ASX 200 Live Today - Tuesday, 15th September

Welcome to our live ASX coverage for Tuesday, September 15. 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.

Hancock Prospecting takes 13.5% stake in White Cliff Minerals

[8:57 am] Gina Rinehart's Hancock Prospecting has agreed to a $8.8 million placement in the ASX-listed explorer, funding an accelerated drilling program at its Rae copper project.

• White Cliff Minerals is a junior explorer whose flagship Rae Copper Project in Nunavut, Canada hosts both vein-hosted copper at Danvers and a sediment-hosted system across a roughly 6.3km² interpreted footprint

• HPPL will invest $8,768,457 for 515,791,601 new shares at $0.017, struck at the previous day's close and subject to shareholder approval at an upcoming general meeting

• Funds go toward expanded drilling, including resource definition at Danvers 1, step-outs at Danvers 2 and 3, and follow-up at regional targets Thor, Rocket, Vision and Stark

• Maiden Danvers drilling returned 175m at 2.5% Cu and 8.66g/t Ag, 90m at 4% Cu and 58m at 3.08% Cu, with step-outs at Danvers 3 returning 20m at 6.64% Cu

• All three 2026 sediment-hosted holes intersected visible chalcopyrite, extending mineralisation 3.7km east of the 2025 discovery hole

• Managing Director Troy Whittaker said the timing could not be more compelling, with copper prices at record highs, supply tightening and demand still growing

Company page: White Cliff Minerals (WCN)

CurveBeam AI clears first FDA hurdle for CT-based bone density

[8:55 am] The imaging group has received 510(k) clearance for its CT-based bone mineral density technology, the first of two steps toward a SaaS revenue launch.

• CurveBeam AI develops and manufactures point-of-care CT scanners for musculoskeletal conditions, led by its HiRise weight bearing CT platform, paired with AI-enabled SaaS clinical assessment tools

• Clearance covers BMD measurement using multidetector CT supine scans, establishing a cleared regulatory foundation for broader BMD SaaS applications across the CT portfolio

• The next step is HiRise, with the company to pursue a separate 510(k) for weight bearing standing CT BMD, which is the clearance required before SaaS revenue can launch

• Commercial case rests on workflow, with a single CT examination potentially delivering anatomy, alignment and bone quality data and removing the need for a separate DXA appointment

• CEO Greg Brown said this is the first of the two clearances necessary to take the SaaS-based bone health products to market

• Longer-term optionality in surgical planning, with quantitative BMD data potentially becoming an additional layer in three-dimensional and robotic-assisted orthopaedic workflows, subject to clearance and validation

Company page: CurveBeam AI (CVB)

China's August credit rebound falls well short of expectations

[8:54 am] New yuan loans returned to positive territory after July's record contraction but badly missed forecasts, with household borrowing still shrinking.

• New loans of 60bn yuan vs 400bn ests (85% miss), recovering from a 340bn yuan contraction in July but well down on 590bn a year earlier

• January-August lending down to 10.44trn yuan from 13.46trn in the same period last year, underlining how tepid demand has become

• Outstanding yuan loans up 4.9% year-on-year, slowing from 5.1% in July to the weakest pace on record

• Household loans shrank 202.9bn yuan, a sixth straight month of contraction, while corporate loans rose 260bn after a 130bn fall in July

• M2 up 7.5% year-on-year, a 17-month low and below ests of 7.6%, with total social financing growth easing to 7.2% from 7.4%

• Capital Economics sees slim odds of a near-term rate cut, pointing to weak household appetite for debt-financed consumption rather than just mortgage demand

Source: Reuters

Macro Risk Advisors sees 8-10% S&P 500 pullback on Fed hikes

[8:48 am] Dean Curnutt has told clients a rate hike will trigger a correction, drawing a parallel with the 2018 tightening-driven selloff.

