Finance Morning Brief: Nikkei Jumps Over 1,000 Points; Korea Posts Worst Q3; China's New Financial-Marketing Rules Take Effect

📊 Today's Asian Markets

1. Nikkei Jumps Over 1,000 Points as AI and Chip Stocks Lead

Source: Kyodo News

Tokyo stocks rebounded on the morning of September 30, with the Nikkei index surging more than 1,000 points intraday and reclaiming the 66,000 mark, according to Kyodo News. Buying poured into artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductor shares, driving the broader market higher.

By the end of the morning session, the Nikkei index was up 837.54 points from Friday's close at 66,318.81, while the TOPIX gained 34.91 points to 4,076.04. Overnight, U.S. stock indices composed mainly of semiconductor shares advanced, lifting sentiment in Tokyo, with chipmaking-equipment giant Tokyo Electron among the gainers.

Among individual stocks, SoftBank Group, which has invested in OpenAI, was sought after following news that OpenAI's revenue had grown sharply. In addition, with a previously halted Saudi oil pipeline repaired, concerns over energy supply eased, and a pullback in U.S. crude futures also improved investor confidence.

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2. AI Trade Unwinds: Korea Posts Worst Quarter Among Major Markets

Source: Stockstar

South Korea's stock market suffered a violent selloff in July as the year's most popular AI trading positions were unwound en masse, making it the world's worst-performing market in the third quarter. Dragged down by a selloff in memory-chip stocks early in the quarter, the KOSPI fell 18.8% in the three months to September 30.

Betting on companies such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix had been one of the most mainstream ways to go long on the AI theme. Prashant Bhayani, Asia Chief Investment Officer at BNP Paribas Wealth Management, said the Korean market has become a barometer for investors judging the outlook of massive AI infrastructure spending. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix together account for about half of the Korean market's total capitalization, and their forward price-to-earnings ratios have fallen to the 4-to-5 times range.

Bhayani said that after the July selloff, Korean valuations had become more attractive, but it would be hard for valuations to rise sharply again: "The market can deliver reasonable returns, but another 70% gain is basically impossible." Separately, the hedge fund Situational Awareness, run by Leopold Aschenbrenner, blew up after holding highly leveraged positions in Korean memory-chip stocks; combined with retail investors' feverish pursuit of leveraged single-stock ETFs and excessive market euphoria, multiple factors together triggered the concentrated unwinding of positions in July.

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3. New Rules on Online Marketing of Financial Products Take Effect

Source: 21st Century Business Herald (21jingji)

Many users have recently noticed that familiar finance bloggers are disappearing in batches, and even some influencers with more than 100,000 followers were no exception. The core reason is the "Measures for the Administration of Online Marketing of Financial Products" (the "Measures"), which took effect today.

The Measures stipulate that, on the marketing-entity side, only licensed financial institutions and the third-party platforms they entrust may conduct online marketing of financial products; on the content side, inducement phrases such as "low risk," "low threshold," "high return," "low interest rate," and "zero cost" are banned.

After the regulatory tightening, some finance accounts with hard compliance problems have been directly banned by platforms. At the same time, some finance bloggers have proactively cleared their homepages, while others quietly changed their names or switched their verified entities to reduce account risk. More worryingly, some so-called influencers have ostensibly stopped posting and exited, but in fact funnel their followers into paid communities, which may well be illegal marketing or even illegal stock recommendations.

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4. Wang Chuanfu Re-Elected BYD Chairman by Unanimous Vote

Source: Sina Finance

According to Radar Finance, BYD's first meeting of its ninth board of directors was held on September 29, at which all nine directors unanimously elected Wang Chuanfu as chairman of the ninth board for a three-year term; the meeting also reappointed Wang Chuanfu as the company's president, and Lu Xiangyang was elected vice chairman.

Tianyancha App shows that BYD Co., Ltd. was founded in 1995, with Wang Chuanfu as its legal representative. Controller information shows Wang Chuanfu holds about 16.9% control of the company; key-personnel information shows Wang Chuanfu and Lu Xiangyang serve as chairman and vice chairman respectively. After this reshuffle, BYD's chairman, president, legal representative and actual controller all remain with Wang Chuanfu, with the company's core governance structure continuing through the term of the ninth board.

