After reviewing recent developments, I found that the recent China-U.S. talks still failed to resolve the Iran-U.S. conflict, and the Iran-U.S. negotiations have once again collapsed. I hadn’t been following Iran-U.S. affairs closely for a long time—since the last U.S. visit to China, I essentially stopped paying attention—but the situation has become important again. The market’s hoped-for turning point has not materialized: if even high-level China-U.S. talks couldn’t reach an agreement, it’s even less likely that a future summit alone will bring a ceasefire. Iran and the U.S. will likely continue engaging in intermittent hostilities. The fighting will eventually end, but the market’s brief sense of relief has faded again, as no one knows when a genuine ceasefire will occur. The most important upcoming event is the U.S. midterm election on November 3, but market performance around recent midterm elections has generally been weak.