1. Sharp (but expected) pullback in AI rally in South Korea and Taiwan.

South Korea's stock benchmark plunged over 8% on Monday, after robust U.S. jobs data lifted bets on a Federal Reserve rate hike and unleashed a selloff in the tech heavy market that had powered the broader AI rally.

Chip heavyweight Samsung Electronics stumbled 10.2%, and peer SK Hynix dropped 7.7% even as Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, said SK Hynix remained its "biggest partner" while unveiling new deals during his trip to South Korea.
Their market capitalisations this year alone have jumped more than 150% and 200%, respectively, now accounting for over half of the benchmark and propelling them into the $1 trillion club.

2. A strong U.S. jobs report ramped up expectations for Federal Reserve interest rate hikes.

Markets are now pricing in a more than 70% chance that the Fed will raise rates in December, up from a 45% chance a week ago, according to the CME FedWatch tool.

"This market has been priced for quite a while for perfection, and these are certainly imperfect times. In that environment, you are going to see some back-and-forth, and some fear of prices having gone too far."
Analysts and investors have, for the most part, dismissed the latest selloff as a "healthy correction", with concentration risks and leveraged positions amplifying the market moves, though it remains to be seen how long the rout will last.

Meanwhile, the Nasdaq and chipmakers were already bouncing back Monday afternoon. "Today looks like a day where investors are doing a little bit of bargain hunting.”

3. AI demand indicators remain bullish across the board as token consumption continues scaling extremely rapidly.

Data from OpenRouter, a platform that routes AI app traffic across many large language models and providers, shows an expected 34.7 trillion tokens consumed run-rate for this week, up from just 2.1 trillion in early June 2025. That’s 15X last years consumption.

Token consumption refers to how many text units (tokens) an AI model uses when processing and generating language. In English, 1 token equals about 0.75 words. It is a critical metric because most AI providers bill on a pay-as-you-go, usage-based model. AI token expenses scale up quickly, especially with advanced, multi-step AI agents.

4. OpenAI targets up to $1 trillion valuation, IPO could come as early as September.

At that valuation, OpenAI would set the stage for a trio of trillion-dollar-valuation companies debuting rapidly, which together are seen as the most consequential test of investor appetite for high-growth technology stocks in the last 10 years.
"SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic are now engulfing onto the public markets to finance their massive growth. While the markets currently welcome the firms with open arms, they will be relentless in rewarding and punishing as their fundamental profile builds over time.
Given that their IPO offerings characteristics diverge so much from the average U.S. IPO, including offering size and initial float, it is a given that their life as a publicly traded entity will be highly dynamic."

5. A bullish French telecom deal.

French telecoms groups Orange, Bouygues and Iliad are set to carve up the assets of Altice France in a 20.5 billion takeover deal.
The deal would shake up one of the most competitive telecoms markets in Europe. Operators in France have been locked in price wars for years, pressuring margins and revenue growth.
EU antitrust regulators, however, have imposed tough remedies and outright blocks on telecoms deals if the deals reduce the number of mobile network operators from four to three in a single country.
Regulators want to safeguard competition and avoid price increases. But a 2024 EU report on the bloc's competitiveness urged regulators to ease a stance that had resulted in a highly fragmented sector, and instead focus on helping businesses gain scale and compete with U.S. and Chinese rivals.
“We expect Bouyges and Orange to trade up on the strong synergy targets and we expect them to beat and raise estimates over the next 12 months, with both offering double digit earnings growth, and cheap valuations”, says JPMorgan.

6. Goldman Sachs starts coverage of Publicis with a buy rating.

Advertising stocks have been gripped by AI-related concerns since 2023, but the investor debate is shifting and the industry might be better equipped to deal with the risk than some fear, Goldman Sachs says in a research note. "The key question is whether the barriers to entry--including scale, operational complexity, and data advantages--that have supported the sector's oligopolistic structure are weakening. We see limited evidence thus far," the analysts say. A flattish performance for the sector overall last year intensified investor scrutiny, but it could return to top-line growth in the fourth quarter, they add.

They have a target of 110.

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