News

We will now wrap up the blog. Bye, folks!
Stocks rose on Friday as Wall Street digested a better-than-expected nonfarm payrolls report for April, which eased recession fears and lifted the S&P 500 for its longest winning streak in just over two decades.
 
The S&P 500 advanced 1.47% and closed at 5,686.67. This marked the broad market index’s ninth consecutive day of gains and its longest winning run since November 2004. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 564.47 points, or 1.39%, to end at 41,317.43.
 
The Nasdaq Composite gained 1.51% and settled at 17,977.73. With Friday’s surge, the S&P 500 has now recovered its losses since April 2, when President Donald Trump announced his “reciprocal” tariffs. This comes a day after the tech-heavy Nasdaq accomplished the same feat.
The unemployment rate for Black women rose by a full percentage point in April, following a year-long deterioration in labour conditions for that category.
 
The jobless rate for Black women aged 20 and over rose to 6.1%, the highest since 2022, from 5.1% in March. It has been steadily increasing since February of last year, when it was 4.4%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data out Friday.
The US Justice Department asked a federal judge on Friday to force Alphabet Inc.’s Google to sell key parts of its advertising technology and share real-time data with competitors to address a ruling that the technology giant illegally monopolises much of the market for placing ads around the web.
 
The government wants the company to divest software used by websites to sell ads, known as a publisher ad server, as well as the exchange used to match buyers and sellers of online display ads. The DOJ argued for a phased approach that would first require Google to provide real-time bidding data from its ad exchange to competing publisher ad servers.
 
The DOJ made the request in a Virginia court Friday during a hearing involving Google’s advertising operations. The government is also in trial against the company in a separate case in Washington focused on Google’s dominance in search.
Wall Street’s risk-on brigade pushed the S&P 500 toward its longest winning streak in two decades, with scars from April’s tariff shock healing on fresh signs of US-China diplomacy.
 
The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 rose more than 1% each on Friday, both heading for a second straight week of gains. A dollar index dropped. Treasuries slid, with the policy-sensitive two-year yield jumping over 10 basis points to 3.83%. Oil slipped almost 2% as OPEC+ discussed making another major production increase.
 
A strong jobs report earlier showed a labour market that’s cooling but remaining resilient. That calmed fears about the impact President Donald Trump’s would have on the economy. Recent developments also indicate that trade tensions are easing between China and the US.
The recent sell-off spurred by worries around President Donald Trump’s tariff plans may be over, said Jay Hatfield of Infrastructure Capital Advisors.
 
“We think we’ve passed peak tariff tantrum,” the firm’s chief executive said in an interview with CNBC, adding that he has a year-end target on the S&P 500 of 6,600. That implies nearly 18% upside from Thursday’s close.
 
Hatfield also thinks there’s going to be a summer rally once the market gets through a “seasonally weak” May-to-June period. That said, he doesn’t believe the S&P 500 will rally past the 6,000 level until most concerns among investors have been resolved.
The market has clawed back to levels seen before President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs announcement in early April on the hopes of trade deals being announced in the near future, but talk of a recession hitting the U.S. economy is also on the rise. This tension can’t last for long, according to Barclays.
 
“[E]arnings are holding up for now, but more companies are sounding cautious on the economic outlook, with guidance and capex intentions revised lower,” wrote analyst Emmanuel Cau in a note on Friday. “So something has to give, as the many bears may prove too hopeful if a recession becomes unavoidable.”
A small logistics company’s plan to hold President Donald Trump’s memecoin as a treasury asset is fueling its blistering stock rally.
 
Freight Technologies Inc. said it will use proceeds from the sale of convertible notes to buy the Trump digital token. The company intends to start with a $1 million offering, and may raise up to $20 million. The Wednesday announcement sent shares of the company soaring by more than double. The stock is up 108% Friday as of 2:43 p.m. in New York — giving it a $4.6 million market value.
 
