Domestic A-shares staged a rebound today, with major indices closing in positive territory. By the close, the Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.24% to 3,903.72 points, the Shenzhen Component Index advanced 0.59%, the STAR Composite Index gained 0.20%, and the ChiNext Index increased 0.64%. Total turnover across the A-share market reached 2.09 trillion yuan, down from the previous session's 2.53 trillion yuan. Sector-wise, the pharmaceutical and biotech sector led the gains with multiple heavyweight stocks hitting their daily upside limits, while precious metals showed notable strength. Meanwhile, grain and robotics-related names pulled back, with nearly 4,100 stocks advancing across the broader market.

The pharmaceutical and biotech sector led the rally today. The Vaccine ETF (159643) closed up 8.50%, the ChiNext Pharma ETF (159377) gained 7.60%, the STAR Innovative Drug ETF (589720) advanced 6.14%, and the Hang Seng Biotech ETF (520930) rose 4.64%.

On the news front, after the market closed yesterday, Moderna and Merck announced positive results from a Phase III clinical trial of their jointly developed personalized mRNA cancer vaccine — the first such vaccine to succeed in Phase III globally. Catalyzed by this milestone clinical progress, Moderna's shares surged nearly 180% overnight, directly lifting sentiment across the innovative drug and vaccine sectors in both A-shares and Hong Kong stocks.

From a fundamental perspective, innovative drugs and CXO remain the two strongest growth tracks within the healthcare sector. The innovative drug industry is gradually moving beyond the early stage of pure R&D investment into a profitability inflection driven by product commercialization and outbound BD licensing deals. Multiple self-developed new drugs have achieved market launches domestically and internationally, while out-licensing transactions continue to scale up, leading to a continuous re-rating of Chinese pharmaceutical companies' global industrial value. Meanwhile, the CXO segment is in a recovery upcycle marked by simultaneous recovery in domestic and overseas demand, with orders and earnings accelerating quarter by quarter. Reviving R&D spending by overseas pharmaceutical firms is driving the recovery in external demand, while the growth of the domestic innovative industry is fueling local order expansion. Capacity utilization rates at leading players are steadily improving.

Data from the 2025 annual reports and the 2026 first-quarter reports have jointly confirmed the sustained fundamental improvement in the sector, and several leading companies have further corroborated this trend in their 2026 interim reports. The prosperity of the innovative drug and CXO segments is expected to persist. Investors interested in this space may consider the ChiNext Pharma ETF (159377) and the STAR Innovative Drug ETF (589720), both offering 20% price-limit elasticity, the Hang Seng Biotech ETF (520930) for one-stop exposure to Hong Kong-listed innovative drug and CXO leaders, and the Vaccine ETF (159643) which focuses on A-share vaccine-related leaders.

Gold assets also delivered standout performance today. The Gold ETF (518800) rose 2.92%, while the Gold Stock ETF (517400) climbed 4.91%. Earlier, the U.S. 30-year Treasury yield had spiked to a cyclical high not seen since 2007. The U.S. Treasury Department then announced it would "at least double" its liquidity-support buyback program for long-term debt, raising the scale from $2 billion to $4 billion, with repurchases covering 10-year to 30-year long-term Treasuries. Following the announcement, long-end U.S. Treasury yields fell notably, and gold prices rallied in response, with spot London gold briefly surpassing $4,500 per ounce.

From a medium-to-long-term perspective, the logic of U.S. fiscal deficit expansion, intensifying debt-servicing pressure, and the gradual erosion of dollar credit continues to play out, suggesting that gold's appeal as a hard asset may keep strengthening. However, short-term gold price movements remain susceptible to repeated fluctuations driven by multiple factors, including shifts in Federal Reserve rate expectations, changes in global geopolitical conditions, and swings in the U.S. dollar index. Interested investors can continue to track the Gold ETF (518800) and the higher-beta Gold Stock ETF (517400), positioning opportunistically based on global macroeconomic conditions, geopolitical developments, and central bank gold-buying activity to capture the asset's medium- and long-term investment value.

The Grain ETF (159033) edged down 0.20% today. The global grain supply-demand balance is currently tightening. On the supply side, the USDA's August report shows that global corn and wheat production for the 2026/27 marketing year will decline simultaneously. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations also projects a year-on-year drop in total global cereal output, while grain demand remains elevated, widening the production-consumption gap. On the climate front, NOAA and the CPC have raised the probability of a super El Niño event in the second half of 2026 to 95%, with peak intensity concentrated between October and December. Historically, super El Niño events tend to trigger uneven patterns of drought and flooding across major global grain-producing regions, directly disrupting crop growth and harvests, with the impact on output typically showing a 9-to-12-month lag and persistently affecting grain supplies. The European Union and the United States — core producing regions — have already lowered their grain output forecasts in advance. Extreme weather will continue to amplify grain price volatility and support a higher price floor. The grain industry currently enjoys relatively clear fundamental support and event catalysts, making its overall investment value increasingly evident. From a valuation standpoint, the grain-related industry is currently trading at a relatively low percentile over the past decade. The P/E ratio of the Guozheng Grain Industry Index sits at the 33.53% percentile of its ten-year range, offering a degree of margin of safety. Interested investors may continue to monitor the Grain ETF (159033).

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