of HK$48.56 on debut in Hong Kong.
📦 Amazon sued over $20bn of ad revenue: The FTC and 22 states allege secret surcharges hit more than 1.2 million advertisers.
₿ Strategy buys bitcoin again: 4,603 coins for $369.7m at an average of $80,318, its first purchase in about 2 months. Holdings 845,050.
💼 I took some risk off the table: A Portfolio Challenge update on the 4 positions I trimmed and the roughly £1,097 it raised.
🧠 One Big Thing
The oil war stopped being about Iran’s oil last night and started being about everyone else’s. Projectiles struck 2 supertankers carrying Saudi crude, 4 million barrels between them, minutes apart as they left the Strait of Hormuz. Brent cleared $92. That price is already inside the official numbers: euro area inflation came in at 3.3% this morning with energy up 14.3%, and it arrives 9 days before the European Central Bank votes. The Fed follows on 16 September and the Bank of Japan on 18 September. That is 3 rate decisions in a fortnight, and a shipping lane is helping write all of them.
⚖️ Fear & Greed
📉 The Number That Matters
3.00%
Japan’s 10-year government bond yield, above 3% this morning for the first time since 1996. Japan supplied the world with almost free money for a generation. That money now costs 3%.
⚔️ Winners vs Losers
Winners
GPRO 0.00%↑ :.89% GoPro Inc. shares extended their surge after YouTuber Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach disclosed an 8.5% stake of 13.5 million shares in a Schedule 13G filing, making him the company’s largest individual shareholder. The move follows a 46% jump in Monday’s session and comes despite a Q2 revenue decline of 31% and a warning about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.
FRVO 0.00%↑ L 11.77% Fervo Energy Company shares climbed after signing an agreement to supply Google with nearly 400 megawatts of geothermal power from its Cape Station project in southwestern Utah starting in 2028, with an option for Google to expand by roughly 600 megawatts by June 2030.
MDT 0.00%↑ : 5.10% Medtronic plc shares rose after fiscal Q1 2027 adjusted EPS of $1.45 beat the $1.39 consensus on revenue of $9.8 billion, up 13.7%, and the company raised full-year organic growth guidance to 7.25% to 7.75% and adjusted EPS guidance to $5.94 to $6.00.
Losers
No major losers today
📊 Market Snapshot
Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $77,971 (▼0.77%)
Ethereum (ETH): $2,455 (▼0.51%)
XRP: $1.38 (▼0.35%)
Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,656 (▼0.56%)
NASDAQ 100: 29,210 (▼1.03%)
FTSE 100: 10,726 (▼0.78%)
Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.78% (▲0.63%)
Oil (WTI): $88 (▲1.90%)
Gold: $4,378 (▼1.58%)
Silver: $64.71 (▼2.70%)
Data as of: UK: 12:07pm BST / US: 7:07am EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 8:07pm JST
✅ 5 Things to Know
🛢️ Saudi oil tankers hit leaving the Strait of Hormuz
Unknown projectiles struck 2 supertankers within minutes of each other late on Monday, both of them outbound through the Strait of Hormuz. The Saudi-flagged Sidr was hit about 16.6 nautical miles northeast of Khasab in Oman at 1952 GMT. The Liberian-flagged Senegal Prosperity took 3 projectiles about 17 nautical miles east of the same town, and the UK Maritime Trade Operations agency logged 3 projectiles hitting a tanker in that position. Each ship had loaded 2 million barrels of Saudi crude at the Juaymah terminal last week, so 4 million barrels were on the water between them. All crew are reported safe (Reuters).
The cargo is the part that has changed. For 6 months this war has been about Iranian exports and the American blockade of Iranian ports, and Saudi Aramco only resumed loading and selling from inside the strait in August. These were 2 ships carrying another country’s oil out of the Gulf. Marisks, the shipping intelligence firm that reported both incidents, called them “a further escalation in the threat environment within the Omani corridor”. The strait moved about a fifth of the world’s oil before the strikes began. Brent cleared $92, up more than 4%, and US crude is near $88. Donald Trump told a reporter, “We’re going to hit them hard. There will be a response” (CBS News).
Sensei’s Insight: The war changed shape last night. For 6 months this was about Iran’s oil and who could stop it leaving. Now it is Saudi cargo being hit on the way out, and Aramco only restarted loading there in August. That is a different war.
