The three main U.S. stock indexes turned in a positive performance on Friday but not even the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s 500-point leap was enough to overcome ongoing worries about heightened tensions in the Persian Gulf and the implications of the bond markets’ midweek sell-off over fears of deteriorating U.S. fiscal conditions.
On 18 August, investors dumped government bonds amid heightened fears that inflation will continue to rise, government deficits are out of control, and a flood of AI-related bond issues are diluting bond values, the Financial Times reported.
We have greatly detailed that in the very near future, possibly this October, there will be a Dot-com Bust 2.0 that will crash the equity markets and spike gold prices.
In its latest second quarter, Walmart’s sales grew 2.6 percent, the slowest rate since the COVID year of 2020 as worried consumers cut back purchases.
Companies in the U.S. private sector did more business in August than in July, according to S&P Global’s flash purchasing managers index (PMI) this month.
On 18 August, the price of diesel fuel averaged $5.47 a gallon, bouncing higher on renewed fears of an extended Iran war.
Payment processing company Stripe will put up $8 billion in cash and stock to take over OpenRouter, a startup that allows companies to switch among various AI models to find the one that is cheapest or best suited to a particular need.
Iran claims to have blacklisted 45 tankers that have violated its rules for passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
China’s top tech stock index has returned 29 percent this year through 18 August, more than twice the NASDAQ’s 12.4 percent.
In this year’s first quarter, Europeans’ gross savings ratio – the amount of disposable income not spent on goods and services – was 14.3 percent, rising above the average of 12.5 percent during the five years before the COVID War, the European Union’s statistics office reported.