ASX 200 Live Today - Monday, 21st September

Welcome to our live ASX coverage for Monday, September 21. Expect a high volume of posts pre-market and more periodic updates throughout the day. We'll be wrapping the blog up around 2:00 pm AEST. Let us know how we can make it even better.

Saudi pipeline outage leaves European refiners without term crude

[8:50 am] Saudi Aramco has told European buyers they will receive no crude next month under long-term contracts, sending physical premiums in the North Sea to records.

• No Saudi term allocations to Europe next month, a decision applying to all European buyers after drone strikes shut the East-West pipeline, with OECD Europe having imported 577,000 barrels a day of Saudi crude in June

• Dated Brent topped US$130 a barrel this week for the first time since April, while Brent futures settled near US$104 and European diesel pushed above US$200 a barrel

• Aramco pivoting volumes back through Hormuz, selling tens of millions of barrels to Asian buyers just outside the strait, cargoes that sit further from European refiners who face the Red Sea or a five-week haul around Africa

• East-West pipeline capacity of up to 7m barrels a day, with Aramco targeting about half within days and full capability in roughly six weeks

• US Gulf Coast jet fuel at US$4.55 a gallon, about 20c off wartime highs, with New York at US$4.75 and weekly jet fuel production the lowest since early March

Gulf leaders push for US-Iran settlement as Houthi strikes widen

[8:49 am] Qatar's prime minister has called for a coordinated Gulf response to the seven-month US-Iran war, with Gulf leaders set to meet Trump at the UN General Assembly this week.

• Gulf leaders aiming to meet Trump on UNGA sidelines Tuesday, per Axios, with the US pushing for a resolution that reopens the Strait of Hormuz and Trump telling Fox News he would probably be open to meeting Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian

• Messages being passed between Washington and Tehran, according to Qatar PM Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, who called the Houthi escalation irresponsible and said the war should be a wake-up call for the region

• Hormuz flows at a six-month high, with CENTCOM's Admiral Brad Cooper saying transit lanes are clear of mines and Gulf allies have shipped over 1bn barrels in recent months, while Iran maintains the strait is closed and has exported zero barrels

• Riyadh hit by rare air-raid alerts, the first since the war's March-April peak, with the WSJ reporting an airstrike on jet fuel facilities at King Khalid International Airport and the State Department warning of rapid escalation risk

• Houthis pressing on Bab al-Mandeb, taking the port city of Mokha and nearby islands and imposing a blockade on Saudi ships in the Red Sea, the kingdom's main workaround export route

• Qatar rules out bypass pipelines, with Energy Minister Saad Al-Kaabi saying the strait will never be obsolete, while Qatar Airways CEO Hamad Al-Khater called the war the airline's single largest crisis in its history

Trump announces Greenland security deal with Denmark

[8:49 am] Donald Trump says the US has struck an agreement with Greenland and Denmark granting permanent control over security on the Danish territory, with a signing expected at the UN General Assembly this week.

• US to begin developing a large military presence in Greenland immediately, per Trump's Truth Social post, on top of the existing US presence under a decades-old defence agreement with Denmark

• Trump says there will be no cost to the United States, claiming the deal addresses all US concerns and guarantees permanent ability to act on Greenland's security

• Stops well short of acquisition, which Trump had previously insisted on, with Greenland maintaining it is not for sale and the EU uniting to rebuke the push earlier this year

• Frederiksen frames it as sovereignty-preserving, saying it recognises the territorial integrity of the Kingdom and Greenlanders' right to self-determination while strengthening Arctic and North Atlantic security

• Official text not yet available, with the three governments expecting to sign at the UNGA and the White House yet to provide further detail

Source: CNBC

Bessent and He meet as US delays China tariff decision ahead of summit

[8:47 am] Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng held all-day talks in New York on Sunday to tee up deliverables for the Sept. 24 Trump-Xi summit in Washington.

