What moved
US cash equities did not trade — Labor Day. The S&P 500's 7,718.60, the Nasdaq Composite's 26,506.99 and the Dow's 53,414.25 are Friday's closes, when the three fell 0.38%, 0.29% and 0.51% respectively. S&P 500 futures finished their shortened holiday session unchanged at 7,722.
Asia carried the day. The Kospi ended 6.32% higher at 6,995.39 and the Nikkei 225 closed up 3.40% at 66,399.84, both on a memory-chip surge; Taiwan's benchmark added 3.20%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.79%, while the Shanghai Composite slipped 0.24%. Europe, trading into a closed New York, went almost nowhere: the FTSE 100 eased 0.08% to 10,822.13 and the DAX 0.15% to 26,006.53, against a 0.33% gain for the CAC 40 and 0.17% for the Euro Stoxx 50.
Why
The Asian move has a clean and specific cause. OpenAI's launch of its GPT-6 Astra model last week, with heavier autonomous-agent workloads, landed alongside brokerage research pointing to memory inventories at Samsung Electronics and SK hynix below ten days of supply — a combination read as a 2027 DRAM squeeze rather than a one-quarter order bump. That followed a 3.4% jump in the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index on Friday. The read-through was mechanical and global: technology was the standout sector across our Asian universe, up a median 1.37%, and Europe's semiconductor supply chain followed, with Infineon adding 6.9% and ASM International 4.5%.
The second driver was the yen, which strengthened 1.19% against the dollar to 154.34 and is now roughly 3.4% firmer over five sessions. Markets have moved close to fully pricing a Bank of Japan increase to 1.25% this month after an adviser to the prime minister said he expected one; because a wide US–Japan rate gap is what makes borrowing cheap yen to buy higher-yielding assets profitable, narrowing it forces those positions to be unwound, and the break of 155 accelerated the move.
Europe's flatness is the honest residual. With New York shut, volumes were thin and there was no domestic catalyst worth the name ahead of this week's ECB decision.
Sentiment & risk appetite
This was a narrow risk appetite, not a broad one. Asian breadth was only modestly positive on PrimerIQ's numbers — 6,276 advancers to 5,889 decliners — with a technology median of +1.37% sitting against a financials median of -0.88%, so the chip trade did most of the lifting. Europe was worse: our UK advance/decline ratio was 0.72 and the continent's 0.83, with real estate the weakest sector at a -1.01% median. The safe-haven read is muddled rather than fearful — gold gained 1.06% to $4,476.60 and copper 1.30%, the dollar index was flat at 99.18, and Friday's VIX close of 15.30 and MOVE reading of 73.10 are both a long way from stress. Bitcoin's 1.45% slide to $79,188 is the one clear pocket of de-risking.
Economic calendar
The US calendar was empty for the holiday. Europe's slate was thin and moved nothing: German industrial production at 02:00 ET (07:00 BST), eurozone Sentix investor confidence at 04:30 ET and the second reading of eurozone second-quarter GDP at 05:00 ET, the last of which consensus had unchanged at 0.4% quarter-on-quarter.
The week's real tests are still ahead. Friday's US August consumer price index, due 11 September, is the last major input before the Federal Reserve's meeting concludes on 16 September. Friday's payrolls remain the anchor: 162,000 jobs added in August against forecasts nearer 53,000, which lifted futures-implied odds of a 25 basis-point Fed hike to around 60% from 49%. Treasuries closed Friday with the 10-year at 4.784%, up 2.2 basis points, and the five-year up 4.1 basis points. The ECB decision lands later this week.
Earnings
Nothing material reported today, with US issuers on holiday and no scheduled European releases of consequence. Friday's software reactions are still the live story: Guidewire fell 19.93% after a soft subscription-growth outlook, Autodesk 8.26% despite beating on revenue and earnings, on weaker near-term guidance and questions about generative AI's effect on its franchise, and UiPath 16.63%. Outside software, Lululemon dropped 17.38% after cutting full-year revenue guidance to $10.35–10.5bn from $11–11.15bn.