News

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

Airbnb reported results for the first quarter that were mostly in line with estimates, but the company issued a disappointing revenue forecast for the current period.

Revenue increased 6% from about $2.1 billion a year ago. Net income fell to $154 million, or 24 cents per share, from $264 million, or 41 cents per share, in the same period a year earlier.

For the second quarter, Airbnb said it expects revenue of between $2.99 billion and $3.05 billion, or $3.02 billion at the middle of the range. Analysts had forecast $3.04 billion in revenue for the current period. The company said it expects the period to include a two percentage point benefit due to Easter timing.

Stocks rose on Thursday after strong quarterly results from two Big Tech players eased concerns that artificial intelligence progress would slow amid economic turmoil.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 83.60 points, or 0.21%, to close at 40,752.96. The S&P 500 gained 0.63% to end at 5,604.14 and near its levels from before President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs announcement in early April. The Nasdaq Composite increased 1.52%, to close at 17,710.74 and wipe out the decline it experienced since April 2.

Investor fears that Trump’s tariffs and a downturn in the U.S. economy would threaten the AI trade were assuaged after Meta Platforms posted stronger-than-expected revenue in the first quarter, with Meta’s Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg saying on an earnings call Wednesday that the business is “well positioned to navigate the macroeconomic uncertainty.”

Amazon reported a 19% increase in online ad revenue in the first quarter, beating analyst estimates. Ad sales climbed to $13.92 billion, while analysts on average were expecting $13.74 billion, according to StreetAccount.

The numbers were contained in Amazon’s first-quarter earnings report. The company reported total first-quarter sales of $155.67 billion, compared to Wall Street projections of $155.04 billion.

Although Amazon’s online ad business represents a fraction of overall sales, it’s emerged in recent years to become the third-biggest platform in the global digital advertising market, behind only Alphabet and Meta.

Kohl’s said on Thursday that the company fired CEO Ashley Buchanan following an investigation that found he advocated for deals with a vendor with whom he had a personal relationship.

The company said Buchanan engaged in transactions with said person’s company on “highly unusual terms.”

Wall Street’s risk appetite raged anew as robust tech earnings upended the ‘sell America’ narrative that rocked global markets last month in the grip of the tariff shock.

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 rose more than 1% each but remained off their highs of the day. Microsoft Corp. and Meta Platforms Inc. jumped on upbeat results. A report of the US weighing a potential easing of restrictions on Nvidia Corp.’s sales to the United Arab Emirates pushed shares higher.

Treasuries fell after better-than-expected data on US factory activity caused investors to slightly curb their bets on US interest-rate cuts this year.

The declines on Thursday sent yields up across maturities after a report showed US manufacturing activity shrank in April amid President Donald Trump’s tariffs — albeit at a pace that some on Wall Street saw as not so bad. Two-year yields, most sensitive to the Federal Reserve’s policy, rose as much as about 12 basis points on the day.

Traders were pricing in about 91 basis points of easing this year from the Fed, compared to about 107 basis points earlier in the session. The first quarter-point rate reduction is fully priced in for July.

Farmers are still delaying equipment purchases as US President Donald Trump’s tariffs cloud demand for crops and risk further extending a years-long slump in the sector.

Top tractor makers CNH Industrial NV and AGCO Corp. each reported lower first-quarter sales Thursday, and pointed to the potential of reduced demand for farmers, which would give them less to spend on machines to plant, harvest and treat their fields.

Still, AGCO shares jumped as much as 13% on Thursday, while CNH rose as much as 8.7%. Shares for each company have been lagging those of Deere & Co., the industry leader. Deere, which reports results later in May, gained as much as 4.7%.

Bitcoin is fast approaching $100,000 once again, after reaching its highest level since late February, with investors’ appetite for risk being rekindled across financial markets.

The original cryptocurrency has faced downward pressure in recent weeks as Donald Trump’s tariff policy prompts a steep rout in both the stock and digital-asset markets. It had dropped as much as 30% after reaching a record high of about $109,000 on Jan. 20, the day Trump was inaugurated for a second time as US president.

