Federal Reserve officials displayed significant divergence regarding the future direction of monetary policy, according to the minutes from the January policy meeting released on the 18th. While nearly all members of the Federal Open Market Committee supported maintaining the benchmark interest rate unchanged during the meeting, internal disagreements about the policy outlook were evident. At the conclusion of the January 28th meeting, ten FOMC members voted to hold rates steady, while two advocated for a 25-basis-point cut. The minutes indicated that several officials believed further rate cuts would be appropriate if inflation continues to decline as expected. Conversely, some participants suggested that maintaining rates unchanged for a period would be suitable as the committee assesses incoming data. Additionally, a few officials supported incorporating "two-way" language in forward guidance to reflect the possibility of rate increases should inflation persist above target levels. Most officials cautioned that the process of returning inflation to the 2% target may be slower and more uneven than broadly anticipated. The Fed's next policy meeting is scheduled for March 17-18.
In overnight trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 267.5 points, or 0.54%, to close at 49,395.16. The S&P 500 declined 19.42 points, or 0.28%, to 6,861.89, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 70.9 points, or 0.31%, to 22,682.31. Major technology stocks mostly closed lower, with Apple, Netflix, and Intel down over 1%; Microsoft, Google, and NVIDIA saw slight declines. Energy stocks broadly advanced, with Occidental Petroleum surging more than 9%, and EQT Energy and Apache Corporation rising over 1%. Airline stocks were generally lower, with United Airlines and Delta Air Lines down over 5%, and Southwest Airlines falling nearly 5%. Most popular Chinese equities declined, with the Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index dipping 0.35%. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company fell 0.52%, while Alibaba dropped 0.96%. NYMEX WTI crude oil for the front-month contract rose $1.62, or 2.49%, to settle at $66.67 per barrel. COMEX gold for the front-month contract increased $6.00, or 0.12%, to $5,015.5 per ounce.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, in a media interview, previewed the upcoming GTC 2026 conference, explicitly stating that a new chip "the world has never seen" will be unveiled. While specific model details have not been disclosed, widespread speculation suggests it likely belongs to one of two chip series: either a derivative of the Rubin series—which debuted at CES 2026 with six newly designed chips now in full production—or the next-generation Feynman series, described as "revolutionary." NVIDIA is reportedly exploring extensive integration centered on SRAM or combining LPUs via 3D stacking technology, though details remain unconfirmed.
Chinese scientists have made breakthrough progress in optical communication and 6G, achieving the world's first cross-network integration between fiber-optic and wireless communication systems. The independently developed "Fiber-Wireless Integrated Communication System" has set a new record for data transmission rates. The findings were published online in the journal Nature on February 19.
According to Maoyan Professional data, the total box office for the 2026 Spring Festival period surpassed 2.7 billion yuan. "Pegasus 3," "Awakening Silence," and "Boonie Bears: Every Year Has Bears" ranked as the top three films.
HHLR Advisors, the secondary market investment management platform under Hillhouse, disclosed its U.S. equity holdings as of the end of the fourth quarter of 2025. The data showed HHLR held positions in 33 U.S.-listed companies, with Chinese equities remaining a core allocation. Notable adjustments included significant increases in holdings of Alibaba and Pinduoduo, while reducing positions in firms like Futu Holdings, further concentrating the portfolio towards e-commerce leaders, biotechnology, and technology sectors.
Newmont Corporation forecasts a 10% reduction in gold production for 2026, attributed to underperformance at two mines jointly operated with Barrick Gold. The company reported record profit figures, with adjusted net income rising to $2.8 billion, or $2.52 per share, in the fourth quarter of 2025. Newmont expects all-in sustaining costs to decrease to $1,680 per ounce in 2026, beating analyst expectations and demonstrating progress in cost control.
Zaihui Group, a Chinese online operation and marketing solutions provider for the catering industry, is pursuing a dual primary listing on the Singapore Exchange and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. According to the prospectus filed with the Hong Kong exchange, Zaihui generates revenue primarily by offering AI-driven online operation and marketing solutions to merchants. Its business model combines proprietary technology supporting standardized, replicable workflows with operational and service capabilities that help merchants execute strategies across multiple online platforms. Proceeds from the listing will be used for technology R&D, including developing AI agents in marketing technology and intelligent cooking robots, upgrading existing solutions to meet diverse client needs, overseas expansion, working capital, and general corporate purposes.
Alibaba's Qwen has officially launched Qwen3.5, releasing the open-weight version of its first model in the series, Qwen3.5-397B-A17B. As a native visual-language model, Qwen3.5-397B-A17B demonstrates excellent performance across comprehensive benchmarks including reasoning, programming, agent capabilities, and multimodal understanding. The model employs an innovative hybrid architecture combining linear attention (Gated Delta Networks) with sparse mixture-of-experts (MoE), achieving outstanding inference efficiency: with total parameters reaching 397 billion, only 17 billion parameters are activated per forward pass, optimizing speed and cost while maintaining capability. Language and dialect support has been expanded from 119 to 201, providing broader availability and enhanced support for global users.
ROBOSENSE issued a profit alert, anticipating it will achieve its first quarterly profit in the fourth quarter of 2025, with profit expected to be no less than 60 million yuan. Based on preliminary information, the net loss attributable to shareholders for the 2025 fiscal year is expected to narrow significantly to no more than 180 million yuan, compared to a net loss of 481.8 million yuan for the year ended December 31, 2024.
Tiangong International has reached a deep strategic cooperation consensus with Bodycote, a global leader in heat treatment and hot isostatic pressing technology. The two parties will integrate core strengths to achieve comprehensive business synergy in high-end manufacturing sectors such as aerospace, automotive, and energy, jointly creating a new global collaborative development model based on "technology + capacity + market." Currently, the company's subsidiary Jiangsu Tiangong Xinzhi Materials Co., Ltd. is planning a second-phase powder metallurgy project, intending to add five hot isostatic pressing units to further solidify the company's capacity and technological advantages in the high-end alloy materials powder metallurgy field, providing solid support for the implementation of the strategic partnership. A recent CICC research report noted that, considering the potential continuous volume increase of Tiangong International's high-end materials starting from 2026, which promotes the company's transition from a tool steel leader to a high-end new materials supplier, the firm has switched its valuation benchmark to 2026 and maintains an Outperform rating on the company.