The US Treasury's move to at least double its buyback operations for long-dated government debt is the single thread running through Thursday's rally in stocks, bonds and crypto alike, easing the yield pressure that had been driving risk-off selling since Tuesday, according to Investing.com. The relief is real, but it's also a reminder that debt-market plumbing — not Fed policy — was the actual swing factor behind this week's selloff and now its reversal; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's own language about "deficits running at a pace unprecedented for times outside of major wars, pandemics or depressed job markets" is the same dynamic behind Thursday's other big number, described below.

US federal debt passed $40 trillion Thursday, up from $30 trillion in January 2022 — a one-third increase in under five years — as political gridlock leaves neither party willing to raise taxes or cut entitlement spending, according to the South China Morning Post. The milestone lands the same week the Treasury is leaning harder on buybacks to manage the bond market, underscoring the tension between a debt load still growing unchecked and a Treasury actively working to keep the cost of financing it from spiraling.

A BofA fund-manager survey shows record expectations for a "no landing" outcome — inflation staying too hot for the Fed to cut, even as growth holds up — just as Kevin Warsh prepares his first Jackson Hole address as Fed Chair on August 27-29, according to Yahoo Finance. Warsh has deliberately given markets less forward guidance than his predecessor, and money markets currently price meaningful odds of a hike by December even as the probability of a September move has cooled after softer July jobs and inflation data — leaving Jackson Hole as the next real signal on where policy goes from here, with obvious read-through for the same yield dynamics that just whipsawed Tokyo.

Russia launched a heavy missile attack on Kyiv overnight, killing at least 13 people as Ukraine's air defenses struggled to intercept the barrage, according to the BBC and The Guardian. The strike is one of the heaviest on the capital in months, and comes as Kyiv's own officials have warned publicly about dwindling air-defense interceptor stocks heading into the war's fourth winter.

President Trump said Thursday he is launching what he called the "most crushing economic operation" yet against Iran, warning any country that helps Iran's financial institutions, shipping registries or oil-smuggling networks will face its own economic consequences, according to The Guardian. Brent crude has stayed firm all week on the standoff, with the Strait of Hormuz still effectively disrupted — a further tightening of sanctions enforcement raises the odds that bid holds into the weekend, with direct implications for Japan's energy import bill noted above.

South Korea's Kospi surged 6.1% to 6,858.91 Thursday, a day after sinking 5.8% on AI-related selling, as SK Hynix surged as much as 14% on a 40 trillion won ($28.6 billion) share buyback-and-cancellation plan — the largest treasury-share cancellation in South Korean corporate history — while Samsung Electronics jumped 9.7% on reports it will announce its own shareholder-return program worth more than $72 billion, according to CNBC. SK Hynix's stock had lost more than half its value in two months before Thursday's announcement, and the company separately raised its shareholder-return pledge to more than 50% of free cash flow generated between 2025 and 2027, worth roughly $170 billion combined — both a sign of how much cash the HBM boom is generating and how badly the two Korean chipmakers needed to arrest this week's slide.

Bitcoin surged to $69,564, up more than 8% on the day, while ether jumped nearly 18% to $2,251, as the same Treasury buyback relief that lifted stocks combined with a newly proposed SEC framework easing capital-raising rules for crypto issuers and Trump naming Hyperliquid in a push to bring the exchange onshore, according to The Block. US spot bitcoin ETFs pulled in $517 million in net inflows Wednesday, the largest single-day haul since early May, led by BlackRock's IBIT — a sign the move is being driven by institutional positioning rather than retail chasing the number.

A Shenzhen court sentenced Evergrande founder Hui Ka Yan to life in prison and fined the company and related entities a combined $2.3 billion on charges including financial fraud, inflating assets, concealing liabilities and illegally absorbing public deposits, according to CNN. Evergrande collapsed in 2020 with more than $300 billion in liabilities after Beijing's crackdown on excessive property-sector borrowing, and several other former executives received prison terms of up to 18 years in the same ruling — a symbolic close to the saga that first cracked open China's property crisis, even as the sector's broader overhang on Chinese growth remains very much unresolved.

China is slowing or delaying exports of germanium- and quartz-based materials used in fiber optics, photonics and chip manufacturing to Taiwan, creating fresh supply-chain bottlenecks for the island's tech and aerospace industries, according to Nikkei Asia. Beijing controls a large share of global supply for both materials, and the move lands as a fresh reminder that the chip supply chain Japan's own equipment makers depend on runs directly through geopolitical chokepoints that can tighten with little warning.

