What moved overnight, in five minutes — from the Hong Kong desk.

Overnight

Tuesday's US session ended where it began. The S&P 500 closed at 7,764.64, the ticker's change column reading −0.00%, and the Nasdaq at 27,244.28, up 0.45%. The Fed's quarter-point rise to 3.75–4.00% on 16 September, carried 12–0, and the Bank of Japan's to around 1.25% two days later are both behind New York now; its second full session with them produced no direction at all. A flat session is reported flat.

Asia and Europe

Tokyo is shut for a third consecutive session, the Autumnal Equinox, and prices nothing again until Thursday 24 September. The Nikkei row reads 65,018.73, Friday's close; the +1.38% beside it is a week old and is not a move. Osaka has traded through: JPX's holiday-trading schedule marks today open for derivatives, so Nikkei 225 futures print a price the cash market cannot. Hong Kong closed Tuesday at 25,087.76 (+0.18%); Europe finished with the FTSE 100 at 10,708.33 (−0.29%) and the DAX at 25,578.85 (+0.02%).

FX, rates and commodities

The ten-year Treasury is 4.955%, the ticker's change column reading +0.08%. The dollar is a little softer against the yen at 157.18 (−0.45%) and the Hong Kong dollar at 7.8434 (−0.02%); EUR/USD is 1.1463 (+0.03%) and GBP/USD 1.3363 (+0.14%) — the ticker's readings at 07:15 Hong Kong time. West Texas Intermediate is US$89.74 and gold US$4,362.40, both with a blank change column: levels, not moves.

The day ahead

The desk can see nothing scheduled today that it can verify. The next dated markers are the Federal Reserve's 27–28 October meeting, per its own calendar, and the UK Budget, which the Chancellor confirmed for 28 October in a letter to the Treasury Select Committee published on 31 July. The Bank of Japan's own schedule puts the Summary of Opinions from its 18 September meeting out on 1 October — the first account of the 7–2 vote that set the policy rate at 1.25%, effective with Thursday's reopen.

One number

4,362.40 — gold's level on the ticker at 07:15 Hong Kong time. No change is printed beside it, so it is a price and not a performance, and the desk reports the first without inventing the second.

One read

Gold's argument this month is not about the morning's tick. Our markets desk set it out on 10 September: Gold's second act at US$4,350: why central banks keep buying. The case is that the official sector is a buyer with a mandate and no profit target, so corrections meet a policy bid rather than a wave of selling; the floor is higher and the volatility is not lower, and the practical question for private money is which wrapper, not whether to hold any.