Global equities advanced, with the Dow up 0.53%, the S&P 500 gaining 0.70% and the Nasdaq rising 1.00%. Apple slid more than 7% after issuing a weaker-than-expected outlook, citing supply-chain strain and component shortages tied to the AI-driven data-center buildout. South Korea’s KOSPI surged 17.91% in a record one-day rebound. U.S. bond yields pushed higher, with the 30-year Treasury yield reaching 5.2509%, the highest since mid-2007.

China’s A-share market came under heavy pressure in July, with the CSI 300 Index falling 9.6% for its biggest monthly decline since January 2016, while the tech-heavy STAR 50 Index slid 30% from its mid-July peak. AI-linked listings showed sharply mixed trading: ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) surged 466% on its first day, but Zhongji Innolight fell 5% during its IPO. State-backed investors bought $9 billion of stocks to stabilize markets, while corporate buybacks climbed to their highest level since U.S. President Donald Trump announced steep tariffs in April 2025. The diverging IPO performance underlined uneven sentiment toward AI-related new listings.

SanDisk (SNDK) reported fiscal Q3 datacenter memory revenue of $1.47 billion, up 233% sequentially, driven by demand tied to AI inference, reasoning tasks and agentic systems. The company said it signed three long-term supply contracts in Q3 with minimum contractual revenue of about $42 billion, supported by financial guarantees exceeding $11 billion. Even so, the stock is down more than 45% from its all-time highs, though the company’s outlook still points to continued growth.

WestJet said it has begun parking Boeing 737 aircraft across its network after flight attendants issued a 72-hour strike notice and the airline responded with its own 72-hour lockout notice on Thursday. The company said the move is intended to prevent travellers and aircraft from being stranded abroad. About 4,287 flight attendants could be off the job as soon as Sunday at 12:01 a.m. MT. The dispute adds near-term operational risk for the carrier, affecting capacity and revenue.

Blackstone Mortgage Trust (BXMT) slid after its second-quarter results as executives warned that about $1 billion of loans are facing increased pressure, and that third-quarter distributable earnings will be hit by loan impairments. The stock fell as much as 14% over two days to $14.11, its lowest since the early days of the pandemic. Management said watch-list loans account for about 5% of total investments and that the trust has cut office exposure to 21%.

Latest data show that 10% to 23% of blocks on the Solana network per hour consume compute units (CU) above the previous 60 million limit. The shift indicates a marked rise in on-chain smart contract complexity, the intensity of parallel execution, and dApp activity. As Solana’s native token, SOL’s value thesis is closely tied to network throughput, resource utilization, and ecosystem activity. The data are framed as a positive technical signal, with no reference to tokenomics changes or regulatory events.

Pakistan’s Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) adjusted liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) prices for August, setting the consumer rate at Rs254,315.35 per tonne and lifting the producer price of an 11.8kg cylinder by Rs152.01 to Rs2,513.58. The retail price of an 11.8kg domestic cylinder was raised to Rs3,000.92 from Rs2,848.91, an increase of Rs12.89 per kilogram. Separately, OGRA notified higher July 2026 RLNG transmission and distribution tariffs for Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) and Sui Southern Gas Company Limited (SSGCL), with increases of more than 32%.

Raymond Lifestyle Ltd reported a wider net loss of ₹22.59 crore for Q1 FY27, up 13.98% from a year earlier. Revenue rose 5.95% year on year to ₹1,515.51 crore, while EBITDA fell to ₹95 crore and margin slipped to 13.9% from 15.3%. The stock closed down 3.15% on the day.