S&P, Nasdaq again close at record highs, trade choppy
U.S. President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled a
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Undo
trade framework
on Sunday, slashing EU import tariffs to 15% - half the previously threatened rate that was scheduled to take effect on August 1. Still, France denounced the deal as a "submission."
The deal is the latest announcement in recent days on U.S. trade agreements with countries such as Japan and Indonesia. Top U.S. and Chinese economic officials
Live Events
resumed talks
in Stockholm to resolve a
trade war
between the world's two largest economies.
"It's feel-good in the sense that it doesn't represent Armageddon, if the draconian tariffs went into place," said Scott Welch, chief investment officer at Certuity in Potomac, Maryland.
"But it's much too soon to pass judgment on the long-term effects on how that will play out. It's better than the alternative for sure, and so I hope they continue."
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 64.36 points, or 0.14%, to 44,837.56, the S&P 500 gained 1.13 points, or 0.02%, to 6,389.77 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 70.27 points, or 0.33%, to 21,178.58.
The benchmark S&P 500 index has now notched six straight daily closing records, en route to its 15th closing record of the year. Stocks have rebounded strongly from a selloff that began in early April when Trump announced a slew of tariffs.
Mounting enthusiasm over the potential for AI technology has helped lift stocks, along with the realization of some trade pacts and early indications
corporate earnings season
may be better than anticipated.
Investors now await a policy announcement from the Federal Reserve on Wednesday. The central bank is
widely expected
to keep U.S. rates unchanged even as Trump has ramped up pressure on Fed Chair Jerome Powell to lower borrowing costs.
Also on deck this week were a slew of corporate earnings, including results from heavyweights Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple, which could sway broader investor sentiment in either direction.
Along with the Fed meeting and earnings, a number of
economic indicators
are scheduled to be released this week, including the Personal Consumption Expenditure report (PCE) - the Fed's preferred inflation measure - and the government payrolls report to gauge how tariffs may have affected consumer prices and the labor market.
Nike climbed 3.89% after J.P. Morgan upgraded the stock to "overweight" from "neutral" and said investors should "just buy it".
Energy, up 1.15% was the best performing S&P sector on the session, buoyed by a jump of more than 2% in oil prices while real estate, down 1.75%, and materials , off 1.44%, were the worst performing.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 1.81-to-1 ratio on the NYSE, and by a 1.48-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P 500 posted 26 new 52-week highs and five new lows, while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 68 new highs and 54 new lows.
Volume on U.S. exchanges was 17.58 billion shares, compared with the 17.84 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.
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Hans India
9 minutes ago
- Hans India
Trump's conflicting South Asia policies strain US-India ties
Toronto: US President Donald Trump's South Asian policy has been marked with strategic contradictions, straining its relationship with India. Though the US considers India a vital player in the Indo-Pacific and seeks its partnership in the region, several of Trump's policy decisions have clashed with India's core strategic interests, a report cited on Saturday. Such contradictions became apparent in several recent decisions, including hosting Pakistan's army chief, General Asim Munir, at the White House, supporting an IMF bailout to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor, and recurring gestures of praise towards Pakistani leadership, Imran Khurshid, an Associate Research Fellow at the International Centre for Peace Studies (ICPS) in New Delhi, wrote in the Eurasian Times. He highlighted that the US support for Pakistan has emboldened Islamabad's strategic confidence, providing it with a leeway to act aggressively against India — politically, militarily, and diplomatically — "especially at sensitive geopolitical moments". "If the US wants India to be a serious and independent partner in the Indo-Pacific, it must stop undermining India in South Asia and respect its sensitivities. It must abandon binary, fragmented regional frameworks and instead pursue an integrated strategy that strengthens India's position — not weakens it," Khurshid mentioned. "If these contradictions continue, America may not just lose India — it may lose the very global leadership it once proudly commanded. Trump claims to want to 'Make America Great Again', but his actions might just ensure America becomes isolated, distrusted, and strategically irrelevant," he added. The relationship between India and the US was once described as the "defining partnership of the 21st century". Previous US Presidents, including Bill Clinton in his second term, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, made considerable efforts to establish mutual trust and followed the policy of de-hyphenation with India and Pakistan, "treating each country on its own merits". "They largely respected India's red lines, particularly on sensitive issues like Kashmir and strategic autonomy, and avoided viewing India through a Pakistan-centric lens..." Trump's transactional approach to foreign policy, he wrote, is driven by personal ego, unpredictable behaviour, fragmented thinking, and an obsession with trade deficits and tariffs which has made India uneasy. The recent actions by Trump, reckoned the author, have eroded the trust and warmth that once existed in the India–US relationship. "This disregard recently escalated with Trump's unilateral decision to impose a 25 per cent tariff on Indian goods starting August 1, 2025, coupled with vague but punitive secondary sanctions linked to India's continued purchases of Russian oil and defence equipment," he stated.
