财经外刊精选 · 每日精读 Five Deep Reads from The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times & The Guardian — for intensive English learning

Sometimes, all Wall Street wants is clarity. Even when it comes with the pain of higher interest rates.

Stocks rebounded and bonds steadied Friday after slightly warmer-than-expected inflation data caused investors to dial up bets that the Federal Reserve will lift interest rates this coming Wednesday, capping a turbulent week in which oil prices jumped above $100 a barrel, U.S. Treasury yields surged to multiyear highs and stocks showed some signs of weakness.

Behind the turnaround: Friday's inflation report was hot, but not so scorching that it dramatically shifted investors' understanding of the economy. After weeks of speculating, many were relieved to have a stronger grasp of what the Fed will do next week—and hopeful that higher rates now could reduce the risk of much more aggressive hikes down the road.

The inflation data "takes a lot of the guesswork out," said Greg Peters, co-chief investment officer at PGIM Credit. "It's just this classic case where a little more certainty is preferred versus uncertainty going into a Fed meeting."

Bonds sold off sharply earlier this week on fears about rising inflation, with the 10-year yield rising to the cusp of 5% on Thursday in its biggest one-day jump since May—defying the start of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's expanded debt buyback program meant to push yields lower.

Fueling inflation concerns was another jump in oil prices. Renewed threats of Houthi strikes on Saudi Arabian energy infrastructure pushed Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, near $110 a barrel Thursday night before futures settled Friday at $104.61.

The one-two punch of higher energy prices and higher yields finally seemed to catch up to the stock market, with the S&P 500 slipping 1.8% on the week through Thursday. Higher yields in particular can hurt stocks by pushing up borrowing costs across the economy and slowing growth. They can also dent the appeal of stocks by offering investors a safer way of earning a decent return.

Then came Friday's consumer-price index report. In the hours that followed, investors appeared to change their mind on just what the inflation report meant for the bond market.

First, yields jumped across maturities in a knee-jerk response to the news that core consumer prices had climbed 0.3% last month—more than what economists had predicted. Yields on Treasurys, which rise when bond prices fall, usually reflect expectations for short-term rates set by the Fed. And the CPI report seemed to confirm the consensus view that a rate increase was coming next week.

Yields on longer-term Treasurys soon started falling, though—with investors hopeful that a more hawkish Fed would move to prevent inflation getting out of control. By late afternoon, yields had reversed course again to drift higher—and ever closer to 5%.

By the end of the session, the yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note was 4.974%, according to Tradeweb, up from 4.943% Thursday and less than 4.8% a week earlier.

The closely watched borrowing benchmark has only topped 5% once since 2007, for just a brief period during a single trading session almost three years ago.

Elsewhere in markets, the S&P 500 gained 0.9% on Friday, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose about 1%, or 509 points. The Nasdaq composite also added 1%. The major indexes still all fell for the week. Brent crude nudged down 2.8%, but still rose more than 8% over the week.

Investors still face hurdles.

Some analysts warn that higher yields might crimp the gangbusters corporate earnings growth that helped send stocks to repeated records this year. Strategists at RBC Capital Markets on Friday said that they expect the Fed to raise rates three times before the end of the year after previously expecting zero hikes.

"You do expect strong earnings growth to continue, but higher rates can easily overwhelm that if things really back up," said Matt Stucky, chief portfolio manager, equities at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management.

The geopolitical backdrop is also grim.

Wall Street has all but given up on its bet that an imminent peace deal with Iran would tamp down oil prices, with many investors increasingly bracing for an open-ended disruption to tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. President Trump on Wednesday said he expected the conflict to wrap up after the November election, while White House advisers have privately warned that the conflict could drag on through the end of his term, The Wall Street Journal reported.

A key pressure-release valve for global supply is also facing new threats. After Iran-backed Houthi militants swept through Yemen in recent days to take effective control of a shipping chokepoint off the country's west coast, Saudi Arabia shut down a crucial pipeline designed to divert supplies across the Arabian Peninsula to the Red Sea. That pipeline, which had suffered multiple attacks, can carry up to seven million barrels of crude each day.

Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Schwab Center for Financial Research, cautioned that the tailwind of earnings growth might not be as strong for stocks going forward as it has been so far this year, just because it could be difficult to maintain the recent pace. She also noted that stocks tend to underperform when the Fed is raising interest rates—particularly near the start of a series of moves.

