Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a speech during a reception at the Great Hall of the People to mark Martyrs Day, September 30, 2025 (Adek Berry/Getty Images)

China steps up customs crackdown on Nvidia chips, launches antitrust investigation into Qualcomm, and plans special port fees on US ships

Beijing is doubling down on protectionism ahead of a planned Xi Jinping and Donald Trump meeting set for later this month.

David Crowther

10/10/25 5:56AM

For months now, China has been getting increasingly defensive over its domestic industries, particularly the all-important AI hardware space. This morning, we got the latest measures from those continued efforts.

First, the Financial Times reported that China has mobilized teams of agents at major ports across the country to “carry out stringent checks on semiconductor shipments.” The initial goal is reportedly to stop local tech companies from buying Nvidia chips, most notably the tech giant’s H20 and RTX Pro 6000D models, which Beijing has become particularly focused on stopping from entering the country. According to the FT, one person familiar with the matter also said that the more rigorous enforcement had been widened to all advanced semiconductor products.

Separately this morning, news broke that chip giant Qualcomm was the subject of a new antitrust investigation from China’s State Administration for Market Regulation over its acquisition of Israel’s Autotalks. Qualcomm fell 3% in early trading. In September, Nvidia itself fell foul of the same Chinese regulator over a 2020 acquisition.

Outside of AI, China is also planning to impose special import fees on vessels owned by US individuals, companies, or organizations, in a retaliatory move to a similar policy the US revealed back in April.

Per The Wall Street Journal, vessels docking at Chinese ports will be charged 400 yuan per net ton from October 14. That’s equivalent to ~$56. That fee is also set to rise over time, hitting 640 yuan per net ton in April 2026, 880 yuan the year after, and 1,120 yuan from April 2028.

The escalation of trade tensions between the world’s two most important economies comes ahead of a planned meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump, slated to take place at the end of the month at the APEC summit. Yesterday, CNN reported that Beijing had ramped up sweeping restrictions on rare earth exports.

Matt Phillips2h

DraftKings moves to counter prediction market threat

DraftKings rose after hours, following news that it is buying Railbird in an effort to address the competitive threat from prediction markets that has weighed on its share price — and that of FanDuel parent Flutter Entertainment — for weeks.

The deal is then latest example of the increasing linkages and overlap between worlds of financial markets, gambling, and prediction markets.

Earlier this month, ICE — the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange and the ICE futures markets, among others — announced it would invest up to $2 billion in prediction markets company Polymarket.

And Robinhood shares have recently gotten a lift from its ongoing partnership with prediction market platform Kalshi, which has seen growing uptake of its events contracts that allow buyers to take positions on football games.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)

By and large investor excitement over prediction markets — which has picked up since the start of football season — has seemed to come at the expense of Flutter and DraftKings, the two companies that dominate US sports betting.

Over the last three months through the end of regular trading on Wednesday, DraftKings and Flutter were down 23% and 18%, respectively, while the S&P 500 is up about 7%.

DraftKings acquires predictions platform Railbird

The deal is then latest example of the increasing linkages and overlap between worlds of financial markets, gambling, and prediction markets.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)

Over the last three months through the end of regular trading on Wednesday, DraftKings and Flutter were down 23% and 18%, respectively, while the S&P 500 is up about 7%.

Max Knoblauch

As Netflix drops on earnings miss, it’s investing just $0.40 into content for every $1 of revenue

Netflix shares fell in after-hours trading on Tuesday, following the release of the streamer’s third-quarter earnings report.

Toby Bochan, Luke Kawa

US stocks go nowhere amid big rotation out of gold and into fake meat

The calmest session for the S&P 500 in over a month.

Jon Keegan

OpenAI releases Chrome-competitor browser “ChatGPT Atlas,” sending Google shares down

ChatGPT currently poses little threat to Google’s search business, but an OpenAI browser — and the data that comes with it — could change everything.

Luke Kawa8h

The no-fundamentals, high-volatility winning trades are reversing hard

The volatile, speculative momentum trades that have been on fire in recent months are getting smoked.

The SPDR Gold Shares ETF is on track for its biggest daily loss since April 2013, as of 10:28 a.m. ET.

And Goldman Sachs’ baskets of “high beta momentum longs” and “non-profitable tech” stocks, which have pretty much been the exact same line for two months, got dumped last Thursday and are down big again today.

D-Wave Quantum, Planet Labs, and Navitas Semiconductor are some of the stocks that feature in both of Goldman’s baskets and are down more than 2% as of 10:24 a.m. ET.

All of these groups have been handily outperforming the S&P 500 for an extended period of time despite by their very nature having more hype than actual track records — in terms of producing profits for shareholders — to speak of. Gold, obviously, generates no income. Nonprofitable tech stocks aren’t really in a position to spin off cash they don’t have to their owners. And, as mentioned, high-beta momentum and nonprofitable tech stocks have pretty much traded the same!

It’s difficult to pinpoint a fundamental catalyst for why speculative momentum trades suddenly turn on a dime, just as it’s often tricky to identify why they went on such a mammoth run in the first place. Perhaps the onset of earnings season — which gives us the opportunity to assess fundamental progress — means that right now, there’s more attention being paid to “line go up” when it comes to revenues and profits, and that’s taking away from the mindshare on “line go up” with respect to recent share price performance.

China steps up customs crackdown on Nvidia chips, launches antitrust investigation into Qualcomm, and plans special port fees on US ships

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