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The US 10-year Treasury yield eased to about 5.16% on Friday after touching 5.2297%, its highest level since 2007. The 30-year yield climbed as high as 5.5319%, a level last recorded in 2004, before retreating as falling oil prices offered bond markets some relief.

Japan experienced an equally striking move. The benchmark 10-year Japanese government bond yield reached 3.121% on Friday, its highest since 1996, extending a rise that has challenged assumptions about the pace at which the country can adjust to higher borrowing costs after decades of exceptionally loose monetary policy.

The surge came despite the Bank of Japan raising its policy rate this month. The central bank lifted the overnight call-rate target to around 1.25%, with the new setting taking effect from September 24, as policymakers continued withdrawing monetary accommodation amid persistent inflation pressures.

Bond prices move inversely to yields, meaning the sharp rise reflected heavy selling by investors. The moves have increased financing costs for governments and businesses and strengthened the transmission of tighter monetary policy into mortgages, corporate debt and other forms of credit.

Pressure has spread across major developed markets rather than remaining concentrated in the United States. Five of the Group of 10’s leading central banks raised rates during September, while others signalled possible further tightening or warned that inflation risks remained elevated. That broad shift has forced investors to reassess expectations that borrowing costs would decline quickly.

Energy prices have been an important driver. Oil’s advance during the Middle East conflict revived fears that higher fuel and transport costs would feed into broader inflation, reducing the appeal of fixed-income securities and increasing expectations that central banks may have to keep policy restrictive for longer.

Some of that pressure eased on Friday as oil prices fell roughly 3% amid hopes of progress towards a US-Iran truce. The retreat helped stabilise Treasuries and encouraged modest declines in some yields, but it did not erase the week’s dramatic repricing.

The scale of the turbulence was reflected in the ICE BofA MOVE Index, a widely followed gauge of US bond-market volatility, which jumped roughly 30% over the week, its biggest weekly increase since the tariff-related market turmoil of April 2025.

Federal Reserve policy expectations have also shifted. Markets have increasingly priced the possibility of further rate increases as policymakers confront inflation risks linked to energy costs and an economy that has remained resilient enough to complicate hopes for easier monetary conditions.

The Federal Reserve raised its target range by 25 basis points this month to 3.75%-4.00%. The combination of tighter policy expectations and persistent inflation concerns has pushed yields higher across the Treasury curve, increasing the government’s cost of refinancing debt and lifting benchmark rates used throughout global markets.

Japan presents a different but connected challenge. Rising domestic yields are changing the economics for investors accustomed to negligible returns at home. Higher Japanese yields can make domestic bonds more attractive relative to overseas assets, potentially affecting international capital flows at a time when US and European governments face substantial financing requirements.

The yen strengthened against the dollar on Friday as yields eased from their peaks, with the US currency falling to around 157.22 yen. Japan’s Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said currency weakness had been discussed during high-level talks in Washington earlier in the week.

Equity markets nevertheless remained comparatively resilient. US shares advanced on Friday, supported by renewed enthusiasm around artificial intelligence companies, while the broader global equity index also rose. That divergence underscored how investors were separating strong corporate themes from the pressure building in sovereign debt markets.

European bonds have faced similar strains as investors weigh inflation alongside fiscal risks. Earlier in the week, benchmark 10-year yields in Germany, France and Britain remained elevated, while France’s borrowing premium over Germany widened amid concern about its budget outlook.

By R. Suryamurthy The most consequential question arising from Washington’s latest sanctions legislation is not whether the United States can impose a 100 percent tariff on countries buying Russian oil. It is whether India can continue to conduct an independent energy policy when access to its largest export market is increasingly being linked, directly or […]

The article India’s Russian Oil Dilemma Is Bigger Than Just 100 Percent Tariff appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

The government is considering an offering of about HK$15 billion to HK$20 billion across US dollar, Hong Kong dollar, euro and offshore renminbi tranches, according to people familiar with the planned transaction. Pricing could take place as early as Monday, after fixed-income investor meetings arranged this week.

