Daily newsletter · Mon 21 Sep 2026
 | Sharespective Wall Street, before morning tea | Daily newsletter Mon 21 Sep 2026 |
 The Handover Plus: Eli Lilly becomes the first drug company worth a trillion dollars. |
Good morning, and welcome to Monday. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates on Wednesday for the first time since 2023, and the S&P 500 finished the week down 0.08%. Five sessions of real drama came to almost exactly nothing. The flat line hides a rearrangement, though: the NASDAQ Composite added 0.72% on a chip rally while the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 1.7%, its worst week since March. Banks did most of the damage.
This week the central banks step back and the politicians take the microphone. Xi Jinping lands at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday, Donald Trump intends to meet the plane, and the two sit down at the White House the next day. Nobody is promising much, which at least makes the bar easy to clear.
Market snapshot
S&P 500 7,650.50 ▼ 0.08% | | NASDAQ 26,522.55 ▲ 0.72% | | NZX 50 13,739.14 ▲ 1.17% |
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ASX 200 8,731.20 ▼ 0.11% | | USD/NZD 1.75 ▲ 1.57% | | USD/AUD 1.40 ▲ 0.70% |
| TRADE |
Xi Jinping lands in Washington on Wednesday with the tariff truce six weeks from expiry
Scott Bessent and Jamieson Greer spent Sunday at JPMorgan's Manhattan headquarters with He Lifeng, China's vice premier, clearing ground for Thursday. Xi arrives at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday, and Trump plans to be there when the plane door opens. American presidents normally wait at the White House. The ceremony, the talks and a state dinner all fall on Thursday.
What is actually on the table. The truce the two sides signed at Busan last November holds US tariffs on Chinese goods at about 20%, and it runs out on 10 November. Washington also wants rare-earth magnets and other critical minerals moving freely again, and says Beijing has not held up its end. Rare earths go into electric motors, wind turbines and guided weapons, and China refines most of the world's supply. The third item is artificial intelligence, and guardrails meant to keep capable models away from the wrong people. Beijing arrives with its own list: Boeing aircraft, relief from American technology restrictions, and Taiwan.
What to watch the 10 November date. Both sides have played expectations down, and an extension is the cheapest thing either leader can hand the other. A truce that holds matters more to Australian iron ore and New Zealand dairy than anything said over dinner. |
| PHARMA |
Eli Lilly is the first drug company worth a trillion dollars
Eli Lilly, one of our preferred stocks, closed Friday at US$1,152.44 after gaining 3.3% over the week, which put its market value at roughly US$1.01 trillion. No pharmaceutical company has been worth that before. The shares have risen close to 300% in the four years since Lilly's first GLP-1 medicine was approved.
Where the money comes from. GLP-1 is a hormone the gut releases after a meal to tell the brain the eating can stop, and these drugs are longer-lasting copies of it. Mounjaro, the diabetes version, and Zepbound, the obesity version, sold US$14.87 billion between them in the June quarter alone, with Mounjaro's sales 91% higher than a year earlier. Friday also brought full FDA authorisation for Inluriyo, an oral breast cancer treatment, a reminder that there is an oncology business underneath the weight-loss one.
The tell eloraTZP. Lilly presents mid-stage results on 30 September at a European diabetes meeting for this two-drug combination, which adds a compound called eloralintide to the active ingredient in Mounjaro and Zepbound. The number that matters is how many patients stayed on it, because extra weight loss bought by pushing people off the treatment has not bought much. |
| AUTOS |
Volkswagen wrote down ten billion euros and pulled Detroit down with it
Volkswagen had told investors to expect an operating margin of 4% to 5.5% this year. On Friday it said the figure will be 1% at most, after €10 billion of one-off charges. The shares closed down 5.6% in Frankfurt. Then the selling crossed the Atlantic: General Motors lost 5%, its steepest fall within a day since June, with Ford down 4% and Stellantis down 5%.
Where the ten billion went. Six billion of it is Porsche. Volkswagen owns 75% of the sports-car maker and has cut what it expects that stake to earn, so the value on the balance sheet came down to match. Most of the remainder is money set aside for job cuts. Behind both sits China, where Volkswagen's sales shrank 20%. Finance chief Arno Antlitz said there is no sign of consolidation and the company cannot escape the trend.
Why does an American investor sell General Motors on a German profit warning? The two carry the same problem. Electric cars earn less per vehicle than the petrol ones they replace, and buyers are switching faster than either company budgeted for. GM had given the market a taste on Wednesday, when its shares fell more than 2% on a softer fourth-quarter outlook.
