Morning Wrap: ASX 200 to fall, S&P 500 and Nasdaq grind higher, Buffett exits Berkshire chair

In a nutshell:

• US benchmarks finished mixed on the second-largest options expiry on record, leaving the Nasdaq as the only major average higher for the week while the Dow logged a second straight weekly loss

• Warren Buffett stepped down as Berkshire Hathaway chairman after more than six decades, handing the role to son Howard and leaving Greg Abel to run the $1tn conglomerate without him at the board's head 

• Energy risk built over the weekend as Houthi forces targeted Riyadh for the first time and Ukraine struck the Moscow oil refinery, while Bessent and He Lifeng opened trade talks in New York before Thursday's Trump-Xi summit

Let's dive in.

• Major US benchmarks closed mixed, the Dow couldn't recover early loses and finished down 0.2%, the S&P 500 fell early but trended higher to finish 0.2% up and the Nasdaq was up 0.39% finishing near best levels

• Breadth was weak, with the S&P Equal Weight index finishing 0.5% down, with only four of the 11 sectors in the green on Friday

• Chipmakers rallied against a mixed tape, with Applied Materials up 6.5%, Lam Research 7% and Broadcom more than 3%, while memory names Sandisk and Seagate added 11% and 7%, respectively

• Ten-year yields advanced 6 bps to 5.0% on bets that oil hovering near $100 a barrel would stoke inflation and force further Fed tightening

• Spot gold held around US$4,377 an ounce for its first weekly gain in four weeks, while silver reached roughly $66, its best level in more than a week

• Nine of the 11 S&P 500 sectors are higher so far in 2026 with energy leading and consumer discretionary lagging, while five of 11 are up quarter-to-date (CNBC)

• Around $7tn of US options notional rolled off the books, roughly a quarter of the market and the second-largest triple witching on record, according to Citadel Securities (BBG)

• Trading volume on US exchanges surpassed 26bn shares, about 40% above the 12-month average, as the expiry pulled forward hedging and rolling activity (BBG)

• Bitcoin pushed above US$81,000, rallying about 6% on the day with ether up 7.3% to US$2,631 after the SEC cleared a five-year path for tokenised US stock trading (YF)

• Daniel Skelly at Morgan Stanley described a "Tale of Two Time Horizons", with oil, high yields and the midterms able to worsen seasonal volatility near term while the long-run outlook stays positive (BBG)

• Rich Privorotsky at Goldman Sachs said the economic incentive to de-escalate and strike a deal is enormous, calling this arguably the moment of maximum leverage for both sides ahead of the summit (CNBC)

• Berkshire Hathaway named Buffett, 96, chairman emeritus effective immediately, with son Howard taking the chair. Shares were marginally lower. The stock is up just 1% in 2026 against an S&P 500 gain of more than 11%, with a $365.5bn cash pile (CNBC)

• Netflix fell 4.6% after Wells Fargo cut it to underweight, flagging engagement trends and a weaker second-half content slate that it expects to curb margin expansion across 2027 and 2028 (CNBC)

• Volkswagen slumped 8.3% after flagging about €10bn of one-off costs, including a €6bn Porsche impairment, and cutting its 2026 operating margin guidance to no more than 1% from 4% to 5.5%. Porsche SE fell 4.9% (RT)

• Cameco rose as much as 3.6% after Bloomberg reported that Westinghouse, which it owns 49% of alongside Brookfield, is seeking a valuation above $50bn in a US IPO that could be publicly filed as soon as October (BBG)

• US steelmakers slid after third-quarter guidance from Nucor and Steel Dynamics came in below ests, sending Nucor down 6% and Steel Dynamics more than 4% (CNBC)

• Crypto-linked equities surged on the SEC tokenisation order, with Strategy up 16%, Coinbase 11.7%, Marathon 13.8% and Robinhood 9.1% (YF)

• SpaceX closed at $152.71, down 1.36%, with Bloomberg confirming its Nasdaq 100 weighting at 2.82% from roughly 1.28% when the quarterly rebalance takes effect today (BBG)

• Saudi Arabia confirmed that Houthi forces tried to strike Riyadh with a ballistic missile on Saturday, the first targeting of the capital since fighting with the Tehran-backed group escalated. The coalition said the missile was intercepted (AP)

• The coalition said attempted attacks on Yanbu, where a key Saudi pipeline terminates, along with Taif, Baysh and Farasan, were thwarted, with no reports of casualties or damage (AP)

• Ukraine struck the Moscow oil refinery overnight into Sunday, a Gazprom Neft plant about 25 kilometres from the Kremlin, in what Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called an unprecedented assault on the capital (BBG)

• Russia's defence ministry said air defences downed 1,110 Ukrainian drones across 19 regions and Crimea, the largest overnight total reported this year and well above the previous high of 822 in August (BBG)