The largest token by market value climbed as much as 3.1% to $97,483, the highest since Feb. 21. Bitcoin last traded at $100,000 on February 7. Many smaller tokens rallied even more on Thursday, with Dogecoin jumping 4.8% and Ether up 3.3%.

Copper rose amid signs of progress on trade deals between the US and other nations, potentially lessening risks to global growth and metals demand.

Three-month futures pushed above $9,200 a ton in London, after sinking more than 3% on Wednesday. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said the Trump administration is making progress in tariff talks and that he expects news by the end of the day.

Copper prices retreated 6% last month — their worst showing since mid-2022 — as signs emerged that the global trade war was starting to hurt economies, with the US contracting in the first quarter and Chinese manufacturing under strain. At the same time, Washington is pushing ahead with a study that may result in US imports of the metal being subject to tariffs.

Shares of Eli Lilly took a tumble on Thursday after the pharmaceutical giant cut its full-year profit guidance due to charges related to a cancer treatment deal. The stock was last down nearly 11%.

Eli Lilly now expects its adjusted fiscal 2025 earnings to come in between $20.78 and $22.28 per share. Previously, it had guided for between $22.50 to $24 per share.

Shares slid despite Eli Lilly posting a first-quarter earnings and revenue beat. The stock is now on pace to end the week 9% lower.

US oil futures broke a three-day string of losses as equity markets strengthened and President Donald Trump threatened broader sanctions against buyers of Iranian crude.

West Texas Intermediate settled 1.8% higher, at $59.24 a barrel after Trump said that any nation or person who buys oil or petrochemicals from Iran will be subject to secondary sanctions. It was the biggest one-day increase for US oil futures in more than a week.

Citigroup Inc. is tapping the US high-grade market Thursday, becoming the last of the biggest US banks to sell securities after posting first-quarter earnings.

The bank has launched the sale of $5.35 billion of notes in four parts, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The longest fixed-to-floating rate portion of the deal, a $2 billion 6-year security that’s not callable for five years, may yield 1.15 percent point more than Treasuries.

That compared with the initial price talk of 1.4 percentage points over Treasuries, said the person who asked not to be identified as details are private. The deal is the first for the bank in the US market this quarter. It sold €2.5 billion ($2.82 billion) of bonds in the euro market in April.

The market may return better-than-average gains over the next several months, if history is a guide, according to UBS.

“We tend to see above-average returns when investors are pessimistic and fearful, as they are today,” wrote Justin Waring, an investment strategist at UBS.

Waring noted that just 21.9% of investors expect the S&P 500 to be higher over the next six months, as estimated by the American Association of Individual Investors.

“In the past, when investors have been this pessimistic, markets have delivered a higher-than-average return over the following [six] months (8.7% vs. 5.8%) and the following 12 months (16.8% vs. 11.9%),” he continued.

The US Department of Justice sued top health insurance companies and brokers alleging they used illegal kickbacks to steer members into private Medicare Advantage plans.

The complaint names units of CVS Health Corp., Elevance Health Inc. and Humana Inc., along with broker companies eHealth, Inc., GoHealth, Inc., and SelectQuote Inc.

Representatives from CVS, Elevance and Humana had no immediate comment or didn’t respond to messages.

World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s decentralised finance project, said its new stablecoin is being used for a $2 billion investment in crypto exchange Binance Holdings Ltd. by Abu Dhabi’s MGX.

MGX made the minority investment in Binance in March, but the stablecoin that would be used to settle the deal wasn’t disclosed. The companies will use World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin for the transaction, World Liberty co-founder Zach Witkoff said on Thursday on a panel alongside Eric Trump at the Token2049 conference in Dubai. “We thank MGX and Binance for their trust in us,” he said.

The transaction links a company controlled by US President Donald Trump’s family with a cryptocurrency exchange that, less than two years ago pleaded guilty to anti-money laundering and US sanctions violations, as well as an investment fund overseen by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the brother of the president of the United Arab Emirates.

MGX also helped bankroll Trump’s $100 billion venture to fund artificial intelligence infrastructure, which was announced a day after his inauguration.