"I think it's going to continue to be choppy," she said.

Oil prices fluctuated in Asian trading Friday as investors assessed developments in the Middle East conflict, while government bonds fell on growing concerns about tighter monetary policy.

Iran-backed Houthi militants seized the port city of Mokha on Yemen's west coast Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing Yemeni and Saudi officials.

The move strengthens their position near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a key passage for energy shipments through the Red Sea.

The seizure followed days of intense fighting with Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces in a conflict that has escalated since early July.

Earlier this week, the Houthis launched a large missile-and-drone attack on energy facilities and a military base in southern Saudi Arabia.

The Houthis' advance "could give the group a foothold, which could enable them to almost fully control the Bab al-Mandeb Strait," ANZ Research analysts said.

Front-month West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures were little changed at $102.48 a barrel after swinging between a 1.9% gain and a 0.3% loss, ICE data showed.

Front-month Brent crude oil futures were 0.2% higher at $107.84 a barrel after also fluctuating between gains and losses.

Government bonds across the Asia-Pacific region fell on concerns that rising oil prices could prompt central banks worldwide to raise interest rates more quickly.

"It's been an ugly session for markets," said Skye Masters, head of markets research at National Australia Bank, in commentary.

"With central banks in the past week(s) communicating their determination to deliver on their inflation targets, rate-hike expectations have been added to amid a further rise in oil prices," Masters added.

Yields on Australia's 10-year government bonds jumped 13 basis points to 5.3740% after earlier touching 5.3993%, its highest intraday level since May 2011, FactSet data showed.

New Zealand's 10-year government-bond yield climbed 16 basis points to 5.0360%, while Japan's 10-year government-bond yield rose 6.5 basis points to 2.975%. Bond yields move inversely to prices.

Bank of Japan policy board member Kazuyuki Masu on Thursday emphasized the need for further interest-rate increases and warned of higher inflation. "To complete the normalization of monetary policy in Japan, I am convinced that the bank needs to raise the policy interest rate further," Masu said in a speech to business leaders in central Japan's Fukui Prefecture. "What is most vital from now on is to ensure that the underlying inflation rate does not significantly exceed 2%," he said, adding that trend inflation is getting "very close" to the central bank's target.

Stock markets across the Asia-Pacific region fell, tracking Wall Street's overnight losses. South Korea's Kospi dropped 1.9%, Japan's Nikkei Stock Average lost 2.1% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index declined 0.9%. China's Shanghai Composite declined 1.8%, Taiwan's Taiex shed 1.4%, and Malaysia's FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI was down 1.0%.

"The main theme was energy-driven risk-off as the Middle East conflict escalated further," Commerzbank Research analysts said in a research report.

Silver Lake is merging two companies it already owns. Cegid and Silae are both French. Both are majority-owned by the American private equity firm. On Wednesday they announced their intention to merge. The deal is expected to value the combined group at more than €10bn in enterprise value. Silver Lake will remain the majority shareholder. Christian Pedersen, newly appointed chief executive of Cegid, will run the group.

Cegid sells cloud business management software to small and medium-sized businesses and to accountants. It was founded in Lyon in 1983. Its products cover accounting, tax, treasury, ERP and retail. It recently bought Shine, which gives very small businesses and the self-employed a business account, invoicing, accounting and payroll.

Silae does payroll and human resources, and has done so for fifteen years from Aix-en-Provence. It serves more than 6,000 partners. Those are accounting firms and HR integrators. It produces over 8 million payslips a month for close to a million businesses in France.

Between them, the announcement says, the two handle the accounting, tax, finance and payroll of 2 million end-customers. They also serve more than 15,000 chartered accountancy firms. Together they generate more than 13 million payslips across Europe every month.

The stated logic is connecting products that currently sit apart. The companies name three things. Deeper integration between payroll and the production software accountants use. Shine services activated inside the mySilae platform. New treasury and cash forecasting tools. They also say the merger lets them spend more on research and development. It would assemble one of Europe's largest developer teams, at 1,400 people.

Christian Lucas is chairman of both companies and a managing partner at Silver Lake. He framed the deal as the end of one project and the start of another.

"This combination is an exciting milestone. It marks the successful culmination of a decade-long journey we've been on first with Cegid and later with Silae, as well as the start of an even more exciting one. Together, Cegid and Silae can offer a unique end-to-end suite of software and AI-powered products serving the SMBs and their professional advisors who are the dynamic heart and soul of the European economy."

