Published on 13/06/2025 01:01 AM
The dollar is trading at a three-year low, but options traders are betting the frenzied selloff in the world’s reserve currency will peter out over the next few weeks.
The greenback has been weakening for five straight months, with one gauge of pessimism reaching extreme levels in May. Now, with the Federal Reserve’s next interest-rate decision just six days away, the options market is suggesting a period of relative calm.
Both one-week and one-month risk reversals, which measure the price difference between bullish and bearish bets on Bloomberg’s dollar spot index, closed Wednesday at the least bearish levels in more than two months.
Argentina’s monthly inflation slowed to the lowest level since the height of the pandemic, scoring a major victory for President Javier Milei ahead of a crucial midterm vote.
Consumer prices rose 1.5% in May from April, far below the 2% median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg, and the lowest reading since May 2020. Annual inflation slowed to 43.5%, according to government data published Thursday.
Multiple consulting firms revised their May estimate after Buenos Aires city released its data Monday. Prices in the capital city rose only 1.6% on the month, the lowest since June 2020. The slowdown in food and beverages was driven by seasonal factors, including reduced rains, while lower taxes, a lack of currency volatility and retail discounts also helped. Moderate price hikes are likely to extend until July, the start of the winter holiday, according to a note by brokerage firm one618.
A closely watched auction of 30-year Treasuries saw stronger-than-expected demand on Thursday, easing for now worries that investors would shun the US government’s longest maturity.
The $22 billion sale followed weeks of fretting over whether spiraling budget deficits and President Donald Trump’s trade war would deter buyers from lending to the US for such a lengthy period. But it drew a yield of 4.844%, below the yield around the auction deadline. That was a sign of solid appetite, and 30-year bonds proceeded to extend their gains.
The results pushed the benchmark rate on the long bond below where it was trading when Moody’s Ratings stripped the US of its last top credit rating in May, blaming successive administrations and Congress for swelling budget shortfalls that it said showed little sign of abating.
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lisa Su said her company’s latest AI processors can challenge Nvidia Corp. chips in a market she now expects to soar past $500 billion in the next three years.
The latest instalments in AMD’s MI350 chip series are faster than Nvidia counterparts and represent major gains over earlier versions, Su said at a company event Thursday in San Jose, California. New MI355 chips, which started shipping earlier this month, are 35 times faster than predecessors, she said.
Though AMD remains a distant second to Nvidia in AI accelerators — the chips that help develop and run artificial intelligence tools — it aims to start catching up with these new products. The stakes are higher than ever: Su previously predicted $500 billion in market revenue by 2028, but she now sees it topping that number.
Immigrants admitted to the US from a Biden-era parole program for Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela have begun receiving notices of termination urging them to depart the US.
Participants in the “CHNV” parole program were also told that their employment authorisation is revoked effective immediately in email messages from the Department of Homeland Security, the agency said Thursday.
The notices follow a US Supreme Court decision last month allowing DHS to move forward with revocation of parole benefits for half a million immigrants after a lower court preserved the protections. A legal challenge to the Trump administration’s dismantling of parole programs, including the CHNV process, is still ongoing.
The dollar fell to the weakest level in three years amid worries over US tariffs and the outlook for the US economy.
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index slid as much as 0.8% on Thursday to touch the lowest level since April 2022. The euro jumped to its strongest since 2021, while the British pound tapped a new three-year high. All currencies in the Group of 10 gained against the greenback.
The latest declines come on the heels of Thursday data that showed US producer price inflation remained muted in May, held down by tame goods and services costs, which together with other data, pushed traders to bet on more interest-rate cuts by the Federal Reserve. The Fed is set to hold its next policy meeting on June 18.
Chime Financial Inc. jumped as much as 66% in its trading debut after raising $864 million in an initial public offering priced above the marketed range.
The financial technology firm’s shares opened trading Thursday at $43 after selling for $27 in the IPO. The shares rose as high as $44.94 at 12:50 p.m. in New York trading, giving it a market value of $16.4 billion.
Accounting for employee stock options and restricted stock units, Chime has a fully diluted value of $19.1 billion based on its filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. That fully diluted value is a sharp drop from Chime’s $25 billion valuation in a 2021 funding round.
