
Asian shares advance ahead of Trump's deadline for imposing higher tariffs on Chinese goods
Markets in Japan and Thailand were closed for holidays.
The Hang Seng in Hong Kong edged 0.2% higher to 24,908.37, while the Shanghai Composite index gained 0.5% to 3,653.50.
Triple digit tariffs imposed by Trump and Beijing were paused for 90 days in May to allow time for talks.
Tuesday is the deadline for extending that truce. The last round of negotiations, held last month in Stockholm, ended without a clear word from Trump on whether the deadline would be extended for another 90 days.
Elsewhere in Asia, Australia's S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.3% to 8,831.40, while the Kospi in South Korea was nearly unchanged, at 3,210.76.
On Friday, the S&P 500 rose 0.8% to 6,389.45, just shy of its record high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.5% to 44,175.61, and the Nasdaq rose 1% to finish at 21,450.02.
Technology companies, with their hefty stock values, did much of the heavy lifting for the market. Nvidia rose 1.1% and Apple gained 4.2%.
Gilead Sciences jumped 8.3% for one of the market's biggest gains after reporting financial results that easily beat analysts' forecasts, while also raising its earnings forecast for the year. Expedia Group rose 4.1% after also reporting encouraging financial results.
They are among the final big batch of companies within the S&P 500 to report mostly strong financial results for the second quarter. Still, many have warned that current tariffs could cut into their profits.
Elsewhere in the market, entertainment giant Paramount Skydance slid 10.5% a day after the company was created by the closing of an $8 billion merger of Skydance and Paramount. Shares in rival Warner Bros. Discovery sank 8%.
Investors will get more insight this week on U.S. inflation at both the consumer and wholesale levels and on retail sales.
Trump's trade war and its potential impact on the U.S. economy and on the Federal Reserve's interest rate policy are a focus after the U.S. began imposing higher import taxes on dozens of countries last Thursday.
The Fed's last decision to hold interest rates steady included two votes to lower interest rates. Its next meeting is in September, and Wall Street is overwhelmingly betting that the central bank will cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point after signals have pointed to a weaking of the economy.
Both are key concerns for the Fed, which has been trying to cool inflation down to its target rate of 2% while also fulfilling its 'full employment' mandate.
Lower interest rates can give the economy and investment prices a boost, though the downside is that they can also push inflation higher. Concerns about inflation reheating could be overshadowed by worries about a weakening employment market.
In other dealings early Monday, U.S. benchmark crude oil shed 38 cents to $63.50 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, declined 31 cents to $66.28 per barrel.
The U.S. dollar slipped to 147.46 Japanese yen from 147.62 yen. The euro rose to $1.1673 from $1.1650.
Hashtags

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


Bloomberg
25 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Trump to Hold Off Hiking China Tariffs Over Russia Oil Purchases
US President Donald Trump said he will hold off on raising tariffs on Chinese goods over the country's purchases of Russian oil, citing progress he said was made with Vladimir Putin toward ending the war in Ukraine. 'Because of what happened today, I think I don't have to think about that,' Trump said Friday in a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity after his summit with Putin. 'Now, I may have to think about it in two weeks or three weeks or something, but we don't have to think about that right now.'
Yahoo
32 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Strategy Pushed ‘Deceptive' Comparison to Apple and NVIDIA, Wall Street Veteran Says
Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, misrepresented its business to investors when measuring itself against S&P 500 firms last month, according to Damped Spring Advisors CEO and CIO Andy Constan. It is '100% fraudulent' that the Bitcoin-buying firm compared its price-to-earnings ratio to the likes of Apple and NVIDIA on a slide during its second-quarter earnings presentation, the Wall Street veteran said during an episode of the What Bitcoin Did podcast released on Monday. The slide implied that Strategy's earnings are recurring, when the performance was driven by a 'one-off, market-to-market' increase in the value of its Bitcoin holdings, Constan argued. 'They are marketing [that revenue] to investors as recurring earnings that deserve a multiple,' he added. 'That is deceptive.' Macro analyst Lyn Alden, who was also featured on the podcast as a guest, said, 'I'm not sure I would call it fraudulent, but I don't agree with the charts that show their P/E comparison either.' Decrypt reached out to Strategy for comment. Strategy shares closed down 4.35% on Thursday to trade at $372.92 after falling 2.2% the day before, according to Yahoo Finance. The stock is still up 33% year-to-date, but shares have slid 11% from $447 over the past month. Bitcoin's price was recently down 3.7% over the past 24 hours to trade just above $118,000, meanwhile. It hit a fresh all-time high above $124,000 on Wednesday, according to crypto data provider CoinGecko. The price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) compares a company's share price with the earnings that it generates, yielding a multiple that can be used to assess stocks' relative values. As of July 29, Strategy had a 4.7x P/E multiple, while chipmaker NVIDIA's's stood at 40.8x. 'There are only five companies in the S&P 500 universe that have a lower PE multiple than us,' Strategy CEO and President Phong Lee said during the firm's Q2 earnings call. 