"Silver Lake has been an unwavering supporter and long-term investor in both companies, helping transform two French leaders into European champions through sustained investment in technology and talent. Since our initial investment, revenues and headcount have more than tripled in size, with one-third of revenue now generated internationally, underscoring how local excellence can drive global opportunity. We are very much looking forward to continuing to support the combined group and its leadership team into the future for the long term."

Pedersen joins from IFS. He was most recently its chief innovation officer, and before that its chief product officer, where he led the development of IFS Cloud. Earlier he was chief product officer and senior vice president at SAP. He spent nearly fourteen years at Microsoft, including a spell running the enterprise ERP business. He started at Navision, the Danish business software company Microsoft bought in 2002.

"I am delighted to join this ambitious project," Pedersen said. "Together as one integrated European platform, we can accelerate innovation and unlock the full potential of AI for customers across interconnected accounting, payment, payroll and HR data. My focus will be to continue turning this vision into truly differentiated, highly value-add solutions for businesses, chartered accountants, and their clients."

Pierre Cesarini will continue to lead Silae inside the combined group. He put the emphasis on the plumbing.

"For fifteen years, Silae has focused on making payroll and HR straightforward, compliant and reliable for our partners and clients. The real value of this merger lies in the product integration: connecting payroll and HR natively with accounting, e-invoicing, digital finance and payments, so that firms and the businesses they serve work on a single platform with data flowing seamlessly across it while preserving the central role of accountants in their relationships with clients."

Bruno Vaffier takes a general management role alongside Pedersen. Rico Adlor-Andersen continues to lead Shine.

Everyone wants into DeepSeek; almost nobody can buy it directly. The Chinese lab, worth about $52bn when it closed its first-ever outside funding round in late May, is raising again at a reported valuation near $71bn before the new money — a jump of more than a third in under two months, with an IPO on Shanghai's STAR Market targeted for 2027. The arithmetic was already unusual: annualised revenue of roughly $500m against a private price tag 140 to 175 times that figure. What makes the deal stranger is how it is being distributed. Because the official syndicate is effectively closed, brokers are stitching together "shadow" access through special-purpose vehicles stacked as many as eight layers deep, charging up to 18% upfront and taking a cut of any eventual profit. The people paying most for DeepSeek hold the worst claim on it.

That gap — between a headline valuation and the mechanics of owning it — is the real story. DeepSeek's round is less a discovered market price than a manufactured one, set by scarcity, benchmarked against a single listed peer, and subsidised at the top by the least informed participants. What it signals about Chinese AI is not that the technology works, which it does. It is that a great deal of money is chasing very few ways to own a national champion.

DeepSeek's trajectory compresses two years of hype into two quarters. The "DeepSeek moment" of January 2025 — a cheap open-source model that made American labs' capital spending look profligate — turned the lab from obscure to indispensable to Beijing's ambitions. The commercial machine followed. It closed an outside round in late May at a $52bn post-money valuation, raising about $7bn from a coalition that ran from Tencent and JD.com to CATL, a battery maker, and China's state-backed national AI fund. Founder Liang Wenfeng reportedly put in about $3bn of his own money. Within weeks the company was in talks for another round at roughly $71bn.

The revenue behind that is real but thin. The Information reported annualised revenue approaching $500m, built on a newer model, agent workloads sold by the seat at $20–99 a month and tens of thousands of enterprises on its application programming interface. One estimate puts the figure twice as high, which is itself a warning about how little is reliably known. Against that, DeepSeek is projected to spend about $1.6bn on infrastructure this year, roughly three times its revenue and ten times last year's outlay. At the current price, an investor is paying 140 to 175 times revenue for the expectation that inference, licensing and agents compound far faster than the enormous capex that supports them.

The scarcity that marks the price up is partly manufactured by the deal's own terms. The shares carry no voting rights and a five-year lock-up, preserving Mr Liang's control with minimal shareholder pressure. Direct allocation is so hard to obtain that access has migrated to a secondary market built by intermediaries. One Hong Kong family office reported being offered positions routed through eight separate vehicles. Management fees run to 6–8%, against a customary 2%; in lower tiers, upfront fees exceed 15% and profit-sharing (carried interest) reaches 40%, against a typical 20%. The structure is opaque by design: each layer thins the information before the underlying asset is reached and thickens the cost.

