The Hang Seng Index reversed its downward trend in Hong Kong on Thursday (February 12th), weakening by around 0.9% to around 27,000 after a strong session earlier. This decline halted the momentum of the short term rally, as investors began to reduce risk in large cap stocks. Among the index's contributors, Tencent was a major drag, with its shares falling by around 2.3%, putting pressure on the technology sector, which has recently been a driving force behind market gains. Weakness in large cap companies like this typically quickly impacts sentiment due to their significant weighting in...
President Donald Trump's desire to impose new tariffs remains undeterred, even after the courts delivered the most devastating blow to his top job yet. White House officials quickly signaled Thursday that Trump would pursue many of the same levies through other legal authorities if the appeal fails. Meanwhile, the administration is aggressively pushing to overturn the decision, saying it would go to the U.S. Supreme Court as early as Friday if a federal appeals court does not stop the initial ruling from taking effect while the challenge continues. The ruling was "clearly wrong" and "we...
Initial jobless claims in the United States jumped by 14,000 from the previous week to 240,000 on the period ending May 10th, the highest in one month, and above market expectations of 230,000. Additionally, outstanding claims rose by 26,000 to 1,919,000 in the earlier period, well above market expectations that they would ease to 1,890,000, to the highest level since November 2021. Source: Trading Economics
A U.S. trade court blocked President Donald Trump's tariffs from going into effect in a sweeping ruling on Wednesday that found the president overstepped his authority by imposing across-the-board duties on imports from U.S. trading partners. The Court of International Trade said the U.S. Constitution gives Congress exclusive authority to regulate commerce with other countries that is not overridden by the president's emergency powers to safeguard the U.S. economy. "The court does not pass upon the wisdom or likely effectiveness of the President's use of tariffs as leverage," a three-judge...
President Donald Trump's global tariffs have been deemed illegal and blocked by a US trade court, dealing a major blow to a pillar of the Republican Party's economic agenda. The ruling can now be appealed by the Trump administration in federal court. A three-judge panel at the US Court of International Trade in Manhattan ruled Wednesday in favor of Democratic-led states and a group of small businesses that argued Trump had wrongly invoked emergency law to justify the levies. The ruling is one of Trump's biggest setbacks in court amid a wave of lawsuits over executive orders that have...
US President Donald Trump said he warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against a military strike against Iran that could disrupt efforts to broker a deal on Tehran's nuclear program. "I told him this would be inappropriate to do right now, because we're very close to a solution," Trump told reporters Wednesday. "Now that could change at any moment — could change with a phone call, but right now, I think they want to make a deal." The US president added that he believed a deal with Iran could be completed within "the next couple of weeks" and that talks had...