
World shares mixed ahead of meeting between Trump and Putin
It later fell back below 122,000 dollars.
The future for the S&P 500 was unchanged, while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged 0.1% higher.
Later Thursday, a report will show how bad US inflation was at the wholesale level across the US.
Economists expect it to show inflation ticked up to 2.4% in July from 2.3% in June.
In early European trading, Germany's DAX rose 0.5% to 24,296.02.
In Paris, the CAC 40 added 0.4% to 7,832.60.
Europe is bracing for Mr Trump's encounter with Mr Putin, though the US president has said he will prioritise trying to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine when he meets with Mr Putin on Friday in Anchorage, Alaska.
The Trump-Putin meeting could have major implications for energy markets, potentially leading to an easing of sanctions against Moscow, or an escalation if no progress is made on ending the war in Ukraine.
Early on Thursday, US benchmark crude rose 28 cents to 62.93 dollars per barrel.
Brent crude, the international standard, added 32 cents to 65.95 dollars per barrel.
During Asian trading, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 fell nearly 1.5% to 42,649.26 as investors sold to lock in recent gains that have taken the benchmark to all-time records.
The Japanese yen rose against the dollar after US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview with Bloomberg that Japan was 'behind the curve' in monetary tightening.
He was referring to the slow pace of increases in Japan's near-zero interest rates.
Low interest rates tend to make the yen weaker against the dollar, giving Japanese exporters a cost advantage in overseas sales.
The dollar fell to 146.50 Japanese yen Thursday, down from 147.39 yen.
The euro slid to 1.1681 dollars from 1.1705 dollars.
In Chinese markets, Hong Kong's Hang Seng index shed 0.4% to 25,519.32, while the Shanghai composite index slid 0.5% to 3,666.44.
South Korea's Kospi rose less than 0.1% to 3,225.66.
In Australia, the S&P ASX 200 index added 0.5% to 8,873.80.
Taiwan's Taiex fell 0.5% and India's Sensex edged 0.2% higher.
On Wednesday, US stocks ticked higher, extending a global rally fuelled by hopes the Federal Reserve will cut US interest rates.
The S&P 500 rose 0.3% and the Dow climbed 1%.
The Nasdaq composite added 0.1%.
Treasury yields eased in the bond market in anticipation that the Fed will cut its main interest rate for the first time this year at its next meeting in September.
Lower rates can boost investment prices and the economy by making it cheaper for US households and businesses to borrow to buy houses, cars or equipment, though they risk worsening inflation.
Mr Trump has angrily been calling for cuts to help the economy, often insulting the Fed chairman Jerome Powell while doing so.
But the Fed has hesitated, worried that Mr Trump's sweeping higher tariffs could make inflation much worse.
Fed officials have said they want to see more fresh data about inflation before moving.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Profits plunge at C Hoare & Co, Britain's oldest bank
Britain's oldest private bank has seen profits slump and has warned Donald Trump's tariffs have left the outlook for the UK economy 'increasingly subdued'. C Hoare & Co, founded in 1672, posted a £63.7 million pre-tax profit for the year to March 2025, down from £80.8 million the year before, according to its most recent accounts. Total income fell to £249 million from £272 million. The bank blamed interest rates, which fell from 5.25 to 4.5 per cent in the period, meaning less money from loans, as well as its customers moving to 'higher-paying' sources of returns. It came despite total customer deposits at the bank rising 5.4 per cent to £6.4 billion and a 6.5 per cent rise in lending to £2.4 billion. Chairman Lord Macpherson, a former Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, said the coming year looked uncertain, as the UK had 'yet to break out of its low productivity-low growth cycle'. The bank said US tariffs had seen 'unprecedented disruption' to global trade and supply chains too and it was 'futile' to try to predict the final levies on imports. Based on Fleet Street, Hoare's is the world's oldest family-owned bank, with eight members of the Hoare lineage, including Venetia Hoare as partners. Clients include some of Britain's largest landowning families.


