Fitch's BMI says South Korea's downstream oil and gas sector could remain stable in 2026 despite pressure from elevated freight costs and geopolitical risk. Seoul is shifting to a broader energy-security strategy to reduce reliance on Middle East crude, targeting the Middle East's share of crude imports to fall from 69.1% in 2024 to 60% or below. BMI adds recent import data show more flexible sourcing: January–May Middle East share was 62.8%, while in May the Americas, including the US, accounte

Galaxy Securities said in a Sept. 23 report the Fed hiked 25bps to 3.75%–4.00% on Sept. 16, the first increase since July 2023. A systemic rise in risk-free rates is lifting discount rates beyond the policy rate and compressing equity P/Es, disproportionately hitting high-valuation growth stocks dependent on distant cash flows. The AI narrative remains strong, but pricing is shifting from long‑term visions to near‑term realization. On the first trading day after the hike, storage, CPUs, foundry and optical‑interconnect segments outperformed; strong current earnings and short investment payback make these compute‑hardware nodes less sensitive to higher rates. Valuation differentiation is accelerating: hardware with verified cash flows and earnings (advanced process, memory, optical interconnect, equipment and materials) is benefiting, while narrative‑driven, unprofitable names are being further squeezed.

OpenRouter's latest daily ranking shows Zhipu AI's GLM-5.3-Flash logged 4.36 trillion tokens of usage, up 73% from the prior reporting period, ranking first on the platform by model call volume.