Shein’s shares fell 9% on their Hong Kong debut, confirming the cautious reception Mu analysed — the fast-fashion giant’s model of ultra-cheap, rapid production is meeting growing investor scrutiny over supply chains and sustainability. The listing came as a tanker was struck in the Strait of Hormuz, with the US vowing to hit Iran “hard”, rattling energy markets. Oil prices rose sharply, adding to a session where US stock futures were little changed after a winning August, while Bitcoin held steady above $78,000.
The geopolitics of energy and finance intertwined at the G20, where the US brought Russia’s finance minister Anton Siluanov back to talks, drawing European anger. Treasury Secretary Bessent reportedly told Moscow there would be no economic relief until the war in Ukraine ends. Meanwhile, the flow of illicit capital through crypto was underlined by blockchain data showing North Korea’s Lazarus Group moved over $30 million in bitcoin on the Hyperliquid platform in recent weeks, prompting US pressure to “onshore” the exchange. Countering that narrative, institutional infrastructure advanced: ICE partnered with tZERO to build a regulated market for tokenised securities, while Polymarket raised $1 billion led by Donald Trump Jr’s firm at a $21 billion valuation.
In tech, Apple’s incoming CEO John Ternus inherits a company that leads smartphone sales but trails in AI, as the company shared evidence of a former employee allegedly stealing data for OpenAI. On the developer side, the removal of uBlock Origin from Chrome’s store under the Manifest V3 transition has sparked a quiet rebellion, with projects like Fastpotify and a single-file ASCII cyberpunk city showing renewed appetite for self-contained, locally-run software that sidesteps platform control.
Elsewhere, UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham faces Parliament for the first time, proposing more public ownership to grow the economy, while a toxic haze from Indonesian fires chokes Malaysian Borneo, and a former gang leader was found guilty of the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, closing a decades-long mystery.