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We will now wrap up the blog. Bye, folks!

Stocks rose on Monday as traders hoped to close out a stunning month with even more record highs. The S&P 500 gained 0.6%, building on the record highs set in the previous session. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.6 and had also reached fresh all-time highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 308 points, or 0.7%.

Monday’s rise follows Canada rescinding its digital service tax in an effort to facilitate trade negotiations with the U.S. That’s after President Donald Trump on Friday said the U.S. was “terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada.” Initial payments on the tax were set to begin Monday and would have applied to companies such as Google, Meta and Amazon.

Stocks are wrapping up a stellar quarter at all-time highs, while hopes the Federal Reserve will resume rate cuts drove Treasuries toward their best first-half stretch in five years. The dollar eyed its longest monthly slide since 2017.

The S&P 500 topped 6,200 Monday, with its 24% surge from the brink of a bear market putting the US equity benchmark on pace for its best quarter since December 2023. Big banks climbed after passing the Fed’s annual stress test, setting the stage for payouts. Oracle Corp. jumped on a cloud-services deal worth $30 billion a year.

Apple Inc. lost its bid to throw out an antitrust case brought by the US Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general on Monday, a victory for the aggressive posture taken during the Biden administration and carried on by enforcers under President Donald Trump.

The lawsuit is an existential threat to Apple and could upend its highly lucrative mobile hardware business. The iPhone maker is accused of violating antitrust laws by blocking rivals from accessing hardware and software features on its popular devices.

The government claims Apple has used its power over app distribution and the iPhone’s features to thwart innovations that would have made it easier for consumers to switch phones.

Aspiring Starbucks Corp. baristas now have to go through an additional layer of interviews to land a job as part of a new hiring push by Chief Executive Officer Brian Niccol.

As of early June, external applicants must be screened by district managers in addition to the manager of the store where they’re applying, according to people familiar with the matter who weren’t authorised to speak publicly. District managers normally oversee about 10 locations and weren’t previously part of the hiring process at the store level.

Starbucks is bulking up staffing as Niccol pushes to revive sales in part by speeding up service. It’s a reversal of past years, where the coffee chain cut the average number of store workers. Starbucks has said that nearly all of its more than 10,000 company-operated locations in the US will have more workers by the end of September.

Argentina’s economy grew more than expected in April as President Javier Milei loosened some currency controls as part of a $20 billion agreement with the International Monetary Fund.

Economic activity rose 1.9% in April from March, compared with the median estimate of 0.3% of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. From a year ago, activity rose 7.7% in April, also surpassing expectations, according to government data published Monday.

After a harsh contraction last year at the start of Milei’s austerity drive, economic activity grew in the first two months of this year, but fell in March amid market flummox just before inking the new IMF deal.

The financing package was signed on April 11, and Argentina lifted significant currency and capital controls with little impact on the currency, though restrictions remain in place for businesses.

Tweaks to the European Central Bank’s strategy unveiled Monday will allow policymakers to deliver more nuanced communication in an increasingly unpredictable world, President Christine Lagarde said.

“Our updated strategy commits to ensuring that our policy decisions account not only for the most likely path of inflation and the economy, but also for the surrounding risks and uncertainty, including through the appropriate use of scenario and sensitivity analyses,” she said.

Such an approach would have helped in 2021, when vaccines allowed the global economy to reopen rapidly but also triggered a surge in inflation, according to Lagarde, whose speech kicked off the ECB’s annual central-banking forum in Sintra, Portugal.

President Donald Trump threatened to impose a fresh tariff level on Japan, while his top economic adviser said the White House aims to finalise deals with partners after the July 4 holiday.

Trump’s latest round of brinkmanship with Tokyo on Monday comes just over a week before a July 9 deadline for higher tariffs to restart for dozens of trading partners, including Japan. He cited what he said was the country’s unwillingness to accept US rice exports.

“They won’t take our RICE, and yet they have a massive rice shortage,” Trump posted on social media. “In other words, we’ll just be sending them a letter, and we love having them as a Trading Partner for many years to come.”

Apple Inc. is considering using artificial intelligence technology from Anthropic PBC or OpenAI to power a new version of Siri, sidelining its own in-house models in a potentially blockbuster move aimed at turning around its flailing AI effort.