Yeah, but the €10 billion is an accounting entry, and no cash left the building on Friday. The 20% fall in Chinese sales is cash, and a write-down does nothing about it. |
Newsworthy numbers
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US$4,368 where spot gold finished on Friday, its first weekly gain in four weeks. Cheaper oil pulled Treasury yields off multi-year highs and gold followed them up. | | 1.79 million Australians at risk of mortgage stress on Roy Morgan's July figures, or 32.5% of everyone carrying a home loan. It is the highest reading in 18 years, and 180,000 more people than in June. |
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NZ$85.3 billion New Zealand's goods exports over the year to August. Imports grew faster, so the annual trade deficit widened to NZ$5.4 billion. | | US$1 billion Uncrustables sales at JM Smucker in its 2026 financial year. The frozen crustless peanut butter sandwich now reaches 27% of American households, a handsome return on cutting the edges off bread. |
Worth a read
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01 | Buy now, pay later may not feel like debt, but it is — Four AUT researchers surveyed young New Zealanders and found 40% did not think of it as debt at all. Of those who used it, 43% borrowed elsewhere to make a repayment and 55% had copped a late fee. |
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02 | The expensive end of the Australian housing market is falling fastest — Top-quartile homes are down 10.7% from their peak in Sydney and 10.5% in Melbourne, while cheaper houses and units have held up. Emma Baker of the Australian Centre for Housing Research explains it: buyers at the top can wait. |
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03 | There's a startup that shuts down other startups, and business is booming — SimpleClosure turns a 90-step wind-up into a job of days, and handled 2.6 times as many closures in the first quarter of this year as a year earlier. |
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04 | Scientists have found cells that start dying, stop, and then rebuild the tissue around them — A Weizmann Institute team found cells in fruit fly larvae that trigger the self-destruct mechanism and then survive it, repopulating almost half a damaged area within 48 hours. Their descendants are seven times harder to kill, good news for healing and less so for cancer treatment. |
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05 | Shetland's most wanted — Daniel Shailer in The Fence on Stuart Hill, the 83-year-old shipwreck survivor who says the Shetland Islands were never lawfully handed to Scotland. Hill has taken on ChatGPT as his campaign adviser, which moved him off obscure charters and onto council tax and fuel poverty. |
Wrapping up
Last week was one loud event and four sessions spent digesting it. The Fed's quarter-point rise to 3.75–4.00% was unanimous, the Dow wore the damage and the NASDAQ shrugged. This week brings no Fed, no RBA and no RBNZ. China sets its loan prime rates today, both expected to hold for a sixteenth straight month, and the Swiss National Bank, the Riksbank and Norges Bank decide on Thursday. The data is flash S&P Global PMIs on Wednesday in New York, then US durable goods orders on Friday.
Earnings are thin and mostly domestic. KB Home reports after Tuesday's US close, and the line to find is how much of the sale price goes back to buyers as incentives, the number that did the damage at Lennar last week. Paychex, Cintas and General Mills follow on Wednesday, Costco and Darden Restaurants on Thursday. Australia's August labour force survey lands on Thursday, where economists expect 20,000 jobs added and unemployment steady at 4.5%. New Zealand has little until the Reserve Bank's next review on 28 October.
The kiwi fell for a fourth week running, down about 1.6% and taking USD/NZD to 1.75, close to a ten-week low. The Fed did most of it: the US dollar reached a seven-week high after Wednesday, and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has already moved and does not meet for five weeks. USD/AUD is at 1.40, the Australian dollar the steadier of the two as the market waits on the RBA.
- Mon 1.15pm NZ · 11.15am Sydney — China's loan prime rates, expected to hold at 3.00% for one year and 3.50% for five, a sixteenth month unchanged.
- Wed 8am NZ · 6am Sydney — KB Home's third-quarter result, out after Tuesday's US close; buyer incentives are the line to watch.
- Thu 1.45am NZ · Wed 11.45pm Sydney — US flash S&P Global PMIs for September.
- Thu 1.30pm NZ · 11.30am Sydney — Australia's August labour force survey; economists expect 20,000 jobs added and unemployment steady at 4.5%.
- Fri (Thursday daytime in Washington) — Trump and Xi meet at the White House, with the 10 November expiry of the tariff truce the thing to settle.
- Fri 8am NZ · 6am Sydney — Costco's fourth-quarter result, out after Thursday's US close.
- Sat 12.30am NZ · Fri 10.30pm Sydney — US durable goods orders for August.
Have a good week, and we'll see you tomorrow.