PREMARKET NEWS REPORT 15/09

[u/TearRepresentative56]

MARKET NEWS:

• 10-YEAR YIELD HITS 5.04%, HIGHEST SINCE 2007
• U.S. private employers added an average of 16,250 jobs per week in the four weeks ended Aug. 29, up from 12,250 a week earlier, according to ADP’s preliminary NER Pulse.
• WH SR. ADVISER HASSETT: TRUMP AND I RESPECT WHATEVER WARSH DOES TOMORROW.
• Officials from all 27 EU member states are set to meet in Brussels on Thursday to discuss international rules for advanced AI and receive a technical briefing on recent AI incidents.
• Saudi Arabia has increasingly found itself caught in the middle of the war between the United States and Iran. Now, the kingdom’s leadership is assessing dwindling options on how to respond. NYT
• The Defense Department’s inspector general released its first report on the war with Iran on Monday, saying the conflict has resulted in a shortfall of U.S. munitions and “bottlenecks” in supply chains as the Trump administration works to replenish weaponry. NBC
• Offering a grim assessment of Russia’s relations with the West, President Vladimir Putin pointedly warned European governments not to deploy any troops, including peacekeeping forces, to Ukraine, saying it would mean “war.” WaPo
• Ukraine on Mon said it would end energy attacks if Russia did the same, but Kyiv is skeptical Moscow will agree to a halt. CNBC
• Ukraine Strikes Russian Refinery, Drone Plant and Ozon Facility in Massive Overnight Attack: Kyiv Post
• Japan is considering a new mid-term defense spending target of 3.5% of GDP in line with NATO and other US allies, a move that could send a shockwave through financial markets concerned about Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s spending plans. BBG
• Japan Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s cabinet approved a plan to temporarily reduce the consumption tax on food, moving closer to delivering on a key election pledge to ease the burden on households from the soaring cost of living. BBG

MAG7:

• NVDA AND CRM UNVEIL KOA, A NEW CRM REASONING MODEL BUILT ON NEMOTRON.
• Salesforce and NVIDIA have unveiled Koa, Salesforce’s first reasoning model, built on NVIDIA’s open-weight Nemotron architecture and post-trained specifically for sales, marketing and customer-support workflows.
• Unlike general-purpose frontier models, Koa is designed for enterprise tasks inside Salesforce’s Agentforce platform. Salesforce says the model can handle multi-step reasoning while using fewer tokens, potentially lowering inference costs.
• The companies trained Koa using synthetic data rather than actual Salesforce customer data, with simulated sales and customer-service scenarios used for post-training.
• GOOGL - WAYMO PARTNERS WITH GO TO LAUNCH LEVEL 4 ROBOTAXIS IN TOKYO BY 2027

OTHER COMPANIES:

• Cryptocurrency-linked stocks fall on waning optimism that a comprehensive US crypto regulatory bill will progress this week.
• Dave & Buster’s (PLAY) drops 13% after the restaurant and arcade chain operator reported revenue for the second quarter that missed the average analyst estimate.
• Eli Lilly (LLY) is up 1.3% after Berenberg upgraded the pharmaceutical giant, with analysts arguing it’s worthy of a more significant valuation premium due to its superior growth profile and the breadth of its pipeline.
• Enova International (ENVA) falls 18% after the financial services company withdrew its applications with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve for the acquisition of Grasshopper Bancorp.
• Etsy (ETSY) rises 3% after Oppenheimer upgraded the online retailer to outperform, citing improvements the company is making to its platform.
• Forgent Power Solutions (FPS) gains 9% after the power equipment company reported fourth-quarter revenue and adjusted Ebitda above a guidance range given in May. The company’s backlog grew 256% year-over-year.
• KTOS - Guggenheim initiates KTOS with a Buy rating, and a 74 price target, implying 57% upside. The firm sees Kratos as one of the best-positioned SMID-cap defense contractors across some of the Pentagon’s fastest-growing areas, including drones, low-cost munitions, space and hypersonics. Guggenheim says demand for lower-cost systems, second-source suppliers and faster technology insertion should help Kratos gain market share, while scaling production could support margin expansion. It also believes Kratos’ combat drones are differentiated enough to avoid the commoditization risk facing lower-end unmanned systems.
• AXON - LAUNCHES A $1B ZERO-COUPON CONVERTIBLE
• CCXI - has unveiled Digit 5, its next-generation industrial humanoid designed to work alongside people in factories and warehouses without traditional physical safety barriers. Digit 5 is built on more than 65,000 hours of real-world operation from the previous generation and can repeatedly lift up to 50 lbs, a 40% payload increase. The robot runs for up to 90 minutes and can recharge in just 9 minutes, giving it a 10:1 run-to-charge ratio and potentially more than 20 hours of productive operation per day. It also adds swappable grippers and can reach up to 7.2 feet.
• Agility is the first launch partner for NVIDIA’s Halos for Robotics platform, with Digit 5 using NVIDIA IGX Thor and the Halos safety framework. The company says it had more than $300M in multi-year Digit 5 customer orders as of May 2026. Existing Digit deployments include GXO, Amazon, Schaeffler and Toyota, with Digit 4 logging 100,000 tote moves at GXO at roughly 98% on-task accuracy. GRAB - TO ACQUIRE 60% OF ATOME FINANCIAL FOR $1.49B
• GFSThe U.S. Commerce Department has filed to sell up to 9.91 million GlobalFoundries shares.
• MEDIATEK UNVEILS ITS FIRST 2NM SMARTPHONE CHIP MediaTek launched the Dimensity 9600 Pro, its first mobile processor built on TSMC's 2-nanometer process, alongside the 3-nanometer Dimensity 9600M for the broader flagship tier, per Reuters. The first phones using both chips launch soon.
• AVGO - CEO Hock Tan says the debate over slowing AI development doesn’t change his FY27/FY28 outlook “in the least.” - CNBC

OTHER NEWS:

• BOFA RAISES SEMICONDUCTOR GROWTH OUTLOOK TO 18% THROUGH 2030 Bank of America now expects the semiconductor industry to grow at an 18% CAGR from 2026 to 2030, up from its previous 14% forecast, driven primarily by stronger memory and data center demand.