The iPhone maker has talked with both companies about using their large language models for Siri, according to people familiar with the discussions. It has asked them to train versions of their models that could run on Apple’s cloud infrastructure for testing, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations.

If Apple ultimately moves forward, it would represent a monumental reversal. The company currently powers most of its AI features with homegrown technology that it calls Apple Foundation Models, and had been planning a new version of its voice assistant that runs on that technology for 2026.

US President Donald Trump blasted AT&T Inc. for poor network performance during a conference call he was holding with faith leaders on Monday.

“I apologize for the long wait on the Faith Leaders Conference Call,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “AT&T ought to get its act together.” He said he may have to reschedule the call but would “use another carrier the next time.”

Trump also called for the head of AT&T, “whoever that may be” to personally get involved, referring to Chief Executive Officer John Stankey. The president said he had “tens of thousands of people on the line,” and that AT&T is “totally unable to make their equipment work properly.”

Chilean state mining company Codelco is on track to finalise a landmark deal with lithium supplier SQM well before the next government takes office next year, a company official said Monday.

Amid mounting political opposition to the transaction heading into presidential elections, Codelco is sticking with its deadline of completing all pending approvals by the end of September, the Codelco official said. Those approvals include a final nod from Chilean nuclear agency CCHEN, community consultation and Chinese antitrust approval. China’s Tianqi Lithium Corp. is a key shareholder in SQM.

Under the deal, SQM would relinquish a majority stake in its prized Atacama assets to Codelco in exchange for three more decades of operations. It’s part of President Gabriel Boric’s efforts to boost state involvement in critical minerals while stepping up production despite current global oversupply. Criticism has ranged from the deal being a case of state overreach to terms being overly beneficial to SQM.

Republican Party leaders are rushing to overcome lingering internal fights over President Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending package as Democrats launch attacks to exploit the divisions.

Senate Republicans were still at odds Monday over how much to cut Medicaid and other social safety-net programs and how rapidly to end Biden-era clean energy tax breaks as Democrats gained the chance to force votes on amendments to the package.

Democrats, locked out of power in Washington, are planning to offer amendments during a marathon voting session to exploit the infighting and make the GOP goal of getting holdouts to back the bill as soon as Monday night more difficult.

Citigroup Inc.’s top banker to governments is retiring, but has at least one more appointment to keep.

In September, Julie Monaco will travel to Europe for her bank’s Ukraine unit’s board meeting. It’s one sign of Ukraine’s importance to Citigroup, which is the only US bank still operating in the country and counts the government among its roughly 500 clients there. Now, it’s readying for the nation’s reconstruction once Russia’s war on Ukraine is ultimately over.

“There is business there that has continued to grow,” Monaco, Citigroup’s global head of public-sector banking, said in an interview. “There’s going to be a lot of opportunity and it will require a lot of capital.”

It’s a widely held belief among economists that President Donald Trump’s tariffs will boost inflation notably over the next few months. But muted price increases so far have called that assumption into question, emboldening the White House and opening up divisions at the Federal Reserve.

Anticipation of firmer inflation has kept the US central bank from delivering interest-rate cuts this year as it waits to see what happens. The Trump administration is applying intense pressure on Fed Chair Jerome Powell to bring down borrowing costs, and two Fed governors in recent days have publicly diverged from Powell by asserting a cut could be appropriate as soon as July.

The Treasury market added to its best performance since February on the last day of June, with yields near the lowest levels of the past month and Thursday’s jobs report as a potential catalyst for further gains.

Ten- to 30-year yields declined to session lows shortly after midday in New York, price action that lacked a clear catalyst but was consistent with expected buying in connection with month-end index rebalancing.

Separately, Goldman Sachs economists predicted an earlier start to Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts than they had previously, which also supported the broader bond market. The benchmark 10-year note’s yield fell below 4.24% to the lowest level since May 2.

Fintech company DailyPay Inc. this month sold $200 million of bonds backed by fees tied to the company’s main service, an app that lets workers access pay as soon as they’ve earned it rather than wait for paychecks.

