The Bank of Korea has resumed purchasing physical gold after a 13-year hiatus, aiming to diversify its foreign exchange reserves.

JPMorgan’s latest report states that it remains bullish on a "tech + cyclical" mix for stock allocations, while recommending adding healthcare as a third investment pillar to reduce the overall portfolio’s correlation with macro factors. The report points out that the tech sector currently offers oversold rebound opportunities. The forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of U.S. "Magnificent Seven" (excluding semiconductor companies) is two standard deviations below its average since 2018, and a return to the historical average could bring around 56% upside potential. JPMorgan believes market concerns over AI investment returns are excessive: order backlogs at large-scale cloud computing firms have grown by roughly 150%, outpacing the ~80% growth in capital expenditures. It favors mean reversion opportunities in AI-related assets, with particular attention to AI targets in Asia-Pacific markets like South Korea. For the cyclical sector, JPMorgan recommends shifting from financials and consumer stocks to industrials, arguing that industrial firms will benefit from global economic improvement, earnings recovery, and valuation re-rating driven by the AI theme. Additionally, the report advises allocating to the healthcare sector as a defensive asset, given its low correlation with the macro cycle, which helps reduce portfolio volatility. On emerging markets, JPMorgan is tactically bullish on Chinese Hong Kong-listed stocks (H-shares), expecting them to benefit from AI infrastructure construction and commercialization trends, though their gains lag behind those of South Korea, Taiwan, and A-shares. It also suggests investors take partial profits from some overextended, crowded AI supply chain targets. The report further recommends monitoring Asian refining companies, as geopolitical uncertainties are pushing Asian refining margins to historic highs.

Citrini analyst Jukan cited data from Counterpoint Research, noting that in the second quarter of 2026 DRAM market share figures, SK Hynix’s revenue-based market share only leads Micron by roughly 1 percentage point. Jukan said this result deviates from prior market expectations, mainly because HBM3E prices did not continue to rise—instead, they were reduced after renegotiation—and the delayed launch of HBM4 also impacted SK Hynix’s growth outlook. Additionally, SK Hynix signed long-term supply agreements (LTAs) earlier, with its fixed supply prices reportedly lower than competitors, which also affected its revenue market share performance. The market had widely expected that, leveraging its HBM3E supply advantage, SK Hynix would expand its lead amid the AI storage demand growth cycle. However, the latest data shows Micron is narrowing the gap with SK Hynix.

On the 3rd, U.S. sources citing Iranian and U.S. officials reported that Iran and Oman are closing in on an agreement regarding navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. According to U.S. sources, the proposed deal would see vessels entering the Persian Gulf use a shipping lane near Iran’s coast controlled by Tehran, while outgoing vessels would take a lane closer to Oman. Several Iranian officials said passing ships would be required to pay a "service fee", with the revenue split equally between Iran and Oman. However, a U.S. official briefed on the negotiations called the Iranian officials’ account "inaccurate", noting that any "temporary" shipping lanes established in the Strait of Hormuz do not require Iran’s approval, and no fees will be charged to passing vessels.

Per Lookonchain’s monitoring, the CXMT short whale address 0xf292 has paid more than $2.04 million in funding fees. As CXMT’s price continues to rise, the whale’s short position currently carries an unrealized loss of roughly $4.3 million, with a liquidation price of $15.8. Market data shows that this address has been consistently shorting CXMT, yet has been incurring funding costs amid the price rally, and is now facing substantial position pressure.

The $CXMT mega bear 0xf292 has now paid more than $2.04M in funding fees. As $CXMT keeps rising, the whale is now down $4.3M on the short position. Liquidation price: $15.8

According to Bitget market data, Kioxia rose 2.97% intraday, while the Nikkei 225 index fell 0.53%. In related news, Kioxia officially announced its first GP series solid-state drive (SSD) — the KIOXIA GP1 — which supports direct GPU access to high-speed flash memory. The product delivers extreme random read performance of 100 million IOPS. Kioxia stated that the KIOXIA GP1 series is designed to support the emerging AI storage architecture that integrates high-speed flash memory media into graphics memory systems. This approach enables AI systems to access larger datasets at a far lower cost than adding HBM, while boosting GPU utilization.