News Recap • Week 30 2025

Check the news below and make sure to visit my latest Market Recap as well.

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Macro

• Mon The People’s Bank of China kept lending rates steady as expected. The 1-year and 5-year prime loan rates remain at 3.0% and 3.5% respectively. Economic growth has been strong lately, leaving the central bank in a good spot with no need for further stimulus through additional rate cuts. Furthermore, the PBoC may want to save further rate cuts for when/if it sees a hit from US tariffs. (CNBC)
• Mon Japan’s ruling coalition lost control of the upper house in an election on Sunday. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba vowed to remain the party leader despite the further weakening of his power. The opposition gained ground on a less fiscally restrained approach, including the promise of tax cuts to help Japanese consumers deal with recent inflation pressures. The far-right Sanseito party was the big winner relative to previous elections. (Reuters)
• Tue The US and Japan reached a new trade agreement featuring a 15% tariff on exports to the US and much easier access for US companies to sell their products in Japan. The Nikkei 225 rallied 3.5% on Wednesday after the announcement with automakers among the biggest winners. (CNBC)
• Tue US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Tuesday that he will meet with Chinese counterparts to continue their trade negotiations in Stockholm next. He added that the 90-day tariff suspension agreed to in May is likely to be extended. (CNBC)
• Tue The White House announced that the US and Indonesia have agreed to the framework of a trade agreement. Indonesia will drop almost all tariffs on US imports while a 19% tariff will be added to their exports to the US. That’s significantly lower than the 32% initially announced on Liberation Day. (CNBC)
• Wed The US and EU are reportedly closing in on a new trade deal with 15% tariffs. The news was dismissed by the US administration though. (Axios)
• Wed Sales of previously owned homes fell 2.7% from May to June on an seasonally adjusted, annualized basis in the US. Analysts had expected a decline of just 0.7%. There were 1.53 million units for sale at the end of June, an increase of 15.9% year over year. The median price of a home sold in June was $435,300, up 2% year over year to another record high. (CNBC)
• Thu The European Central Bank kept rates unchanged at 2.15%, exactly as expected. The ECB jacked up interest rates to 4% in an attempt to combat inflation which has since come down to the 2% target. Now, the macroeconomic environment has become a lot more uncertain, particularly sparked by Trump’s tariff policies. The ECB will likely keep rates steady until it has more clarity around the path forward and whether to worry more about increased inflation or an economic slowdown. (CNBC)
• Thu President Donald Trump visited the Federal Reserve headquarters and discussed the ongoing renovations with Fed chair Jerome Powell. He also backed off of his idea of firing Powell. (CNBC)
• Sun The US and EU reached a new trade agreement on Sunday, including a 15% tariff across the board. (CNBC)
• Sun The US and China extended their mutual tariff pause by another 90 days during their trade negotiations in Stockholm on Sunday. (Solid Intel)

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Other

• Mon Figma is reportedly targeting a $16.4 billion valuation in its IPO, raising more than $1 billion by selling nearly 37 million shares at $25 to $28 each. Adobe, who tried to acquire Figma for $20 billion little over a year ago, has a market cap of roughly $160 billion. (Reuters)
• Tue Legacy department store Kohl’s more than doubled in early trading on Tuesday before settling down with a 37.6% gain. The jump happened on no apparent news and rather seemed to be a short-squeeze fueled by the Reddit retail crowd. (CNBC)
• Tue Amazon confirmed that it plans to acquire Bee, an AI wearable startup that makes a $50 wristband similar to a Fitbit tracker. (CNBC)
• Wed GoPro and Krispy Kreme were the latest to join the meme stock party on Wednesday. Both stocks were heavily cited on WallStreetBets and soared 73% and 39% respectively before settling with much more modest gains. (CNBC)
• Thu American Eagle launched a new campaign starring actress Sydney Sweeney, seemingly pleasing investors who sent the stock up by 4.25% in Thursday’s trade. (CNBC)
• Thu Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that TikTok will need to hand over control of the US side of its platform and algorithm in order to keep operating in the US. (CNBC)
• Thu OpenAI is reportedly preparing to release its newest AI model, GPT-5, next week. (Axios)
• Fri Global auction sales at the three leading auction houses, Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips, have declined for the third year in a row. Sales in the first six months of the year totaled $4 billion, compared to $4.2 billion last year and more than $7 billion at the peak in 2022. Since the wealthy have only gotten wealthier in that period, the trend may point to a more general shift in consumer and investor behavior in the younger generations. To that point, auction sales in the luxury category (including jewelry, handbags, wine, watches, and sports memorabilia) grew 1% in the first half of the year. Jewel and jewelry sales jumped more than 68%. (CNBC)