• New tariffs on China and other partners held off until after the summit, per Bloomberg sources, preserving the threat as negotiating leverage, with a trade report recommending a 7.5% tariff on Chinese goods shelved for now

• Trade truce expires Nov. 10, the suspension of heightened reciprocal tariffs that capped Trump's second-term China duties at about 20%, with the US reportedly offering only a six-month extension

• Rare earths and critical minerals the main friction point, with a senior US official saying China's performance on restoring flows "has not been up to par" and magnet shipments to Japan slumping

• AI guardrails on the agenda for the first time, covering both open and closed-weight models, with Bessent saying the US is open to avoiding shared risks and bifurcation of the two systems

• Outstanding May commitments still unresolved, including Chinese pledges to lift US agricultural purchases by US$17bn a year and buy more than 200 Boeing aircraft

• Analysts expect small steps rather than a breakthrough, with Ashton Intelligence's Anna Ashton saying status quo is probably both sides' best expectation

SpaceX Nasdaq 100 weighting more than doubles in rebalance

[8:46 am] SpaceX will account for 2.82% of the Nasdaq 100 when the quarterly rebalance takes effect Monday, up from about 1.28%.

• Weighting confirmed at 2.82%, calculated off Friday's close and matching the provisional figure previously published by the index provider

• Current 1.28% weight dates to July inclusion, when most SpaceX shares were still locked up, even after Nasdaq eased rules to let newly listed large caps in sooner and scrapped the 10% public float requirement

• Seventh-largest Nasdaq 100 member by market value at over US$2trn, yet its current weighting does not place it inside the top 20 by percentage weight

• Passive flows are the mechanism, with more than 200 products tracking the index and over US$800bn in assets globally, including the US$482bn Invesco QQQ Trust

• Macquarie's Edward Yoon says rebalances now carry more weight, pointing to Iran geopolitics, inflation concerns, renewed tariff uncertainty, rate moves and AI and tech volatility as drivers of price action in the names involved

Source: Bloomberg

Buffett steps down as Berkshire chairman after six decades

[8:38 am] Warren Buffett has handed the chairmanship of Berkshire Hathaway to his son Howard, completing a succession that began with Greg Abel taking the CEO role.

• Buffett becomes chairman emeritus effective immediately and stays on the board, with Howard Buffett, a director since 1993, taking the chair and Susan Decker continuing as lead independent director

• Abel runs the business while Howard guards culture and values, with Buffett writing that Abel exceeded his sky-high expectations and has been making the decisions that matter for some time

• Berkshire up 1.3% in 2026 against the S&P 500's 11.6%, with rising oil prices and a market preference for higher-growth names weighing, per CNBC

• Cash pile of US$365.5bn at the second quarter, down from a record near US$397bn the prior period, with buybacks stepped up to US$4.5bn in the quarter

• Buffett has pledged to fully dispose of his roughly US$140bn Berkshire stake by 2034, having already ceded the annual letter to Abel and skipped the May meeting stage

• Track record of 19.7% compound annual return since 1965, nearly double the S&P 500, with the conglomerate generating US$44.5bn in operating earnings last year

Bond yields hit 5% as record options expiry drives volume surge

[8:37 am] Bloomberg observes US stocks churning into one of the largest options expiries on record, with the 10-year Treasury yield back at 5%.

• 10-year Treasury yield up seven basis points to 5%, driven by bets that oil near US$100 keeps inflation elevated and forces further Fed hikes

• US exchange volume above 26bn shares, roughly 40% above the 12-month average, with about US$7trn of options notional expiring at quarterly triple witching, one of the largest ever according to Citadel Securities

• S&P 500 up 0.2% despite most constituents falling, with a chipmaker rally doing the work, Nasdaq 100 up 0.7% and the Dow down 0.2%

Source: Bloomberg

Good morning!

[8:26 am] ASX 200 futures are down 57 pts (-0.65%). Here's what happened overnight:

• Major US benchmarks finished mixed in a heavy triple-witching session, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq eking out gains while the Dow slipped, capping a week dominated by the Fed's first rate hike in three years

  • S&P 500 (+0.17%),Nasdaq (+0.39%), Dow (-0.18%) and Russell 2000 (-0.50%)

  • US weekly recap: S&P 500 (-0.08%), Nasdaq (+0.72%), Dow (-1.69%), Russell 2000 (-1.50%)

• Bonds remain the drag, with the US 10-year yield finishing the week at 5.0% and policy-sensitive 2-year at 4.75%

• Warren Buffett stepped down as Berkshire Hathaway chairman after 56 years, while US and Chinese officials opened pre-summit talks ahead of Xi Jinping's Washington visit

• Trump said he is in "deciding mode" on Iran, framing his options as "wiping Iran out, letting them rot economically, or making a deal", as Saudi Arabia told European refiners they will get no crude next month and US diesel hit a record US$6.49 a gallon on a 12th straight day of records