Brent crude oil fell below $83, with an intraday decline of 1.33%.

According to CNBC, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella criticized Anthropic’s usage restrictions on its Fable model during an internal meeting for Copilot engineers, describing the company’s approach of rejecting certain requests as “excessively restrictive editing control” and calling it unreasonable. Anthropic’s support page notes that when users ask for content related to large language model (LLM) development, the platform may switch to an older model version to respond. The firm previously stated that new security measures rolled out after Fable 5’s relaunch could lead to more false positives, incorrectly flagging harmless requests for blocking. Microsoft earlier announced a $5 billion investment in Anthropic, with the latter committing to spend $30 billion on Azure. Some of Microsoft’s Copilot products also use Anthropic’s models, so Nadella’s comments involve its key partner and customer. Nadella also emphasized that enterprises should be able to develop custom models at lower costs and control their internal data, rather than allowing a small number of companies to monopolize AI token resources. He said: “We can’t have just two global companies holding token capital while everyone else is forced to rent. That doesn’t make economic sense.”

Swissquote analyst Ipek Ozkardeskaya said TSMC’s upward revision of its capital expenditure forecast may have sparked market concerns, triggering a sell-off in tech stocks. She noted that despite TSMC posting record second-quarter profits, its share price failed to get a lift, reflecting the market’s view that chip stocks are currently overvalued. Amid overcapacity risks, investors may be growing increasingly uneasy about large-scale AI infrastructure builds, though tech companies continue to ramp up spending. Next week, major U.S. tech firms will release earnings reports sequentially, which could help improve the recent weak market sentiment. However, signs indicate that companies like Alphabet are further increasing infrastructure spending, which may further weigh on share prices.

Per its official announcement, Bitget has launched over 2,800 US stock option contracts, covering most major US equity underlying assets. Users can trade US stock options on the platform with zero commission fees, plus receive 30 days of free real-time option market data. According to the announcement, Bitget’s option trading adopts a T+1 settlement cycle, aligned with US stock spot trading; trading hours are 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM Eastern Time, only cash trading is supported (no margin buying), and a 100% margin rate applies to Long Call/Put positions. The system also provides order profit/loss estimation support, enabling order modification, cancellation and record inquiry to help users achieve more transparent asset allocation.

South Korea’s Meritz Securities researcher Kim Sunwoo noted that the market has overreacted to misunderstandings about the fundamentals of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, advising against short-sighted and pessimistic judgments on the semiconductor sector based solely on fragmented information. Regarding rumors that SK Hynix secured orders by cutting prices when signing long-term supply agreements with major tech firms, Kim stated that these arrangements are not mere price sacrifices but strategic investments to pre-emptively lock in demand in the generative AI and AI data center markets. The company is expanding its medium- and long-term customer base through joint ventures and partnerships. He projected that DRAM demand fulfillment rates will reach only 75% to 80% in the second half of this year, potentially dropping further to around 60% next year; even when considering only actual end-user demand, the fulfillment rate remains at roughly 70%, meaning supply shortages will continue to deepen. Kim added that share repurchases, cancellations, and dividends from Samsung Electronics, as well as a potential special dividend from SK Hynix, will help ease market concerns. He also noted that both companies are currently in a stage of severe undervaluation and overcorrection.

On Friday, global stock markets posted sharp declines as investors fled AI tech stocks. Japan’s tech-heavy Nikkei 225 index fell more than 5% intraday at one point. A Tokyo-based brokerage executive said: “This is one of the worst trading days for the Tokyo market in a long time. Many investors had placed extremely aggressive bets on tech and AI via Japanese tech stocks, and now they are rushing to exit.” U.S. stock index futures signal the U.S. market is likely to open lower. In Europe, Euro Stoxx 600 futures point to a 0.6% drop at the open. Richard Yetsenga, chief economist and head of research at ANZ, noted that the sell-off has exposed an alarming level of reliance on the AI boom across many current markets and a large portion of economic activity. (Jinshi)

According to Bitget data, the Nikkei 225 index closed 4.03% lower on Friday, July 17, at 64,141.12 points, having plunged as much as 6% intraday to fall below the 63,000 threshold. Individual stocks saw Kioxia drop 16% and SoftBank decline 8.5%. South Korean stock markets are closed today.