Friday’s World Stock Markets: Asia-Pacific
#AsiaPacific#Australia#Japan #China#world#stocks
Australian shares finished lower Friday ahead of Key earnings due next week.
The S&P/ASX 200 index fell 0.6% to 6,806.7 at the close of trade. The benchmark was down 0.5% on the week. New Zealand’s benchmark S&P/NZX 50 index fell 1.3% Friday. The index was down 3.6% on the week.
Japan’s stock benchmark capped a 4-session rally Friday, slipping from a more than 30-yr high marked Wednesday, as investors took some profits.
Nikkei share average edged down 0.14% to 29,520.07. The broader Topix finished up 0.04% to end at 1,931.68.
China’s A-share market will be closed from Thursday, 12 February through 17 February, and resume trading on 18 February 2021.
There will be no Asia emerging market stocks and currencies report on Friday, 12 February as most markets in the region will be closed for the Lunar New Year holiday.
HeffX-LTN will resume coverage of the report on Monday, 15 February.
Have a healthy weekend, Keep the Faith!
The Problem Is Not the Problem
People treat the Jack Sparrow line as a joke. The attribution is a joke. The sentence is not. Forty years in markets says the same thing Epictetus said in 125 CE and Robert Merton named in 1948: the event is finite, and the story you appoint to govern it is not. This essay walks the quote back to its actual sources, draws the loop that turns a feeling into an order, and sets out the four places a rule written in advance cuts the loop. Faith is not a hedge. It is a stance.
Understanding the US China AI and Quantum Landscape
AI and quantum are usually reported as a US–China race. The more useful story is two different systems — frontier capital versus open-source scale — entangled through shared chokepoints. Shayne Heffernan maps the landscape with the KXCO AI Sector Ontology, with comparison graphics and the investable names.
USA vs China: The AI and Quantum Scorecard
The US still leads AI models and chips by a whisker; China leads power and open-weight models outright. Shayne Heffernan scores the four races that will decide the decade.
USA vs China: The Quantum Computing Race
The U.S. still leads quantum computing, but China has closed the gap fast — on hardware scale, supply-chain self-reliance and quantum networking. A category-by-category scorecard as of June 2026.
Every story, signed and delivered.
Subscribe to the kxco channel and get the headline, the AI-written key takeaways, and the chain-anchor link the moment we publish. Audio versions and per-ticker subscriptions arrive in the next iteration.