The precedents are instructive. Ant Group's 2020 grey market collapsed when Beijing pulled its IPO; WeWork's pre-IPO secondary market let hype outrun its balance sheet. DeepSeek is not arranging these vehicles, and there is evidence the issuer itself is uneasy: Mr Liang is reportedly reviewing limited partners to eject opaque ones, a sign he worries the tangle could complicate his listing. The round was even paused in late July after a leak of his private remarks conceding that China trailed America by 12 to 18 months in funding and computing power and remained dependent on Nvidia chips — sensitive admissions for a "national AI champion." The pause did not last; the demand was too strong.

The natural reference point is Zhipu, a rival that listed in Hong Kong as Knowledge Atlas Technology and whose market capitalisation topped HK$1 trillion (about $128bn) in June, off the back of its own retail wave. DeepSeek, private at roughly $71bn, is pricing itself as a discount to that live quote. Together the top independent Chinese AI houses are said to be worth more than $140bn. The mechanism is self-reinforcing: with the state and big tech embedded on the cap table, an IPO that came in below the last private round — a "down round" — would be embarrassing for everyone involved. So the incentives push each new valuation higher, anchored to whichever peer is listed, rather than to audited profit.

The deeper point is structural, not sentimental. Chinese AI has abundant domestic capital — state funds, deep-pocketed platforms, a $125bn investment landscape — and very few liquid ways to own it. That combination inflates every pre-IPO price against its neighbours and hands the top of the stack to brokers, not to sophisticated buyers. The shadow market is a symptom of money pressing against scarcity, not of fundamentals. It rewards the issuer and the intermediary; the investor paying 18% to get in is doing the funding end of the deal's work.

The real test will come at the IPO, when audited revenue must be disclosed and the private price must be met by public buyers at something near Zhipu's cap. If the audit confirms $400m rather than $1.1bn, the distance between $71bn private and public absorption becomes suddenly visible. For an investor watching from outside China, the lesson transfers beyond this one stock: when a private valuation is surrounded by a market that inflates it and an intermediary stack that taxes it, the price is a statement about scarcity and exit, not about the business. The steepest fees in the shadow market are the surest sign that the marginal buyer is being separated from their money by structure, not by conviction about the model.

Jamie Dimon, chief executive of the largest US bank, JP Morgan, is understood to have warned Andy Burnham and his chancellor, John Healey, against raising taxes on banks in his inaugural budget in October.

The Wall Street billionaire met the politicians on Wednesday and cautioned them that higher taxes could put investment and employment in the UK at risk, it is understood.

The meeting came amid speculation that Healey is considering a windfall tax on banks and oil companies in his budget on 28 October.

Dimon has a long track record of lobbying against Britain's additional bank taxes, which were imposed after the government bailed out big UK lenders in the 2008 financial crisis.

Lenders in the UK pay a 28% corporation tax rate, higher than the standard 25%, as well as a separate surcharge on their UK balance sheets.

The JP Morgan chief executive has previously warned that raising these taxes further could have "adverse consequences".

In August, he told Healey in a telephone conversation that higher levies could hit jobs, citing a fall in finance roles in New York that he blamed on the city's tax regime.

Dimon was among a group of bank bosses who successfully lobbied against higher taxes before Healey's predecessor Rachel Reeves's budget last year – with Dimon hosting Varun Chandra, who remains in his post as the prime minister's business envoy, at a birthday celebration for King Charles at the bank's Manhattan headquarters.

Days afterwards, Dimon revealed plans to build a 3m sq ft tower in London's Canary Wharf district, although he added that a "continuing positive business environment in the UK" was required.

However, in May this year, he said he could scrap plans for the £3bn tower – which is expected to serve as JP Morgan's UK headquarters and house more than half its 23,000-strong UK workforce – if Keir Starmer were replaced by a new Labour prime minister who was hostile to banks.

Burnham has not made any specific comments about a bank tax so far. However, he has faced calls to introduce higher levies from the TUC and the campaign group Positive Money, which argue that a tax increase could help cover rising household bills as part of his drive to tackle the cost of living.

The UK's four biggest lenders: HSBC, NatWest, Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group, have generated £200bn in pre-tax profits over the past five years, largely off the back of rising interest rates.

UK banks together paid an estimated £43.3bn in tax for the financial year that ended in March 2025, according to a report commissioned by the industry body UK Finance.