Big data centers connecting to power grids is now one of the greatest near-term risks to reliability, according to a rare warning by the US agency charged with overseeing the sector.
The sprawling campuses responsible for AI and cryptocurrency mining are being developed at a faster pace than the power plants and transmission lines needed to support them, “resulting in lower system stability,” said the North American Electric Reliability Corp. in a report Thursday.
That’s because data centers require tremendous amounts of power at unpredictable intervals, and are also sensitive to swings in grid voltage — making them a major wild card in a electricity system that’s unprepared for such energy use.
Optimism that Ecuador is finally exiting years of political chaos and economic stagnation under the recently re-elected President Daniel Noboa sent its bonds to a three-year high, even as the country remains mired in violence.
The debt, which surged on Noboa’s win in April, extended gains this month after the government announced subsidy cuts and tax reforms, as well as plans to issue dollar bonds in 2026 guaranteed by multilateral lenders.
Notes climbed across the curve on Thursday after the country unlocked additional funding from the International Monetary Fund. They’ve handed investors a whopping 41% return this quarter, the best performance in emerging markets, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Amazon.com Inc.’s hard-line stance on getting disabled employees to return to the office has sparked a backlash, with workers alleging the company is violating the Americans with Disabilities Act as well as their rights to collectively bargain.
At least two employees have filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the National Labour Relations Board, federal agencies that regulate working conditions. One of the workers said they provided the EEOC with a list of 18 “similarly situated” employees to emphasise that their experience isn’t isolated and to help federal regulators with a possible investigation.
Disabled workers frustrated with how Amazon is handling their requests for accommodations, including exemptions to a mandate that they report to the office five days a week, are also venting their displeasure on internal chat rooms and have encouraged colleagues to answer surveys about the policies.
President Donald Trump said Israel “could very well” strike Iran but that he had advised against an attack while negotiations were ongoing, as the departure of US staff from the region fans concerns about a coming assault.
“I don’t want to say imminent, but it looks like it’s something that could very well happen,” Trump told reporters at an event Thursday at the White House.
In recent days, Trump has said he is less confident the US will reach a deal with Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions in exchange for sanctions relief. The president has repeatedly said that while he wants a diplomatic solution, he does not want Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons and warned the US could resort to military action if a deal is not reached.
US President Donald Trump said the US government will retain a “golden share” in United States Steel Corp. after its purchase by Japan’s Nippon Steel Corp.
“We have a golden stock, we have a golden share, which I control, or a president controls,” Trump said Thursday at a White House event. “That gives you total control.”
Shares of US Steel surged as high as $54.13 after Trump’s comments, edging closer to Nippon Steel’s $55-a-share cash offer. The shares are up 0.8% to $53.92 as of 12:15 pm in New York.
Trump claimed that the share amounted to “51% ownership by Americans,” though it was not immediately clear what that meant.
US President Donald Trump said he may raise US auto tariffs in order to boost domestic auto manufacturing, a move that could further ratchet up tensions with trading partners.
Trump spoke Thursday at a signing ceremony for legislation terminating California regulations that would have banned the sale of gasoline-powered cars in 2035 — a long-sought victory for some carmakers and oil companies that attacked the rules as unachievable.
The president said raising auto tariffs from their current 25% level could offer further protection for the domestic auto industry, citing General Motors Co.’s plan to invest $4 billion in US plants over the next two years in order to avoid paying duties.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott is deploying 5,000 National Guard soldiers and 2,000 state troopers to assist local law enforcement during planned protests this weekend. Any demonstrators engaging in violence or damaging property will be arrested, Abbott warned in a statement Thursday.
A day of “No Kings” demonstrations against President Donald Trump is planned for June 14 across the US. In recent days, Trump sent National Guard troops to Los Angeles and activated 700 Marines amid protests spurred by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. Activists held rallies in Texas cities this week in support of the Los Angeles demonstrators.
President Donald Trump ripped Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell as a “numbskull” on Thursday as he turned up the heat on the central bank chief to lower interest rates.
Trump claimed at the White House that lowering rates by two percentage points would save the U.S. $600 billion per year, “but we can’t get this guy to do it.”