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Earnings

• Tue Coca-Cola earned 87 cents adjusted and beat expectations for 83 cents. Revenue came in at $12.62 billion vs $12.54 billion expected. The company sees very minimal growth ahead. Shares fell 0.59% after the report. (CNBC)
• Tue General Motors delivered a beat on both the top and bottom lines. The company also reaffirmed its full-year guidance, which had been lowered in May due to a potential tariff impact. The fact that GM didn’t raise its guidance now that the tariff uncertainty has largely dissipated may be what spooked investors and sent the stock down more than 8%. However, the entire loss was regained on Wednesday after the US and Japan agreed to a new trade deal which largely favors automakers. (CNBC)
• Wed Alphabet delivered a solid beat all around with earnings and revenue coming in at $2.31 per share and $96.43 billion, beating expectations for $2.18 and $94 billion. Both revenue from YouTube ads and Google Cloud beat expectations. Overall revenue grew 14% year over year, outpacing the 10.9% forecast. One key takeaway was the fact that AI chatbot competitors are not really hurting Google’s search business, at least not yet. Furthermore, Google’s own AI product, Gemini, now has 450 million monthly active users. Alphabet also increased its capital expenditure forecast for 2025 from $75 to $85 billion due to strong and growing demand for its Cloud products and services. The stock rose about 1% on Thursday after the report and closed the week at its highest level since February. (CNBC)
• Wed Tesla reported a 16% decline in auto revenue as sales fell for a second straight quarter. The top line came in at $22.50 billion vs $22.74 billion expected while adjusted earnings per share landed at 40 cents vs 43 cents expected. Elon Musk added on the earnings call that Tesla “… could have a few rough quarters”. Considered how low expectations were heading into the print, this really was an impressively bad earnings report. And yet, Tesla bulls will keep reiterating that you’re not buying Tesla for the cars but rather for the robotaxi service, humanoid robots, EV infrastructure, etc. Although the stock hung in there initially, it did end up dropping 8.2% after the report on Thursday. It’s now down 21.74% for the year. (CNBC)
• IBM posted a solid beat on both the top and bottom lines. Revenue came in at $16.98 billion while earnings per share landed at $2.80 adjusted. The forecast had been for $16.59 billion and $2.64. Revenue increased nearly 8% year over year. Despite the seemingly strong numbers, the stock dropped 7.62% after the report. It’s still up more than 18% for the year though, which may explain some of the current profit-taking. (CNBC)
• Wed Chipotle Mexican Grill reported revenue below expectations and said that overall traffic declined 4.9% in Q2. Furthermore, the company now expects no same-store sales growth at all in 2025. Investors weren’t happy and sent the stock down by 13.34% on Thursday to its lowest level since January of last year. (CNBC)
• Thu Intel reported revenue of $12.86 billion, beating expectations for $11.92 billion. Earnings were negative though. The stock dropped 8.53% on Friday and wiped out most of its 2025 gains. (CNBC)
• Thu Deutsche Bank’s net profit came in at €1.485 billion in Q2, beating the €1.2 billion forecast. Revenue also came in slightly above expectations. Shares rallied 7.83% on Thursday after the report and reached their highest level in almost a decade. (CNBC)
• Fri Volkswagen lowered its full-year guidance and reported a 29% drop operating profit year over year. The latter was also worse than expected. Investors seemed to look through the poor numbers, perhaps due to this week’s progress on the trade deal front. Volkswagen shares gained 2.91% on Friday after having been down in early trading and rose more than 11% for the week. (CNBC)