• Curnutt expects an 8-10% pullback in the S&P 500 with a potential second leg lower in December as the Fed hikes into a K-shaped, low-churn economy

• The S&P 500 is down nearly 1% so far in September, historically its weakest month, on elevated energy costs and inflation data that pushed 10-year yields above 5%

• A quarter-point hike is now almost fully priced for Wednesday under Chairman Kevin Warsh, up from roughly 60% odds a week ago

• Hikes will compress margins at companies unable to pass costs through, and deliver a volatility shock to a market not positioned for it

• The 2018 analogue is central, with the S&P 500 peaking that September before falling 10% across October and November and eventually almost 20% from the peak

• Curnutt argues a defensive posture is the correct approach given the setup

Source: Bloomberg

Saudi pipeline shutdown and Houthi gains squeeze oil's escape routes

[8:48 am] The closure of Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline has collided with Houthi control of the Bab al-Mandeb, removing the two main workarounds that have kept crude flowing out of the Gulf through six months of the US-Iran war.

• The East-West pipeline has averaged roughly 6m barrels a day during the war against full capacity of 7m, with Capital Economics estimating up to 4% of world supply could be taken offline and the AP reporting several weeks of outage

• Yanbu inventories sit near 15m barrels, giving Kpler an estimated four days to depletion and Rystad five to seven, with Saudi Arabia now trying to push more volume through Hormuz having already lifted September exports toward 4m barrels a day

• Freight is the binding constraint, with the cost of hauling crude from the Persian Gulf to China nearing US$1m a day on Friday for the first time, while August Saudi shipments of about 3m barrels a day were the lowest in at least nine years

• Houthi forces captured Mocha and Perim island at the mouth of the Bab al-Mandeb, and MBS twice asked Trump for US air strikes on Houthi positions last week and was refused

• Diplomacy stalled again with the Salalah summit on temporary Hormuz transit corridors postponed on Saudi objection, and Iran insisting it will only engage on ending the war if the US naval blockade is lifted

China rejects AI slowdown calls as Amodei pushes for tighter China curbs

[8:47 am] Beijing has dismissed calls from US AI executives to slow frontier model development, setting up a contested backdrop for US-China AI talks ahead of the Trump-Xi summit on 24 September.

• AI stocks fell on Monday, with SoftBank down 10% in Japan, after Amodei, Sam Altman and Elon Musk backed a slower pace of capability development

• Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said fearmongering and vicious competition would only disrupt global AI governance, with state media framing Amodei's essay as a containment playbook

• Amodei's 3,800-word essay called for democracies to hold as large a lead as possible, continued curbs on advanced chip sales to China and a crackdown on distillation of US model outputs

• The FBI, NSA and CISA issued a joint advisory alleging aggressive distillation of US frontier models by Chinese developers, which China's Commerce Ministry called groundless

• Georgetown's Helen Toner estimated China's best models are six to nine months behind the US frontier, so a US slowdown risks letting Chinese labs simply close the gap

• Beijing signalled no intention to slow, with its cyberspace regulator releasing an updated AI safety framework and state security minister Chen Yixin urging faster infrastructure buildout

BofA lifts S&P 500 target

[8:42 am] Bank of America strategists raised their year-end S&P 500 forecasts, with the forecast implying a 2.9% drop from where it closed overnight.

• BofA's Savita Subramanian lifted her year-end target to 7,400 from 7,100, still the Street-low call, with a 12-month target of 7,800 or 2.4% above the latest level

• Subramanian modelling EPS growth of 33% in 2026 and 12% in 2027 on AI capex, manufacturing and productivity, and Purves calling growth exceptional, durable and broad-based

• Subramanian flagged pullback risk, noting only one 5% drawdown in 2026 against a typical three per year, with half of her bear-market signposts now triggered and any further rise in financing costs likely to hasten pain

Source: Bloomberg

Amodei's slowdown call collides with Anthropic's IPO window

[8:41 am] Anthropic's push toward a potentially record listing has been complicated by its own CEO calling for slower AI development, drawing a public attack from Donald Trump and raising questions over how investors price model-company growth.