The proposed deal would exceed the scale of Hong Kong’s previous digital green bond issues and underline its push to expand tokenised capital markets alongside conventional debt issuance. Digital bonds use distributed-ledger technology to record ownership and support parts of the issuance, settlement and post-trade process.

Hong Kong has steadily increased the size and complexity of its sovereign digital bond programme. Its third digital green bond offering, completed in November 2025, raised about HK$10 billion equivalent across four currencies and attracted subscriptions exceeding HK$130 billion, according to government figures.

That transaction was then the world’s largest digital bond sale. It also incorporated tokenised central bank money, including e-HKD and e-CNY, into the primary settlement process, while using the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s Central Moneymarkets Unit and a digital assets platform to connect tokenised infrastructure with established settlement channels.

The planned new sale would come after the Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation completed a HK$12 billion public digital bond issuance in June, setting another global size record for a digital bond at the time. The transaction included Hong Kong dollar and offshore renminbi tranches and used the same digital assets platform, demonstrating broader public-sector adoption of tokenised issuance.

Hong Kong authorities have made digital finance a central part of their capital-market strategy. Financial Services and the Treasury Secretary Christopher Hui said last week that digital bonds issued in Hong Kong accounted for about half of the global market between 2025 and the first half of 2026.

The government has also said it intends to make digital bond issuance a regular feature rather than an occasional pilot. Its 2026 policy agenda calls for further use of digital currencies in bond settlement and for tokenised money to be tested across additional stages of the bond lifecycle, including coupon payments and redemption.

Hong Kong Monetary Authority Chief Executive Eddie Yue said at the Treasury Markets Summit on Wednesday that the city was working to encourage more bond issuance, deepen offshore renminbi liquidity and modernise market infrastructure. He called for development of a more diversified, deep and digital-native bond market.

The proposed green bond would also extend Hong Kong’s sustainable-finance programme. Proceeds from government green bonds are allocated to eligible projects under its green bond framework, including areas such as green buildings, waste management, resource recovery, energy efficiency and conservation.

By the end of 2025, around US$32 billion equivalent of green bonds had been issued under the government’s sustainable bond programme in institutional, retail and tokenised formats, according to the monetary authority. The proceeds had been allocated to more than 110 green projects.

Hong Kong’s first tokenised government green bond was issued in February 2023. A second transaction in February 2024 became the world’s first multi-currency digital bond offering, raising about HK$6 billion equivalent in Hong Kong dollars, renminbi, US dollars and euros.

The 2024 transaction also broadened access by linking the Central Moneymarkets Unit with international settlement systems Euroclear and Clearstream, allowing investors to participate through familiar market infrastructure while the bonds themselves were digitally native.

For the proposed new offering, final size, tenor, pricing and tranche allocations will depend on investor demand and market conditions. The government has not yet announced final terms, and the people familiar with the discussions said the structure remained subject to change.

The dollar rose about 0.2 per cent against the yen to around 157.20, with trading conditions thinner because Japanese markets were closed for a three-day holiday. The limited liquidity kept attention on whether authorities in Tokyo might act if volatility intensified.

The yen had come under pressure despite the Bank of Japan raising its policy rate on Friday to 1.25 per cent, the highest level in 31 years. Two policymakers dissented from the decision and the central bank stopped short of delivering the stronger guidance some investors had expected on the pace of further tightening.

The currency fell sharply after the decision before recovering part of its losses when Japanese officials were reported to have conducted rate checks with market participants. Such checks are closely watched because they can signal that authorities are assessing market conditions ahead of possible intervention.

Lee Hardman, senior currency analyst at MUFG, said the rate check should help restrain expectations over how far the yen might be allowed to weaken in the near term. Traders nevertheless continued to test the currency as they weighed the Bank of Japan’s policy stance against a comparatively hawkish Federal Reserve.

The dollar index, which measures the US currency against six major peers, was broadly steady at about 100.23 after gaining more than 1 per cent last week. The advance followed the Federal Reserve’s latest rate increase and indications that additional tightening could be needed if inflation pressures remain persistent.

Market pricing showed investors assigning about a 55 per cent probability to another Federal Reserve rate rise at its October meeting, compared with roughly 43 per cent a week earlier. The shift underscored how expectations for US monetary policy continued to support the dollar despite tightening moves elsewhere.

