Breakfast | August 18, 2026

U.S. stocks closed lower, but memory chip stocks rose, with SanDisk gaining nearly 9%. The chip index returned to bull market territory, and optical communication stock Coherent rose nearly 8%. Middle East risks pushed crude oil up 3% intraday. The 30-year U.S. Treasury yield hit a new high since 2007. The offshore RMB rose above 6.74 intraday, reaching a multi-year high.

Trump: In no hurry to end the Iran war, not seeking to extend the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding. The Iranian side "will not reach the kind of agreement I deem necessary." If Oman obstructs negotiations, it will be "heavily bombed."

In June, China and Japan led overseas selling of U.S. Treasuries. The three major creditors—China, Japan, and the UK—all reduced their holdings, with China's holdings hitting a new low since 2008.

Li Qiang: Timely planning and introduction of practical and effective incremental policies to remove various bottlenecks and obstacles, promoting sustained, new, optimized, and improved economic development.

China's industrial value-added above designated size grew by 4.5% year-on-year in July, a slowdown. Retail sales of consumer goods grew by 0.6% year-on-year in July, also a slowdown. Urban fixed-asset investment fell by 6.7% year-on-year from January to July. Real estate development investment fell by 19.2% year-on-year from January to July, and sales of newly built commercial housing fell by 13.1%.

Two departments released the "15th Five-Year" oil and gas plan: Domestic oil and gas supply will reach 440 million tons of oil equivalent by 2030. Research will be conducted to improve the refined oil consumption tax system and refine the refined oil pricing mechanism.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) deployed efforts to accelerate the rollout of new policy-based financial tools in 2026, increasing support for private investment projects.

Investment guru Druckenmiller bought Chinese concept stocks for the first time in two years, significantly increasing his position in Amazon, entering AMD, and clearing positions in Broadcom, Intel, and Micron.

Nvidia's guarantee cap for OpenAI data centers is $105 billion, more than half less than the original plan.

Report: Anthropic's annualized revenue exceeded $65 billion in July, an increase of more than seven times compared to the end of last year. Internal projections estimate revenue could reach $200 billion by 2028.

Reminder: Baidu will announce its second-quarter earnings on Tuesday.