Hong Kong open (Tuesday June 30): Hang Seng Index (HSI) opened down 18.81 pts (-0.08%) at 23,007.87; Hang Seng Tech Index opened up 23.67 pts (+0.54%) at 4,416.68; Hang Seng China Enterprises Index (HSCEI) opened down 6.32 pts (-0.08%) at 7,599.02; Red Chip Index opened down 18.09 pts (-0.48%) at 3,749.45.

Aluminum prices are on track for their largest monthly decline since 2008, down more than 15% month-to-date in June after Iran-related gains were rapidly reversed. A temporary U.S.-Iran ceasefire and expectations that the Strait of Hormuz will reopen have raised hopes that Middle East shipments will resume, erasing the prior three months' rally. Prices have also been hit by a rapid USD rally since mid‑May, making dollar‑denominated metals more expensive for most buyers, and by market bets that the Fed will keep rates higher for longer or may tighten further, weighing on demand.

On June 29, NVIDIA said it is recruiting robotics teams in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen across four core areas: embodied intelligence, simulation, deployment and solutions architecture. The embodied intelligence team will target dexterous manipulation, wearable-sensor human modeling, whole-body mobile manipulation and whole-body control to develop next‑generation general-purpose robot systems. The simulation team will build core simulation and training infrastructure to enable efficient virtual learning and faster, more reliable sim‑to‑real transfer. The deployment team will focus on algorithm optimization and real-world rollout for humanoid robots and embodied-intelligence systems, while the solutions team will integrate NVIDIA’s technologies into industrial and service-sector applications.