News Recap • Week 6 2025

The main market movers this week were a series of earnings releases, some important macro data out of the US, and continued tariff talk from president Trump.

Check out the main headlines below or check out my earnings roundup and deeper dive into two of the main macro data releases from Friday.

• Earnings Roundup: Amazon, Alphabet, Disney, and More
• Mixed Signals: Jobs Data and Consumer Sentiment

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Main headlines

Macro

• The new tariffs imposed by the US on imports from Canada and Mexico were quickly paused. Justin Trudeau agreed to implement a $1.13 billion border plan to stop the inflow of fentanyl into the US and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum sent 10,000 soldiers to the border to do the same.
• The tariff talk isn’t over yet though. On Friday, Donald Trump said he will announce reciprocal tariffs on many countries next week. Buckle up for another round of volatility.
• Donald Trump signed an executive order to create a US sovereign wealth fund, expected to be set up within the next 12 months by the US Treasury and Commerce Departments. He simultaneously suggested that it could be used to purchase TikTok.
• Job openings in the US fell to 7.6 million in December, well below the consensus estimate of 8 million.
• Private payrolls in the US expanded by 183,000 in January, more than the 150,000 expected. Pay for workers who stayed in their jobs grew at a 4.7% annual rate. Service providers created 190,000 new jobs while goods producers lost 6,000.
• The US trade deficit hit a record in 2024 on surging imports.
• China’s consumer inflation accelerated in January, rising 0.5% year-over-year. Economists had forecast a 0.4% increase. Core CPI rose to 0.6%. The producer side of things was still in serious deflationary territory with prices declining 2.3% year-over-year, worse than the 2.1% forecast.
• Japan’s household spending came in much higher than forecast. The average household expenditure hit $2,332 in December, up 7% in nominal terms and 2.7% in real terms from a year earlier. Analysts had expected an increase of just 0.2% in real terms. The data strengthens the case for additional rate hikes in Japan.
• Bank of England cut interest rates from 4.75% to 4.5% on Thursday, as expected. It also cut its 2025 economic growth forecast from 1.5% to 0.75% and signaled more rate cuts to come in order to stimulate the economy.
• Inflation in the euro zone rose to 2.5% in January, higher than the 2.4% forecast. Core inflation stayed at 2.7% for the fifth straight month. The main contributor to the higher headline number was a jump in energy costs. The market didn’t seem to care much about the miss.
• India’s central bank cut interest rates by 25 basis points to 6.25%. This was its first cut in nearly five years. India now expects 2025 GDP growth of 6.7% and inflation of 4.2%.
• China’s factory growth missed expectations in January, barely staying in expansion territory with a 50.1 reading. Economists had expected 50.5.
• China retaliated with additional tariffs of up to 15% on coal and liquified natural gas imports from the US. The new tariffs will take effect on February 10.
• Donald Trump acknowledged the Fed’s decision to pause interest rate cuts at the latest meeting in January. He’s otherwise been highly critical of Fed chair Jerome Powell and has previously said that he wants rates to come down immediately. On that note, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent clarified this week that he and Trump are focused on the 10-year treasury yield rather than the federal funds rate. He added “if we deregulate the economy, if we get this tax bill done, if we get energy down, then rates will take care of themselves and the dollar will take care of itself”.The 10-year currently sits at 4.5%, down from 4.8% in mid-January.
• Donald Trump said during a press conference with Israel’s Prime Minister that the US will take over the Gaza Strip.

Other

• China said on Tuesday that it will launch an antitrust investigation into Google. The move could be interpreted as a response to the new tariffs imposed by the US.
• Softbank and OpenAI unveiled SB OpenAI Japan, a joint venture to offer AI services to corporate clients in Japan.
• Cybersecurity firm SailPoint is looking to IPO at a valuation of $11.5 billion, raising more than $1 billion in the process.
• Safe Superintelligence, founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, is reportedly seeking funding at a $20 billion valuation. It was last valued at $5 billion in September.
• A new report from SemiAnalysis estimated that DeepSeek may have spent well above $500 million on hardware for its latest model. Most headlines have focused on how little the company used to train the model, i.e., $5.6 million.
• Softbank is close to finalizing a $40 billion investment in OpenAI at a $260 pre-money valuation.
• Tesla’s car sales in China fell 11.5% in January compared to last year.
• Bill Ackman revealed on Friday that he’s built a more than $2 billion stake in Uber, saying that the stock is till trading at a massive discount. The news gave a boost to the stock which was already up on the day.
• Chinese regulators are considering whether to open a formal probe into Apple’s App Store fees and policies.
• Donald Trump said Japan’s Nippon Steel will invest heavily in U.S. Steel rather than buy it outright.
• Lyft and Anthropic announced a partnership aiming to transform the rideshare experience with AI.
• BlackRock is preparing to launch a Bitcoin ETP (exchange-traded product) in Europe.