By Mike Dolan
LONDON (Reuters) – What matters in U.S. and global markets today
By Mike Dolan, Editor-At-Large, Finance and Markets
The glass appears half full once again.
With midyear approaching, the main Wall Street stock indexes are back within a hair’s breadth of new records, helped along by a weakening dollar, the prospect of lower borrowing rates, increasing trade optimism and a renewed focus on the artificial intelligence theme.
Throw in some positive tax and regulatory twists, and now we’re likely to see new highs for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq later today.
It’s Friday, so today I’ll provide a quick overview of what’s happening in global markets and then offer you some weekend reading suggestions away from the headlines.
Today’s Market Minute
* The United States has reached an agreement with China on how to expedite rare earth shipments to the U.S., a White House official said on Thursday, amid efforts to end a trade war between the world’s biggest economies.
* European Union leaders discussed new proposals from the United States on a trade deal at a summit in Brussels on Thursday, with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen not ruling out tariff talks could fail and saying “all options remain on the table”.
* Iran would respond to any future U.S. attack by striking American military bases in the Middle East, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday, in his first televised remarks since a ceasefire was reached between Iran and Israel.
* U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday asked Republicans in Congress to remove a “retaliatory tax” proposal that targets foreign investors from their sweeping budget legislation, as lawmakers struggled to find a path forward on the bill.
* What will be the biggest pain trades in the second half of 2025? ROI columnist Jamie McGeever discusses the most vulnerable positions.
Wall St flirts with new record
While still underperforming the MSCI’s all-country index for the year so far, and lagging euro zone stocks by some 20% in dollar terms in 2025, the S&P500 has all but completed a remarkable 20% round trip from the peak of February to the troughs of April and back.
The VIX ‘fear index’ ebbed to its lowest in four months, while gold prices slipped to their lowest in almost a month.
With more than 40% of S&P500 revenues coming from overseas, the dollar’s slide to 3-year lows this week spotlights a 10%-plus currency tailwind in 2025. The greenback remained near the year’s lows on Friday.
And even though President Donald Trump’s harrying of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell unnerves many about the long-term inflation impact of threatening Fed independence, it has stepped up bets about a resumption of interest rate cuts – and most clearly after Powell’s term ends next year.
While markets awaited the latest U.S. May inflation update later on Friday – with oil prices brushing off the latest Middle East conflict to resume a near 20% year-on-year drop – two and 10-year Treasury yields fell to their lowest since early May on Thursday.
The bond market has been soothed in part by this week’s Fed proposal on overhauling how much capital large global banks must hold against relatively low-risk assets, part of a bid to boost banks’ participation in Treasury markets.
But markets got a further lift overnight from signs of some movement on bilateral trade negotiations ahead of July 9’s expiry of the 90-day pause on Trump’s sweeping tariff hikes.
The White House said the United States reached an agreement with China on how to expedite rare earth shipments to the U.S.
European Union leaders discussed new proposals from the United States on a trade deal at a summit in Brussels late on Thursday, with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen saying “all options remain on the table”.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged the EU to do a “quick and simple” trade deal rather than a “slow and complicated” one, even as French President Emmanuel Macron struck a cautious note.
And while the U.S. fiscal bill is still struggling through the Senate, there was an important development on tax provisions that may ease foreign investor concerns.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent asked Republicans in Congress to remove a “retaliatory tax” proposal – the controversial Section 899 that targets foreign investors with higher tax in retaliation for any overseas disputes.
Justifying the removal, Bessent said that under a G7 agreement, a 15% global corporate minimum tax will not apply to U.S. companies under “Pillar 2” of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development tax deal.
The latest economic numbers, meantime, were a mixed bag but show few signs of a sharp downturn yet.
Durable goods orders boomed in May well above forecasts, while the labor market remained resilient with a drop in weekly jobless claims. May trade data, on the other hand, showed a sharp drop in exports.
As the second-quarter earnings season comes into view next month, the longer-term AI investment theme was given a fresh spur from an above-forecast revenue readout from Micron Technology – even though its stock ended lower on Thursday. AI darling Nvidia hit a new record high, however, up more than 80% from the lows of April.
