Our comments and expectations
External backdrop. The S&P 500 rose 0.2%. Most sectors ended the session in positive territory, although gains in the index were capped by a decline in the semiconductor sub-sector, which includes large companies with a high weight in the index. The key news of the day was an unexpected statement by the Treasury about ramping up buybacks of long-term government bonds. From September 9, it will increase the size of certain reverse buyback operations for securities with maturities of 10–30 years from $2 bn to at least $4 bn. Markets view this as a mild intervention rather than a new round of quantitative easing (QE), given that the ministry will continue issuing bonds. The goal is to ease pressure on long-end yields, which—unlike short-end yields—depend more on fiscal dynamics than on monetary policy, and on the growing U.S. government debt, which recently surpassed $40 tn for the first time and has increased by about a third in less than five years. The 10-year Treasury yield fell to 4.65%, while the dollar in global markets dropped to its lowest levels since May. Also in focus were the following news items: 1) the Fed minutes showed that several officials would support a rate hike if inflation does not decline; 2) Trump postponed the introduction of 50% tariffs on Canadian goods by three days, saying the sides had reached a preliminary agreement. This morning, sentiment in Asia is positive: all major indices are rising, S&P 500 futures are up 0.14%. Brent crude is trading at $92.9 per barrel.
KASE Index. KASE rose 0.2% after a 0.6% decline the day before. We believe the session was successful, as stocks that had previously been signaling a potential reversal rose, thereby avoiding a deterioration in the technical picture.
Index stocks. Halyk Bank rose 1.9% on the local market and 2.9% on the LSE. Thus, investors “picked up” the shares that had fallen 3.7% the day before after the release of Q2 results, which showed the negative impact of tighter regulation in the banking sector. As we noted yesterday, the previous day’s drop was technically not yet a final signal of a change in the picture, since there was no downside break of the local upward trendline. On the LSE, the GDR rose to $35.2 and returned to levels seen before the August 18 decline. An even stronger gain was posted by Kaspi ADS on Nasdaq. Here, the quotes not only stopped falling but also set new highs since March 2025. In this case, we also noted that the pullback of recent sessions was not a verdict, and the key medium-term driver remains that quotes are trading within an upward channel. At the same time, Kazatomprom is lagging other GDRs/ADS despite the continued rise in uranium. This situation may create a “coiled spring” effect and could theoretically lead to a sharp upward move in the near term.
Currency. Today on KASE we see a clear impact from the decline in the DXY dollar index on global markets following the U.S. Treasury’s statements. USDKZT, which paused its decline in recent sessions, is moving down again today and is slipping below the 460 tenge level.
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