“We’re going to spend $600 billion a year, $600 billion because of one numbskull that sits here [and says] ‘I don’t see enough reason to cut the rates now,’” Trump said.
A senior Trump administration official projected that Huawei Technologies Co.’s output of its Ascend AI chip will be at or below 200,000 for 2025, responding to US lawmakers’ concerns that China is gaining ground in the production of advanced semiconductors.
“It’s critical for us not to have a false sense of security, to understand that China is catching up quickly, but that is our projection for this year,” said Commerce Under Secretary Jeffrey Kessler, who oversees the agency’s export control programs. “We shouldn’t take too much comfort in the fact that China’s production of these advanced chips is relatively small, because we know they have global ambitions.”
Kessler said that most of those Huawei semiconductors would be delivered within China. The US has moved to pressure its allies against adopting the Ascend chip, warning that use of Huawei’s latest technology risked violating export controls.
US President Donald Trump on Thursday is signing three congressional resolutions that target California’s statewide efforts to adopt electric vehicles and phase out diesel engines and the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035.
California’s plan had been adopted by 11 other states. General Motors and Toyota had lobbied against California’s rules.
More evidence of cooling US inflation extended a week-long drop in bond yields and sent the dollar to a three-year low, signs that traders are convinced the Federal Reserve has room to lower interest rates should the economic expansion lose steam. Stocks rebounded.
Treasuries rallied, with money markets fully pricing in bets on two Fed reductions in 2025. Attention will soon shift to a $22 billion sale of 30-year debt for a read on whether spiralling deficits are causing investors to shun the maturity. The S&P 500 edged up as Oracle Corp. led gains in technology shares after projecting cloud infrastructure sales will jump more than 70%.
A sharp decline in immigration is keeping a lid on the unemployment rate even as the economy slows.
Government data out Friday showed the size of the workforce shrank in May, in part because of the biggest back-to-back decline in the number of foreign-born workers in the labor force since 2020. That left the jobless rate unchanged at 4.2% even as the number of people out of work rose.
Traders are once again fully pricing in expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates twice this year as reports on US producer prices and jobless claims support a rally in the bond market.
US Treasuries surged across maturities on Thursday, sending yields down six to seven basis points to the lowest levels in a week and erasing what remained of the moves sparked by strong May employment data. The rally lowered the expected yield for an auction of 30-year bonds later in the session to around 4.84%. It peaked this week at around 4.98%.
After weeks of hand-wringing around demand for long-term US debt, all eyes are on Thursday’s 30-year Treasury auction for a fresh read on whether spiralling deficits are causing investors to shun the maturity.
The $22 billion sale, set for 1 p.m. New York time is part of the government’s regularly scheduled borrowings. Yet it will take place as Congress considers President Donald Trump’s massive tax bill, which by some projections will add trillions of dollars to US budget gaps, potentially requiring more bond issuance to finance the spending.
That backdrop, along with worries that the president’s trade war threatens to reignite inflation and dim global demand for US assets broadly, has punished the longest-maturity Treasuries in particular. Investors have grown more wary of lending to the US government for such a long time, and have demanded higher yields as a result, increasing a cushion known as the term premium.
Initial filings for unemployment insurance were unchanged last week, though an indicator of longer-term unemployment hit its highest in more than 3½ years, the Labour Department reported Thursday.
Jobless claims totalled a seasonally adjusted 248,000 for the week ending June 7, flat from the previous upwardly revised total and near the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 246,000, the Labour Department reported Thursday.
However, continuing claims, which run a week behind, rose 54,000 to 1.96 million, the highest since Nov. 13, 2021.
US producer price inflation remained muted in May across the board, another sign that tariffs have yet to result in higher prices for consumers and businesses.
The producer price index rose 0.1% from a month earlier, according to a Bureau of Labour Statistics report released Thursday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 0.2% increase. Excluding food and energy, the PPI also increased 0.1%.
The PPI report follows May consumer price data that showed a fourth month of tame inflation. While the impact of higher tariffs has so far been modest for Americans, economists see price pressures building in the second half of the year as companies look to guard against further margin weakness.
