Podcast Transcripts

Japan Markets

Thinking sharp. Executing big. This is Savvy Giant.

Good afternoon — this is Tokyo Today, Japan Markets, for Tuesday, September 15, 2026, published at 5:49 PM Japan time.

Nearly 600 points. That's how far the Nikkei had climbed by lunchtime today. By the close, every one of them was gone.

Tokyo has closed for the day, and the Nikkei 225 finished essentially flat, near 63,500, down just 9 points. The morning belonged to the bounce. After Monday's selloff in anything tied to artificial intelligence, buyers came back early. A strategist at IwaiCosmo Securities put it simply: investors decided it was too early to judge how far the big cloud companies will actually slow their AI spending. By midday the index was up about 1%.

Then the afternoon turned. Japan's 10-year government bond yield climbed to about 3.03%, its highest in roughly 30 years, while the US 10-year pushed above 5%. The rally drained away, and the Nikkei's volatility gauge rose more than 4%. More stocks rose than fell across the exchange, but the market would not carry its gains into a week with two central bank decisions.

The standout was SoftBank Group, up about 7.5% after a drop of nearly 11% on Monday, when OpenAI ruled out going public this year. Part of the bounce was relief. Part of it was SB Energy, SoftBank Group's data center business, which is planning a US listing and will sell 500 million dollars of shares to Japanese investors as part of it, at a valuation that could reach 50 billion dollars. With OpenAI's listing pushed out, SB Energy is now the nearest event that could put a public price on a piece of SoftBank Group's AI bet.

Taiyo Yuden and Trend Micro also gained more than 4%. On the other side, Advantest fell about 3%, and Resona Holdings dropped more than 3%.

That Resona move points to the story underneath the flat close: interest rates.

A 10-year JGB yield of 3.03% is the highest since September 1996. Normally, higher yields help banks earn more on their loans. But a lender focused on Japanese households and smaller businesses sliding more than 3% suggests investors are also thinking about who pays those higher rates. One estimate reported by News On Japan: more than 5,600 additional small and midsize companies could slip into losses if borrowing costs rise by half a percentage point.

The pressure is global. Yields from the United States to Germany, France and Australia are sitting at multi-year highs. And that sets up the yen's problem.

The dollar is back near 155 yen this evening, after the yen touched a 7-month high near 153 last week. That yen rally was built on one bet: that the Bank of Japan will speed up to a hike every quarter, taking its rate above 2% within a year, from 1% now. A Reuters analysis today argued the bet has gotten ahead of itself. Masafumi Yamamoto, chief currency strategist at Mizuho Securities, told Reuters that even if the BOJ hikes this week, it will be hard for it to sound more hawkish than markets already expect. If Friday disappoints, the analysis said, the dollar could head back toward 157 yen.

The other half of that math is Washington. Futures markets are pricing better than a 90% chance that the Federal Reserve raises rates this week, with the decision landing early Thursday Japan time. Morgan Stanley now expects a second hike in December. If both central banks tighten together, the gap between US and Japanese yields stays wide, and the yen loses its easiest reason to keep climbing.

In Tokyo politics, two things happened today that the bond market will notice.

First, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's cabinet formally adopted the outline of her food tax cut. The consumption tax on groceries would drop from 8% to 1% for 2 years starting in April 2027, paired with new cash benefits tied to income. What the outline does not settle is how to pay for it. With the 10-year yield above 3%, that open question is exactly what bond investors are pricing. For supermarkets and food retailers, the tailwind arrives in 2027. For the bond market, the uncertainty arrives now.

Second, Takaichi reshuffles the ruling party's leadership on Wednesday and her cabinet on Thursday. Most senior figures are expected to stay, including Taro Aso, Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi and Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi. The new cabinet lineup lands the same day the Fed decision reaches Tokyo.

Two corporate stories to know.

Kioxia is exploring raising at least 10 billion dollars by listing depositary receipts in the United States, according to Bloomberg, with Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan in talks. The memory maker has spent billions buying back its own shares in Japan, and a US listing would widen its investor base and could put it in semiconductor indexes. The talks are preliminary, pointing to a possible offering next year. The stock was up more than 2% during the session.

And in Osaka, the city and prefecture set a minimum price of about 92 billion yen for the former Expo site on Yumeshima island, right next to the casino resort already under construction. The buyer must build an international tourism hub, and a developer is due to be chosen in February 2027.

