CNBC Daily Open: If U.S.-China talks go well, analysts think the S&P 500 could hit new high
Trade negotiators from the U.S. and China have met in London, and talks are expected to continue Tuesday, a source familiar with the situation told CNBC's Megan Casella.
At the top of the agenda for America appears to be a relaxation of China's rare earths export curbs, according to a CNBC interview with U.S. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett. If China's actions late last week — when it seemingly gave Western automakers concessions regarding those minerals — are any indication, Beijing could be willing to accede to the U.S. request.
But the world's second-biggest economy would demand reciprocity. On June 2, Beijing bristled at Washington's tighter grip on exports of chip design software to China. But it appears that Washington is also in a conciliatory mood. "Our expectation is that … immediately after the handshake, any export controls from the U.S. will be eased," Hassett said on CNBC's "Squawk Box."
If the U.S.-China talks go well, there's a chance the S&P 500, only around 2% off its February high as of Tuesday morning Singapore time, could reach a new peak, noted the JPMorgan trading desk.
That'd be something to cheer, of course. But it's slightly upsetting to realize that the S&P could have continued scaling heights from February, or at least broken its closing high much earlier in the year, if not for truculent trade policy from the White House — which, as is evident from the meeting between U.S. and China, governments now are still trying to undo.
U.S.-China talks set to go into Day 2U.S. President Donald Trump's top trade officials met Chinese counterparts in London on Monday for talks aimed at resolving their trade dispute — particularly with regard to mineral exports. Discussions are set to continue Tuesday. Late last week, in an apparent olive branch, China seemed to offer U.S. and European auto giants something of a reprieve regarding its exports of rare earth elements.
Stocks in the U.S. rose marginallyU.S. stocks edged up Monday. The S&P 500 added 0.09%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was mostly flat, and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.31%. Europe's Stoxx 600 index dipped 0.07%. Shares of chip designer Alphawave jumped 20% on a takeover by U.S. semiconductor giant Qualcomm, while Spectris soared 60% after confirming it is in talks over a takeover deal with private equity group Advent International.
A new 'Liquid Glass' look for Apple's iOSApple held its annual Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on Monday. At the event, the company announced a redesign to its iOS system called "Liquid Glass," a virtual glass look that was inspired by the Vision Pro; real-time translation to calls, texts and FaceTime; new gaming, video and enterprise features for its augmented reality device Vision Pro; a new version of its Mac operating system, named Tahoe.
UK in a 'Goldilocks' moment: Nvidia CEO "The U.K. is in a Goldilocks circumstance," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Monday on a panel with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Investment Minister Poppy Gustafsson. "You can't do machine learning without a machine — and so the ability to build these AI supercomputers here in the U.K. will naturally attract more startups," Huang said, though he added that the country lacks homegrown AI infrastructure.
[PRO] New record for S&P soon?The S&P 500 ticked higher on Monday and continues to chip away at the gap to a new record high. The broad-based index is just 2% below its record close set in February. Several events in the days ahead could prove to be the catalyst that vaults it over the top, according to the JPMorgan trading desk.
'Bitcoin Family' hides crypto codes etched onto metal cards on four continents after recent kidnappings
Didi Taihuttu, patriarch of the so-called Bitcoin Family, said he overhauled the family's entire security setup after a wave of high-profile kidnappings targeting cryptocurrency executives.
The Taihuttus — who sold everything they owned in 2017, from their house to their shoes, to go all in on bitcoin when it was trading around $900 — have long lived on the outer edge of crypto ideology. They travel full-time with their three daughters and remain entirely unbanked.
Over the past eight months, he said, the family ditched hardware wallets in favor of a hybrid system: Part analog, part digital, with seed phrases encrypted, split and stored either through blockchain-based encryption services or hidden across four continents.
