Dow soars 800 points, S&P, Nasdaq up over 2% as investors focus on earnings
Wall Street
's main indexes recovered some ground on Tuesday as investors focused on corporate
earnings
after President Donald Trump's mounting criticism of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell led to a sharp selloff in the previous session.
At 11:11 a.m. ET, the
Dow Jones
jumped 800.89 points or 2.10% to close at 38,971.30, the S&P 500 rose 114.80 points or 2.23% to 5,273.00, and the Nasdaq surged 393.92 points or 2.48% to 16,264.82.
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Investors sifted through a slew of quarterly earnings, with dozens more due through the week, for indications on how companies are navigating the uncertainty caused by tariffs and their expectations for a hit to future earnings.
"There's still a lot of uncertainty in the air with where tariffs will land... but if we can look past that, the fundamentals in the markets still look very good," said Eric Sterner, chief investment officer for Apollon Wealth Management.
"Earnings are expected to grow 10% for this first quarter, so corporate profits are still very healthy."
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Shares of industrial conglomerate 3M Co, the biggest gainer on the blue-chip Dow, jumped 3.4% after the company beat first-quarter profit expectations.
Verizon fell 2.4% after posting a higher quarterly
subscriber loss. Northrop Grumman slumped 8.7% after it reported a sharp drop in profit, while RTX tumbled 8% after the company flagged a potential hit of about $850 million to annual profit from tariffs.
Megacaps also recovered, with Nvidia rising 1.1% and Apple up 1.7%.
All sectors on the S&P 500 inched higher, with consumer discretionary taking the lead.
Tesla, which will kick off earnings for the "Magnificent Seven" group of megacap stocks after markets close, rose 2.1%.
The mood, however, remained fragile as investors awaited Trump's next move in his relentless tussle with
Powell over interest rates, fueling concerns about the central bank's autonomy and the future monetary policy path, which pushed Wall Street down more than 2% on Monday.
Clarity on U.S. tariff policy and the outcome of negotiations with individual countries on reciprocal levies are also in focus.
Indexes have fallen sharply this year as Trump's erratic trade policies rattled markets, with the S&P 500 more than 14% below its February 19 record closing high.
A close 20% below that mark would confirm that the index has entered a bear market. The
Nasdaq Composite
confirmed it was in a bear market earlier this month.
The International Monetary Fund slashed its forecasts for growth in the U.S. on Tuesday to 1.8% in 2025, from 2.8% growth in 2024.
Commentary from several Fed speakers is expected through the day. Their remarks will be parsed for clues on the central bank's policy outlook and view on rising tensions with the White House.
Shares of Invesco leapt 8.7% after the asset manager reported higher-than-expected quarterly profit.
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 9.24-to-1 ratio on the NYSE, and by a 4.52-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
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Time of India
44 minutes ago
- Time of India
China leaders take reins at TikTok Shop in US as sales miss goal
ByteDance Ltd., TikTok 's parent company, has been replacing US-hired staff near Seattle with leaders connected to China, aiming to replicate its e-commerce success in Asia after sales fell short in America. TikTok Shop initially set a goal to increase its US e-commerce business tenfold last year to $17.5 billion in transaction volume, but the company had to drastically lower that goal, according to people familiar with the plan who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly. TikTok established its Shop business in the Seattle area near Inc., the online retail giant it was aiming to displace. Meetings that used to be held in English are now often conducted in Mandarin and managers increasingly write in Chinese when communicating on Feishu, ByteDance's internal Slack-like app, with English-speaking staff forced to rely on the built-in translation function. More than 100 TikTok Shop employees in the US have been fired or have left amid confusion between leaders that has worsened the work environment, according to people familiar with the company. The cultural transition taking place in the company coincides with its fight for survival in the US — due mainly to the app's Chinese ties. A national security law passed by Congress last year requires TikTok's US business to be spun off from its Chinese parent company or it will face a ban. Lawmakers warned that TikTok's ties to China pose a threat to the safety and security of American users. President Donald Trump has twice delayed the ban — with legal assurances from his attorney general — and another deadline for divestiture looms later this month, though that might also be extended, Wall Street Journal has reported. ByteDance has said it doesn't intend to sell. The TikTok