大仁Jaron

The world’s wealthiest investors are listing inflation as their top risk. According to Citi Group’s latest survey, inflation this year has overtaken the trade war and tariffs to become the biggest concern for family offices, and this trend is profoundly affecting the asset allocation logic of the ultra-high-net-worth group.
Citi Group’s annual global family office report shows that after inflation, changes in interest rates and the stability of the global financial system have become the issues most concerning to the surveyed institutions.
When it comes to selecting major asset classes, publicly traded equities are ranked as the preferred asset category for future net additions. More than 90% of the surveyed family offices said their portfolios recorded positive returns this year, and nearly half said they increased their holdings of listed stocks in the first half of the year.

Intel is extending its advanced packaging strategy into the Micro LED substrate domain, and has also reportedly forged deep cooperation with AU Optronics, a major Taiwan panel maker, to jointly advance CPO (co-packaged optics) and integration solutions for high-density computing chips. This marks that the photonic heterogeneous integration technology roadmap is accelerating toward commercialization.
According to a report by Taiwan media outlet Taiwan (Economic Daily) on September 21, industry insiders revealed that Intel has obtained a U.S. licensed patent titled "IC Package with Micro LEDs." The core technical route is to embed semiconductor chips into a glass substrate and, through through-glass vias (TGV), enable electrical interconnection between Micro LEDs and the packaging substrate. This allows on-chip light-emitting display, customized optical output, and in-situ optoelectronic testing functionalities to be achieved without the need for additional external components. Previously, AU Optronics Chairman Peng Shuanglang stated clearly at a previous earnings briefing that the company has already made inroads in advanced packaging and the glass substrate field, and is now developing jointly with partners.

Next Monday (September 21), the Nasdaq 100 index quarterly rebalancing will officially take effect. SpaceX’s weight in the index will jump from 1.28% to 2.82% directly—more than doubling.
To be honest, seeing this number, my first reaction was: finally, things are back to normal. SpaceX’s market value has surpassed $2 trillion, making it the seventh-largest company in the Nasdaq 100 index—yet previously, with its weighting, it couldn’t even squeeze into the top 20. That’s basically a “miscarriage of justice” in index construction history. Now the weight finally matches the market cap, but the driver behind it isn’t fundamentals—it’s a mechanical rules adjustment.

Core CPI again beat expectations: the Fed has been “cornered,” and rate hikes may not be the flood of doom
After the nonfarm payrolls, August CPI also came in above expectations. This time, it was not the headline CPI that beat expectations, but the core CPI: core CPI month-on-month was 0.3%, higher than the expected 0.2%; core CPI year-on-year was 2.45%, compared with 2.48% last month—essentially flat. The rise in headline CPI had been fully anticipated and is in line with market expectations.
Specifically, the core rise is mainly due to hotels and air tickets. Prices for other core goods and services remained relatively moderate, with rents increasing by less than 0.2% month-on-month. This may explain why, after the data was released, gold first fell and then rose, and U.S. Treasury yields first rose and then fell—this “odd” reaction was as if the data were below expectations. The market may think that the increase driven by travel and holidays is not sustainable.

A “non-fundamental” rally triggered by index rules
The wave of buying ahead for SpaceX has little to do with its business prospects. It’s more like a mechanical outcome produced after an index construction rule that few people pay attention to gets triggered.
The Nasdaq 100’s quarterly rebalance effective September 21 is expected to raise SpaceX’s weighting from 1.25% to about 1.51%. According to a team led by JPMorgan strategist Min Moon, this adjustment will trigger roughly $12.4 billion in passive net buying.
The direct reason for the jump in weighting is that the free-float ratio has risen from less than 10% after the IPO to nearly 30%—after more than 1 billion shares of lock-up stock are released, the index rules automatically amplify the inclusion weight of this mega-cap with a market value of more than $2 trillion.

The recent pullback in tech stocks is not the end of the AI narrative, but the market is undergoing a profound restructuring of its pricing logic.
Nvidia once saw seven straight trading days of declines, weighing on the Nasdaq. Rich Privorotsky, head of the Goldman One-Delta trading desk, said this round of selling in tech stocks is hard to attribute to a single catalyst; rather, it is the combined result of triple pressures—credit market conditions, supply-chain expectations, and the policy environment. He warned that “the credit market is raising questions that the stock market had largely overlooked.”
This repricing has already left clear marks at the valuation level. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index’s 24-month forward P/E has narrowed from 21–22 times to roughly 15 times, and the range of possible outcomes is widening significantly. The core issue has also shifted—from “what AI can do” to “who will pay for it to run.”

Bessent launches an all-out economic offensive against Iran; AI devours global high-end storage output, and on the eve of Nvidia's earnings report, its own supply chain becomes the frontline of national security.
1｜Bessent launches "Operation Economic Abandonment"; the final arguments of Iran's moderates are dismantled
Bessent formally announced on Monday the secondary sanctions code-named "Operation Economic Abandonment". The measures cover five areas—digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping—adding nearly 60 individuals, entities, and vessels. Before the sanctions were published, the rial had already fallen below 2 million per 1 US dollar, a historic low. The Washington Post's assessment is that the heaviest move was actually delayed.

Billionaire and founder of Bridgewater Associates Ray Dalio issues a warning: the U.S. debt crisis could break out as soon as within three years, and he advises investors to reduce their bond holdings—allocating 10% to 15% of their portfolio to gold—while holding a small amount of Bitcoin to hedge risk.
In an article published on Friday, Dalio said that this year the U.S. government’s revenue is about $5.5 trillion, while spending is as high as $7.5 trillion, leaving a gap of $2 trillion. Even just interest expenses alone would come close to $1 trillion, and roughly $10 trillion in debt urgently needs to be refinanced.
He believes that if the current trajectory is not changed, the debt crisis—"within three years, with an error range of plus or minus two years"—may arrive. The remarks have once again stirred market sentiment.

Meta Platforms has become one of Microsoft’s largest AI (artificial intelligence) customers, highlighting that demand for this emerging AI technology remains largely concentrated in the technology industry for now.
An insider said Meta spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year to access AI models through Microsoft Azure cloud services. It added that the compute power Meta uses each week via Azure has reached the level of tens of trillions of tokens.
An important part of Microsoft’s AI strategy is to provide AI models from different vendors through a model marketplace called Foundry. As of this past July, Foundry had 100,000 customers. In promotional materials, Microsoft often showcases customers from traditional industries such as manufacturing and transportation.