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Exclusive-China-backed militia secures control of new rare earth mines in Myanmar
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Beijing's access to fresh stockpiles of minerals like dysprosium and terbium has been throttled recently after a major mining belt in Myanmar's north was taken over by an armed group battling the Southeast Asian country's junta, which Beijing supports. Now, in the hillsides of Shan state in eastern Myanmar, Chinese miners are opening new deposits for extraction, according to two of the sources, both of whom work at one of the mines. At least 100 people are working day-to-night shifts excavating hillsides and extracting minerals using chemicals, the sources said. Two other residents of the area said they had witnessed trucks carrying material from the mines, between the towns of Mong Hsat and Mong Yun, toward the Chinese border some 200km away. Reuters identified some of the sites using imagery from commercial satellite providers Planet Labs and Maxar Technologies. Business records across Myanmar are poorly maintained and challenging to access, and Reuters could not independently identify the ownership of the mines. The mines operate under the protection of the United Wa State Army, according to four sources, two of whom were able to identify the uniforms of the militia members. The UWSA, which is among the biggest armed groups in Shan state, also controls one of the world's largest tin mines. It has long-standing commercial and military links with China, according to the U.S. Institute of Peace, a conflict resolution non-profit. Details of the militia's role and the export route of the rare earths are reported by Reuters for the first time. University of Manchester lecturer Patrick Meehan, who has closely studied Myanmar's rare earth industry and reviewed satellite imagery of the Shan mines, said the "mid-large size" sites appeared to be the first significant facilities in the country outside the Kachin region in the north. "There is a whole belt of rare earths that goes down through Kachin, through Shan, parts of Laos," he said. China's Ministry of Commerce, as well as the UWSA and the junta, did not respond to Reuters' questions. Access to rare earths is increasingly important to Beijing, which tightened restrictions on its exports of metals and magnets after U.S. President Donald Trump resumed his trade war with China this year. While China appears to have recently approved more exports and Trump has signalled progress in resolving the dispute, the move has upended global supply chains central to automakers, aerospace manufacturers and semiconductor companies. The price of terbium oxide has jumped by over 27% across the last six months, Shanghai Metals Market data show. Dysprosium oxide prices have fluctuated sharply, rising around 1% during the same period. CHINESE INFLUENCE A prominent circular clearing first appears in the forested hills of Shan state, some 30 km (18.6 miles) away from the Thai border, in April 2023, according to the satellite images reviewed by Reuters. By February 2025 - shortly after the Kachin mines suspended work - the site housed over a dozen leaching pools, which are ponds typically used to extract heavy rare earths, the images showed. Six km away, across the Kok river, another forest clearing was captured in satellite imagery from May 2024. Within a year, it had transformed into a facility with 20 leaching pools. Minerals analyst David Merriman, who reviewed two of the Maxar images for Reuters, said the infrastructure at the Shan mines, as well as observable erosion levels to the topography, indicated that the facilities "have been producing for a little bit already." At least one of the mines is run by a Chinese company using Chinese-speaking managers, according to the two mine workers and two members of the Shan Human Rights Foundation, an advocacy group that identified the existence of the operations in a May report using satellite imagery. An office at one of the two sites also had a company logo written in Chinese characters, said one of the workers, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters. The use of Chinese operators in the Shan mines and transportation of the output to China mirrors a similar system in Kachin, where entire hillsides stand scarred by leaching pools. Chinese mining firms can produce heavy rare earth oxides in low-cost and loosely regulated Myanmar seven times cheaper than in other regions with similar deposits, said Neha Mukherjee of London-based Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. "Margins are huge." Beijing tightly controls the technology that allows for the efficient extraction of heavy rare earths, and she said that it would be difficult to operate a facility in Myanmar without Chinese assistance. The satellite imagery suggest the Shan mines are smaller than their Kachin counterparts but they are likely to yield the same elements, according to Merriman, who serves as research director at consultancy Project Blue. "The Shan State deposits will have terbium and dysprosium in them, and they will be the main elements that (the miners) are targeting there," he said. STRATEGIC TOOL The UWSA oversees a remote statelet the size of Belgium and, according to U.S. prosecutors, has long prospered from the drug trade. It has a long-standing ceasefire with the junta but still maintains a force of between 30,000 and 35,000 personnel, equipped with modern weaponry mainly sourced from China, according to Ye Myo Hein, a senior fellow at the Southeast Asia Peace Institute. 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Customer charged RM30 for mixed rice in JB, then called out by owner over misleading photo angle
Would you pay RM30 for a plate of mixed rice? If your idea of nasi campur still revolves around a budget-friendly meal where you can eat to your heart's content without breaking the bank, it might be time for a reality check. A man in Johor Bahru recently took to Facebook to share his shock over being charged RM30.20 for a single plate of cai peng at Sentosa Curry Rice in Taman Sentosa. In his post, he included a photo of his meal, detailing the items he picked: a piece of curry chicken, some braised pork and egg, plus a serving of curry vegetables. Like most of us, he didn't bother to ask for the price of each dish while piling food onto his plate, thus, was blindsided when it was time to pay. To top it off, the bill included a 6% SST charge. Apparently, this wasn't his first rodeo. He claimed to be a long-time patron, dating back to the shop's humble pushcart beginnings, particularly fond of their fried chicken. So naturally, the RM30 price tag would hit harder. Many netizens chimed in, siding with the man and dropping jokes here and there. But not everyone took his side. A user posted an estimated itemised bill of his meal while calling him out for being 'greedy'. The plot thickened when the eatery's owner responded with a detailed breakdown of the cai peng, which included: Curry chicken (RM6) Rice (RM4) Braised eggs (RM1.50) Curry vegetables (RM4) Braised pork (RM15) Chinese tea (RM1) She also pointed out that he had taken a rather generous helping of pork, something not clearly reflected in his photo, and accused him of using a strategic camera angle to downplay the portion. However, the man wasn't backing down. He responded, insisting that he didn't even order any drinks, throwing the validity of the breakdown into question. The internet remained divided: some argued that RM15 for 10 pieces of pork (RM1.50 each) was fair enough, while others couldn't get over the RM4 charge for plain rice. What about you — which side are you picking? Wacky Mart convenience store snack series to release on Fri The post Customer charged RM30 for mixed rice in JB, then called out by owner over misleading photo angle appeared first on
