All three major U.S. stock indexes finished higher, with the S&P 500 up 0.4%, the Dow rising 517 points and the Nasdaq gaining 0.4%. The 30-year U.S. Treasury yield climbed to its highest level since 2007, helping lift gold to a session high above $4,690 an ounce. Concerns over the rapid growth of U.S. government debt also pushed yields higher. The Australian dollar strengthened to US71.64¢.

National Australia Bank reported an unaudited $1.9 billion profit for the June quarter, up 32% from the average for the March half as the drag from accounting changes eased. CEO Andrew Irvine said higher interest rates, government housing tax changes and fallout from the war in Iran are creating “challenges and uncertainties” for customers, while softer spending could ease inflation pressure. ASX 200 futures signalled a weaker open, tracking an overnight pullback in major US stock indexes on Wall Street.

Wall Street is preparing to structure “AI bonds” as Nvidia teams up with Goldman Sachs, Apollo Global, KKR, Brookfield and BlackRock on a capital pool of $US500 billion ($708 billion) or more to help customers finance Nvidia chip purchases. Nvidia says it will guarantee 25 per cent of the residual value of project collateral. Hyperscale cloud providers are investing about $US750 billion in AI this year and are expected to spend more than $US1 trillion next year, but AI revenue growth is lagging the pace of spending.

Meta has released Muse Glimmer, a lightweight AI model distilled from Muse Spark 1.2 that has 30 billion parameters and can run on a single graphics card for agent-style tasks such as schedule management and file organization. The company said users can download and customize the model. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also published a 6,500-word essay outlining an open AI vision that directly challenges the more closed approaches associated with OpenAI and Anthropic. After the announcement, Meta shares rose about 1% in New York trading on Monday.

Australia’s second-largest mortgage lender reported an unaudited June-quarter net profit of $1.8 billion, up 3% on the quarterly average for the March half, but bank stocks weighed on the ASX. Mining shares outperformed, led by Sunrise Energy Metals, which surged 13% after the Pentagon was revealed to be planning an investment of more than $500 million in its New South Wales scandium project to expand critical minerals supply. West Texas Intermediate crude was trading near $US79 a barrel.

US stocks surged to record levels as corporate earnings beat expectations and oil prices fell. SpaceX reported a $US541 million loss in its first quarterly report as a public company, but it was smaller than Wall Street anticipated while revenue jumped. Australian share futures pointed to a 35-point, or 0.4%, gain at the open, and the Australian dollar strengthened to US70.47¢. Caterpillar posted its first-ever quarterly sales above $US20 billion, and S&P 500 spring earnings growth expectations were nearing 50%, according to FactSet.

HSBC said it will sell its $36 billion Australian home-loan portfolio to Blackstone and wind down the rest of its local retail banking business over the next 18 months. The bank said it is exiting retail banking in Australia to focus on commercial and corporate clients as part of a simplification push. The move follows Citi’s decision to quit Australian retail banking in 2021 after selling its retail business to National Australia Bank.

Australia’s Federal Court fined Harvey Norman A$35 million for misleading advertising that promoted Latitude Finance credit products, breaching the Australian Consumer Law. Latitude Finance Australia was also penalised A$20 million in the same case. The judge cited public comments by CEO Gerry Harvey disparaging the legal system as one factor supporting a higher penalty. The matter is a domestic enforcement action in Australia that directly affects Harvey Norman’s profitability and market credibility.

China’s Moonshot AI has released Kimi K3, a 2.8 trillion-parameter openweight model it says trails only Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI’s GPT5.6. The company temporarily paused signups after demand surged following the launch. Moonshot has told investors it reached $US300 million in annual recurring revenue in June and is considering an IPO within six months at a valuation of more than $43 billion, Bloomberg and others reported. The development has prompted investors to reassess whether closed AI models can sustain their commercial moats as openweight alternatives narrow the gap.