Weekend News Roundup: PBOC Releases July Financial Statistics

- PBOC releases July financial data: in the first seven months of 2026, aggregate social financing increased by 22.25 trillion yuan and RMB loans rose by 10.38 trillion yuan, with broad money (M2) up 7.7% year on year to 355.51 trillion yuan.

- The PBOC will continue to implement a moderately loose monetary policy and step up countercyclical adjustment in the second half of the year.

- The PBOC and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) decided to promote the centralized operation of multinational companies' domestic and foreign-currency cross-border funds nationwide.

- Yuan hits a three-and-a-half-year high: the central parity rate has risen from 7.2 to 6.79 since April 2025, while the CFETS RMB index climbed from 96.2 to 102.3.

- Iran says it has reached an agreement with Oman on the Strait of Hormuz passage plan.

- US July retail sales unexpectedly fell 0.6% month on month.

- US stocks closed slightly lower, with memory and optical-communication stocks rallying and SanDisk up more than 7%.

- SSE and SZSE strengthened monitoring of stocks with severe abnormal fluctuations this week.

- The animated film "Niu Lai" saw its box office surge over 1000-fold, with a projected total of 18.37 million yuan.

- Four departments issued income tax policies for non-monetary asset exchanges by integrated circuit and industrial machine tool enterprises.