The Houston-based company said in a press release that it is one of the first public companies to make the Trump coin “a cornerstone of its digital asset strategy.” The purchase came after Freight Technologies acquired FET tokens from Fetch.ai, a decentralised artificial intelligence platform. As of April 29, the company said it holds about $8 million worth of FET.
Shein Group Ltd.’s initial public offering plan has slowed to a crawl as the retailer assesses the impact of US tariffs on its business and awaits regulatory approvals, according to people familiar with the matter.
 
Enthusiasm for what could be London’s biggest IPO in years has been dwindling, with Shein’s valuation target sinking and shareholders trying to sell stock at steep discounts in private market deals. In 2023, Shein was targeting an IPO with a valuation of up to $90 billion. By February, it was seen as $30 billion.
 
Shein filed papers in June for a listing in London, having earlier considered the US. The process was slow even before US President Donald Trump unveiled his barrage of global tariffs, as Shein considered a venue for an IPO, while it also came under scrutiny for its supply-chain operations and labour practices.
US stocks extended gains Friday, putting the S&P 500 Index on track to log the longest winning streak in more than 20 years and wipe out losses from April tariff turbulence as strong jobs data and progress on international trade talks unleashed a wave of buying.
 
The S&P 500 rose 1.4% as of 1:48 p.m. in New York, topping levels it reached on April 2, just before US President Donald Trump triggered a market rout by unveiling sweeping tariffs against major trading partners. The Nasdaq 100 gained 1.6%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 1.3%.
Oil slumped as OPEC+ discussed making a second major production increase, inflaming concerns about swelling global supplies that have dragged down crude prices this year.
 
West Texas Intermediate futures fell almost 2% to trade around $58 a barrel, continuing a slide this week that has brought prices near the lowest since early 2021. Key OPEC+ nations are considering another production increase of about 400,000 barrels a day in June ahead of a meeting the group pushed forward two days to May 3.
Apple Inc. is teaming up with startup Anthropic PBC on a new “vibe-coding” software platform that will use artificial intelligence to write, edit and test code on behalf of programmers.
 
The system is a new version of Xcode, Apple’s programming software, that will integrate Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet model, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Apple will roll out the software internally and hasn’t yet decided whether to launch it publicly, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the initiative hasn’t been announced.
 
The work shows how Apple is using AI to improve its internal workflow, aiming to speed up and modernise product development. The approach is similar to one used by companies such as Windsurf and Cursor maker Anysphere, which offer advanced AI coding assistants popular with software developers.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said his agency doesn’t plan to move forward with billions of dollars worth of Biden-era loans as the Trump administration reviews the department’s $400 billion-strong green bank.
 
Wright, speaking during a Bloomberg Television interview Friday, criticised former President Joe Biden’s administration for issuing billions of dollars in loans and grants between the time President Donald Trump was elected and inauguration day.
 
“We’ve got a lot of reasons to be worried and suspicious about that,” Wright said in response to a question about the department’s loan program. “Some of these loans will go forward, some of it, it’s too late to change course. A lot of them won’t go forward, but that’s a very careful review process that we’ve just put in place and just got a team to execute on.”
Key OPEC+ nations are discussing making another production increase of roughly 400,000 barrels a day in June ahead of a video-conference to set policy on Saturday, delegates said.
 
The group led by Saudi Arabia and Russia stunned oil traders last month with a 411,000 barrel-a-day hike that was triple the amount originally planned, in an apparent bid to discipline its over-producing members. They’re considering doing the same again next month, said the delegates, who asked not to be identified as the talks are private.
A day before Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting, Berkshire board member and longtime shareholder Chris Davis touched on the conglomerate’s endurance.
 
“I think so fundamental is that Berkshire Hathaway is a national treasure that is built to endure and withstand almost anything. And so that focus on resiliency, on a culture of stewardship, on durability — those things, and on being an asset to the United States, that sort of view — that is a really powerful combination,” Davis, also the chairman of Davis Advisors, told CNBC’s Mike Santoli in an interview during “Halftime Report” on Friday afternoon.
 
