A-Shares Turn Lower in Early Trading: Property Sector Surges, Vanke Hits Limit Up; Oil Prices Swing Wildly; Deutsche Bank Bullish on Copper

On Sept 29, A-shares fluctuated lower in early trading, with the three major stock indices collectively turning down after rising at the open; the micro-cap stock index rebounded; the real estate sector surged, culture/media and biotech sectors gained, and concept stocks such as innovative drugs, CRO, and PCB advanced; concept stocks such as lab-grown diamonds, glass substrates, and coal mining corrected, while shipping, oil and gas, and precious metals sectors extended weakness. ^[1]

As of press time, the Shanghai Composite fell 0.05%, the Shenzhen Component rose 0.15%, and the ChiNext rose 0.09%. Hong Kong stocks opened lower and moved lower in early trading, with the Hang Seng Index down 0.30% and the Hang Seng Tech Index down 0.83%; the Hang Seng Biotech Index rebounded 2%, biomedicine rose, Akeso gained over 10%, most heavyweight tech internet stocks fell, and new energy vehicle stocks plunged, with NIO and Geely among the biggest decliners. ^[1]

In bonds, government bond futures mostly rose, with the 30-year main contract flat, the 10-year main contract up 0.03%, the 5-year main contract up 0.03%, and the 2-year main contract up 0.02%. In commodities, most domestic commodity futures fell, with asphalt and coke up more than 1%; polysilicon, Shanghai gold, alumina, and palladium down more than 1%, and the container shipping index, platinum, Shanghai silver, rubber, eggs, and crude oil down more than 2%. ^[1]

On the board, property stocks continued to rally, Vanke A hit the limit up, Xinda Real Estate, Shenzhen Property A, Hualian Holdings and other stocks sealed limit up, Tefa Service rose more than 13%, and Binjiang Group, Greenland Holdings, China Merchants Shekou, and Gemdale Corporation followed higher. The innovative drug concept rebounded after volatility, with Novoprotein up more than 6%, hitting a record high; Akeso rose 11% to a more than one-month high, with turnover of HK$1.1 billion. ^[1]

On the news front, on Sept 28, Shanghai Siprui and MSD jointly announced a global exclusive licensing agreement for the preclinical oral KRAS G12D (ON) inhibitor SPR2015, with a potential total amount of $2.13 billion, including $400 million upfront, with the remainder contingent on development and commercialization milestones. Recently, Akeso's ivonescimab announced at the 2026 World Conference on Lung Cancer the latest overall survival data from the HARMONi-2 study; compared with pembrolizumab, ivonescimab significantly extended median overall survival to 30.8 months, versus 22.6 months for pembrolizumab. ^[1]

Cybersecurity concept stocks fluctuated higher, with Sinovatio posting 3 limit-ups in 5 days, while Qiming Information, Gaoling Information, Yongxin Zhisheng, and Qi An Xin followed higher. On the news front, Nvidia released an open agent security platform, composed of the OpenShell open-source software and the Sentry reference system design; the Sentry system runs on the BlueField-4 DPU and can continuously monitor agent behavior and isolate it upon detecting anomalies, in as little as a few milliseconds. New stock N Anda widened its intraday gain to 345%, triggering a second temporary halt, with turnover exceeding 200 million yuan. ^[1]

International oil prices experienced sharp swings on Monday; WTI crude touched a high of $96.54/barrel, with intraday gains approaching 4.5%; Brent crude rose as high as $108.83/barrel, up more than 4.3%. But as a flurry of U.S.-Iran diplomatic news emerged, gains narrowed rapidly; WTI once fell to $91.25/barrel, down nearly 1% on the day; Brent once fell to $103.76/barrel. Measured from intraday highs, both gave back more than $5. ^[2]

On the supply side, Saudi Aramco began loading crude through the East-West Pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu on Sunday; pipeline throughput is currently about 3.5 million barrels per day. The 750-mile pipeline has a maximum capacity of 7 million barrels per day. It was shut down after a drone attack on Sept 10; previously it transported about 4 million barrels per day on average, accounting for about 4% of global supply. ^[2]

On U.S.-Iran diplomatic news, CNN reported that Trump is willing to exchange progress on the nuclear issue for sanctions relief; Saudi media outlet Al Hadath then reported that Iran had agreed to suspend uranium enrichment; immediately afterward, reports said Iranian officials were pessimistic about reaching a deal before the U.S. midterm elections; finally, U.S. negotiators told Al Arabiya that "the differences are huge and the obstacles are significant." ^[2]

In the copper market, Deutsche Bank analyst Daniel Ghali expects copper prices to rise to $22,050 per ton in Q2 2027, more than 50% above Monday's LME copper price. The bank expects copper to average $20,900 per ton in 2027, and average to fall back to $18,500 in 2028. ^[3][4]

Deutsche Bank warned that the combination of deglobalization and decades of underinvestment in supply has created fragility. If current trends continue, by the end of this year, copper inventories held jointly by the United States and major Asian consumer markets could account for 71% of total global supply, further squeezing the physical resources available to other regions; by the end of 2028, freely circulating inventories will be close to zero. ^[3][4]

In the short term, LME copper fell 1.33% on Monday to $14,428.50 per ton. ^[3][4]