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CNA
3 hours ago
- CNA
Dollar strong as Trump imposes new tariff rates; yen sinks to four-month low
TOKYO :The dollar headed for its best week in almost three years against its major peers, maintaining momentum on Friday after U.S. President Donald Trump set new tariff rates on dozens of trade partners. The yen touched a four-month low against the greenback, extending its steep decline from Thursday after the Bank of Japan signalled it was in no hurry to resume interest rate hikes. In trade-related moves, the U.S. currency gained ground on the Swiss franc after Trump set a 39 per cent tariff rate on Swiss imports, up from the 31 per cent he previously mooted. Canada's dollar dipped to a more than two-month trough after the country received a 35 per cent levy instead of an earlier threatened 25 per cent. The euro remained pinned near an almost two-month low, as it continues to be weighed down by what markets see as a lopsided trade agreement with Washington. The U.S. dollar stayed strong even though Trump continued his attacks on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell overnight, calling him a "terrible" Fed Chair and calling his own decision to appoint Powell to the position a "mistake". Trump's repeated threats to fire Powell and calls for the Fed to drastically cut rates has put the central bank's independence in question, hurting the dollar in recent months. "In the short-term you can make the case for more dollar strength," said Mike Houlahan, director at Electus Financial in Auckland. "The lion's share of the tariff news has washed through." "The big move of the week has really been the euro getting rerated downwards," he said. "The net result would be the EU-U.S. trade deal is a further headwind for the euro." The U.S. dollar index - which measures the currency against a basket of six major peers including the euro, yen, Swiss franc and Canada's loonie - pushed as high as 100.10 overnight, topping 100 for the first time since May 29. The yen changed hands at 150.64 per dollar after dipping to 150.89 per dollar early on Friday, its weakest since March 28. The euro hovered around $1.1420, not straying far from Wednesday's low of $1.1401, a level not seen since June 10. The franc eased as much as 0.26 per cent to 0.8120 per dollar.
CNA
3 hours ago
- CNA
CEO Tim Cook says Apple ready to open its wallet to catch up in AI
SAN FRANCISCO :Apple CEO Tim Cook signaled on Thursday the iPhone maker was ready to spend more to catch up to rivals in artificial intelligence by building more data centers or buying a larger player in the segment, a departure from a long practice of fiscal frugality. Apple has struggled to keep pace with rivals such as Microsoft and Alphabet's Google, both of which have attracted hundreds of millions of users to their AI-powered chatbots and assistants. That growth has come at a steep cost, however, with Google planning to spend $85 billion over the next year and Microsoft on track to spend more than $100 billion, mostly on data centers. Apple, in contrast, has leaned on outside data center providers to handle some of its cloud computing work, and despite a high-profile partnership with ChatGPT creator OpenAI for certain iPhone features, has tried to grow much of its AI technology in-house, including improvements to its Siri virtual assistant. The results have been rocky, with the company delaying its Siri improvements until next year. During a conference call after Apple's fiscal third-quarter results, analysts noted that Apple has historically not done large deals and asked whether it might take a different approach to pursue its AI ambitions. CEO Cook responded that the company had already acquired seven smaller companies this year and is open to buying larger ones. "We're very open to M&A that accelerates our roadmap. We are not stuck on a certain size company, although the ones that we have acquired thus far this year are small in nature," Cook said. "We basically ask ourselves whether a company can help us accelerate a roadmap, and if they do, then we're interested." Apple has tended to buy smaller firms with highly specialized technical teams to build out specific products. Its largest deal ever was its purchase of Beats Electronics for $3 billion in 2014, followed by a $1 billion deal to buy a modem chip business from Intel. But now Apple is at a unique crossroads for its business. The tens of billions of dollars per year it receives from Google as payment to be the default search engine on iPhones could be undone by U.S. courts in Google's antitrust trial, while startups like Perplexity are in discussions with handset makers to try to dislodge Google with an AI-powered browser that would handle many search functions. Apple executives have said in court they are considering reshaping the firm's Safari browser with AI-powered search functions, and Bloomberg News has reported that Apple executives have discussed buying Perplexity, which Reuters has not independently confirmed. Apple also said on Thursday it plans to spend more on data centers, an area where it typically spends only a few billion dollars per year. Apple is currently using its own chip designs to handle AI requests with privacy controls that are compatible with the privacy features on its devices. Kevan Parekh, Apple's chief financial officer, did not give specific spending targets but said outlays would rise. "It's not going to be exponential growth, but it is going to grow substantially," Parekh said during the conference call.
CNA
7 hours ago
- CNA
Saylor's Strategy swings to quarterly profit as treasury strategy gains momentum
Strategy reported its first profit in six quarters on Thursday, as the biggest corporate holder of bitcoin benefited from a remarkable quarter for cryptocurrencies. In a watershed moment of legitimacy for the crypto industry, U.S. President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law earlier this month. Industry anticipation leading up to the moment helped rally bitcoin — the largest cryptocurrency — past $120,000 for the first time as investors cheered Washington's long-awaited approval on digital assets. Strategy held 597,325 bitcoins as of June 30, at an average cost of $70,982. Bitcoin currently trades around $116,600. It recorded a $14 billion unrealized fair value gain on digital assets during the quarter that saw corporations ranging from major U.S. banks to payment firms embrace crypto. Until the fourth quarter of 2024, the company could only record losses when bitcoin's value fell below its purchase price, but could not recognize price increases unless it sold bitcoin. The company's net profit was $9.97 billion, or $32.60 per share, for the three months ended June 30, compared with a loss of $102.6 million, or 57 cents per share, a year earlier. Strategy began buying bitcoin with cash in 2020 and then started issuing low-cost convertible bonds and stock sales to finance its accumulation drive. Its shares are up nearly 39 per cent this year, eclipsing bitcoin's 25 per cent climb, a phenomenon that has now inspired several public companies to pivot their operations and mimic founder and executive chairman Michael Saylor's buy-and-hold treasury approach. "We're in a hyper-growth, hyper-adoption phase for bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset," said Saylor on a post-earnings call. A few among these companies are now also pivoting to smaller tokens like ether, often listing via mergers with blank-check vehicles to wrap crypto assets into equity.