The European Central Bank has also raised rates this month and signalled that further action may be required to contain inflation pressures. Those moves, combined with the Federal Reserve’s stance, have reinforced expectations that borrowing costs in major economies may remain elevated for longer than investors had anticipated.

Against the euro, the dollar was little changed, with the single currency near $1.149. Sterling was also broadly flat at around $1.339, leaving the yen as the main focus in otherwise subdued foreign-exchange trading.

The yen had strengthened to a seven-month high earlier in September as investors positioned for faster Bank of Japan tightening and signs that Japanese investors were repatriating funds. Some of those gains have since unwound as traders reassessed how aggressively the central bank is prepared to raise rates.

US regulatory positioning data showed speculative net-long yen positions had climbed to about $9.7 billion in the week to September 15, the largest such exposure since July 2025. The build-up left the currency vulnerable to a sharper reversal when the Bank of Japan’s message failed to match the most hawkish market expectations.

Fred Neumann, chief Asia economist at HSBC, said the central bank faced a high bar in convincing investors that its policy stance had become decisively hawkish, particularly after the Federal Reserve delivered a unanimous rate increase.

Thomas Mathews, head of markets for Asia-Pacific at Capital Economics, said traders continued to regard the Federal Reserve as more hawkish than the Bank of Japan. He added that the yen might have to weaken further before intervention again became an immediate consideration.

Japan has already shown its willingness to enter currency markets when moves become disorderly. The yen fell to 163.99 per dollar in July, its weakest level in four decades, before coordinated action by Tokyo and Washington helped lift the currency.

The Bank of Korea said the Bank of Korea Won International Wire Network started trial operations at 9am local time with KB Kookmin Bank, Woori Bank, Hana Bank and Shinhan Bank participating. Two of the banks completed transactions worth about 1.4 billion won during the initial test, according to the central bank.

Full operation is scheduled for January 2027, when foreign financial institutions are expected to gain wider access to the network. The system is designed to allow won payments and settlement during the business hours of major overseas financial centres rather than limiting activity to South Korea’s domestic banking day.

Under the planned framework, offshore investors will be able to trade the won with other foreign participants using accounts opened with Registered Foreign Institutions for KRW Business, known as RFI-Ks, in their home markets. This is intended to reduce the need for investors to open and operate separate accounts directly with financial institutions in South Korea.

The network will function continuously from 9am on each business day until 9am the following day, effectively providing round-the-clock settlement on weekdays. It will remain closed on weekends and public holidays. Foreign banks are also due to participate in the trial, although the Bank of Korea has not specified when they will enter the testing phase.

The central bank said it would monitor the pilot, refine operating arrangements and expand participation before the system moves into full service. It expects the new infrastructure to improve foreign investors’ access to won settlement and support wider international use of the currency.

The trial follows South Korea’s move in July to extend onshore dollar-won trading to a 24-hour schedule. That change removed the previous gap between Seoul trading hours and active periods in major centres such as London and New York, allowing transactions to continue through the global trading day.

Authorities have paired the longer trading window with changes to settlement arrangements because extended dealing hours alone do not remove operational barriers if investors cannot complete payments outside domestic banking hours. The new network is intended to address that mismatch by keeping settlement infrastructure available while overseas markets are active.

The initiative forms part of a broader programme to open South Korea’s foreign-exchange market and make local assets easier for global institutions to access. Seoul has also been seeking improvements in market infrastructure as it pursues developed-market classification for its equities from MSCI, whose accessibility assessments examine areas including foreign-exchange convertibility, investment flows and operational arrangements.

South Korea has already introduced the RFI framework to permit eligible overseas financial institutions to participate directly in the domestic foreign-exchange market. The settlement network extends that approach by enabling those institutions to hold and transfer won through designated accounts linked to the central bank’s payment infrastructure.

The Bank of Korea has also been modernising its core settlement systems. Its 2025 payment and settlement systems report, released last week, said operating hours for BOK-Wire+ were extended in March and that work continued on the international won network and the adoption of the ISO 20022 financial messaging standard.

