Records at one end of the curve, 25-year highs at the other

Two markets, one inflation print

Wednesday's inflation figures did what soft inflation figures usually do to share prices. The S&P 500 closed at a record high, with the Wall Street Journal reporting stocks propelled to fresh records on what it called inflation relief. On Friday morning S&P futures were steady after that record close.

The bond market took a different view. The Guardian's live blog reported US long-term borrowing costs rising to a 25-year high, with inflation fears hitting a government bond sale. Two days earlier the Journal's opinion pages had run a piece under the heading that bond investors want the Federal Reserve to raise rates — an argument now being made rather more loudly by the auction results than by the columnists.

Gold, which had been the obvious beneficiary of the inflation trade, was on track for a weekly loss on profit-taking, according to the Journal, despite wholesale price data coming in softer than expected. The same paper carried a separate piece arguing inflation protection is on sale, which is a curious thing to publish in the same week that thirty-year money became the most expensive it has been since 2001.

CNBC added a complication to the Fed's arithmetic: the cost of the artificial-intelligence build-out. Capital spending on data centres and the power to run them is large enough to muddy the inflation signal the central bank is trying to read. So the week ends with equity investors pricing disinflation and bond investors pricing something else, from the same set of numbers.

London: an insurer digests its purchase

Aviva reported a jump in profits, its first set of results to reflect the acquisition of Direct Line in full, City A.M. reported. The FTSE 100 opened softer, with attention on what the same publication described as slowing demand in the oil market, and on Iran threatening to extend the war.

That threat has been costed. Treasury officials, according to This is Money, have warned that the conflict could slow UK growth to just 0.3 per cent. The paper's framing was blunter than the Treasury's would be, but the number is the number, and it sits awkwardly beside a domestic equity market that spent the morning drifting.

Elsewhere in the City, a bank chief called stamp duty on shares the biggest handbrake on the UK market. The Financial Conduct Authority banned a would-be buyer of Reading Football Club after finding he had forged a £170m bond portfolio — a reminder of how much of due diligence still rests on documents somebody could simply make up.

BP is returning to Venezuela with Gulf partners as the post-Maduro energy opening accelerates, Euronews reported. Between an oil major re-entering Caracas and Iranian escalation risk, the crude price has more than one story pulling at it this week.

Asia: profits, not promises

The South China Morning Post framed the week's Asian results season as a shift from chasing robots to chasing profits, and the numbers behind that phrase were substantial. AI demand drove triple-digit quarterly profit growth at the Chinese foundries SMIC and Hua Hong. JD.com's second-quarter profit climbed 15 per cent as losses in its food-delivery business narrowed. CK Hutchison Holdings reported a 31-fold surge in first-half profit. The Hong Kong developer Hysan managed a more modest 7.4 per cent rise in first-half earnings, with project milestones approaching.

Hong Kong is also to list the first Shanghai free-trade zone bond, a move the SCMP described as defending the territory's status as an offshore yuan hub.

South Korea offered the week's cautionary material. The BBC spoke to retail investors caught by wild swings in the Korean market, including one who lost $14,000 in a month. The story of a market going up and the story of individuals losing money in it are not in conflict; they rarely are.

Two other items rounded out the region. Uber and China's Pony AI plan to launch more than 2,000 robotaxis across Europe, according to Euronews. And a passenger on the first commercial international flight of China's C919 airliner told the SCMP the journey was "very smooth". Meanwhile the United States said dozens of countries had helped China dodge Donald Trump's tariffs — a finding that, if pursued, widens the list of economies with a trade problem to manage.