The dollar fell to the weakest level in three years amid worries over US tariffs and the outlook for the US economy.
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index slid as much as 0.8% on Thursday to the lowest level since April 2022. All Group-of-10 currencies rose, with the euro hitting its strongest since 2021.
The latest declines come on the heels of data that showed US producer price inflation remained muted in May, held down by tame goods and services costs. Earlier in the session, the dollar came under pressure as President Donald Trump said he would notify trading partners soon of unilateral levies.
The Pentagon launched a review of a Biden-era pact to develop nuclear-powered submarines with Australia and the UK, as the Trump administration looks to shift the burden to allies and ensure the US’s own supply of warships.
The study would seek to determine whether the Aukus arrangement — signed under President Joe Biden in 2021 — is “aligned with the president’s America First agenda,” the Defense Department said in a statement on Wednesday.
The review would be aimed at making sure that allies contribute more to collective security and that America’s defense industrial base can meet domestic needs, the department said, in remarks that will fuel concerns in Canberra and London that President Donald Trump might withdraw from the deal.
Russia has likely suffered 1 million causalities since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the UK Ministry of Defence said, a staggering human cost from the war with no end in sight.
The toll from the conflict includes around 250,000 Russian soldiers who were killed or are missing and presumed dead, and comes largely as a result of President Vladimir Putin’s “desperate tactics,” the ministry said in a post on the X social media platform on Thursday.
Bloomberg was unable to independently verify the figures. Neither Russia nor Ukraine provide official figures for the number of combat casualties. Moscow has said previously that the losses suffered by its troops are far lower than western and Ukrainian estimates since the invasion began in February 2022.
While Donald Trump hailed the outcome of trade talks in London, Xi Jinping walked away with an understated strategic gain: a negotiating process that buys China time and helps defuse the threat of more harmful tariffs and technology curbs.
Shortly after two days of negotiations wrapped, Trump declared on Wednesday on social media that a deal had been “DONE” to restore the flow of critical magnets from China, and pledged to lift curbs on student visas. Hours earlier, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick revealed Washington would unwind its recent tech curbs, if niche metals essential to US auto and defense firms now flowed fast enough.
China’s focus was very different. A People’s Daily commentary on Thursday — Beijing’s most substantial comments so far on the talks — made no mention of export controls. Instead, the Communist Party mouthpiece touted an “institutional guarantee” established in Geneva for the two sides to bridge differences via a “consultation mechanism.” In a long-awaited leaders’ call before the London negotiations, Xi told Trump the importance of using this channel, it added.
Tesla Inc. sued a former engineer with the company’s highly secretive Optimus program, accusing him of stealing confidential information about the humanoid robot and setting up a rival startup in Silicon Valley.
Zhongjie “Jay” Li worked at Tesla between August 2022 and September 2024, according to a complaint filed in a San Francisco Federal Court late on Wednesday. Li worked on “advanced robotic hand sensors—and was entrusted with some of the most sensitive technical data in the program,” Tesla’s lawyers said in the complaint.
The suit, also filed against his company Proception Inc, alleges that in the weeks before his departure, Li downloaded Optimus-related files onto two personal smartphones and then formed his own firm.
Chronos Capital, an early backer of emerging market unicorns Tyme Group and Optasia, is looking to invest in companies deploying artificial intelligence in healthcare as it seeks to capitalise on a technology that’s expected to transform the medical industry.
“AI in healthcare is going to have the biggest impact on humanity,” Roger Grobler, a partner at the investment firm said in an interview. “AI in healthcare is probably where fintech in financial services was 30 years ago. All the upside is still to be made.”
Gold rose as tensions escalated in the Middle East, and President Donald Trump ratcheted up trade uncertainty by saying he intends to impose unilateral tariffs on dozens of US trading partners within two weeks.
Gold climbed as much as 1% following a CBS report overnight that Israel was ready to launch an operation aimed at Iran, prompting the US to move some embassy staff out of Iraq and allowing military families to leave the region. A gauge of the greenback fell 0.6%.NewsLive TVMarketPopular CategoriesCalculatorsTrending NowLet's Connect with CNBCTV 18Network 18 Group :©TV18 Broadcast Limited. All rights reserved.