Barclays led the sale, which consisted of three investment-grade rated bonds and one rated junk, according to Bloomberg News deal information. Investors bought the highest-rated and largest of the bonds for interest payments of 1.75 percentage points above Treasuries, or 5.63% per year, Bloomberg reported.

“This is a first-of-its-kind type of deal, and it will help us expand the number of employees we work with,” Stacy Greiner, the company’s chief executive officer, said in an interview.

The US Justice Department announced one arrest and charges against nine more people in connection with an alleged scheme in which North Koreans posed as American tech workers to gain lucrative jobs and fund the country’s government.

The North Koreans used stolen identities to gain employment with roughly 100 American companies, according to the Justice Department. They were helped by people in the US, China, the United Arab Emirates and Taiwan, according to the court records.

The International Criminal Court contained a “sophisticated and targeted” cybersecurity incident that it first identified last week, the organisation said in a statement Monday.

The Hague, Netherlands-based tribunal said if the incident was swiftly discovered and contained through its alert mechanisms, and it is now working to assess the impact and mitigate any potential effects. The ICC didn’t provide further details about the incident in its statement.

The court investigates and tries individuals suspected of crimes against humanity, such as genocide and war crimes. The cybersecurity incident was the second of its kind in recent years, with a previous one detected in September 2023, the court said.

Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg announced a major restructuring of the company’s artificial intelligence group, including a commitment to developing AI “superintelligence,” or systems that can complete tasks as well as or even better than humans.

Zuckerberg wrote Monday to employees that Meta’s AI efforts will fall under a new group called Meta Superintelligence Labs, which will be led by Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of data-labeling startup Scale AI, according to an internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg. Wang, whom Zuckerberg called the “most impressive founder of his generation,” will serve as chief AI officer.

Nat Friedman, the former CEO of Github, will “partner with Alex to lead” the group, Zuckerberg continued, and head Meta’s work on AI products and applied research. Bloomberg previously reported on Zuckerberg’s effort to recruit a new superintelligence group.

A US judge on Monday ordered Argentina to turn over its controlling stake in the state-run oil company YPF SA as partial payment of a $16 billion court judgment against the Latin American country.

Burford Capital last year asked US District Judge Loretta Preska to award it the 51% stake in YPF currently held by Argentina’s federal and provincial governments. Preska is the judge who in 2023 issued the judgment that Burford is now trying to collect.

BBVA SA decided to keep its takeover offer for Banco Sabadell SA alive even though the Spanish government’s decision to ban a merger for several years has cast doubt over how it will pan out.

“BBVA has decided not to withdraw the offer and, therefore, it remains in effect in accordance with the applicable regulations,” the bank said in a statement on Monday.

The bank said it was moving forward “because the transaction creates value for the shareholders of both entities, even though the condition will delay some of the estimated synergies.”

Last week, Madrid said the proposed acquisition could only go ahead if the two banks remain separate entities for at least three years. That has raised questions over BBVA’s ability to extract cost savings and make the deal work economically.

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund saw income from investment activities rise for a second consecutive year, driven by dividends and asset sales.

The Public Investment Fund earned $34.5 billion from investment activities in 2024, up 38% from the previous year, according to financial statements released Monday. Dividend income from investment securities more than doubled.

Still, net profit fell by more than half to about $7 billion, pressured by high interest rates, inflation and impairments on select projects.

The results underscore a growing tension: while the PIF is extracting more from its investments, it is likely to face mounting pressure as it drives Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitious economic diversification plan.

Stocks are wrapping up a stellar quarter at all-time highs amid signs of progress in US trade talks, while hopes the Federal Reserve will resume its rate cuts drove Treasuries toward their biggest first-half stretch in five years. The dollar eyed its longest monthly slide since 2017.

The S&P 500’s 24% surge from the brink of a bear market put the benchmark on pace for its best quarter since December 2023. While gains were mild on Monday, optimism that the US is close to reaching deals with top trading partners sent the gauge near 6,200.

Big banks climbed after passing the Fed’s annual stress test, setting the stage for payouts. Oracle Corp. jumped on a cloud-services deal worth $30 billion a year.

The UK is currently planning to keep its digital services tax, a person familiar with the matter said, after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney scrapped their own levy to restart trade talks with President Donald Trump’s administration.