In other corporate news, Nike’s shares jumped 10% overnight as its first-quarter revenue outlook exceeded market expectations.
Elsewhere, stocks in Europe were sharply higher on Friday – chiming with Wall Street. They have been boosted by the defense spending push at this week’s NATO summit and as details of Germany’s big fiscal stimulus unfolded.
German lawmakers on Thursday passed a multi-billion-euro package of fiscal relief measures to support companies and boost investment, involving corporate tax breaks amounting to almost 46 billion euros ($54 billion) from this year through to 2029.
Despite the positive noises on a U.S. trade deal, Chinese stocks bucked the global trend and were in the red on Friday.
China’s industrial profits swung back into sharp decline, falling 9.1% in May from a year earlier, as factory activity slowed in the face of broader economic stress.
There was better news in Japan as core consumer inflation in Tokyo slowed sharply in June. Tech stocks led the Nikkei up more than 1%.
Weekend reads:
* TARIFF DAMAGE: Even though President Donald Trump appears to have retreated from his more extreme trade tariff plans due to market, industry and political pushback, trade barriers will damage the economy over the next decade. So claims a Peterson Institute paper by Warwick McKibbin, Marcus Noland and Geoffrey Shuetrim, who estimate the impact under five different scenarios – which get worse the bigger the retaliation overseas and the higher the country risk premium demanded by global investors. “Contrary to Trump’s promises to revive U.S. industry, America’s manufacturing and agriculture sectors see disproportionate losses in production and employment due to his tariffs.”
* OPAQUE DEBT: Global sovereign debt vulnerability is rising and 54% of low-income countries are already in or at high risk of debt distress, with many spending more on debt repayments than on education, healthcare and infrastructure combined. With frequent global shocks adding to the risk, the World Bank’s Axel van Trotsenburg argues on Project Syndicate that debt obligations are now more complex, with a wider range of creditors and some borrowing occurring behind closed doors and outside the scrutiny of oversight mechanisms. “Without urgent action to improve transparency, unsustainable debt-service burdens in the developing world will become common.”
* UKRAINE VS RUSSIA IN AFRICA: On Africa’s dry western tip, Mauritania has become an unlikely staging post for Ukraine’s increasingly global struggle with its adversary Russia. Reuters’ Jessica Donati and Olena Harmash detail Kyiv’s Africa Strategy in seeking allies with aide and embassies – countering Russia’s much more entrenched presence in the continent.
* SIU SIMPLE: With much attention on the European Union’s ability to attract or unlock much-needed investment capital, accelerating its capital markets integration – or Savings and Investments Union – is seen as critical. Nicholas Veron at Bruegel proposes catalyzing this by hardening a central supervisory system to replace the current complex hybrid of a central agency – the European Securities and Markets Authority – alongside national supervisory bodies. “The way to reform it is by pooling all capital market supervisory authority into a transformed multicentric ESMA that would operate mostly through its own offices in EU countries, ensuring supervisory consistency and no preferential treatment for any single financial centre.”
* WEGOVY TEEN IMPACT: A fast-growing cohort of American teens who have chosen to take Novo Nordisk’s weight-loss drug Wegovy, placing them at the forefront of a monumental shift in the treatment of childhood obesity. A Reuters special report by Chad Terhune and Robin Respaut found children who had taken Wegovy or a similar weight-loss drug, to speak with them about their experiences. The reporters spent more than a year closely following four teens and their families to examine in detail the impact of treatment.
Chart of the day:
U.S. stock markets have completed a remarkable 20% round trip since February to stand back at the brink of new records – with the S&P500 up more than 10% on this time last year.
Today’s events to watch
* U.S. May personal consumption expenditures inflation gauge (0830EDT) University of Michigan’s final June consumer survey (10:00 AM EDT)
* New York Federal Reserve President John Williams and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack speak
Opinions expressed are those of the author. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.
(By Mike Dolan; Editing by Anna Szymanski)
