Public Markets 8 Hours

Last updated: September 12, 2026, 10:51 PM ET

Equities & Exchanges

South Korea's main bourse is extending trading into evening sessions through 8 p.m., breaking with Asia's norms in a bid to capture sustained demand from global investors. The experiment tests whether longer hours translate into deeper liquidity or simply stretch market-making capacity thin.

Autos & Industrials

Tesla is reclaiming share of a shrinking U.S. EV market, recovering from its 2025 nadir as legacy automakers pull back from electrification spending. The reversal hands Elon Musk's company renewed pricing power even as overall EV sales stay depressed.

Deals & Corporate

Johnson & Johnson is in talks to sell its DePuy Synthes hips-and-knees unit to Apollo Global Management for roughly $20bn, part of a plan to hive off slower-growth businesses and concentrate on higher-margin segments. The transaction, if completed, would rank among the largest private-equity healthcare buyouts in years.

Legal Industry

Weil Gotshal's highest-paid partner has defected to Cravath, a move that stunned Big Law and laid bare two competing visions of the industry's race for scale. The star dealmaker's exit raises questions about whether lockstep compensation models can retain top rainmakers.

Consumer Economy

Restaurant chains are adopting a barbell pricing strategy, pairing budget value items with premium offerings to capture both thrifty and free-spending diners. The approach reflects a consumer base increasingly split by income, pressuring operators to serve two menus at once.

Energy & Geopolitics

Saudi oil exports face heightened threats after attacks on a pipeline, with Houthi militias asserting control in the Red Sea and compounding risks for ship operators already navigating a volatile region. Any sustained disruption would tighten crude flows through the world's most critical chokepoint.

Technology & Policy

Anthropic C.E.O. Dario Amodei has called for a slowdown in artificial intelligence development, arguing in a new essay that rapidly advancing capabilities demand stronger safety controls across the industry. Separately, researchers at Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta and Google are raising alarms about superintelligence doomsday scenarios, an internal debate now spilling into public view.

Washington & Culture

President Trump demanded the Smithsonian install a "Colossus" statue of George Washington, the latest salvo in his push for what he calls patriotic history at the National Museum of American History. He also said Irish unification would be "fantastic," breaking with decades of official U.S. neutrality on an issue that fueled violence in Northern Ireland until the 1998 peace deal.