Morning Preview: September 21, 2026

Early Look

Monday, September 21, 2026

After finishing mixed last week, U.S. stock futures are looking higher to start the trading week as oil prices fell and Treasury yields dipped ahead of the U.S.-China summit. This week, Trump will host Xi at the White House, with trade, tariffs, Taiwan, and artificial intelligence expected to feature prominently in the talks. The summit is scheduled for Sept. 24. Futures on the Nasdaq rose over 1% as shares in chipmakers rallied, along with other AI related trading sectors. Stocks finished mixed on quad-witching Friday as the Nasdaq outperformed, while the S&P 500 was nearly flat and the Dow and Russell 2000 closed lower. Breadth was negative, with most sectors down. Treasuries sold off after initially rallying on the BoJ decision, while crude settled lower after a volatile session. For last week, the S&P 500 fell -0.1%, the Dow fell -1.7% (weekly loss is biggest since March), and the Nasdaq climbed +0.7%. In Asian markets, The Nikkei Index was closed for holiday, the Shanghai Index gained 38 points to 3,949, and the Hang Seng Index jumped 291 points to 25,042. In Europe, the German DAX is up 283 points to 25,587, while the FTSE 100 rises nearly 100 points to 10,756. Bitcoin prices add to last week gains, rising another 4.3% to $84,670, seven month highs and boosting the crypto sector further.

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell -96.11 points, or 0.19%, to 51,681.93
• The Nasdaq Composite gained 104.25 points, or 0.39%, to 26,522.55
• The Russell 2000 Index declined -14.24 points, or 0.50% to 2,860.39

• Earnings After the Close: ABVX

• Oil futures prices eased even as Iran and the United States exchanged new threats and after the Houthis attacked Saudi Arabia’s capital.

• Greenland Energy (GLND), Greenland Mines (GRML) and Critical Metals (CRML) shares rose late Friday after President Donald Trump announced a security agreement with Denmark and the Arctic territory. The agreement didn’t include any announced funding, permits or commercial agreements for the three companies. Trump said the deal would give the United States a permanent role in Greenland’s security and prevent adversaries from establishing military bases or making sensitive investments without U.S. approval.

• Stablecoin issuer Bastion gets conditional approval for U.S. OCC Banking license – WSJ reported.

• Novo Nordisk (NVO) posted its strategic ambitions for 2030 ahead of its Capital Markets Day saying it targets to deliver pipeline sales of more than 150 billion Danish crowns ($23 billion) by 2035 and to increase its obesity customers 10 times.

• Anthropic may release a new AI model to counter OpenAI’s momentum since the launch of GPT-6 Astra, Reuters this weekend reports, citing three sources familiar of the matter; this would come ahead of its expected IPO.
• Ciena (CIEN) upgraded to Outperform at Evercore ISI on sustained growth and raise tgt to $550 from $375 as sees connectivity between and inside data centers becoming an increasingly critical gating factor for frontier LLM monetization and calls Ciena an attractive way to gain exposure to the optical networking space.
• DeepSeek CEO Liang Wenfeng told investors that using more domestic chips for AI training is now a major priority, with Huawei expected to begin deliveries as early as Q4. DeepSeek is training a 2T-parameter model and plans to eventually build an 8T-parameter model.
• Google (GOOGL) was fined $463M by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission following an inquiry into the search engine’s processing of location data, it said in a statement on Monday.
• Google’s (GOOGL) Gemini model accessed the internet and hacked other companies during a test of its cybersecurity capabilities, The Wall Street Journal reported. The hacks, which the company confirmed on Friday, occurred in May as part of a test run by the company Irregular, which was also involved in similar incidents disclosed by OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta (META).
• Lumentum Holdings Inc. (LITE) announced plans for a joint demonstration together with Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. (QCOM) and Corning (GLW) of a high-density die-to-die (D2D) optical interconnect showcase for AI scale-up architectures at ECOC 2026. The board-level demonstration will combine a D2D interface IP subsystem from Qualcomm Technologies with Lumentum’s VCSEL-based optical interconnect platform and Corning multimode fiber connectivity.
• Paramount Skydance (PSKY) is in advanced talks with state attorneys general to allow its $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) to be completed, though not all of the state AGs are on board. Shares rise for both amid reports that Paramount Skydance is discussing a $1.5B investment in California movie and television production as part of potential concessions to resolve legal challenges to its proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.