# Roundup of the week: 5 September 2025

_Bond yields spiked across major markets, UK gilt hysteria proved misplaced, and corporate updates showed strength in cloud services and biotech, weakness in electric vehicles, and progress in clinical diagnostics._

Neil Woodford · 5 September 2025 · 6 min read

![The yield on 30-year UK government bonds has risen to its highest level since 1998.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/v3acfbvo/production/ece38dc1cb9ad1da9d782aa2d77da5c74353fb2a-2700x1800.jpg?w=1600&fit=max&auto=format)

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## Politics

This week’s gathering of presidents Xi, Putin, Modi and Un in Beijing has dominated political commentary but had little relevance for global financial markets. In the US, an appeals court ruled that Trump’s tariffs brought in through an emergency powers act did not fall within the president’s mandate and were therefore illegal. This, too, has not had a meaningful impact on financial markets, given that the President has asked the Supreme Court to hear the arguments in November and to issue its final decision soon after (in normal circumstances, the case would not be heard until early next summer). Nevertheless, the decision could be a meaningful reversal of Trump’s signature policy if the appeal court decision is upheld by the Supreme Court.

Perhaps the most significant story this week, which will conclude on Monday next week, is the French vote of confidence on Prime Minister Bayrou’s budget. Parties on both the left and right of French politics have already said they will vote against the austerity proposed in the budget, so the vote is likely to go against Bayrou. What happens after the vote is unclear, but I don’t expect this vote on Monday to have the widely expected adverse implications for French financial assets that many have written about. This is because none of this will be a surprise. It has been pretty obvious for months that this budget would not get through parliament, so its failure to do so has already been priced into the market. If this vote leads to a new election, or indeed presidential elections, this might cause some nervousness, but the current impasse is clearly time-limited.

## Economics

The economic story that has dominated this week is the increase in long-dated government bond yields in the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan. It is hard to know exactly what is driving this seemingly coordinated increase in yields. To some extent, long bond yields everywhere will be priced off the US 30-year rate, which is now close to 5%, and so once yields move there, they are likely to cause other government bond markets to do the same, but the precise cause is not clear by any means. This is not least because this week in the US, ten-year yields have fallen below 4.2%. (They were as high as 4.5% earlier in the summer) This move down in ten-year Treasury yields reflects weaker jobs data than was forecast and the increasing probability that the Fed will cut rates in the middle of the month.

In the UK, the increase in the 30-year gilt yield to 5.6% has catalysed a new round of apocalyptic media stories about the loss of international confidence in UK government debt. Once again, this is another example of media hysteria.

In fact, this week, a £14bn auction of ten-year gilts received a whopping £140bn of bids, which is a new record. Hardly symptomatic of an international buyers’ strike! My understanding is that non-domestic buyers bought 40% of this new issue, which is higher than normal. This week, the governor of the Bank of England also said that the “importance of the 30-year gilt should not be exaggerated, given that UK issuance was focused on other maturities”. Enough said.

## Markets

In what has been a noisy, volatile week, there have been a couple of important corporate results affecting companies I follow, but nothing of great significance other than the long bond market moves I have already written about.

Here are some brief comments on the most important announcements.

### Alibaba

Alibaba announced better-than-expected Q2 numbers this week, which included a particularly strong performance from its most profitable division, the Cloud Intelligence Group. It produced a 26% increase in revenue YOY, driven by AI-related products, which achieved ‘triple digit’ growth for the eighth consecutive quarter. The company commented, “as AI demand continues to grow strongly, we are also seeing increased demand for compute, storage, and other public cloud services to support AI adoption”. Alibaba’s strong performance in this division was an especially important factor that resulted in the share price rising 18% on the back of these numbers.

### BYD

BYD’s disappointing Q2 results last week reflected the ongoing pressures in the Chinese EV market, where intense competition is intensifying. Adding to these concerns this week, BYD also lowered its full-year sales target from 5.5 million units to 4.6 million. This reduction clearly reflects BYD’s attempts to limit the damage to its bottom line from the very competitive Chinese EV market, but it may also be a reaction to the Chinese government’s recent call for companies to reduce excessive price-led competition to head off deflationary forces in the economy.

For the time being, a market recovery and a better balance between manufacturing capacity, supply, and demand will take a while, but these significant steps from China’s largest EV manufacturer are an appropriate response to what is clearly an oversupplied market right now.

### Oxford Nanopore

ONT released its Q2 numbers this week. They were previewed back in July, when the company guided analysts to expect a better performance in Q2 than had been previously expected. The numbers were very good and reflected the substantial progress the company is currently achieving with new products in new applied markets. Overall revenues were up 28% on a constant currency basis YOY, but revenue grew by nearly 53% in clinical and by 27.4% in applied industrial markets.

There was no change to 2025 full-year guidance, and the medium-term guidance remained at 30% revenue CAGR and EBITDA breakeven in 2027. I am not sure why the share price fell so much on the numbers, but it probably had more to do with the fact that the shares had risen so significantly since June.

### Ionis

This week, Ionis (a US biotech company), the company announced very positive topline results from its pivotal Phase III studies of olezarsen in patients with severe hypertriglyceridemia. This disease can be caused by genetic factors or be the product of obesity or poorly controlled diabetes. Dangerously high levels of triglycerides can cause pancreatitis and cardiovascular disease.

Approximately three million people in the US are living with sHTG, including one million who are considered high-risk. This pivotal study result is a big deal for Ionis and creates a very high bar for its competitors’ drugs that are in development but behind olezarsen. The drug may well be approved by year end and be contributing meaningfully to Ionis revenues in 2026.

## What to look out for next week

Next week is a busy one from an economics perspective. The US will publish important inflation data on Thursday and more labour market data on Friday. These data are particularly important given their proximity to the Fed’s rate decision, which will follow the FOMC meeting on the 16th-17th of September. Given the recent series of labour market indicators have pointed consistently to a weakening jobs market, I still expect the Fed to cut at this meeting. I suspect it will take a very disappointing inflation print next week to push the Fed off this course of action.

In the UK, there is a six-year maturity gilt auction on Wednesday, which I suspect will be watched closely. I anticipate strong demand at that auction, just as at this week’s ten-year sale. We will also see July’s GDP data on Friday. Following recent better-than-expected data, this report will once again give an indication of underlying momentum in the economy, which will serve as an interesting comparison with the consensus media narrative.

France’s confidence vote on Monday will receive a lot of attention in the media, but I suspect its predictable outcome, namely that the government will lose the vote, is already discounted in financial markets.

The corporate calendar is pretty quiet next week with no major announcements expected from the companies I follow.