The central bank has said the international network will use real-time gross settlement, a structure in which transactions are settled individually and continuously rather than being netted for later settlement. That approach is intended to limit credit risk during the payment process while supporting cross-border compatibility.

Preparations have included linked-system testing and business-continuity planning before the scheduled commercial launch. The authorities have also revised foreign-exchange regulations to accommodate the wider use of overseas won accounts and settlement channels.

South Korea and Taiwan led the regional gains, reflecting renewed buying in semiconductor companies tied to expanding demand for data centres, memory chips and advanced computing. South Korea’s Kospi rose about 1.4%, while Taiwan’s benchmark gained around 1% and reached a three-month high. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan added roughly 0.9%.

Chinese blue-chip shares were also firmer, rising about 0.2%, while Japan’s cash market was closed for the Silver Week holiday. Nikkei futures nevertheless edged 0.2% higher. Trading across parts of the region was thinner than usual because Japanese markets will remain shut through Wednesday.

The strength in Asian technology shares followed continued investor focus on the capital spending required to support generative AI and cloud computing. Samsung Electronics rose sharply in Seoul, while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co gained in Taipei, reinforcing the technology-heavy tone across major regional bourses.

US equity futures also pointed higher during Asian trading. S&P 500 futures gained about 0.4% and Nasdaq futures rose 0.6%, while European futures indicated a firmer opening, with EUROSTOXX 50 and German DAX contracts advancing.

Oil prices moved in the opposite direction. Brent crude fell about 1.7% to just above $102 a barrel, while US West Texas Intermediate dropped close to 2% to around $98.50. Both benchmarks had already weakened at the end of last week.

The decline reflected signs that more crude and other energy cargoes were moving through the Gulf despite continuing disruption linked to the conflict in the region. Data from Kpler showed Saudi Arabian crude exports recovering to just above 4 million barrels per day so far in September after dropping to about 2.4 million barrels per day in August.

Saudi shipments through the Strait of Hormuz have increased after disruption to the East-West pipeline and reduced flows through the Red Sea export hub of Yanbu. JPMorgan analysts estimated that total Middle East oil flows averaged 17.1 million barrels per day over the previous 10 days, suggesting that physical supply had proved more resilient than traders initially feared.

Energy markets were also monitoring the possibility of diplomatic engagement this week, which helped reduce part of the geopolitical risk premium built into crude prices. However, tensions remained high after further attacks involving Saudi targets, leaving traders cautious about assuming that supply risks had disappeared.

Bond markets remained another constraint on risk appetite. The US two-year Treasury yield was around 4.76%, after rising sharply over the previous two weeks. Futures markets were pricing a greater-than-even chance of another Federal Reserve rate increase in October following the central bank’s hawkish guidance last week.

Higher borrowing costs have complicated the outlook for equities even as technology stocks continue to attract capital. Investors are balancing the earnings potential created by AI-related investment against the prospect that restrictive monetary policy could persist as central banks attempt to contain inflation.

The US 10-year Treasury yield was close to 5%, keeping pressure on rate-sensitive assets and supporting the dollar. The currency was little changed around 157 yen, with investors alert to the possibility of intervention by Japan’s authorities during the holiday-thinned session.

The yen had strengthened sharply on Friday after Japanese authorities conducted rate checks in the foreign-exchange market. The euro was broadly steady near $1.148 after losing ground against the dollar over the previous week.

Gold prices were little changed to slightly lower as higher bond yields offset safe-haven demand generated by Middle East tensions. Copper, meanwhile, remained supported by signs of stronger demand from China and constrained inventories.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was broadly flat, lagging the technology-led advances elsewhere in the region. India’s benchmark Sensex traded higher during the session, while Hong Kong shares also advanced as investors continued to favour large technology and internet companies.

The assessment evaluated multiple leading AI computing resource management platform providers in China and noted Phancy’s industry-leading technological maturity across heterogeneous accelerator compatibility and adaptation, large-scale cluster operations, and delivery in hybrid cloud environments. Drawing on its accumulated capabilities in heterogeneous computing resource management, fine-grained GPU virtualization and agent-oriented computing services, Phancy received full scores and outperformed the industry benchmark in four out of six evaluated dimensions[1].