“And I think that is an enormous, sort of unique defining characteristic of this incredible treasure,” he added.
The European Central Bank can be confident in returning inflation to the 2% goal, according to Vice President Luis de Guindos.
 
While the latest projections already foresaw a deceleration close to that level at the end of the year, the stronger euro, falling commodity prices and economic uncertainty will dampen prices even further, Guindos was cited as saying in interview with the newspaper Die Presse. This will be “decisive” in determining whether to continue cutting interest rates, he said.
 
“We’re optimistic that we will sustainably meet our inflation target,” Guindos said.
Amazon.com Inc. added to its Manhattan real estate holdings with the purchase of an office tower on Fifth Avenue. The e-commerce giant said it bought 522 Fifth Ave. from landlord RFR. No price was disclosed.
 
“We continuously evaluate our corporate office needs to best serve Amazon’s businesses, employees and customers,” a spokesperson for the company said by email.
 
The Real Deal first reported that Amazon was the buyer of the building. The 23-story property, at 44th Street, is close to Grand Central Terminal and six blocks south of the Lord & Taylor building, which Amazon purchased for about $1 billion in March 2020.
A dollar gauge dropped Friday, ending lower for the fourth time in the last five weeks, as the prospect of trade deals created an appetite for other currencies.
 
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.8% on Friday, erasing gains earlier in the week. The yen and Australian, and New Zealand dollars were amongthe  best performers in the Group of 10, advancing more than 1% after China signalled an openness to tariff talks with the US.
The top Democrats on congressional banking committees called on the Federal Reserve to reconsider its decision to approve Capital One Financial Corp.’s purchase of Discover Financial Services, saying it would inflict “serious harm” on consumers and the banking system.
 
The decision sounds like the Fed “had predetermined it was going to approve the transaction and either ignored relevant facts or explained them away with baseless assertions copied and pasted from Capital One’s application,” Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Maxine Waters said in a letter sent to the Fed this week and seen by Bloomberg News.
 
Warren serves as the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee and Waters has the same role on the House Financial Services Committee.
Worries about potential market-moving weekend news from the Trump administration has fueled a surge in Friday trading costs for US investment-grade corporate bonds.
 
Those expenses were 31% more on Fridays in the first half of April than the rest of the week, Barclays Plc researchers Andrea Diaz Lafuente and Zornitsa Todorova wrote in a May 2 note. Global markets swung wildly last month amid President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements.
The US government’s remedies trial in the Google antitrust case regarding its advertising tech is scheduled to begin on September 22, according to civil hearing minutes released Friday.
 
Last month, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, said Google was liable for “willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power,” ruling that Google held illegal monopolies in online advertising markets due to its position between ad buyers and sellers.
Chevron Corp. Chief Executive Officer Mike Wirth says he remains confident his company will prevail against in an arbitration case against Exxon Mobil Corp. and close its $53 billion deal to buy Hess Corp.
 
Wirth said in an interview with Bloomberg Television that he expects a decision in the arbitration case within three months of a hearing scheduled for the end of May.
 
“We’ve had plenty of time to prepare for the integration, and so the teams have been working closely,” Wirth said. “And we are ready to move very quickly to integrate the two businesses.”
 
Exxon filed the arbitration case last year to block Chevron’s acquisition, saying it has a right of first refusal over Hess’s stake in a massive oil field in Guyana.
China said it is assessing the possibility of trade talks with the US, the first sign since Donald Trump hiked tariffs last month that negotiations could begin between the two sides.
 
China’s Commerce Ministry said in a Friday statement that it had noted senior US officials repeatedly expressing their willingness to talk to Beijing about tariffs, and urged officials in Washington to show “sincerity” toward China.
 
“The US has recently sent messages to China through relevant parties, hoping to start talks with China,” the ministry added. “China is currently evaluating this.”
President Donald Trump asked Congress for deep cuts to domestic agencies and a boost to the military in a preliminary outline of his 2026 budget request.
 