Wall Street’s risk appetite raged anew as robust tech earnings upended the ‘sell America’ narrative that rocked global markets last month in the grip of the tariff shock.

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 rose more than 1% each but remained off their highs of the day. Microsoft Corp. and Meta Platforms Inc. jumped on upbeat results. A report of the US weighing a potential easing of restrictions on Nvidia Corp.’s sales to the United Arab Emirates pushed shares higher.

Treasury yields rose, with the 10-year rate around 4.24%, after investors slightly curbed their bets on US interest-rate cuts this year following factory activity data. A dollar index climbed on reports that Donald Trump’s administration reached out to China to start tariff talks.

Nvidia blasted Anthropic Thursday in a rare public clash over artificial intelligence policy, with US chip export restrictions set to take effect.

“American firms should focus on innovation and rise to the challenge, rather than tell tall tales that large, heavy, and sensitive electronics are somehow smuggled in ‘baby bumps’ or ‘alongside live lobsters,’ ” a spokesperson for Nvidia said.

Anthropic, the AI startup backed by billions from Amazon, argued for tighter controls and enforcement, saying in a blog post Wednesday that Chinese smuggling tactics involved chips hidden in “prosthetic baby bumps” and “packed alongside live lobsters.”

US President Donald Trump said Thursday (May 1) that any person or country that buys oil from Iran will not be allowed to do any business with the US.

U.S. crude oil futures rose $1.11, or 1.91%, to $59.32 per barrel, while global benchmark Brent was up $1.15, or 1.88%, to $62.21 per barrel.

“Any Country or person who buys ANY AMOUNT of OIL or PETROCHEMICALS from Iran will be subject to, immediately, Secondary Sanctions,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social. “They will not be allowed to do business with the United States of America in any way, shape, or form.”

Uber Technologies Inc. debuted a simpler version of its rideshare app to make it easier for older adults to get around, prompting rival Lyft Inc. to move up the launch announcement of a similar feature it had in the works.

According to the company, the streamlined version includes larger text, easier-to-find saved destinations, and fewer home screen buttons than the regular Uber app. It will be piloted in Phoenix and Orlando starting Thursday, with more cities to follow in the coming weeks. The rideshare giant is also expanding its family profile types beyond just adults and teens to include seniors.

Although the feature is marketed toward older people, it will be available under the app’s accessibility settings for anyone in those markets to use.

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said that bond-market pricing doesn’t amount to a judgment call on what the Federal Reserve ought to do with interest rates, and that it would be a “very serious error” for policymakers to ease next week.

“It would have been a grave mistake to have eased already, and would be a very serious error to ease at this upcoming meeting,” Summers said on Bloomberg Television’s Wall Street Week with David Westin. A cut on May 7 would undermine confidence in the Fed’s determination to bring down inflation, causing longer-term borrowing costs to climb, he said.

The Nasdaq Composite is back to trading above its levels seen before President Donald Trump’s early April tariff announcement, which had caused a steep market sell-off and a drop in momentum behind U.S. growth names.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq jumped about 2.2% on Thursday to around 17,825 in early afternoon trading, as strong quarterly results from Meta and Microsoft revived the AI trade.

The index had closed at 17,701.05 on April 2 before Trump’s announcement hit, and ultimately plunged as low as 15,267.91 on April 8.

New York hedge fund Third Point LLC has taken a “meaningful” stake in United States Steel Corp. and expects a $14.1 billion takeover offer by Nippon Steel Corp. to go ahead, according to an investor letter.

The firm’s billionaire founder Daniel Loeb told investors in a letter that the firm believes the iconic American company will complete its merger with the Japanese steelmaker, despite the transaction being blocked by former US President Joe Biden in January.

“We have a meaningful investment in US Steel, which we believe will complete its planned merger with Nippon Steel based on the industrial logic behind the combination, and benefits to ‘America First’ re-industrialization plans,” Loeb, who’s also Third Point’s chief executive officer, said in a letter dated April 30.

The letter didn’t disclose the exact amount of the firm’s stake in US Steel. A Third Point spokesman didn’t return a request for comment. US Steel didn’t reply to requests for comment. Reuters earlier reported on the letter.