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5. Sanan Optoelectronics Controller Lin Xiucheng Criminally Detained

Source: Haibao News

Sanan Optoelectronics announced on September 24 that it had received notice from the family of actual controller Lin Xiucheng that Lin had been criminally detained by public security authorities on suspicion of embezzlement and misappropriation of funds. The announcement also explained that Lin had held no position in the company since July 2017. Why is a founder who left the listed company's management nine years ago still being pursued for criminal liability?

In terms of equity relationships, Lin Xiucheng indirectly controls Sanan Optoelectronics through Sanan Group; he directly holds 59.68% of Sanan Group and, together with his son Lin Zhiqiang, holds 71.83%. The "2026 Hurun Global Rich List" shows that Lin Xiucheng and Lin Zhiqiang rank third among Xiamen's listed tycoons with 16 billion yuan in wealth. In July 2017, Lin Xiucheng stepped down as chairman of the listed company and his son Lin Zhiqiang took over, but Lin Xiucheng has always remained the legal actual controller of the listed company.

On the timeline, Lin Xiucheng was placed under lien and investigation by the National Supervisory Commission on March 21, which the company announced on March 23; the criminal detention on September 24 means the case has moved from supervisory proceedings into criminal judicial proceedings. Meanwhile, the controlling shareholder's debt problems also surfaced: on March 30 the company disclosed that shares held by Sanan Electronics and Sanan Group had been judicially frozen and frozen in rotation; as of September 23, the two shareholders' combined 1.312 billion Sanan Optoelectronics shares had been entirely frozen, with more than 7 billion shares frozen in rotation cumulatively. In addition, less than a month after Lin Xiucheng was placed under lien, the company's vice chairman and general managers Lin Kechuang (Lin Xiucheng's son-in-law) was placed under lien for investigation by the Yuzhong District Supervisory Commission in Chongqing and could no longer perform his duties normally.

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6. Thermal Coal Prices Near 1,000 Yuan as Multiple Agencies Move to Secure Supply

Source: China Financial Information Network

Xinhua Finance reported on September 30 (reporter Zhang Lei) that on the last day of September, parts of northern China had clearly cooled. Since June, many places have stepped up coal-mine safety inspections, causing a sizable drop in national coal output; an imbalance between supply and demand has pushed coal prices steadily higher, with the price of 5,500-kcal thermal coal at Qinhuangdao approaching the 1,000-yuan mark.

In response to the new coal-market situation and rigid winter demand, multiple state departments have jointly rolled out special measures to fully deploy key work including stabilizing coal output and supply, regulating and controlling capacity, and supplementing supply through multiple channels. Wei Yaru, a coal and coke researcher at Haitong Futures, said some mines resuming production in areas such as Jinzhong show a pattern of "resuming production without resuming output," indicating that safety supervision has deepened from "suspension" to "output restriction," forming a substantive and sustained rigid contraction in supply; as of the end of August, mines that had passed acceptance and resumed production had generally not returned to pre-accident capacity levels.

Data show that national coal output was about 340 million tons in July alone, down 10.1% year on year, the lowest since October 2021; in August, national output of raw coal by industrial enterprises above designated size was 360 million tons, down 7.7% year on year. Xu Dongkun, a senior analyst at the research department of the China Coal Market Network, said that in Yulin, for example, coal prices jumped 200 yuan per ton in a single week in early September, with high-grade coal topping 1,000 yuan and some coal-producing areas in Shanxi reaching phase highs last seen in 2021. One enterprise reported recently purchasing 50,000 tons of coal at close to 1,000 yuan per ton, mainly for commissioning two 1-million-kilowatt units.

