📊 Today's Numbers
30-Year Treasury Yield ▲ ~20-year high: long-term borrowing costs at a generational extreme
10-Year Treasury Yield ▼ ~4.50% (from 4.60%): slight retreat, pressure remains
SK Hynix Seoul Close ▲ +5.30% at 2,186,000 won: institutional conviction confirmed
Micron ▲ +5.20%: AI memory rally spreads to US peers
Sandisk ▲ +7.60%: biggest beneficiary of HBM sentiment wave
Fed Tightening Priced (2026) ▲ ~38 bps: cut expectations fully reversed
📈 EQUITIES
Photo: Leeloo The First
SK Hynix's $28bn Nasdaq Debut Is a Bet on the AI Memory Shortage
Seven times oversubscribed. That's not a strong IPO, that's a queue around the block. SK Hynix priced its ADR offering Thursday, locking in up to $28 billion in proceeds and landing as the second-largest US debut by a foreign company in history. The demand tells you everything about how desperate institutional investors are for direct AI memory exposure.
Deal size of $24.5–28bn puts it behind only Alibaba's $25bn IPO; anchor investors Baillie Gifford, Coatue, and Situational Awareness Partners alone pledged up to $7bn combined
SK Hynix controls ~57% of global high-bandwidth memory revenue, the chip type that sits inside every serious AI data centre right now
DRAM prices are forecast to rise ~10% in Q3 2026, so the proceeds funding new fabs and EUV lithography equipment will shape AI infrastructure costs for years
ADRs trade on Nasdaq Friday under SKHYV, converting to ticker SKHY on July 13
💬 If you've been frustrated that AI's biggest winners aren't accessible through US markets, that changed yesterday.
📉 BONDS
Photo: Đào Thân
The US Government Is Paying Its Highest 30-Year Borrowing Rate Since the Bush Administration
Thursday's 30-year Treasury auction cleared at its highest yield in roughly 20 years. That's not just a record for the history books. It's the rate that anchors 30-year fixed mortgages, corporate bonds, and infrastructure financing across the entire economy.
The 10-year yield hit 4.60% on Wednesday before easing back to ~4.50% Thursday. The direction of travel is still up.
Fed Chair Warsh's push to shrink the balance sheet by offloading longer-duration bonds adds structural supply pressure at the long end, with no obvious near-term relief
The US bond market has now been in drawdown for 71 consecutive months, the longest in recorded history, meaning pension funds and insurers are sitting on significant unrealised losses with no exit in sight
Futures now price ~38 basis points of Fed tightening in 2026, a complete reversal of the rate-cut expectations that opened the year
💬 Every 0.25% move higher in the 30-year yield is another rung removed from the housing ladder for first-time buyers — and Thursday's auction took a few rungs off at once.
📰 Also Today
Hormuz clashes send Brent up ~2% overnight: Fresh US-Iran exchanges in the Strait of Hormuz — through which roughly one-fifth of global oil and LNG supplies flow — pushed Brent crude up approximately 2% in Asian trading before gains partially faded as tankers kept crossing; the ECB September hike probability jumped to ~90% from ~50% in one week on the combined inflation pressure.
Meta's 'Iris' AI chip hits production in September: A leaked internal memo revealed Meta will begin producing its proprietary Iris data-centre chip in September 2026, alongside projected 2026 AI infrastructure spending of up to $145bn and a plan to double compute capacity to 14 gigawatts by 2027; Meta shares fell 2.6% on margin fears while the SMH semiconductor ETF rose more than 3%.
China PPI surges to 4.1% — four-year high: China's June factory-gate prices rose 4.1% year-on-year, well above the 3.5% consensus, while CPI held at just 1.0%, creating a 3.1 percentage-point spread that signals manufacturers are absorbing cost pressure that can't last indefinitely; Japan machine tool orders meanwhile jumped 52.8% year-on-year in June, far above the 38% forecast.
US existing home sales drop 2.4% in June: Against a forecast of a 0.7% gain and May's 3.2% rise, existing home sales fell 2.4% month-on-month as 30-year mortgage rates stayed near 6.5%; new home months-of-supply hit 10.3 months, tied with July 2022 for the highest reading since April 2009.
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Not investment advice. For informational purposes only.