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Global stocks mostly rise as U.S. continues trade talks with China

Global stocks mostly rise as U.S. continues trade talks with China

Fast Company29-07-2025
Global shares were mixed Tuesday at the outset of a second day of trade talks between Chinese and U.S. officials.
France's CAC 40 jumped 1.1% in early trading to 7,887.57, while the German DAX rose 1.0% to 24,191.38. Britain's FTSE 100 added 0.3% to 24,191.38. The future for the S&P 500 was up 0.2%. The future for the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged 0.1% higher.
Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 fell 0.8% to 40,674.55 on broad selling of major companies including automakers and big banks. Toyota Motor Corp. dipped 2.3% and Honda Motor Co. fell 2.1%. Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group finished 1.8% lower, while Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group stock dipped 1.6%.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 0.2% to 25,524.45, while the Shanghai Composite gained 0.3% to 3,609.71.
Analysts said investors were watching for the latest from U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. trade talks with China in Stockholm. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng were meeting in the Swedish capital.
'Aside from addressing economic imbalances, tariffs are also now well entrenched in the geo-political arena,' Tan Boon Heng of the Asia & Oceania Treasury Department at Mizuho Bank said in a commentary.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 edged 0.1% higher to 8,704.60.
South Korea's Kospi gained 0.7% to 3,230.57. Samsung Electronics edged 0.3% higher after jumping nearly 7% on Monday on news that it signed a deal with Tesla to provide computer chips for its electric vehicles.
This week will bring a flurry of potentially market-moving data releases, corporate earnings and an interest rate decision by the Federal Reserve.
The widespread expectation on Wall Street is that Fed officials will wait until September to resume cutting interest rates, though a couple of Trump's appointees could dissent in the vote. The Fed has been on hold with interest rates this year since cutting them several times at the end of 2024.
On Monday, the S&P 500 was nearly flat, edging up by less than 0.1% to 6,389.77 and setting an all-time high for a sixth straight day. The Dow dipped 0.1% to 44,837.56, while the Nasdaq composite added 0.3% to its own record, closing at 21,178.58.
Hundreds of U.S. companies are lined up to report how much profit they made during the spring, with nearly a third of the businesses in the S&P 500 index scheduled to deliver updates.
Companies are broadly under pressure to deliver solid growth in profits following big jumps in their stock prices the last few months. Much of the gain was due to hopes that Trump would walk back some of his stiff proposed tariffs, and critics say the U.S. stock market looks expensive unless companies will produce bigger profits.
In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude jumped 50 cents to $67.21 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gained 47 cents to $69.79 a barrel.
In currency trading, the U.S. dollar fell to 148.53 Japanese yen from 148.56 yen. The euro cost $1.1567, down from $1.1589.
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