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August 20th - Since the beginning of this year, my country's consumer market has maintained a trend of innovation and improvement, with the market size steadily expanding and the quality of development continuously improving. From January to July, the total retail sales of consumer goods and services increased by 2.6% year-on-year; the total retail sales of consumer goods reached 28.77 trillion yuan, an increase of 1.2%, of which retail sales of consumer goods excluding automobiles increased by 2.7%.

The United States has secretly opened the Hormuz oil route, with 15 to 20 oil tankers passing through quietly at night each day, transporting approximately 10 million barrels of crude oil to the sea. A quick overview of the pre-market crude oil prices (converted between domestic and international markets) is provided in the chart.

The US Treasury expanded its long-term Treasury bond repurchase program, causing precious metals to fluctuate at high levels. A chart provides a quick overview of the pre-market conversion prices of gold and silver in both domestic and international markets.

On August 20th, according to news from China Optics Valley, on August 18th, at the signing ceremony for the cooperation between Tongji Hospital and Tianqin Biotechnology Research Platform, six scientific and technological innovation platforms were unveiled: the Experimental Animal Center of the National Medical Center for Major Public Health Emergencies, the Experimental Animal Center of Tongji Hospital, the Hubei Provincial Brain-Computer Interface Technology Innovation Center, the Hubei Provincial Brain Science and Brain-Computer Interface Concept Proof Center, the Tongji Hospital Brain-Computer Interface Research Institute, and the Tongji Hospital-Tianqin Biotechnology Brain-Computer Fusion Translational Medicine Joint Laboratory. On the same day, a number of major projects were launched simultaneously. Among them, the National Data Bureau's "High-Quality Brain-Computer Interface Dataset Construction Project" has a total investment of 122 million yuan and a construction period of 24 months. It will focus on building multimodal high-quality datasets for 10 types of diseases, including stroke rehabilitation, spinal cord injury, Parkinson's disease, and epilepsy. Simultaneously, the Hubei Provincial Health and Biomedical New Technology Research and Transformation Special Project, "Key Technologies and Clinical Transformation of Closed-Loop Neuromodulation Brain-Computer Interface" and the "Optics Valley Brain-Computer Interface Data and Computing Power Platform" project were also launched.

The yield on Japan's 30-year government bonds fell 9.5 basis points to 3.985%.

Ukrainian authorities in Kyiv say the Russian airstrikes killed five people and injured 23.

On August 20th, it was reported that payment service provider Stripe announced on August 19th local time that it had reached an agreement to acquire OpenRouter. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Previous reports, citing sources familiar with the matter, indicated that Stripe had finalized an agreement to acquire AI startup OpenRouter for over $7 billion.

According to Futures News on August 20, as of 8:30 AM Beijing time, spot platinum fell 0.12%, while spot palladium rose 0.23%.

DownDetector: User feedback indicates that OpenAI is experiencing a malfunction.

Japan's exports rose 23.2% year-on-year in July, exceeding the expected 19.9% and marking the fifth consecutive month of accelerated growth, the fastest pace since October 2022. This growth was primarily driven by demand fueled by artificial intelligence (AI), with semiconductor equipment exports surging 49.1% year-on-year. Imports also rose 27.8% year-on-year, higher than the expected 26.5%, reaching their highest level since November 2022. The trade deficit reached 634.5 billion yen, lower than the expected 680 billion yen, but still higher than June's 409.9 billion yen. The 49.1% year-on-year increase in semiconductor equipment exports reflects the continued demand growth driven by the AI boom. Oil imports increased by 87.8% year-on-year due to the Iran-Iraq conflict pushing up oil prices.

The yield on Japan's 20-year government bonds fell 7.5 basis points to 3.700%.

U.S. State Department: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet with the Canadian Foreign Minister on Thursday.

Musk: (Regarding reports that SpaceX attempted to acquire Cognition) Our discussions with Cognition were limited to ensuring that Grok could meet their needs.

Japan's Ministry of Finance: Japan's thermal coal imports in July fell 9.1% year-on-year to 8.816 million tons.

Japan's Ministry of Finance: Japan's crude oil imports rose 5.5% year-on-year in July, while liquefied natural gas imports fell 4.8% year-on-year to 5.014 million tons.

Japan's Ministry of Finance: Japan's exports to the United States increased by 22% year-on-year in July, exports to the European Union increased by 19.1% year-on-year, and exports to Asia increased by 24.5% year-on-year.

Japan's seasonally adjusted merchandise trade balance for July was -686.009 billion yen, compared to a forecast of -407.6 billion yen and a previous reading of -881.9 billion yen.

Japan's merchandise exports rose 23.2% year-on-year in July, below the expected 19.9% and the previous month's 19.30%.