The US wanted Britain to drop the tax as part of trade talks between the two countries and Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government had been considering making changes, but the prospect isn’t on the table and hasn’t been for some time, according to the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The levy, which is charged at 2% on the revenues derived from UK users of search engines, social media companies and online marketplaces, is unpopular with American firms such as Google parent Alphabet Inc., Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms Inc., and Amazon.com Inc.

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Raphael Bostic said tariff price increases may be incremental instead of a one-time bump, which could result in more persistent upward pressure on inflation.

“There is a risk that seeps into the psyche of the consumer and the business leader,” Bostic said Monday during an event in London hosted by MNI. A divide has developed among Fed officials, likely over how tariffs are expected to affect inflation.

Projections released at the Fed’s policy meeting earlier this month showed 10 officials would look through the price impact from tariffs and expect to lower rates at least two times this year. But seven officials penciled in no rate cuts for this year, suggesting they are more concerned that tariffs could lead to more persistent price pressures.

Vodafone Group Plc pulled in multi-billion investor bids across a multi-currency debt sale, the proceeds of which will be used to finance a sweeping €2 billion ($2.35 billion) debt buyback announced on Monday.

The company and its subsidiary Vodafone International Financing DAC raised €1.9 billion from three bonds in the single currency and £500 million sterling-denominated note, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified. The debt sale comes as Vodafone looks to repurchase existing debt securities denominated in US dollars and British pounds through concurrent tender offers.

The euro-denominated tranches pulled in more than €5.4 billion of investor demand across a four-year note — that saw the most interest — an eight-year note, and a 13-year note. As a result, spreads were tightened by as much as 40 basis points from the wide end of initial price thoughts for the euro tranches. The British pound-denominated 25-year note drew £1.7 billion of demand with the spread tightened to 120 basis points over UK gilts from around 140 basis points over at initial price thoughts.

Harvard University’s talks with the White House have stalled, according to a person familiar with the matter, threatening a quick resolution to a standoff that’s threatening the school’s finances and upending foreign student plans.

A potential deal was knocked off course last week, although hopes remain for an accord, said the person, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. Harvard didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

The Trump administration ramped up pressure on Harvard earlier Monday, saying that a US investigation found that the school violated civil rights law in its treatment of Jewish and Israeli students. “Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources,” the government said in a letter to Harvard President Alan Garber.

The Dutch government needs more time to assess the options for TenneT Holding BV’s German high-voltage business and a decision is likely to come in September.

TenneT has been preparing the German business for an initial public offering or private stake sales and has held discussions with potential investors, according to a letter sent by Dutch Finance Minister Eelco Heinen to the parliament on Monday. The government initially aims to decide on which path to pursue at the beginning of the summer break.

“Many investors are interested in investing in TenneT Germany,” Heinen said in the letter. “Both paths could offer promising and attractive opportunities to cover our capital needs. I have therefore decided to pursue both options in parallel this summer.”

Oil traders expect OPEC+ will agree a fourth bumper oil supply increase this weekend as group leader Saudi Arabia continues its bid to reclaim market share.

Eight key OPEC+ nations are preparing to discuss another hike of 411,000 barrels a day, due to take effect in August, delegates said last week. They’ll likely approve the move when they hold a video conference on Sunday, according to a survey of 32 traders and analysts.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies have been reviving halted output at triple the initially-scheduled rate during the past three months, despite faltering fuel demand and signs of global oversupply.

Russia summoned Azerbaijan’s ambassador after police in Baku raided the office of a Russian state-funded media outlet amid deteriorating relations between the former Soviet neighbours.

The Foreign Ministry in Moscow accused Azerbaijan of “unfriendly actions” after staff at Sputnik Azerbaijan were detained, the Tass news service reported Monday.

That came after Azerbaijan on Sunday cancelled cultural events linked with Moscow in the oil-rich Caucasus state over the deaths of two Azerbaijani men during a police raid in the Russian Urals city of Yekaterinburg. Several others were injured and six people were arrested.NewsLive TVMarketPopular CategoriesCalculatorsTrending NowLet's Connect with CNBCTV 18Network 18 Group :©TV18 Broadcast Limited. All rights reserved.