US September PMI hits multi-year highs, market sees 75% chance of Fed rate hike in October

Market Overview

On September 24 (Beijing time), Japanese stocks opened higher, with the Nikkei 225 index last trading at 65,732.03 points, expanding gains to 1.1%. South Korean markets were closed for a holiday.

On September 23 (local time), all three major U.S. stock indices closed lower:

• Dow Jones Industrial Average: Fell 0.68% to 51,511.59 points
• S&P 500: Declined 0.75% to 7,706.05 points
• Nasdaq Composite: Dropped 1.13% to 26,936.04 points

U.S. Treasuries faced renewed selling pressure, with yields surging across maturities. According to Wind data, the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield rose to 5.133% on September 23, its highest level since 2007.

Europe's three major stock indices all closed lower on September 23:

• Germany's DAX: Down 0.66% to 25,410.63 points
• France's CAC 40: Fell 0.39% to 8,123.41 points
• UK's FTSE 100: Declined 0.03% to 10,705.26 points

International oil prices rose on September 23:

• WTI crude oil (November delivery): Closed at $92.16/barrel, up 1.81%
• Brent crude oil (November delivery): Closed at $103.08/barrel, up 3.86%

Gold and silver declined on September 23:

• London spot gold: Fell 1.64% to close at $4,286.553/oz
• London spot silver: Dropped 3.91% to close at $64.4/oz

International Macro Developments

According to Xinhua News Agency, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian stated during his speech at the UN General Assembly general debate on September 23 that Iran "will never bow its head or surrender," and called on all countries to work together to achieve peace.

Also per Xinhua, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said on September 23 that during the 81st UN General Assembly general debate in New York on September 22, Iran held talks with the U.S. through mediator Qatar, conveying to the U.S. side the conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

The U.S. September S&P Global Manufacturing PMI rose to 57, a 52-month high; the Services PMI climbed to 58.7, a 59-month high; and the Composite PMI preliminary reading surged to 58.4, the highest since July 2021.

Following the release of U.S. PMI data, market expectations for at least a 25-basis-point rate hike by the Federal Reserve at its October meeting rose to approximately 75%, up from about 53% before the data release. Several Fed officials continued to signal a hawkish stance. Fed Governor Michelle Bowman stated that further rate hikes may be necessary to ensure inflation returns to target levels.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released its latest economic outlook on September 23, raising its global economic growth forecast for 2026 to 2.9%, up from the 2.8% estimate in June.

Corporate News

Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated that China's AI large-model computing output per unit is nearly at the world's top level. He predicted that within roughly two to three years, China will be able to close the computing power gap through lithography technology and chip manufacturing. Musk also forecast that within 10 years—or possibly less—there will be at least 1 billion humanoid robots, and that number could reach 100 billion within the next 20 years.

Meta Connect 2026, the annual technology conference, officially opened on September 23–24 (Eastern Time). The event serves as Meta's core platform to showcase next year's major hardware products, artificial intelligence technologies, and metaverse ecosystem developments. Market sources indicate that Meta plans to unveil its first camera-free smart glasses, codenamed "Luna," at the conference, and may also officially announce the long-rumored "Phoenix" mixed reality headset.

TSMC may raise wafer foundry prices again. Supply chain sources revealed that TSMC's 8-inch fab capacity utilization exceeds 100%, and its 45nm and below process nodes are fully loaded, with order visibility extending to 2030. The company has confirmed that starting January 2027, it will adjust Wafer Out prices by 3%–6% depending on the process node. TSMC has not responded to the market rumors.

Qualcomm launched the sixth-generation Snapdragon 8 Super Premium Edition and the sixth-generation Snapdragon 8 Premium Edition, both manufactured using TSMC's 2nm process. The chips feature two Prime cores clocked at up to 5GHz and six Performance cores clocked at up to 4GHz. Qualcomm stated this marks the first time a smartphone CPU has reached 5GHz.

IonQ, a quantum computing company, announced that its real-time quantum error correction decoder has completed testing. The system can run on a single standard commercial CPU and supports simulated circuits with up to 408 logical qubits and over 31.5 million quantum operations. The development is expected to alleviate the long-standing real-time error correction bottleneck in fault-tolerant quantum computing.