US Stock Futures Dive Further

According to Bitget market data, spot gold rallied $20 in the short term, currently trading at $4,039.58 per ounce. Both U.S. WTI and Brent crude oil fell by over $1 in the short term: WTI crude oil broke below $81 per barrel, down 1.69% on the day, while Brent crude oil dropped 1.00% on the day, currently at $85.33 per barrel. On the news front, a senior Iranian source stated that mediators have proposed a 10-day pause in strikes to explore ways to revive the temporary agreement between Iran and the U.S.

According to Bit.com market data, U.S. stock index futures of the three major benchmarks rose: Nasdaq 100 futures gained more than 1%, S&P 500 futures rose 0.57%, and Dow Jones futures increased 0.43%. On the news front, a senior Iranian source stated that mediators have proposed a 10-day pause in strikes to explore ways to revive the temporary agreement between Iran and the United States. This may signal a short-term de-escalation of tensions in the Middle East, driving a rebound in risk markets.

According to Bitget market data, both US and Brent crude oil continue to slump. Brent crude has fallen below $85 per barrel, down more than 2% on the day; WTI crude oil dropped over $2 intraday, currently trading at $80.29 per barrel, a 2.5% decline.

SemiAnalysis analysts Jordan Nanos and Max Kan recently analyzed Kimi K3, the model developed by Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI, concluding that it outperforms Google Gemini in comprehensive benchmark tests. This not only reflects the narrowing gap between Chinese and U.S. AI models but also offers new insights into the business models of closed-source AI firms like Anthropic and OpenAI. According to SemiAnalysis’s overall assessment, Kimi K3 currently ranks third globally, trailing only Fable 5 and GPT-5.6, and surpassing Google Gemini. The analysts noted that while this result does not signal major issues for Google’s AI business, Kimi K3’s publicly disclosed parameter count, performance, and pricing provide a reference for external estimates of the economic value of closed-source models. Kimi K3 has 2.8 trillion parameters, far exceeding most open-source models. Jordan Nanos stated that a model of this size cannot be deployed on a single NVIDIA B200 GPU, requiring higher-spec hardware such as GB300, B300-class systems, or AMD MI355X. Based on this, he speculated that Anthropic and OpenAI’s flagship closed-source models likely operate at a similar parameter scale, rather than holding an order-of-magnitude advantage. In terms of business models, Kimi K3’s launch price is close to Anthropic’s Sonnet series: input pricing is approximately $3 per million tokens, and output pricing is around $15 per million tokens, a roughly threefold increase over the previous Kimi generation. Max Kan argued that if Moonshot AI is not operating at a long-term loss, then Anthropic and OpenAI charging higher prices for models of comparable size suggests their API business may have high profit margins. “Selling API tokens could be more profitable than SaaS,” he said. However, the two analysts emphasized that these judgments are not based on the AI companies’ public financial data, but rather on reverse inference drawn from Kimi K3’s parameters, pricing, and performance.

Goldman Sachs’ latest research report shows that U.S. inflationary pressure is spreading from a narrow set of sectors to a broader range of areas. While current inflation levels have not yet hit their 2022 peak, the expanding scope of price increases is posing greater challenges to the Federal Reserve’s policy efforts. Goldman Sachs economist Jessica Rindels analyzed the extent of inflation spread using the six-month annualized change rate of the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, a key metric closely watched by the Fed. The data shows that, compared to the average inflation level between 1990 and 2019, the pressure index for inflation categories exceeding 3% has reached around 6, while it stood at 10 during the 2022 inflation peak. The report points out that sectors such as audio-visual equipment, financial services, healthcare, and transportation have become key drivers of current price increases. Meanwhile, housing rent inflation, which carries a significant weight in the PCE index, is projected to fall below 3% in the fourth quarter of this year, potentially serving as a key factor easing inflationary pressure. Goldman Sachs’ analysis aligns with recent concerns from new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh about the "broadening of inflation". Warsh stated that preventing price hikes from spreading to more sectors of the economy is a key task for the Federal Reserve. However, unlike former Chair Jerome Powell’s relatively clear policy communication style, Warsh has so far refused to provide specific interest rate path guidance. Jeremy Schwartz, senior U.S. economist at Nomura Securities, noted that the Fed is reducing forward guidance to the market, and this policy uncertainty has heightened concerns on Wall Street. Meanwhile, hawkish voices within the Fed are growing. Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan has expressed support for moderate interest rate hikes, arguing that the current economic resilience is inconsistent with inflation risks.

Senior Iranian sources said the mediator has proposed a 10-day pause in strikes to find ways to revive the interim agreement between Iran and the U.S. (Jinshi)