Shop near Seattle in February began requiring workers to be in the office five days a week for eight hours a day, according to a memo reviewed by Bloomberg. The change is in contrast to some other major tech companies that still offer flexible work schedules, and has been particularly burdensome for employees who often join late-night calls with colleagues in Asia after they leave the office, according to former employees. US-based staff require human resources and manager pre-approval to work from home. The changes were introduced after Bob Kang, China-based global head of TikTok's e-commerce division, visited the office in Bellevue, Washington, earlier this year and found there weren't enough staff pressent on a work day, according to multiple people who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Increasing influence Increasing Chinese influence over TikTok's fastest-growing business may raise questions about its previous corporate promise to distance the US operation from China. After Trump initially tried to ban the app during his first term, the company announced a security plan dubbed 'Project Texas' and vowed to wall off the app's US data and operations from any Chinese oversight. TikTok Shop is the biggest source of revenue for the video-sharing app besides advertising, and it has become a major investment area for ByteDance. Adding full-scale commerce to its eye-catching content and popular influencers sets it apart from rivals like Instagram and YouTube. The company still aims to challenge Amazon in major markets. To better compete, TikTok Shop recruited aggressively near Seattle over the past three years, targeting people with experience at Amazon, according to a review of Linkedin profiles and people who worked at both companies. In some corners of TikTok's Bellevue office of roughly 1,000 employees, the workflow felt like a remix of previous Amazon teams, the people said. But since January, growing tension in the teams below Kang and Nico Le Bourgeois, who oversaw TikTok's e-commerce operations in the US, became a distraction for staff who were often unsure about whose orders to follow, the people said. TikTok's uncertain fate in the US also weighed on morale. The company carried out a round of layoffs in April. A second batch followed in May. In the first round, Le Bourgeois was demoted when Mu Qing, a Chinese executive from ByteDance's e-commerce platform Douyin moved to the Seattle area to run TikTok Shop in the US. After the second bout, Mu sent an internal message saying Le Bourgeois was leaving to pursue other opportunities, according to a copy of the message seen by Bloomberg. Those cuts were intended to improve TikTok's 'efficiency,' according to former employees, though it wasn't clear to staff what factors contributed to a worker's efficiency rating. More like Douyin With these changes, ByteDance leaders are bringing in people who are familiar with what worked for the company in China, where Douyin, its TikTok clone for the Chinese market, has evolved into a $490 billion shopping phenomenon. In addition to Mu, who was the head of Douyin's e-commerce, six other leaders with Chinese backgrounds were appointed in April, according to a different internal memo from Kang viewed by Bloomberg. One challenge is that habits of many American users trend toward passive TikTok scrolling as opposed to making purchases in the app. Some US sellers told Bloomberg that they have also been reluctant to invest in the platform, given the possible ban. The final tally for 2024 sales came in at around $9 billion, according to an estimate by Singapore-based consultancy Momentum Works, far below the internal goal of $17.5 billion in transaction volume. A TikTok spokesperson previously called the $17.5 billion internal goal 'inaccurate.' TikTok Shop's US struggles haven't halted the company's global shopping ambitions. ByteDance in 2021 rolled out e-commerce services in countries including Indonesia, Vietnam and the UK. In Southeast Asia, it's already the region's biggest shopping platform after Shopee, according to Momentum Works. Last year, TikTok Shop opened in five countries in Europe, including Germany and Spain. The Europe expansion was delayed because the company first prioritised US growth, Bloomberg reported. A TikTok spokesperson did not respond to an emailed request for comment for this story. This is a crucial month for TikTok in the US. The company will host merchants and creators in Los Angeles next week for a summit featuring some of the new leaders of the e-commerce unit. The current deadline for ByteDance to sell the TikTok's US operation is June 19 and there have been several interested suitors. The company came close to a possible spin-off in April to a consortium of investors that included Oracle Corp., but the deal was scuttled in part because of Trump's trade war with China. Meanwhile, the churn of e-commerce employment continues in the Seattle area. Current and former TikTok Shop employees told Bloomberg that they get hounded by recruiting messages from Temu , another Chinese e-commerce competitor.
