Daily Overview: 9 October 2026

The global bond sell-off is the only story that matters this morning. US 10-year Treasury yields pushed to 5.36 per cent intraday — the highest since April 2002 — before a better-than-feared US$39 billion auction pulled them back to 5.29 per cent, while the 30-year sits at 5.72 per cent. French OATs jumped another 12 basis points to 4.87 per cent as student protests widened into a national movement, and the spread over German bunds has blown out to 136 basis points. The pain is landing hardest closer to home: NSW, Queensland and Victorian state bonds widened by as much as 7 basis points over Commonwealth paper. Watch whether the auction calm holds through the Asian session, and watch the Australian dollar — it hit 62.31¢ against the euro, its highest since late 2024, and Westpac sees 65¢. With the RBA cash rate at 4.6 per cent and markets pricing roughly a one-in-three chance of a November hike, former board member Ian Harper's "plausible" call on another move this year is worth taking seriously.

Firmus Technologies is the other live event. Bankers told fund managers on Thursday morning that offers to take up stock were "not held", the data room has been pulled, and repricing talks have slid from $11 to $8.25 and possibly as low as $6–$7 — or the float gets pulled entirely. The read-across is already ugly: Maas Group shed almost a quarter of its value, about $550 million, on its 3.2 per cent stake and $1.2 billion of JLE electrical contracts tied to Firmus' "AI factories". Watch the whole AI-infrastructure complex today — CDC Data Centres, Energy Bay, and the broader ASX listing pipeline — and whether Nvidia or Blackstone step in with alternative funding rather than let the deal die. Plato's 30 red flags and Gartner's call that over 80 per cent of neocloud providers will cease independent operations by 2030 are not going away.

On the calendar, Canada's September labour force survey lands at 22:30 tonight and is the commodity-relevant print of the day: employment is forecast to rebound by 65,000 after a 41,700 fall, with the unemployment rate ticking up to 6.5 per cent from 6.4 per cent and participation at 65.3 per cent. A soft number would harden Bank of Canada easing expectations and weigh on the loonie, with knock-on effects for oil and TSX-listed miners. US Michigan consumer sentiment follows at midnight (47.9 forecast versus 48.1 prior) — a near-record-low reading that makes the inflation-expectations component the number to watch. Fed's Collins speaks at 06:00. Closer to home, keep an eye on Fortescue's ongoing pricing standoff with China Mineral Resources Group and the fallout from the High Court's scope 3 ruling as Queensland parliament prepares to debate mining law changes.

Australia

International

Economic Releases

• German exports fell 0.8 per cent month-on-month against consensus for a 0.8 per cent rise — a sharp miss that points to softening euro-area industrial demand, with the trade surplus narrowing to €19.5 billion from €21.6 billion.
• US initial jobless claims came in at 197,000, below the 200,000 consensus and the prior 199,000, keeping the US labour market tight and reinforcing the case for higher-for-longer yields.
• Atlanta Fed GDPNow eased to 3.6 per cent from 3.7 per cent, still a robust US growth read that sits awkwardly with the bond market's inflation fears.
• No actuals were reported for Japan household spending, while the ECB monetary policy meeting accounts and speeches from Fed's Waller and BoE Governor Bailey produced no market-moving detail.

Firmus, AI Infrastructure & Capital Markets

• Firmus Technologies' US$5.5 billion (A$7.9 billion) IPO is on the brink of collapse after the bookbuild closed short of the $44 billion valuation sought; repricing slid from $11 to $8.25 a share overnight, with sources flagging $6–$7 or a pulled float as live options.
• Maas Group lost almost a quarter of its value — around $550 million — as investors marked down its 3.2 per cent Firmus stake and the $1.2 billion of JLE Group electrical contracts tied to Firmus' planned AI factories.
• Plato identified 30 red flags against the float, noting 97 per cent of promised data centre capacity is unbuilt and only 46MW is operating against 912MW contracted; Gartner expects over 80 per cent of neocloud providers to cease independent operations by 2030.
• Dilution clauses with Nvidia, Blackstone and Coatue would hit founders Oliver Curtis, Tim Rosenfield and Jonathan Levee if the IPO fails by November 30, with Series 4 IPS conversion ratios rising from one-for-one to 1.15 shares plus top-up shares as delays extend.
• The broader AI debt machine kept spinning: JPMorgan is pitching a US$5 billion leveraged loan for Volta AI's Norway data centre at about an 11 per cent yield, and Apollo is reportedly assembling a US$40 billion package for SpaceX's xAI Colossus 2, against UBS's estimate of US$3.5 trillion in total hyperscaler obligations.
• Fortescue has dramatically scaled back its New York-based Fortescue Capital arm after chief executive Robert Tichio and managing director Hussein Khalifa departed without replacement, with the envisioned decarbonisation funds never raised.
• CDC Data Centres' proposed $15 billion, 1.4GW Wagga Wagga campus is facing a petition of more than 1,000 signatures over water, power and zoning concerns, while China's Ulanqab hub in Inner Mongolia has 89 data centres built or planned and about 15GW of committed computing capacity.

