Bonds & Stocks
Stocks hovered near all-time highs amid signs of Corporate America resilience, with companies surpassing profit estimates by the most since 2021. A slide in gold deepened. While still early in the season, the solid earnings beats come as a relief to investors at a time when the equity rally has slowed. With Wall Street sifting through a fresh batch of results, Tesla Inc. will be the first megacap to report after Elon Musk’s electric-vehicle giant more than doubled in the past 12 months. A surge in Beyond Meat Inc. and Krispy Kreme Inc. echoed of the meme-stock frenzies that periodically roil the market.
Economy
The Federal Reserve has shown other US regulators the outlines of a revised plan that would dramatically relax a Biden-era bank capital proposal for Wall Street’s largest lenders, according to people familiar with the matter. Some officials have calculated that the terms of the Fed’s plan would lead to an increase of between about 3% and 7% in aggregate for most big banks, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing the plans. Although there’s no specific projection in the outline, those estimates are lower than the 19% increase in the 2023 proposal and the 9% bump floated in a compromise version last year.
World
The European Union is working on trade options to counter China’s planned export controls on critical raw materials should the bloc fail to reach a diplomatic solution with Beijing. The European Commission is preparing a list of trade measures by the end of the month that can later be deployed against China to boost its negotiating leverage, according to people familiar with the matter. The commission is also developing a plan to protect critical supplies in the short-term and secure other sources.