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First Post
an hour ago
- First Post
The Deng doctrine: How China weaponises rare earths to gain leverage in trade war with the US
China has signalled for more than 15 years that it was looking to weaponise areas of the global supply chain, a strategy modelled on longstanding American export controls Beijing views as aimed at stalling its rise. read more China has long indicated its intention to weaponise parts of the global supply chain—a strategy now visibly playing out through tighter control of rare earth exports. Modelled on longstanding US export restrictions that Beijing believes are designed to limit its technological rise, China is now turning similar tools to its own advantage. The recent rush by companies to secure export licences for rare earth materials, culminating in a phone call between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, highlights how Beijing has refined a powerful lever in the ongoing trade war. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Industry experts say China may approve more shipments in the near term but it has no plans to dismantle the new system underpinning those approvals. Instead, China's new export licensing regime, closely mirroring the US model grants the government deeper visibility into global supply chokepoints including critical sectors such as electric vehicle motors and precision systems used in missiles. This level of control offers Beijing a potent means to retaliate in the trade dispute while asserting dominance in strategically vital markets. China sharpens rare earth export controls in trade war playbook As relations between the two countries sour and supply chains fracture, both Washington and Beijing appear determined to shift from broad tariffs to more focused, technical barriers—ones that could have lasting implications for industries worldwide. 'China originally took inspiration for these export control methods from the comprehensive U.S. sanctions regime,' Zhu Junwei, a scholar at the Grandview Institution, a Beijing-based think tank focused on international relations told Reuters. 'China has been trying to build its own export control systems since then, to be used as a last resort.' After a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Trump said the two leaders were 'straightening out some of the points,' particularly regarding rare earth magnets—key components in electric vehicle (EV) motors and high-tech weaponry. But Trump did not confirm whether Beijing had agreed to speed up export licensing, a sticking point since Washington imposed restrictions on chip design software and jet engines over what it calls China's deliberate slow-walking of approvals. China, which holds a near-monopoly on rare earth magnets, added some of the most advanced types to its export control list in April. The move forces all exporters to seek government licences before shipping these materials, turning a once-obscure division of the commerce ministry—staffed by around 60 people—into a powerful gatekeeper of global manufacturing. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The export curbs, part of a broader retaliation package against US tariffs, have had ripple effects well beyond the US. Several European auto parts manufacturers were forced to shut down production lines this week after exhausting their supply of rare earth magnets, underscoring the global reach of Beijing's measures. Though China's commerce ministry has not publicly commented on the issue, analysts say the blanket controls offer Beijing both leverage in its trade war with Washington and a strategic tool to reshape global supply chains in its favour. 'Beijing has a degree of plausible deniability – no one can prove China is doing this on purpose,' Noah Barkin, senior adviser at Rhodium Group, a China-focused U.S. thinktank told Reuters. 'But the rate of approvals is a pretty clear signal that China is sending a message, exerting pressure to prevent trade negotiations with the U.S. leading to additional technology control.' China mines about 70% of the world's rare earths but maintains a near-monopoly on refining and processing, giving it a powerful position in global manufacturing. Even if export approvals accelerate, as U.S. President Donald Trump indicated after a call with President Xi Jinping, Beijing's new licensing system offers it unprecedented visibility into how companies use these critical materials. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD European and U.S. executives warn that by forcing exporters to apply for licences, China's government can now closely monitor supplier chokepoints in sectors ranging from electric vehicles to advanced weaponry, oversight that other governments lack due to the complexity of global supply chains. Hundreds of Japanese companies are expected to need Chinese export approvals for rare earth magnets in the coming weeks, a person lobbying on their behalf told Reuters. Without timely licences, they risk production disruptions, underscoring how Beijing's new trade tools could reshape access to materials essential to modern industry. 'It's sharpening China's scalpel,' said a US-based executive at a company seeking to piece together an alternative supply chain who sought anonymity. 'It's not a way to oversee the export of magnets, but a way to gain influence and advantage over America.' China's export controls deepen as fears grow over weaponisation of supply chain power Fears that China could weaponise its dominance in critical supply chains first emerged in 2010, when it briefly halted rare earth exports to Japan during a territorial dispute. But those concerns have intensified in recent years as Beijing sharpens its trade tools and broadens export restrictions across strategic sectors. As far back as 1992, former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping noted, 'The Middle East has oil, China has rare earths.' That sentiment has shaped policy: in 2020, China passed a sweeping Export Control Law allowing it to restrict exports of any items deemed vital to national security, including materials, technology and data. