U.S. stock pre-market highlights: Binance takes a stake in Circle, both parties reach a new 5-year partnership, Trump's approval rating hits a new low in his political career.
BlockBeats news, September 22, Tuesday pre-market in the U.S., reports said Iran is willing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days, causing oil prices to fall and U.S. stock index futures to rise. Later, despite denials from Iranian media, as of press time, Dow futures were still up 0.31%, Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.04%, and S&P 500 futures up 0.07%.
Other major macro news includes: Trump's approval rating hit a new low in his political career, with Republican voter support falling 9 percentage points in a week. A Reuters/Ipsos poll said Trump's overall approval rating fell to 32% from 35% the previous week, a new low in his political career in the survey's records; Republican voter support fell to 73% from 82%.
Chicago Fed President Goolsbee said in London on September 21 local time that U.S. inflation may no longer be just about tariffs and energy supply shocks, and strong demand is also pushing prices higher. AI investment may transmit to broader areas of the economy, and persistently elevated services inflation also indicates that the source of pressure is not limited to oil prices.
On AI stocks, Meta's personal AI assistant Muse, launched on September 8, has topped the U.S. Apple App Store and Google Play download charts, offering a free version and two subscription tiers at $20 and $100 per month, open to adult users in the United States and Canada.
Samsung Electronics is considering expanding 4nm foundry capacity to support HBM4 base die production. It has already allocated more than half of its 4nm capacity to this business and raised prices for new orders. Samsung expects third-quarter HBM4 revenue to more than triple quarter over quarter, accounting for more than 60% of HBM revenue in the second half.
SpaceX launched Grok 4.7, focusing on improving coding and knowledge work capabilities, with input and output prices per million tokens at $2 and $6 respectively, the same as Grok 4.6. The new model expands the base model scale, extends reinforcement learning training, and adds training weight for tasks that take hours to complete.
On crypto-related stocks, Binance invested $100 million in Circle to expand their stablecoin partnership. The investment was completed in the form of a share sale, with Circle issuing and selling 1,237,011 Class A common shares to Binance at $80.84 per share, for total proceeds of $100 million. The two sides reached a new five-year cooperation agreement, the main terms of which are: Circle agrees to pay Binance a monthly incentive fee based on the percentage of USDC held through wallet infrastructure services. Binance, in turn, will conduct certain promotional activities for USDC on its platform. As a result, CRCL turned positive pre-market and is now up 1.76%.