• Saudi Aramco is working to partially restart its East-West pipeline within days after attacks stemming from the Iran war forced its suspension (BBG)

• Saudi Arabia is ramping up prompt crude sales from outside the Strait of Hormuz and has paused some sales to Europe, with traders saying buffers still hold for now (BBG)

• Satellite imagery suggests Saudi Arabia moved 2.8m barrels a day through Hormuz over the past six days, against just 700,000 barrels a day in August (CNBC)

• Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng opened all-day talks at JPMorgan's Manhattan headquarters on Sunday, joined by Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, to prepare agreements for this week's summit (RT)

• Trump hosts Xi at the White House on 24 September, with artificial intelligence, tariffs, rare earths and the November expiry of the trade truce on the agenda (CNBC)

• Washington's suspension of heightened reciprocal tariffs on Chinese imports is scheduled to lapse on 10 November, the central plank of a truce that capped second-term duties near 20% (CNBC)

• The administration is rebuilding its tariff structure under alternative authorities after the Supreme Court struck down the emergency-powers duties, including a restored 12.5% levy on Chinese goods over forced-labour allegations (RT)

• A separate tariff investigation is being finalised aimed at curbing what Washington says is rampant excess industrial capacity in China (RT)

• A senior US official said China's delivery on restoring critical-minerals flows "has not been up to par" and would be raised in the run-up to the leaders' meeting (CNBC)

• The Bank of Japan raised its policy rate 25 basis points to 1.25%, the highest since 1995, in a 7-2 vote with board members Toichiro Asada and Ayano Sato dissenting (CNBC)

• RBA governor Michele Bullock told a parliamentary panel the board must decide whether tightening to date is sufficient to return inflation to target in a reasonable time, ahead of the 28 to 29 September meeting (BBG)

• US factory output unexpectedly fell 0.3% in August, the first decline this year, against ests for a 0.3% advance as business equipment production cooled and input costs rose (BBG)

• Japan's core inflation slowed to 1.7% year-on-year in August from 1.8% in July, its first decline in four months, released hours before the BoJ decision (TE)

• China's refined fuel exports rose 12.7% year-on-year in August to 6.01m tonnes, with jet fuel exports hitting a record high (TE)

• Tower has renewed its reinsurance programme for FY27, lifting the catastrophe upper limit to $970 million from $915 million and raising the third catastrophe limit to $100 million from $85 million, with event excesses unchanged at $20 million. Reinsurance premium expense is expected to be 9.5% of gross written premium, down from 10.6% (TWR)

• Rebalance insanity: Friday's closing auction threw up some wild moves, with the quarterly rebalance taking effect before the open today. The worst of it landed on ASX 300 removals, where G8 Education (-17.3%), Healius (-14.6%), Jumbo Interactive (-13.3%) and Australian Finance Group (-7.3%) were all smoked. Stranger still were the moves higher in 4DMedical (+13.4%), Maas Group (+12.7%), PDI Gold (+12.3%), Develop Global (+11.8%) and Arafura Rare Earths (+11.7%), none of which featured in the rebalance at all. What you'd typically expect is a bit of mean reversion (e.g. those removals recoup some of those closing auction declines).

• Poor breadth: Seven S&P 500 sectors finished lower, led by utilities (-1.4%), materials (-1.1%), real estate (-0.9%) and staples (-0.6%). Mining equities struggled for upside despite gold (+0.8%) and copper (+1.48%) both closing higher. The Global X Copper Miners ETF added 0.77%, the VanEck Gold Miners ETF slipped 0.46% and the rest of the overnight ETF watchlist traded mostly lower.

Stocks trading ex-dividend: 

• Mon 21 Sep: Cochlear (COH) – $1.30, New Hope Corporation (NHC) – $0.30

• Tue 22 Sep: Fleetwood (FWD) – $0.095, Latitude Group Holdings (LFS) – $0.055, Southern Cross Electrical Engineering (SXE) – $0.075

• Wed 23 Sep: Genesis Energy (GNE) – $0.063, IPD Group (IPG) – $0.079, St Barbara (SBM) – $0.05

• Thu 24 Sep: Bisalloy Steel Group (BIS) – $0.13, Briscoe Group Australasia (BGP) – $0.081, PRL Global (PRG) – $0.03, Salter Brothers Emerging Companies (SB2) – $0.02, Wiseway Group (WWG) – $0.006

• Fri 25 Sep: Teaminvest Private Group (TIP) – $0.015

Other ASX corporate actions today:       

• Dividends paid: 3P Learning (3PL), ASX (ASX), Aussie Broadband (ABB), Embark Early Education (EVO), GTN (GTN), Liberty Financial Group (LFG), QuickFee (QFE)

• Earnings: Myer Holdings (MYR)

• IPOs: None

• AGMs: None

Economic calendar (AEDT):

• None