'We're possibly the most misunderstood and undervalued stock in the U.S. and potentially the world.' Strategy disclosed a whopping $10 billion second-quarter profit last month, or earnings of $32.60 per common share. The company meanwhile posted $114.5 million in Q2 revenue, largely from software subscriptions and providing product support. Under generally acceptable accounting principles (GAAP), Strategy started recording its Bitcoin holdings at fair value this year, reflecting quarter-to-quarter price swings. Under previous rules, firms recorded cryptocurrencies at their original cost; they could write them down as an 'impairment charge' if the value dropped—but could not mark them up when prices rose. Despite the shift in GAAP rules, Strategy should be careful with how it portrays earnings because if the Bitcoin 'market falls, they will be the biggest loser in that quarter in history,' Constan argued. MetaMask Is Set to Unveil Plans for New Stablecoin: Source Constan, who isn't opposed to Bitcoin as an investment, argued that Strategy resembles a Ponzi scheme because the company has issued a lot of preferred shares to buy Bitcoin and 'there is no hope of paying the preferred dividends without new proceeds from issuance.' In the first quarter, Strategy disclosed a $5.9 billion loss after Bitcoin's price fell, or a decline of $16.49 per common share. Strategy warned that a Q1 profit was doubtful around a month prior, but identical class action lawsuits, alleging securities fraud, were subsequently filed. The lawsuit accused Strategy of making 'false and misleading" public statements about the anticipated profitability of its Bitcoin treasury strategy. In SEC filings, the company has signaled that it intends to "vigorously defend itself against these claims.' But if Strategy ever fails, Constan said that any legal battle could be overshadowed, and the slide in question could be remembered for years to come. 'Fraud will be the least of Saylor's problems,' he said, referring to Strategy's ever-bullish executive chairman and co-founder Michael Saylor. 'That slide will live in infamy.' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
42 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Wall Street Joins Consumer Advocates to Call for Edit to GENIUS Act on Stablecoins
Wall Street bankers are hammering away at some provisions of the new U.S. stablecoin law that was hailed by President Donald Trump and the crypto sector as a huge first step toward establishing a fully regulated U.S. industry, and the banks are joined by unusual bedfellows from the consumer-advocate world in sounding alarms. Hoping to revise and cut provisions that might threaten aspects of the current financial system, the American Bankers Association and other bank lobbying groups aligned in a letter this week with Americans for Financial Reform — usually a staunch opponent of Wall Street's policy aims — and the National Consumer Law Center. One provision of the stablecoin law known as the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act lets a stablecoin-issuing subsidiary of a state-chartered uninsured depository institution run money-transmission and custody services nationwide, which the bankers argue bypasses existing state licensing and oversight. Their letter asked several key U.S. senators to insist that whole section be erased entirely. "Ignoring state law in this regard invites regulatory arbitrage, allowing certain uninsured depository institutions special privileges to operate across state lines as federally insured banks currently do, but without the panoply of regulatory and supervisory requirements, or limitations on preemption applicable to those institutions," the August 13 letter argued. The bank lobbyists, also cooperated in a separate effort to protect deposits and other core aspects of their businesses from the GENIUS Act, arguing in another letter to lawmakers this week that the law leaves an opening for crypto firms to offer returns on stablecoins. While the law bans stablecoin issuers themselves from offering interest or yield, it doesn't stop the issuers' affiliates or exchanges from doing so indirectly. The bankers fear a massive loss of deposits and money-market fund activity from the resulting rivalry stablecoins might offer. "Congress must protect the flow of credit to American businesses and families and the stability of the most important financial market by closing the stablecoin payment of interest loophole," according to the groups, including the ABA, Bank Policy Institute, Financial Services Forum and others. Banks turn deposits into loans, so the lack of deposits threatens necessary U.S. lending. Faryar Shirzad, the chief policy officer at U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase, criticized the banks' position in postings on social media site X. "Congress shouldn't be in the business of passing legislation that takes away consumer choice and the opportunity for the average person to earn returns on their hard-earned dollars," he wrote, additionally arguing that the $6 trillion figure on what desposits may be at stake is overblown. "Let's play along for a second," Shirzad added. "If customers really would move $6T away from banks into stablecoins, what does that say about what value consumers feel like they're getting from their banks?" The GENIUS Act was signed into law by President Trump, but the bigger and more complex legislation to regulate U.S. crypto markets is still pending. That future bill, which already passed the House of Representatives as the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, could still overhaul provisions of the stablecoin law, even before that new law is converted into rules by the U.S. financial regulators. That's what the bankers are advocating, alongside their temporary customer-advocate allies. Adds comment from Coinbase's Faryar Shirzad. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data