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7. Hong Kong Central Office Rents Rise as Finance Expands

Source: Sina Finance

Thanks to a rebound in the local capital market and continued expansion of the financial-services sector, office rents in Hong Kong's Central district are climbing, showing a "the pricier, the faster it rises" pattern in some segments. Hedge funds and quantitative funds are seen as one of the main drivers of recent growth in Central office demand; to accommodate business expansion, some institutions have locked in office space in advance even before staff are in place.

As one of the core barometers of Hong Kong's financial-market vitality, the Central office market has since 2024 shown an accelerating recovery that outperforms the broader local market. Some market statistics show that net absorption in the district totaled about 612,000 square feet in 2024-2025; data Colliers provided to Caijing show that the Central district recorded more than 500,000 square feet of new net absorption in the first eight months of this year.

Savills' recently released August report on Hong Kong's office leasing market shows that in the second quarter of 2026, overall Grade-A office rents in Hong Kong rose 1.3% quarter on quarter, and the overall vacancy rate fell from 15.2% to 14.8%; Central rents rose 4.8% on the quarter, with its vacancy rate dropping to 9.4%. Colliers data show that Central office rents rose 8.7% cumulatively in the first eight months of 2026, with top-tier Grade-A1 office rents up 15.4%.

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8. U.S. 30-Year Treasury Yield Hits 24-Year High

Source: 21st Century Business Herald (21jingji)

Driven by the market's inflation outlook and expectations for Federal Reserve rate hikes, the yield on the 30-year U.S. Treasury note rose notably during trading on the 29th, reaching as high as 5.623%, the highest since June 2002. Xinhua Finance reported from New York on September 29 (reporter Liu Yanan) that the 10-year Treasury yield, which is closely tied to mortgage, auto-loan and credit-card rates, rose as high as 5.297%, while the 2-year note, closely linked to the federal funds rate, traded in a narrow range.

JoAnne Bianco, a senior investment strategist at U.S. advisory firm BondBloxx Investment Management Corp., said investors remain very focused on inflation and are more worried about the U.S. fiscal deficit and the scale of Treasury issuance, factors that lead investors to believe Treasuries need a higher term premium.

New York Fed President John Williams said that afternoon that, with the Fed having raised rates at its September meeting, further hikes are not urgent and the Fed has time to gather more information; to support inflation returning to target in a more timely way, another rate hike later this year may be appropriate. In addition, the Conference Board's preliminary September survey released that morning showed that consumers' average and median inflation expectations for the next 12 months rose by 0.3.

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9. Overnight Markets: Oil Plunges to Near One-Month Low, Gold Rebounds

Source: Sina Finance

In early Asian trading on Wednesday (September 30, Beijing time), spot gold traded near $4,180.22 an ounce, with prices rebounding on Tuesday from a more-than-seven-week low hit the previous session, as investors awaited economic data that could offer clues on the Fed's rate-hike cycle. Oil fell sharply on Tuesday to a near one-month low, with investors watching signs that Middle East crude exports are recovering.

U.S. stocks closed slightly lower on Tuesday: the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.26% to 51,349.92, the S&P 500 fell 0.17% to 7,670.84, and the Nasdaq fell 0.08% to 26,797.54.

CME's FedWatch tool shows the market now sees a 51.5% probability of at least a 25-basis-point rate hike at the Fed's October meeting, down from nearly 70% earlier in the session.

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10. Apple Returns to Top of China's Weekly Sales Ranking

Source: 21st Century Business Herald (21jingji)

On September 29, according to The Paper, Counterpoint Research's "China Smartphone Weekly Sales Tracker" shows that sales of the iPhone 18 Pro series in its first three days on the market (just three days of Week 38) grew 12% year on year versus the first-week sales of the iPhone 17 Pro series. With that strong start, Apple jumped to the top of the weekly sales ranking in Week 38, capturing 33% of China's smartphone market share.

Senior analyst Ivan Lam said the delayed launch of the base iPhone 18 may push some consumers toward the Pro series; at the same time, many Chinese flagship models have raised prices by more than $200, which may have raised consumers' price anchor for flagship phones and narrowed the price gap between the iPhone and competing flagships, thus highlighting the iPhone's relative price advantage.

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