30-year Treasury yield hits highest since 2004

The 30-year Treasury yield hit 5.44% on Wednesday, a level unseen since 2004, while the 10-year touched roughly 5.14%, according to Reuters. Municipal bonds followed straight through the floor: the 30-year muni benchmark broke 5% for the first time since at least 2011, per Bloomberg. Thirty-year US mortgage rates are now near 7%. Blame stacks up fast: Brent crude above $106 a barrel, resilient growth data killing hopes of near-term Fed cuts, and a Treasury market absorbing heavy new issuance on top of it all. Bank of England Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden told the Treasury Committee it is becoming increasingly appropriate for rates to respond to inflation risk, and UK markets now price a 75% chance of a BoE hike to 4% in November. Every company financing a data centre, a mortgage book, or a leveraged buyout on the assumption that cheap money returns in 2027 needs to rerun that model this week.

Goldman's Timothy Moe argues the AI capex cycle is strong enough to absorb the valuation hit from a 10-year Treasury yield sitting near 5.2%, according to Bloomberg. Higher discount rates should crush stocks whose earnings arrive mostly in the future, which is precisely the profile of most AI infrastructure names. Moe is sticking with a 12,000 target on the Kospi, implying nearly 80% upside, on the theory that memory-chip demand overrides the rate story entirely. One rival desk disagrees hard: Treasury Partners' Richard Saperstein has flagged 5.25% on the 10-year as the line where equities stop shrugging this off. Brent at $106.60 and a 30-year yield at its highest since 2004 make Moe's call a genuinely contrarian one, not a consensus view dressed up as insight.

Chicago grain futures fell at Friday's open because the Trump-Xi summit produced reassurance, not receipts, as Reuters reports. The White House says China committed to at least $17 billion in additional US farm purchases annually through 2028, on top of a pledge to buy 25 million metric tons of soybeans a year. China has bought roughly half that soybean target so far, including about 1 million tonnes in a single September week, but its broader agricultural purchases, excluding soybeans, sat at just $3.9 billion for the first seven months of 2026, barely above last year's tariff-depressed total, according to the New York Times. The USDA's own forecast puts China's 2026-27 purchases at $21.5 billion, well short of the roughly $30 billion the pledges imply. China still has Brazil as an alternative supplier and every incentive to use it. Until customs data shows the volumes moving, this is a political promise wearing a trade deal's clothes.

Attorney General Letitia James and Governor Kathy Hochul filed suit against Polymarket US on Wednesday, alleging the platform ran unlicensed gambling in the state since its December 2025 launch, according to Reuters. The state wants $100,000 for every sports-wagering offer made without New York Gaming Commission authorisation, plus forfeiture of profits and restitution to users. New York's argument is blunt: calling a sports bet an event contract doesn't change what it is. This lands on top of the state's existing fight with Kalshi, and a ruling either way will set precedent for whether federal commodities law shields prediction markets from state gambling statutes nationwide. Polymarket has not yet filed a public response.

The US Department of Justice asked the EU's General Court on September 24 to let it intervene in X and Musk's appeal against a 120 million euro Digital Services Act fine, according to the DOJ's own filing. The European Commission's December 2025 penalty was calculated on the worldwide turnover of the entire Musk-controlled economic unit, not just X's EU revenue, a methodology Washington now says overreaches EU jurisdiction. This is the first DSA enforcement case to reach the General Court, so the ruling sets the template for every future fine against a US platform. A government intervening directly in a private company's regulatory appeal is not normal practice. It signals the Trump administration is willing to fight Brussels' tech rules through litigation, not just tariff threats.

Lula is expected to sign two provisional measures Friday: one banning online betting outright, the other having the Treasury buy up bad consumer debt from banks at a discount, according to Bloomberg. Brazil's regulated betting market was worth more than $4 billion a year before this; licensed operators who built compliance systems and sponsorship deals around it now face a wipeout with no compensation mentioned. The debt measure could cover delinquencies up to five years old, following an earlier programme that let borrowers cut balances by as much as 90%. Both measures need congressional approval to stick permanently, and Brazil's first-round election lands October 4. Nobody has said yet how much of these bad debts the Treasury actually eats.

ADARx Pharmaceuticals priced its IPO at $17 a share, the top of its range, selling 26.25 million shares for roughly $446.3 million, up from the 21.875 million shares it had marketed just days earlier, according to Yahoo Finance. AbbVie is putting in up to $100 million at the same price, landing at roughly 4.9% ownership once the deal closes, per Reuters. The San Diego biotech makes siRNA drugs, not gene therapy in the conventional sense, and is running late-stage trials across five programmes including a Phase 3 hereditary angioedema study. Shares start trading on Nasdaq under ADRX today. A deal upsized this late in the process, with a pharma major writing a cheque alongside it, means demand cleared well above what the initial filing assumed.

Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden told the Treasury Committee it is becoming increasingly appropriate for rates to respond to rising inflation risk, having not been ready to vote for a hike at September's meeting, according to Reuters. Brent above $108 a barrel is doing the damage here. UK money markets now price a 75% chance of Bank Rate moving from 3.75% to 4% in November, with three more hikes priced through the end of 2027. Deputy Governor Clare Lombardelli added a condition worth noting: rates rise if energy prices stay high, unless growth data turns weak enough to override it. Wall Street's own rate-hike odds moved similarly, with Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and HSBC all shifting toward a 25 basis point Fed move this cycle.

The Tata Sons board approved a fresh five-year term for chairman N. Chandrasekaran on September 17 and cleared preparatory steps toward a stock listing, over the explicit objection of Noel Tata, who chairs Tata Trusts and holds a board seat himself, according to Reuters. Tata Trusts, which owns roughly 66% of Tata Sons, calls the reappointment illegal because it lacked support from the trusts' own nominee directors. The Reserve Bank of India forced the issue by rejecting Tata Sons' bid to shed its Core Investment Company registration, a status that may require a listing regardless of what the trusts want. Shapoorji Pallonji Group, the 18% minority holder, backs the listing, siding with the regulator and the board against the family trusts that have run Tata for generations. This is a fight over who controls India's largest conglomerate at the exact moment Modi's government needs Tata to deliver on semiconductors, batteries and aviation manufacturing.

Ontario's premier is already calling the trade-off with China, lower EV tariffs for lower Chinese tariffs on Canadian farm goods, unbalanced, and Bernstein still expects BYD deliveries to hit 5.4 million vehicles this year despite losing Chinese market share to Geely and XPeng.

Neither leader signalled any intent to slow their own AI programme down, and the concrete outcome floated so far is just a bilateral incident-notification channel for AI-related cyberattacks, not binding safety rules.

The firm's advisory business, its biggest growth engine for years, is now the segment slowing the whole group down.