The world’s biggest exchange-traded fund just got its biggest endorsement yet. The $608 billion Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (ticker VOO) saw a nearly $21 billion inflow last month, the most in its 15-year history and the fifth largest amount ever taken in by a fund on a monthly basis, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence.

It all happened as the underlying S&P 500 Index notched one of its choppiest months in recent memory, with large down days followed by relief rallies in the grip of President Donald Trump’s tariffs announcements.

Absorbing billions of dollars this year — to the tune of $55 billion — even amid intense market volatility helped VOO recently surpass the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) in assets to become the largest ETF. VOO’s rock-bottom management fee of 0.03% has made it a hit, with retail traders in particular, and its ticker has become somewhat of a shorthand among market analysts for talking about flows from do-it-yourself investors.

Apple Inc. shares have clawed back a good portion of the ground they lost in the historic tariff-induced selloff last month, but that doesn’t mean investors are in the clear.

The company’s results, due after the market close on Thursday, come at a period of extreme uncertainty for the iPhone maker, which is caught in the swirling currents around trade policy and rising geopolitical tension.

While tariff exemptions for smartphones and other electronics have so far allowed Apple to avoid the worst-case scenario, the situation remains in flux, further clouding the company’s prospects.

US President Donald Trump’s tariffs threaten to increase the cost of a big offshore wind farm that Dominion Energy Inc. is building by as much as $500 million, the company said Thursday.

The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project off the coast of Virginia has already seen tariff costs of $4 million, Chief Executive Officer Bob Blue said on an earnings call. The project’s current budget is $10.7 billion.

If the tariffs continue through the end of the second quarter, the added cost for CVOW would rise to $120 million, and if kept in place through the end of next year, when the project is expected to enter service, the impact would be approximately $500 million.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the US Treasury market is telegraphing that the Federal Reserve ought to lower interest rates.

“We are seeing that two-year rates are now below fed funds rates. So that’s a market signal that they think the Fed should be cutting,” Bessent said in an interview with Fox Business.

Two-year Treasury yields were at 3.66% as of 12:56 p.m. in New York, compared with a benchmark federal funds rate of 4.33%. The Fed currently targets the key rate at a range of 4.25% to 4.5%.

Treasuries slipped after better-than-feared data on US factory activity caused investors to slightly curb their bets on US interest-rate cuts this year.

The declines on Thursday sent yields up by about six basis points across maturities after data showed US manufacturing activity shrank in April amid President Donald Trump’s tariffs, albeit at a pace that some on Wall Street saw as not so bad.

Traders were pricing in about 95 basis points of easing this year from the Federal Reserve, compared to about 107 basis points earlier in the session. The first quarter-point rate reduction is fully priced in for July.

US stocks advanced Thursday after a batch of robust tech earnings, with major indexes close to erasing losses sparked by the tariff shock that rattled markets just weeks ago.

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 trimmed earlier gains but the latter still remains more than 1% higher. Microsoft Corp. and Meta Platforms Inc. jumped on upbeat results. A report of the US weighing a potential easing of restrictions on Nvidia Corp.’s sales to the United Arab Emirates pushed shares higher.

Bombardier Inc. is offering earnings guidance for 2025 again after pausing last quarter, as the jet manufacturer sees its diversified revenue as strong enough to help it navigate through an uncertain economic environment.

The Quebec-based company expects to post more than $9.25 billion in revenue for the year, fueled by a healthier mix that includes its services segment and stronger contributions from its defense segment. Bombardier also sees its 2025 adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization reaching over $1.55 billion as it delivers more than 150 aircraft during the year.

“This guidance may be revised if the tariff regulatory environment changes,” said Bombardier Chief Financial Officer Bart Demosky on a call with analysts. “With that being said, our strong backlog, diversified top line, and better clarity on tariff applicability gives us the visibility needed on our top and bottom line to provide you with guidance today.”NewsLive TVMarketPopular CategoriesCalculatorsTrending NowLet's Connect with CNBCTV 18Network 18 Group :©TV18 Broadcast Limited. All rights reserved.