So Tokyo heads into Wednesday with bond yields at 30-year highs, a yen that has lost some of its bid, and a Fed decision still to come before dawn on Thursday. Friday's question for the Bank of Japan is less whether it hikes than whether it can match what markets have already priced in. Today's flat close was the sound of a market that bought the bounce, then decided not to carry it into the heaviest rates stretch of the month.

That's Japan Markets. Keep thinking sharp, and executing big. We're back tomorrow.

Global

Tokyo Today — Global.

Five percent. The US 10-year Treasury yield broke above that line today, reaching about 5.03%, its highest since 2007.

That's the number moving everything else. US stock futures slipped, and the bond selloff reached from Australia to France. The driver is the Federal Reserve. Futures markets put the odds of a rate hike this week above 90%, with the decision due early Thursday Japan time. Morgan Stanley went further today, forecasting a second hike in December, saying inflation has been coming down in a way that is slower and less convincing than policymakers need. For Tokyo, a Treasury market above 5% pulls Japanese yields higher before the Bank of Japan even meets on Friday.

Oil is adding fuel. Houthi forces struck a Saudi military airbase in the kingdom's south on Monday, days after an attack knocked Saudi Arabia's main pipeline around the Strait of Hormuz offline. A planned meeting in Oman between Iran and the Gulf states on Hormuz shipping was postponed, and Iran's Revolutionary Guards said the strait is closed and "still under our smart control." Washington turned down a Saudi request for direct military help. Brent crude rose again in Asian trading. Higher crude keeps Japan's energy producers and trading houses supported, and it feeds the very inflation the Bank of Japan is trying to contain.

The war's cost is also coming into view. The Pentagon's inspector general put it at 33.4 billion dollars through the end of June, and warned of strategic shortfalls in US munitions.

In China, August data showed a split economy. Factory output grew 5.2% from a year earlier, beating forecasts. But retail sales rose just 0.4%, half what economists expected, and investment kept shrinking. Strong factories and weak shoppers help Japanese suppliers selling machinery and components into Chinese production lines, and hurt brands selling to Chinese households.

Around the region, stocks slipped. South Korea's Kospi fell 0.85%, and Hong Kong was down almost 1% by midday. Hong Kong's queue of new listings keeps growing, too. Syngenta, the Chinese-owned seed giant, has filed confidentially for a Hong Kong listing that could raise about 5 billion dollars, Bloomberg reported.

In Britain, payrolls fell by 26,000 in August and wage growth cooled, two days before the Bank of England decides. Economists at ING expect it to hold rates. That would leave London standing still while Washington and Tokyo both tighten.

Gold slipped below 4,300 dollars an ounce as the dollar and yields rose. And Bitcoin fell below 77,000 dollars, as betting odds that the US Clarity Act crypto bill becomes law this year dropped to 16% ahead of a Senate vote. On the corporate calendar, FedEx is scheduled to report on September 16.

Three central banks decide before the weekend, and the bond market has already made its opening move. That's Global.

Tech

Tokyo Today — Tech.

Asia delivered its verdict on the AI slowdown debate today, and it drew a line straight through the chip sector.

TSMC was down about 3.5% in Taipei. In Tokyo, Advantest, whose machines test AI chips, fell about 3%. But Kioxia, Murata and Taiyo Yuden all rose. The dividing line: companies most tied to the most advanced AI training chips got sold, while makers of components that go into every server and every phone got bought back.

The politics got louder, too. On Monday, President Trump phoned Nvidia's Jensen Huang while Huang was on stage at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles, and Huang put him on speaker. Trump said the push to slow AI could be coming from China, and added, "We're not going to let that happen. It's a hoax." Huang answered, "You're right. We're not going to let that happen, sir." With the White House and the biggest AI chip supplier on the same side, the case for continued hardware demand has a powerful backer, even as the labs talk about pacing.

Those labs are not backing down. OpenAI president Greg Brockman said any slowdown should apply to the companies building the most powerful models, not to open-source or smaller projects, and that OpenAI has already slowed some of its most advanced work over safety concerns. That narrows which demand is at risk. The catch is that the frontier labs are also the biggest buyers of cutting-edge accelerators.

A rulebook is forming around them. A group called the AI Evaluator Forum published a baseline standard for independent outside testers of AI models, covering access, conflicts of interest and funding. And a research engineer at Google DeepMind resigned with a public warning that AI could threaten humanity and that time to prevent it may be running short. Audit standards tend to slow model releases more than they cancel hardware orders.