🔥 Europe’s energy bill lands on the ECB’s desk
Euro area inflation came in at 3.3% in August, up from 2.9% in July, on the flash estimate Eurostat published this morning. Energy prices rose 14.3% over the year, from 10.3% the month before. Underneath that, the picture was calmer. Services eased to 3.0% from 3.3%, food, alcohol and tobacco held at 1.2%, goods other than energy edged up to 1.2% from 0.9%, and the core measure that strips out energy, food, alcohol and tobacco slipped to 2.4% from 2.5%. Prices rose 0.4% on the month. Spain printed 4.5%, Belgium 4.2%, Italy 3.2%, Germany 2.9% and France 2.7% (Eurostat).
The ECB’s Governing Council meets on Thursday 10 September, at 2:15pm in Frankfurt, which is 1:15pm UK and 8:15am Eastern. Its deposit rate has sat at 2.25% since 17 June, and economists were already expecting a rise to 2.5% before this print landed. Energy carries a weight of 9% in the eurozone basket and it produced almost the whole of the increase, because crude has spent 6 months priced off a war and cleared $92 again overnight. The line runs from a shipping lane in the Gulf, through a pump in Madrid, to a rate decision in Frankfurt (RTE).
Sensei’s Insight: Strip energy out and euro inflation is 2.4%, down from last month. The core measures fell or held flat. So the ECB is being asked to raise rates in 9 days because of a war it has no power over. Rates cannot make oil cheaper.
🇯🇵 Japan’s borrowing cost hits a 30-year high
What does it cost Japan to borrow for 10 years? As of Tuesday, 3.00%, and it has not been that expensive since 1996. The yield rose 6 basis points to get there and has more than tripled since 2024. The 30-year sits at 4.14% and the 40-year at 4.20%. The same move is running everywhere else: the US 10-year closed at 4.778% on Monday, its highest since January 2025, and is higher again this morning at 4.78%, the US 30-year is at 5.27%, and gilts led the selling (Investing.com).
For 3 decades, borrowing yen cost close to nothing, so investors borrowed in yen and bought assets in other countries with the proceeds. That trade works while Japanese rates stay on the floor. The Bank of Japan meets on 17 and 18 September with markets pricing 80% to 90% odds of a rise to 1.25%. The ECB votes 8 days before that, and the Fed sits between them on 16 September. Bloomberg’s line this morning was that the US 30-year has entered September on its worst stretch since 2006. The Nikkei 225 closed down 0.4% on Monday and slipped again on Tuesday (Bloomberg).
Gold fell 1.58% and silver 2.70% on the same morning, which is what rising yields do to assets that pay no income.
Sensei’s Insight: Japan is where the cheap money came from. For 30 years you could borrow yen for almost nothing and buy whatever you liked. At 3% that costs real money, and the Bank of Japan has not even moved yet. It votes on 18 September.
💸 Nvidia writes a $3.5 billion cheque to MediaTek
Nvidia is putting $3.5 billion into MediaTek, the Taiwanese chip designer, through bonds convertible into MediaTek shares. The 2 companies announced it in a joint statement on Monday. Nvidia took roughly 90% of a $3.9 billion overseas convertible offering, the largest of its kind in Taiwan’s history, and Alphabet took part as well without disclosing its size. It is Nvidia’s first direct investment in a Taiwanese chip designer. MediaTek shares hit their 10% daily limit in Taipei on Tuesday morning at NT$4,315, adding to a rally of almost 200% this year (Taipei Times).
What the money buys is placement. MediaTek will build with NVLink Fusion and a new Nvidia memory technology called NVHBM, which means the custom chips it designs for data centre owners plug into Nvidia’s own wiring rather than someone else’s. MediaTek is chasing the business Broadcom and Marvell currently own, and it expects around $2 billion of AI chip revenue this year against a target of up to 15% of an $80 billion segment next year. Investors have asked before whether Nvidia funding its own customers creates real demand. Jensen Huang answered it directly on Bloomberg television: “This is not circular because obviously they do their own business and we do our own business.” Broadcom reports on Wednesday after the US close, 10:00pm UK and 5:00pm Eastern (CNBC).