Times
9 hours ago
- Times
Traders, not bankers, are the masters of London's finance universe
This was supposed to be the year of the dealmaker as animal spirits revived. But once again it is the traders at banks and hedge funds that are the top dogs. Nowhere is this more so than in London. My first job in the late nineties was on one of the largest bank trading floors in the City. I vividly remember the roar of the floor: hundreds of traders shouting prices down the phone to their clients, yelling trades across the floor to colleagues and tapping away furiously on large clunky Bloomberg terminals. Investment banking dealmaking in IPOs and M&A has always been big business for banks. But this sector has struggled since the pandemic, despite signs that deals are returning thanks to the AI boom: the US software maker Figma saw its share price rise 250 per cent on the day it listed. Yet investment banking revenues are a shadow of previous bubbles, and the majority of it comes from less sexy debt underwriting. By contrast, the trading desks of banks have grown much faster — mainly due to high volatility in markets, the enduring success of 'buy the dip' strategies, and a massive growth in hedge fund trading. Just take a look at the earnings of the major banks: Goldman Sachs has seen its markets revenue double since 2019, but its investment banking business hasn't grown. And despite a concerted effort by adding deal makers, in the second quarter of 2025 Barclays' revenues in equity capital markets were only £81 million, while M&A advisory was just £123 million; its markets business revenues were £2.3 billion. Much of the boom in trading has come from hedge funds and other leveraged players, which raise finance from the major banks. This business now makes up a third of the markets revenue at firms such as Goldman and Barclays. According to the US Treasury, the pace of hedge fund borrowing has increased significantly. This is partly owing to rising markets and higher assets under management (AUM). But leverage has risen considerably for the largest 50 hedge funds in the world. These days, the star traders are just as likely to be at a hedge fund than a bank. 'Pod shop' hedge funds are at the vanguard. These are distinct from other hedge funds because they have large numbers of separate investment teams. The largest, Millennium Management, has more than 320 of these 'pods' of traders. Pods can be like running your own business but outsourcing all the non-investment functions. The central pod shop team raises money (typically one master fund), speaks to clients and manages infrastructure such as technology. Firms such as Citadel, which employs more than 265 PhDs, are known as pioneers in data and have the scale to win in the AI age. Pod shops aim to be market neutral, relying on portfolio diversification and lashes of leverage to eke out adequate consistent returns. Each pod is an expert in a specific area whether it be trading tech stocks or European interest rates but is set strict limits in terms of diversification, liquidity and market exposure. Risk limits are tight with capital pulled from pods when they have drawdowns and pods closed if they are down 7 per cent. The biggest ten pod shops may have only $300 billion of AUM, but they have 20,000 employees. The largest are of the scale of an investment bank. Given their trader mentality and the Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest approach, pod shops tend to hire from other hedge funds or bank trading desks and have a high employee churn rate of about 15-20 per cent a year. Just like bank trading desks, the vast majority of their traders are young men below the age of 40. While most pod shops are based in the US, they have sizeable London offices, cementing the UK's enduring position as a hot spot for trading. At the same time, there has been a significant growth of multi-strategy hedge funds that have similarities to pod shops but with a more centralised approach to investing. The largest of these, a British hedge fund with a London headquarters, is Marshall Wace, which has more than $70 billion in AUM and 700 employees. London has always had a conveyor belt from bank trading desk to hedge fund. This includes the founders of names such as Rokos, Brevan Howard and Capula. There is some movement of talent to the UAE, but several of the fastest-growing, newer firms in the industry including quant fund QRT (Qube Research & Technologies) and credit fund Arini are London-based. In the adjacent universe of high-frequency trading, XTX Markets illustrates the vibrancy of London's trading community. Investment bankers are natural salespeople who like to go on TV to talk up dealmaking, but bank and hedge fund traders are where the money is. And it is likely to remain that way for the time being. But a word of caution: the image that you conjure up when you hear the word 'trader' may need to change. The world of the alpha trader who relied on their gut instinct, market chatter and the huge firepower and risk appetite of their banks to take large positions disappeared after the financial crisis. Exchanges are now all electronic, and customers such as big hedge funds are increasingly data-driven and execute electronically; most of a bank's trades are priced by algorithms with the quant and tech guys making the trading floors of today much quieter. It has been said that at its height, in 2000, Goldman Sachs employed 600 US cash equity traders and that two decades later there were almost none, as the business was being done with algorithms. In complex derivatives, less liquid financial instruments or very large trades, there remains a need for the human trader — but the computers keep getting better. Rupak Ghose is an adviser to fintech companies and a former financials research analyst


Scottish Sun
10 hours ago
- Scottish Sun
Inside ‘secret' plans to turn iconic Glasgow building into ‘one of Europe's finest hotels'
It's one of Glasgow's biggest American-Classical-style commercial buildings UNDER WRAPS Inside 'secret' plans to turn iconic Glasgow building into 'one of Europe's finest hotels' Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) PLANS are in progress to transform an iconic Glasgow building into one of Europe's "finest" hotels. The B-listed 95 Bothwell Street building in the city centre is understood to be mostly empty. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 1 Plans have been lodged with Glasgow City Council to transform 95 Bothwell Street Credit: Google Maps It's one of Glasgow's biggest American Classical-style commercial buildings. Proposals to turn it into a 235-room hotel have been submitted to the council. But details about the hotel company eyeing to take over the building have been kept under wraps. A statement about the proposed design read: 'The proposed confidential hotel operator is particularly excited about the potential provided by the building to create a best-in-class hotel of distinction, which they anticipate will be one of the finest in their operator's European portfolio. 'The listed building is soon to become entirely unoccupied. The commercial office use for which the building was built and designed is no longer viable. "The building has early indications of corrosion of the structural steel frame, which needs to be addressed to prevent damage to the significant external masonry façade. 'The proposed development is conservation-led and will integrate and repurpose the significant parts of the listed building into the new hotel use, whilst retaining its external appearance and presence within the street.' HFD Property Group Limited has lodged a planning permission request to alter the use of the building from 'offices at upper floors and restaurant/cafe and retail on ground floor to hotel". The proposals also include constructing a two-storey roof extension. Glasgow City Council is considering the application.