• Valued at US$965bn earlier this year, Anthropic filed its IPO prospectus confidentially in June, has selected the Nasdaq and could seek a US$2trn valuation, matching SpaceX's post-IPO mark

• Annualised revenue reached US$65bn in July, roughly a sevenfold increase on the prior year, with the company telling some shareholders it will book a second consecutive quarter of operating profit

• Amodei's weekend essay proposed third-party model evaluations, common safety standards among frontier labs and coordination between democratic and authoritarian governments, framed as achievable without sacrificing commercial advantage

• Trump attacked Amodei on Truth Social, saying the only guardrail AI needs is a strong president, claiming criminal and regulatory power over the companies and calling opposition to AI data centres a conspiracy benefiting China

• Analysts are split on valuation, with PitchBook arguing model companies deserve a discount and Deepwater's Gene Munster warning any perceived slowdown is a negative because the market underwrites uninterrupted model improvement

• Read-through to AI infrastructure, given Anthropic's multibillion-dollar compute deals with Nscale, AMD, SpaceX and Google, heavy Nvidia GPU usage, and OpenAI targeting roughly US$600bn of compute spend by 2030

US 10-year yield breaches 5% as oil and supply pressures build

[8:39 am] US 10-year Treasury yields pushed above 5% for the first time since 2023 as energy-driven inflation fears collided with heavy government and corporate issuance, though equity weakness has so far stayed modest with the S&P 500 up more than 11% for the year.

• The 10-year reached 5.01% on Monday, its highest since October 2023, before paring back to around 4.99% as dip buyers emerged, with the 30-year at 5.35% and the 2-year at 4.66%

• Brent up 2.0% to US$106.47 a barrel, with the stalemated US-Israel war with Iran, continued obstruction of the Strait of Hormuz and Houthi movement toward Bab al-Mandeb keeping inflation risk elevated

• Traders assign a 92.3% chance to a 25bp Fed hike on Wednesday, which would be the first increase since 2023 and comes after August CPI landed in line but well above the 2% target

• Seventh straight monthly rise for the 10-year matches the longest run since 2011, leaving the yield roughly a full percentage point above pre-Iran war levels and Treasuries on course for their first annual loss since 2022

• Bessent's expanded buyback of up to US$6bn of longer-dated debt has had little effect, with BMO noting it does not address the fundamental drivers of upward pressure on 10- and 30-year yields

• Standard Bank's Steven Barrow lifted his 10-year forecast to 5.2% by year-end and 5.3% in Q1 2027, while CreditSights sees scope toward 5.5% on structural deficit, AI issuance and supply-chain pressures

Source: Bloomberg

Good morning!

[8:26 am] ASX 200 futures are down 14 pts (-0.15%). Here's what happened overnight:

• Wall Street closed lower but well off its worst levels as a brutal chip selloff ran into a powerful bid for software and cybersecurity

  • S&P 500 (-0.48%), Equal-weight S&P 500 (+0.07%)

  • Nasdaq (-0.56%), Dow (-0.29%), Russell 2000 (-0.40%)

  • US 2-year yield up 3 bps to 4.66% (added 32 bps in the last six sessions)

  • US 10-year up 3 bps to 4.99% (up 22 bps in the last six sessions)

• The AI trade split in two after the leaders of Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI called for a deliberate slowdown in frontier model development, hammering semiconductors while security and incumbent software names rallied

• Rates and oil continue to weigh on markets, with the US 10-year briefly crossing 5% for the first time since 2023 and Brent up another ~2% to US$106 after Saudi Arabia shut its East-West pipeline

• Commodities didn’t stand a chance against this higher rates and energy backdrop, with copper down ~2.3% to a fresh two-week low of US$6.4/lb