Indian Express
9 minutes ago
- Indian Express
It's Trump's economy now. The latest financial numbers offer some warning signs
For all of President Donald Trump's promises of an economic 'golden age,' a spate of weak indicators this week told a potentially worrisome story as the impacts of his policies are coming into focus. Job gains are dwindling. Inflation is ticking upward. Growth has slowed compared with last year. More than six months into his term, Trump's blitz of tariff hikes and his new tax and spending bill have remodeled America's trading, manufacturing, energy and tax systems to his own liking. He's eager to take credit for any wins that might occur and is hunting for someone else to blame if the financial situation starts to totter. But as of now, this is not the boom the Republican president promised, and his ability to blame his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, for any economic challenges has faded as the world economy hangs on his every word and social media post. When Friday's jobs report turned out to be decidedly bleak, Trump ignored the warnings in the data and fired the head of the agency that produces the monthly jobs figures. 'Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can't be manipulated for political purposes,' Trump said on Truth Social, without offering evidence for his claim. 'The Economy is BOOMING.' It's possible that the disappointing numbers are growing pains from the rapid transformation caused by Trump and that stronger growth will return — or they may be a preview of even more disruption to come. Trump's aggressive use of tariffs, executive actions, spending cuts and tax code changes carries significant political risk if he is unable to deliver middle-class prosperity. The effects of his new tariffs are still several months away from rippling through the economy, right as many Trump allies in Congress will be campaigning in the midterm elections. 'Considering how early we are in his term, Trump's had an unusually big impact on the economy already,' said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist at Firehouse Strategies. 'The full inflationary impact of the tariffs won't be felt until 2026. Unfortunately for Republicans, that's also an election year.' The White House portrayed the blitz of trade frameworks leading up to Thursday's tariff announcement as proof of his negotiating prowess. The European Union, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia and other nations that the White House declined to name agreed that the US could increase its tariffs on their goods without doing the same to American products. Trump simply set rates on other countries that lacked settlements. The costs of those tariffs — taxes paid on imports to the US — will be most felt by many Americans in the form of higher prices, but to what extent remains uncertain. 'For the White House and their allies, a key part of managing the expectations and politics of the Trump economy is maintaining vigilance when it comes to public perceptions,' said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist. Just 38% of adults approve of Trump's handling of the economy, according to a July poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. That's down from the end of Trump's first term when half of adults approved of his economic leadership. The White House paints a rosier image, seeing the economy emerging from a period of uncertainty after Trump's restructuring and repeating the economic gains seen in his first term before the pandemic struck. 'President Trump is implementing the very same policy mix of deregulation, fairer trade, and pro-growth tax cuts at an even bigger scale – as these policies take effect, the best is yet to come,' White House spokesman Kush Desai said. The economic numbers over the past week show the difficulties that Trump might face if the numbers continue on their current path: — Friday's jobs report showed that US employers have shed 37,000 manufacturing jobs since Trump's tariff launch in April, undermining prior White House claims of a factory revival. — Net hiring has plummeted over the past three months with job gains of just 73,000 in July, 14,000 in June and 19,000 in May — a combined 258,000 jobs lower than previously indicated. On average last year, the economy added 168,000 jobs a month. — A Thursday inflation report showed that prices have risen 2.6% over the year that ended in June, an increase in the personal consumption expenditures price index from 2.2% in April. Prices of heavily imported items, such as appliances, furniture, and toys and games, jumped from May to June. — On Wednesday, a report on gross domestic product — the broadest measure of the US economy — showed that it grew at an annual rate of less than 1.3% during the first half of the year, down sharply from 2.8% growth last year. 'The economy's just kind of slogging forward,' said Guy Berger, senior fellow at the Burning Glass Institute, which studies employment trends. 'Yes, the unemployment rate's not going up, but we're adding very few jobs. The economy's been growing very slowly. It just looks like a 'meh' economy is continuing.' Trump has sought to pin the blame for any economic troubles on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, saying the Fed should cut its benchmark interest rates even though doing so could generate more inflation. Trump has publicly backed two Fed governors, Christoper Waller and Michelle Bowman, for voting for rate cuts at Wednesday's meeting. But their logic is not what the president wants to hear: They were worried, in part, about a slowing job market. But this is a major economic gamble being undertaken by Trump and those pushing for lower rates under the belief that mortgages will also become more affordable as a result and boost homebuying activity. His tariff policy has changed repeatedly over the last six months, with the latest import tax numbers serving as a substitute for what the president announced in April, which provoked a stock market sell-off. It might not be a simple one-time adjustment as some Fed board members and Trump administration officials argue. Of course, Trump can't say no one warned him about the possible consequences of his economic policies. Biden, then the outgoing president, did just that in a speech last December at the Brookings Institution, saying the cost of the tariffs would eventually hit American workers and businesses. 'He seems determined to impose steep, universal tariffs on all imported goods brought into this country on the mistaken belief that foreign countries will bear the cost of those tariffs rather than the American consumer,' Biden said. 'I believe this approach is a major mistake.'