The president’s budget calls for $557 billion in non-defense spending next year, which represents a cut of $163 billion from current levels. National security funding would increase to $1.01 trillion, a 13% increase from the previous year.
 
Known as the skinny budget because of its lack of detail, the document is a new president’s first opportunity to outline his vision for the size and scope of the federal government. But Trump’s version was even thinner than usual, omitting baseline economic and interest-rate projections, which are typically a feature of budget proposals submitted by the White House in prior administrations.
Berkshire Hathaway shares hit a record high Friday, just as Warren Buffett is about to kick off Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting on Saturday.
 
Tens of thousands of rapt shareholders will descend on Omaha, Nebraska, this weekend for the annual gathering dubbed “Woodstock for Capitalists.” This year’s meeting marks the 60th anniversary of Buffett leading the company, and the 94-year-old investment legend is expected to opine on a wide range of market-moving topics, including tariffs, the state of the economy and his stock portfolio.
 
Class A shares climbed 1.5% Friday to a new all-time intraday high of 808 993.53. The record closing level to watch is $806 684 from April 2. The stock has rallied more than 18% this year, significantly outperforming the S&P 500.
Singaporean prosecutors secured eight more weeks to deepen a probe and potentially bring more charges against three men accused of fraud in shipping servers suspected of containing Nvidia Corp. chips banned from China.
 
Prosecutors asked for an extension in court proceedings to gather more evidence, and told the court on Friday they may bring additional charges. The judge set the next court hearing for June 27 and told the prosecution to present more evidence at that session.
 
The high-profile cases put Singapore and neighbouring Malaysia under the spotlight, with both countries starting investigations into whether chips subject to US export curbs were funnelled via them to restricted destinations. Advanced artificial intelligence chips developed by US firms, from Nvidia to Advanced Micro Devices Inc,. are banned by the US from being shipped to markets including China.
OPEC+ has brought forward its video conference to discuss June production levels to Saturday, delegates said, asking not to be named because the information is private.
 
The meeting, originally scheduled for May 5, could determine the trajectory of oil prices in the coming weeks, with a majority of traders surveyed by Bloomberg anticipating another supply surge from the cartel.
 
Last month, the alliance led by Saudi Arabia and Russia stunned crude traders by pushing OPEC+ to revive 411,000 barrels a day in May — three times the planned volume — in a move delegates said was intended to punish over-producing members Kazakhstan and Iraq by driving down prices.
The better-than-expected jobs report for April has pushed out market expectations for the next Federal Reserve rate cut.
 
Following the 177,000 increase in nonfarm payrolls, traders in the fed funds futures market took a June cut off the table and now see the central bank’s next move coming in July, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch gauge.
 
For the year, pricing now is split between a total three or four cuts, assuming quarter percentage point increments.
It’s been more than a decade since the US last broke ground on a large-scale nuclear power plant that came online. Xcel Chief Executive Officer Bob Frenzel is raising the idea that it’s time to start again.
 
Many in the utility industry are trying to puzzle out how to meet the expected boom in power demand that’s forecast from the data centers that run artificial intelligence.
 
“I’m a unabashed fan of nuclear,” said Frenzel, a former nuclear engineering officer in the US Navy who served aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. He spoke in an interview at Bloomberg News offices in New York.
 
“Nuclear is safe, it’s carbon free, it’s dispatchable, it’s reliable,” he said.
Block shares were on track for their second-worst day Friday, plunging more than 20% as investors digested a brutal quarterly report and a wave of analyst downgrades centered on one issue: Cash App.
 
The first-quarter earnings miss rattled Wall Street, prompting multiple firms — including Wells Fargo, Seaport, BMO, and Benchmark — to downgrade the stock overnight. Many flagged fresh concerns around stagnant Cash App user growth, muted consumer demand, and a soft macro environment that may weigh on monetisation.NewsLive TVMarketPopular CategoriesCalculatorsTrending NowLet's Connect with CNBCTV 18Network 18 Group :©TV18 Broadcast Limited. All rights reserved.