In memory, supply is getting tighter. Unions representing most of Micron's roughly 15,000 workers in Taiwan want a permanent profit-sharing deal, and say they'll move toward a strike vote if talks on Friday and Monday produce nothing concrete. Taiwan is Micron's largest manufacturing hub for the memory chips used in AI servers. Any walkout would squeeze an already tight market, which would support prices for Kioxia.

MediaTek, meanwhile, launched a new flagship phone chip and said it's working with customers to optimize performance around the memory shortage. When chip designers start engineering around a scarce part, the scarcity is real.

And Samsung helped lead a funding round of more than 200 million euros for Euclyd, a Dutch startup building chips that run AI models, with former ASML chief executive Peter Wennink as chairman. Running models is the part of AI demand least exposed to a slowdown in training the next ones.

The market's message today: sell the chips tied to the race, and keep the parts every machine needs. That's Tech.

Lifestyle

Tokyo Today — Lifestyle.

Japan now counts more than 107,000 people aged 100 or older, the first time that number has passed 100,000. It has set a record for 56 years in a row, and nearly 9 in 10 centenarians are women. The oldest woman is 114-year-old Fuyo Kishimoto in Kyoto. The oldest man is 112-year-old Hikaru Kato in Kumamoto. The count arrives just ahead of Respect for the Aged Day next Monday.

In Toronto, Blue Jays rookie Kazuma Okamoto hit his 33rd home run on Monday, the most in a major league season by a Japanese right-handed hitter. He had already broken the Blue Jays' rookie home run record, and he's one of just 5 Japanese-born players with a 30-homer big league season, alongside Shohei Ohtani, Hideki Matsui, Seiya Suzuki and Munetaka Murakami.

At the movies, director Hirokazu Kore-eda's live-action version of the manga Look Back won a student jury prize at the Venice Film Festival, just as it opened in Japanese cinemas. Kore-eda is also set to receive an honorary award from the Singapore Film Festival.

Crayon Shin-chan has a new box office champion. This summer's film, about a yokai monster vacation, has earned more than 2.7 billion yen, the biggest take in the franchise's history, clearing last year's record holder by roughly 600 million yen. And Doraemon's next movie arrives in March 2027, sending Nobita and his friends back to Victorian London in a film called Nobita's Steam Time Locomotive.

For a view you have to earn, the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge near Kobe is running tower tours through the end of November. Visitors walk about a kilometer along a maintenance passage under the expressway, over grated floors with the sea far below, then ride an elevator for 90 seconds to the top of a tower about 300 meters up. From there you can see Kobe, Awaji Island, and on a clear day, Osaka.

And in Kyoto, Studio Ghibli is meeting Zen. A new exhibition opening October 3 builds on conversations between Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki and Zen monks, centered on Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron. Book a ticket through JR Central's travel service, and you receive goshuin papers, the pages temples stamp to mark a visit, decorated with Ghibli-meets-Kyoto artwork and ready to carry to 3 of the city's famous temples. The museum is calling it Ghibli for grown-ups.

Enjoy the evening. That's Lifestyle.

Scraps

Tokyo Today — Scraps.

On the markets side, Pictet's global multi-asset fund has tripled to 5 billion dollars on money from China. The Financial Times reports foreign investors are now favoring US stocks over US Treasuries, a rare shift. US prosecutors are seeking 61 million dollars in crypto they say came from Iranian oil sold to Chinese buyers. And Jaguar Land Rover is in talks to sell its Defender to NATO militaries.

In the wider world, Apple has released iOS 27, bringing its long-awaited AI version of Siri. The US Air Force secretary confirmed America has deployed weapons in orbit, a first public admission. The Supreme Court blocked a Trump administration plan to screen mail-in ballots. Beijing is tightening exit controls on wealthy citizens and tech talent. A Japan Air Self-Defense Force Global Hawk surveillance drone lost contact off Tottori. And Iceland's plan to ban whaling could leave Japan as the last major country still defending the industry.

And in culture, Netflix and Sega are making a live-action Crazy Taxi movie. Widow's Bay and The Pitt ruled the Emmys. Pokémon fans can claim a rare 30th-anniversary Mewtwo card for free. The Switch 2 version of 007 First Light slips to March 2027. And Starbucks and fashion brand Beams launch their second collection on Friday.

That's the roundup — and that's Tokyo Today.