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Since then, China has built up its own sanctions arsenal in response to U.S. restrictions, investing heavily in alternative supply chains while tightening its grip on key exports. In 2022, the United States imposed broad curbs on chip and semiconductor tool exports to China, aiming to slow the country's military and AI advancements. But analysts say Beijing has continued to make headway despite those barriers. In retaliation, China has steadily expanded its export controls. Last year it imposed licensing requirements for gallium, germanium, and certain graphite products—vital inputs for defence, electronics, and green technologies. Shipments of these minerals to the U.S. were banned outright in December. Then in February, China added five more metals to its control list. Now, following a phone call between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, attention has turned to whether China will ease its latest rare earth export curbs. But analysts warn of a lack of transparency. 'It's virtually impossible to know what percentage of requests for non-military end users get approved because the data is not public and companies don't want to publicly confirm either way,' said Cory Combs, an analyst at China-focused consultancy Trivium. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The opaqueness of Beijing's process and its expanding powers over chokepoint materials are reinforcing Western concerns that supply chains are becoming geopolitical battlegrounds. With inputs from agencies
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
Green fuel: UAE retail giant LuLu now runs delivery fleet with biodiesel from used cooking oil
LuLu's delivery trucks and vans run on biodiesel refined from used cooking oil collected across its UAE stores/ Image courtesy: Gulf News LuLu Group, one of the UAE's largest retail chains, has begun powering its delivery fleet with biodiesel made from used cooking oil collected across its stores. This move is part of the company's broader sustainability strategy and supports the UAE's national vision of net-zero emissions by 2050. The initiative is the result of a strategic partnership with UAE-based clean energy company Neutral Fuels, which processes the used cooking oil into biodiesel. This low-emission fuel is now powering an increasing share of LuLu's delivery trucks, directly reducing greenhouse gas emissions on UAE roads. In a statement, LuLu Group said, ' This proves that practical, everyday actions can lead to measurable environmental benefits without compromising efficiency or service.' How the biodiesel is made: From waste to fuel The process begins with collecting used cooking oil from LuLu's in-store kitchens, restaurants, food courts, and catering partners. The oil is filtered to remove food residues and then sent to processing plants where it undergoes transesterification, a chemical reaction involving methanol and a catalyst. This reaction produces two byproducts: biodiesel, and glycerin. Unlike conventional diesel, biodiesel made through this method is biodegradable and emits fewer harmful pollutants. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Here's What a 6-Hours Gutter Upgrade Should Cost You LeafFilter Partner Undo According to LuLu, their fleet mostly uses blends of biodiesel to balance fuel performance and emissions reduction. The advantages are clear: Lower Carbon Emissions : Because the oil originates from plants, its carbon output is largely offset by the carbon those plants absorbed, contributing to a near carbon-neutral cycle. Less Air Pollution: It significantly reduces sulfur oxides, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter—key urban pollutants. Waste Management: It repurposes a major waste stream that would otherwise contaminate water or soil. Economic & environmental gains with nationwide impact Beyond the environmental benefits, the program has economic implications. By building a biodiesel supply chain, collection, cleaning, processing, and distribution, LuLu helps generate local green jobs. It also reduces reliance on fossil fuels, contributing to the UAE's energy security. LuLu's fleet plays a crucial logistics role across the UAE, transporting goods daily in dense urban areas. Switching to biodiesel has directly cut emissions in these high-traffic zones, making a noticeable difference in air quality and environmental impact. However, the path hasn't been without hurdles: Supply Volume Constraints: Collecting enough used oil consistently is a logistical challenge. Infrastructure: Expanding processing capabilities requires investment. Vehicle Compatibility: Not all engines are optimized for high biodiesel blends. LuLu is addressing these issues by investing in research, building strategic partnerships, and ensuring quality standards are rigorously met before the fuel is used. LuLu's broader green vision Biodiesel is just one pillar of LuLu's Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) efforts. Other key initiatives include: Plastic Waste Reduction: Over 90% reduction in plastic bag usage across stores, replaced by reusable alternatives. Reverse Vending Machines: Installed in stores to encourage customers to recycle plastic bottles and cans, rewarding participation. Green Logistics: Use of energy-efficient, green chiller vehicles for transporting fresh food, maintaining both food safety and emission reduction. Eco Packaging: Rollout of biodegradable and reusable packaging. Energy Efficiency: Adoption of energy effecient lighting and refrigeration across stores. Community Outreach: Programs that promote environmental education and responsible consumption among customers and employees. These programs reflect LuLu's long-term commitment to environmental stewardship and community awareness. A model for UAE's renewable future The UAE government has placed sustainability at the core of its Vision 2030 and 2050 Net Zero Strategy. Biodiesel from used cooking oil aligns with national priorities by enabling a circular economy and reducing emissions from key sectors like transport and retail. As the infrastructure for biodiesel grows and public awareness improves, other companies may follow LuLu's lead. The LuLu-Neutral Fuels model is not just a corporate initiative, it's a proof of concept for how sustainability and business efficiency can work hand in hand.