Beyond the immediate share-price pop covered above, SK Hynix and Samsung's combined shareholder-return commitments — more than $170 billion pledged from SK Hynix alone through 2027, plus Samsung's own $72 billion program, according to Bloomberg — are as much a statement about how much free cash flow the HBM boom is now throwing off as they are a defense of the stock price, a dynamic with direct read-through for the Japanese equipment and materials names, including Tokyo Electron, Advantest and Disco, that sit downstream of both companies' capacity plans.

Nebius Group priced $5 billion in convertible senior notes — split between $3 billion due 2030 at a 40% conversion premium and $2 billion due 2034 at a 45% premium — upsized from an initial $4.5 billion target, with proceeds earmarked for data-center construction, AI cloud development and GPU procurement, according to Investing.com. Nebius shares fell nearly 10% on the news even as the deal itself sailed through upsized, a sign investors are increasingly focused on dilution and financing structure even when the AI capex story underneath remains intact.

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told employees at an all-hands that the company will be a public company in 2027, or sooner if the business "continues to inflect," according to CNBC. It's the most specific timeline OpenAI has put on an IPO to date, and comes in the same week rival Anthropic's own pre-IPO credit facility was reported set to exceed $10 billion — both signs that the leading AI labs are now openly preparing their balance sheets for public-market scrutiny rather than treating it as a distant hypothetical.

Marvell Technology (MRVL) held most of Wednesday's gain after JPMorgan reiterated its rating on the stock following Tuesday's custom-chip deal with Google, according to Investing.com. The deal — which handed Google a warrant on roughly 7% of Marvell in exchange for a broader custom-silicon partnership — remains the more consequential story for the custom-AI-chip market than any single analyst note, but Wall Street holding its rating rather than downgrading into the pop is itself a signal the Street sees the deal as durable rather than a one-day spike.

Walmart is scheduled to report fiscal second-quarter results later Thursday (~10:30 PM JST), with Wall Street looking for roughly $0.74 in earnings per share on $186.8 billion in revenue, growth of about 5% and 9% respectively, according to TradingKey. Options pricing implies a swing of a little over 5% in either direction once the numbers land — a reminder that even the largest US retailer's ability to absorb or pass through tariff costs to consumers is still an open question the market hasn't settled, one worth watching for read-through to Japan's own export-facing consumer names.

Metallica gave a public shoutout to Ado's performance of "Enter Sandman" at Summer Sonic, according to Anime News Network. It's a small but genuine crossover moment — one of the biggest names in Japanese music covering one of the biggest names in American metal, and getting the band's own blessing for it.

Kura Sushi lowered the minimum price on its menu by ¥5 to ¥110 per plate, aiming to draw back customers as it competes in Japan's crowded conveyor-belt sushi market, according to Livedoor News. It's a tiny number on its own, but in a category where chains compete plate by plate on price, five yen is a real lever — and a sign of how much pricing pressure still runs through Japan's restaurant sector even as broader inflation climbs.

Princess Aiko toured an Osaka museum exhibition of Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring," according to Livedoor News. A quiet, pleasant note in a week that hasn't had many of them — the painting's rare visit to Japan drawing royal attention alongside the public's.

Grand Theft Auto 6 has pulled in more than $400 million in preorder revenue ahead of launch, according to GameSpot, even as leaked gameplay footage keeps circulating and stirring debate among fans about how much they're seeing before release. Indie horror hit The Binding of Isaac: Repentance+ has now set its online re-release for November 19 — the same day GTA 6 launches — a scheduling choice its developers are framing as going head-to-head rather than getting out of the way, according to Engadget.

A long-shelved plan to bring Shinkansen service to Shikoku is back under active discussion, more than five decades after it was first proposed, according to NewsOnJapan. Japan's four main islands are connected by bullet train everywhere except Shikoku, and reviving a proposal this old — one that predates most of the rail network Japan takes for granted today — is the kind of infrastructure story that only makes sense in a country that's been building this system for sixty years and still isn't finished.

Joe Hisaishi, the composer behind nearly every Studio Ghibli score for four decades, has been awarded three Guinness World Records, according to Anime News Network. The records themselves are almost beside the point — what they mark is a career that turned a handful of animated films into some of the most recognizable orchestral music of the last forty years, still being performed, still being discovered by new listeners, decades after the movies it scored first came out.