Iron Ore, Coal & Scope 3

• Fortescue's iron ore shipments fell almost 8 per cent, or about 4 million tonnes, to 42.9 million tonnes in the September quarter as its standoff with China Mineral Resources Group dragged on; the realised price dropped to US$80 a tonne from US$91, and shares closed at a 15-month low of $15.59.
• Fortescue and Formosa Steel are suing Clover Pipelines and Turkey's Superlit Boru over the 240-kilometre Iron Bridge raw water pipeline, with Fortescue flagging its share of replacement costs could top US$100 million after a $1.1 billion write-down on the project.
• The High Court's scope 3 ruling invalidated MACH Energy's Mount Pleasant expansion in the Hunter Valley, prompting NSW Premier Chris Minns to refuse planning law changes, Queensland Premier David Crisafulli to declare his state's laws "bulletproof", and the Minerals Council of Australia to demand federal legislation.
• BHP has agreed to sell its idled Kambalda nickel concentrator, tenements and mineralisation rights to Gold Fields, with completion expected in calendar 2027; BHP will review its suspended WA Nickel assets by February 2027.
• Queensland opened expressions of interest for resource companies to nominate prospective petroleum, gas and coal areas for future land release programs, the first step in implementing its 2025 Land Release Review.

Gold, Rare Earths & Exploration

• Genesis Minerals executive chair Raleigh Finlayson labelled Gold Fields' rejected $38 billion approach for Northern Star "opportunistic", arguing a larger cash component is needed and questioning the estimated $4–5 billion of synergies given no due diligence has been done.
• Arafura Rare Earths broke ground at its $1.8 billion Nolans project north of Alice Springs, backed by $1.2 billion in federal support, the US government and Gina Rinehart, targeting around 4 per cent of global neodymium-praseodymium oxide demand outside China.
• Rox Resources began stope planning at United North after drilling confirmed about 125 metres of strike extensions beyond the Youanmi DFS mine plan, while Alligator Energy extended the Blackbush uranium trend by roughly 1 kilometre with intercepts including 5.2 metres at 0.15 per cent eU3O8.
• Barton Gold completed the 38,760-metre phase 2 drilling at Tunkillia, with an updated JORC resource and pre-feasibility study due in Q1 2027, and Stellar Resources intersected 3.9 metres at 0.82 per cent tin north of its Severn resource at Heemskirk.
• PC Gold agreed to acquire the remaining third-party mining leases at its Spring Hill gold project for $6.5 million, consolidating 100 per cent ownership of about 43.5 hectares in the Northern Territory.

Macro, Bonds & Policy

• The global bond rout deepened: US 10-year yields touched 5.36 per cent and 30-year yields 5.72 per cent, both the highest since 2002, while French 10-year OATs rose 12 basis points to 4.87 per cent and the euro fell to its weakest level against the dollar since 2009.
• Australian state government bonds were the hardest hit domestically, with NSW, Queensland and Victorian yields widening by as much as 7 basis points over Commonwealth paper, though Barrenjoey's Andrew Lilley said France's meltdown is not yet severe enough to cause wider damage.
• Former RBA board member Ian Harper called another rate hike before year-end "plausible", with markets pricing about a one-in-three chance of a November move after September's rise to a 15-year high of 4.6 per cent.
• Mortgage stress is intensifying in outer-suburban Sydney and Melbourne, with Pakenham arrears at 2.99 per cent against a 0.85 per cent national average; Fitch expects property prices to fall up to 9 per cent, and the RBA has warned about 5 per cent of mortgages could slip into negative equity.
• The Australian Banking Association proposed industry-funded financial services hubs in up to 10 regional towns without branches, seeking almost three years of ACCC authorisation, while the Regional Banking Investment Alliance is pushing a $153 million-a-year levy on the nine largest banks.
• Labor ministers are pressing the ATO to reverse its ban on credit card payments for tax bills, with Tax Commissioner Rob Heferen defending the move on the grounds the ATO cannot absorb about $200 million a year in merchant fees.
• Capital city house rents were flat at $700 a week over the September quarter and the national vacancy rate rose to 1 per cent, with Domain data showing tenants have hit affordability limits.
• Assistant Technology Minister Andrew Charlton said Labor will avoid prescriptive AI rules in favour of systems-based regulation requiring frontier labs to test, report and manage model risks, with penalties for failures.
• Data breaches continued to pile up: EY clients including Goldman Sachs' wealth division and Man Group were exposed via a Checkmarx vulnerability, the FBI removed an Accenture contractor after a PeopleSoft breach, and St Andrew's Hospital in Adelaide reported an incident.
• Australia's public EV charging ratio worsened to one charger for every 52.7 electric vehicles as the national fleet grew from 370,000 to 612,000 in the year to June, with Ampol committing $225 million for 1,030 charging bays.
• MST Marquee's Lafitani Sotiriou argued super funds that internalised investment teams have underperformed peers using external managers over three years while charging higher fees, with AustralianSuper and Aware Super's excess returns halving as internal management rose to 37 per cent.
• Pacific Equity Partners agreed to buy a 30 per cent stake in renewables business Energy Bay, mostly via primary issuance, to fund its pipeline of embedded networks, rooftop solar and battery storage.