
S&P 500 ends slightly up; traders watch US-China trade talks
American stock market saw a slight increase. Amazon and Alphabet shares helped. Investors are watching discussions between America and China about trade. Both countries want to fix their trade issues. Technology giant plans to invest in Pennsylvania. Apple's new software did not excite investors. Warner Bros Discovery will separate its studios from cable networks. Morgan Stanley has downgraded McDonald's stock.
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The S&P 500 ended slightly higher on Monday, lifted by Amazon and Alphabet , while investors watched U.S.-China negotiations aimed at mending a trade dispute that has rattled financial markets for much of the year.Top officials from both countries have kicked off discussions, looking to get back on track with a preliminary trade agreement struck last month that had briefly cooled tensions between the world's largest economies."The market deems any dialogue with Beijing as progress, whether or not it leads to tangible results. The market is just going to take the administration's word for it, until proven otherwise," said Jake Dollarhide, CEO of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Oklahoma.Amazon and Google parent Alphabet each gained more than 1% and helped keep the S&P 500 in positive territory.Amazon.com said it plans to invest at least $20 billion in Pennsylvania to expand data center infrastructure, adding to the billions of dollars the technology giant has committed to the expansion of artificial intelligence.Apple dipped 1.2% after the iPhone maker kicked off its annual software developer conference with incremental developments that did little to impress investors.The S&P 500 climbed 0.09% to end the session at 6,005.88 points.The Nasdaq gained 0.31% to 19,591.24 points, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended essentially unchanged at 42,761.76 points.Of the 11 S&P 500 sector indexes, six declined, led lower by utilities, down 0.66%, followed by a 0.55% loss in financials.Expectations of more trade deals between the U.S. and its major trading partners, along with upbeat earnings and tame inflation data, helped U.S. equities rally in May, with the S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq notching their best monthly gains since November 2023.The S&P 500 remained about 2% below its all-time high touched in February, while the Nasdaq is about 3% below its December record high. Warner Bros Discovery fell about 3% after the company said it would separate its studios and streaming business from its struggling cable television networks. Immediately after the announcement, it had surged as much as 13%.Shares of McDonald's dipped 0.8% after Morgan Stanley downgraded the fast-food restaurant to "equal-weight" from "overweight". Robinhood Markets dropped almost 2% after S&P Dow Jones Indices left S&P 500 constituents unchanged in its latest rebalancing, following recent speculation that the online brokerage would be added to the benchmark index.Major data releases this week include readings on May consumer prices on Wednesday and initial jobless claims on Thursday. While investors widely expect the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates unchanged next week, focus will be on any signs of pick-up in inflation as Trump's tariffs risk raising price pressures.Advancing issues outnumbered falling ones within the S&P 500 by a 1.1-to-one ratio.The Sundefined the Nasdaq recorded 97 new highs and 46 new lows.Volume on U.S. exchanges was relatively light, with 17.1 billion shares traded, compared to an average of 17.8 billion shares over the previous 20 sessions.
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Time of India
40 minutes ago
- Time of India
iFold coming? Apple's first flip iPhone could debut soon, but it won't be cheap - specs, camera and all details
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Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
Amazon ‘deadline' to employees, Donald Trump phone, Elon Musk's Starlink in India; Intel layoffs and other top tech news of the week
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India.com
2 hours ago
- India.com
Bad news for employees of this company as it plans to sack over 1000 employees, not Narayana Murthy's Infosys, TCS, Google, IBM
(Representational image: freepik) New Delhi: American multinational corporation and IT giant Microsoft Corporation will cut more than 1000 jobs as the conglomerate is rearranging its staff to support its ambitious Artificial Intelligence initiatives. This will be Microsoft's third significant layoff wave of 2025. Most of the jobs that will be eliminated in early July will be from the sales department. Microsoft's new fiscal year This particular time of early July coincides with the beginning of the company's new fiscal year, according to Bloomberg and the Times of India. As mentioned above, Microsoft is reshuffling its staff to support its ambitious Artificial Intelligence initiatives for which it is doubling down on efficiency and strategic realignment as AI investments mount up. Sales Division in third round of layoffs This third round of layoffs is considerably more focused on customer-facing positions than the earlier two rounds, which were mainly focused on engineers and developers. The most affected would be the employees in Sales and Marketing department which accounts for about 45,000 of Microsoft's 228,000 workers. In the first two rounds of layoffs, Microsoft fired around 2,300 employees in Washington this year. Earlier in 2023, the company had fired 3,200 people, which was the biggest layoffs round. Reportedly, Microsoft had dropped a hint about this move in June 2024 as it relieved 1,000 mixed-reality and Azure roles. Apart from that, the company started selling software to outside companies in April as it concentrated on small and mid-sized business sectors. Experts say that apart from the sales positions, other departments might also be impacted. In May, the company had laid off more than 6,000 people in a 3% cut of its workforce. Out of which 1,985 employees affected were from Washington. Investments in realm of Artificial Intelligence In the proverbial 'keeping up with the times' and adapting to current trends, Microsoft is now emphasising more on AI as it tries to stay ahead in a fast-changing technology landscape. The tech giant is investing heavily into data centres and AI research to support growing demand from businesses that are adopting AI tools and services. The Bloomberg report further said that Microsoft has planned capital expenditure of around Rs 6.6 lakh crore ($80 billion) for the ongoing financial year. A big chunk of this expenditure will go into expanding data centre infrastructure as the aim is to reduce pressure on existing facilities that support AI services. Layoffs in the tech sector are continuously troubling IT professionals. Recently, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has warned that the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the corporate workforce will eventually lead to job cuts. After the COVID-19 pandemic, big tech companies like Amazon, Meta and Google laid off thousands of workers to reduce their staff. Now, another tech giant, Microsoft, has given a live, sombre, and somewhat gloomy presentation.