Trump and Xi dine with AI titans and Meta takes the stage: What to watch this week

Financial markets enter the final week of September facing significant macroeconomic and corporate catalysts, headlined by Meta Platforms' annual Connect conference. Meta is scheduled to unveil a new version of its AI-powered smart glasses, following its recent rollout of the 'Meta One' consumer AI subscription platform, signaling intensifying competition in consumer-facing artificial intelligence hardware and software. Concurrently, Qualcomm hosts its Snapdragon Summit to showcase next-generation hardware infrastructure. Beyond corporate product launches, geopolitical and macroeconomic developments will heavily influence investor sentiment. A high-stakes summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to feature prominent AI industry leaders, including OpenAI's Sam Altman and Nvidia's Jensen Huang, as both nations navigate trade tensions and the AI arms race. Meanwhile, Wall Street continues to assess the broader economic fallout of recent Federal Reserve interest rate actions amid persistent inflation pressures across non-cyclical sectors and ongoing volatility in global energy markets.