According to the IDC report, as AI moves into large-scale deployment, the growing adoption of AI agents is reshaping cloud infrastructure. In the meantime, AI infrastructure is evolving beyond basic computing capacity to become a core part of the enterprise technology stack, supporting digital and intelligent transformation.

Dr. Dai Wenyuan, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Phancy, said: “The AI industry is moving beyond the ‘model race’ and entering a new phase of large-scale deployment. For enterprises, the real challenge is no longer whether they can access large language models, but about how to translate agentic AI capabilities into sustained productivity while keeping costs under control and operations stable. IDC’s assessment reflects the growing importance of unified management, flexible scheduling and fine-grained operations for heterogeneous computing resources. Phancy will continue to advance its capabilities in heterogeneous computing resource scheduling and agent infrastructure, helping more enterprises unlock the value of AI with greater efficiency, cost-effectiveness and reliability.”

Five Core Capabilities Behind Phancy’s Vendor-Neutral Unified Management Platform

At the core of Phancy’s offering is vendor-neutral unified management software that supports large-scale training and high-concurrency inference for mainstream models across chips from over ten leading vendors[2]. Its core technological capabilities include:

• Code-compatible multi-chip virtualization: Phancy supports the partitioning of a single AI accelerator across multiple workloads, enabling mainstream frameworks and inference engines, including PyTorch, TensorFlow, vLLM and SGLang, to run without changes to application code. Resource quotas help maintain stability when multiple workloads run concurrently.
• Three-tier resource pools and intelligent workload scheduling: Phancy’s platform provides three types of resource pools: dedicated, shared and overcommitted pool. Resources can be intelligently scheduled based on four dimensions (workload priority, hardware topology, real-time load and resource requirements), enabling large-scale training and high-concurrency inference workloads to run on the same infrastructure.
• AI gateway and dual-track metering: The AI gateway provides unified management of model routing, API calls and audit activities. Usage is measured through both accelerator hours and token consumption, helping enterprises track costs and resource utilization from the perspectives of both resource consumption and model usage.
• Agent-oriented computing services: Phancy’s platform turns heterogeneous computing resources into standardized services that AI agents can call on demand. These services support partitioning, reuse and elastic scaling. Combined with intelligent routing through the AI gateway, this accommodates the frequent calls and fluctuating workloads associated with AI agents, while token quotas and circuit-breaking mechanisms also help enterprises manage usage risks and costs when predefined limits are exceeded.
• Operations and maintenance for heterogeneous computing resources: Phancy’s platform provides end-to-end observability spanning nodes, accelerators, workloads and model services. It supports fault isolation, workload rescheduling and private deployment in environments without public internet access, helping enterprises improve operational efficiency across complex heterogeneous computing environments.

The report highlighted a use case in which a Chinese policy bank significant improved resource utilization by using Phancy’s three-tier resource pool architecture to manage computing resources across three data centers in two locations, while also enabling a smooth business migration.

Looking ahead, Phancy will continue to advance its AI computing resource management platform as AI infrastructure shifts from traditional “cloud + AI” architectures toward greater cloud-native, agent-oriented integration. The Group will continue to help enterprises manage computing resources more efficiently, deploy AI across a wider range of production environments, and turn AI into sustainable business productivity at scale.

Hashtag: #Phancy

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

About Phancy Group

Phancy Group (6682.HK) is a leading full-stack AI cloud services platform, providing comprehensive solutions for the AI 2.0 era. Our offerings include SageAIOS, HAMi vGPU and ModelHub XC, delivering efficient and scalable AI infrastructure with end-to-end capabilities. We provide a complete solution from heterogeneous compute resource management and optimization to the deployment of intelligent agent models. These solutions empower digital transformation across a wide range of industries, supporting our vision of building a large-scale and efficient “Token Factory.”

Guided by the mission of “AI for Everyone” and positioned as the “Navigator of AI,” Phancy Group is committed to becoming a global leader in Artificial General Intelligence.