Sensei’s Insight: Nvidia is paying to keep custom silicon inside its own wiring. MediaTek gets the money and the interconnect, Broadcom gets a better funded competitor, and Nvidia gets to sell into a data centre it never had to design. Broadcom reports Wednesday night.
⚡ A California bill took 23% off Edison in a session
The California legislature’s 2026 session ended on Monday. Over the weekend the State Assembly amended Senate Bill 492 and stripped out the provisions the utilities had been counting on: a $6 billion cap on what any single incident can draw from the state wildfire fund, a bar on insurers suing utilities, and a mechanism for refilling the fund. Edison International closed down 23% at $53.98. PG&E closed down 18% at $13.57. Sempra fell 3%. The main US utilities ETF fell 1.18%, so the selling was specific to California statute rather than to the sector (24/7 Wall St).
PG&E went into bankruptcy in January 2019 over wildfire claims, and the state fund was built afterwards to stop that happening again.
Taking the cap out puts the exposure back on the balance sheet, and the analysts moved within hours. BMO cut PG&E to Market Perform and its target to $21 from $28, raising the wildfire drag it applies to $10 a share from $6 and assuming uncapped liabilities beyond 2030. Wells Fargo cut to Equal Weight with a $24 target, and Mizuho moved both names to Neutral. S&P has PG&E one notch below investment grade. Nothing further can pass in Sacramento until the 2027 session opens (Seeking Alpha).
Sensei’s Insight: Utilities are the boring bit of an index fund. A bill in Sacramento left one clause out and took 23% off Edison in a single session. Legislative risk does not show up in a dividend yield, and plenty of pension money owns it.
Stories You Might Have Missed
🍏 Apple accuses OpenAI of destroying evidence
Apple filed a brief on Monday supporting a motion for expedited fact-finding in its trade secrets case against OpenAI. It alleges that Chang Liu, an iPhone engineer who left for OpenAI in January, downloaded a confidential Apple circuit schematic and used it in his new job, and that on learning of Apple’s internal investigation he sent instructions for destroying evidence to an OpenAI colleague who confirmed she would comply. Liu is one of more than 400 former Apple employees now working at OpenAI. OpenAI has asked the court to throw the case out, calling the accusations meritless and the lawsuit “careless, aggressive and oddly personal”, and saying it does not “have, nor want, any of their trade secrets”. Judge Edward J. Davila hears arguments on 1 October. It lands on the day John Ternus takes over as chief executive, with Tim Cook moving to executive chair after 15 years (AppleInsider).
🛍️ Shein fell below its own IPO price on day one
Shein began trading in Hong Kong on Tuesday under the code 625, having priced at HK$48.56 and sold around 280 million shares to raise HK$13.6 billion, about $1.74 billion. The shares fell as low as HK$43.72 in the morning and closed the session down 7%, valuing the company at just over $26 billion. Private investors paid a valuation of $98.2 billion in 2022. The reception was put down to tariffs on low-value parcels entering the US, regulatory pressure in Europe, and slowing growth. Shein reported a first-quarter loss of $99 million against a $395 million profit a year earlier (CNBC).
📦 The FTC and 22 states sued Amazon over its ad auctions
The Federal Trade Commission and 22 state attorneys general filed suit against Amazon on Monday in the Western District of Washington. The complaint alleges Amazon applied secret surcharges and inflated auction rates across Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display, that it began overriding the results of its own auction with higher rates in 2018, and that the practice affected more than 1.2 million advertisers and generated over $20 billion of revenue. Amazon’s advertising business earned $68.6 billion in 2025. Amazon called the suit misguided and said the inflation-adjusted average cost per click on Sponsored Products search ads was flat between 2019 and 2024. Shares closed down 2.5% (CBS News).
₿ Strategy started buying bitcoin again
Strategy bought 4,603 bitcoin for $369.7 million between 24 and 30 August, at an average price of $80,318. It is the company’s first purchase in around 2 months, and it was funded by $602.80 million of common stock sales. Total holdings now stand at 845,050 bitcoin. The shares closed up 4.42% at $132.94 on Monday. Bitcoin itself finished August up about 24%, its strongest month since November 2024, and was just under $78,000 by the middle of Tuesday, roughly flat on the week (The Block).