Time of India
18 minutes ago
- Time of India
Is Sydney Sweeney a Republican? Fact-checking the viral claim amid the 'controversial' Euphoria actor's American Eagle backlash
makes a splash every time she appears on a commercial (with her sexy commercial scratchy voice, as coined by Stephen Colbert), whether by choice or by sheer coincidence. The ' ' actress has been under scrutiny for the past few days, thanks to her latest and heavily criticized American Eagle campaign, where she claims that she has great 'jeans', a pun on 'genes' that sparked heated debate over racial undertones and alleged ties to eugenics. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Yes, it's attracted more ridicule than her bathwater soap (?!), and what followed was an intense backlash and a whole lot of digging to find dirt on her. Amid mounting criticism over her 'controversial' commercials, now, questions have swirled about whether the 'Anyone But You' star is a Republican or not. More pressingly, did she vote for Donald Trump? Is Sydney Sweeney a Republican ? Multiple sources, including Florida's Department of State voter records (as reported by Newsweek), confirm that a Sydney Bernice Sweeney was registered as a Republican voter in Monroe County, Florida, on June 14, 2024, with an active voter status. A viral post on X by user @time222smoke first claimed that she was a registered member of the Republican Party. BuzzFeed subsequently reported on Sweeney's voter registration after reviewing publicly available records. However, there is no official confirmation that this registration belongs to the Hollywood actress born in Spokane and based in Los Angeles. While she owns a $13.5 million home in Florida's Summerland Key, aligning with the state of registration, none of the public reports confirm directly that the voter record refers to her. Furthermore, there's no official statement from Sweeney's side accepting or denying the claim. In short, yes, there's publicly accessible data pointing to Republican registration, but no definitive confirmation that it refers to the actor herself. Political image so far This isn't the first time Sweeney has faced heat. In 2022, images from her mother's 60th birthday party went viral, with guests wearing MAGA‑style hats and 'Blue Lives Matter' shirts. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Sweeney later clarified that those individuals were family friends, not her family, and she 'didn't intend a political statement.' In fact, on-screen and in public forums, Sweeney is as 'woke' as it gets. She has openly supported liberal-leaning causes such as LGBTQ+ rights, transgender rights, Black Lives Matter, and remained pro‑choice. However, her broader political alignment remains unclear, as she generally maintains a low public profile on explicit partisan issues. Although that hasn't stopped her from attending billionaire Jeff Bezos' ludicrous (to say the least) wedding in Venice and doing another ridiculous commercial selling her bathwater soap! Did Sweeney vote for Donald Trump ? Although multiple outlets have claimed that Sweeney is a registered Republican, there is no credible confirmation of her exact political alignment and affiliation. Which brings us to answer the obvious next question: no credible source confirms that she voted for or endorsed the US President Donald Trump. In essence, she has largely stayed out of electoral politics in public life. Great jeans or poor campaign: The American Eagle controversy Launched in late July, the campaign's centerpiece, 'Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans,' triggered intense debate in the public forum. One video even featured her saying, 'Genes are passed down… My jeans are blue.' The campaign generated a wave of controversy, being accused of invoking racialized beauty standards and eugenics-era rhetoric, noting Sweeney's blonde hair and blue eyes as visual cues in the messaging. Some even labeled the campaign 'fascist‑coded,' 'Nazi propaganda,' or an explicit nod to white supremacist tropes. While many argued that the pun on 'genes' combined with visuals of a blonde, blue‑eyed actress evoked white‑beauty norms and eugenics imagery, American Eagle came out with a rather 'safe' comment, responding to the backlash, stating: 'It is and always was about the jeans… great jeans look good on everyone.' However, despite the controversy, the brand's stock rose by around 10-11% following the campaign rollout, and Sydney Sweeney hasn't yet stopped trending on various social media platforms; evidence that controversy can translate into commercial traction. The final word… Sydney Sweeney's political identity remains ambiguous. The fact that the actress has yet to issue an official statement despite the intense heat speaks for her potential preference to keep her political stance that way. Will this ambiguity play out in her favor? Or she will come out, picking a side, justifying the same? Moreover, will that affect her career in the public eye? That remains to be seen. Sydney Sweeney Ad Row: JD Vance Unbuckles On 'Nazi' Noise, American Eagle Keeps It Casual
