Wall Street surge powers recovery in global financial markets #NewsMarket

Good morning. Today we’re covering:

• One of the largest wildfires in California’s history

• How Microsoft spread its bets beyond OpenAI

• The Bank of Mexico’s rate cut

But first, US equities had their strongest gain yesterday since 2022, after figures from the US labour department showed initial state unemployment claims, a proxy for lay-offs, were lower than expected in July.

The fall in unemployment claims helped to assuage investors’ fears that the world’s largest economy was heading into a downturn. The upbeat data has reverberated across global financial markets this morning, with Asian and European indices having clawed back the bulk of their losses since Monday’s sell-off.

Last week’s jobs report, showing fewer jobs added to the US economy than expected, had sent markets into a tailspin this week. Vix, an indicator of stock market volatility, peaked on Monday. And analysts had begun debating whether the Federal Reserve was moving too slowly to cut rates.

“I think it’s going to take time for markets to normalise,” Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco told the FT. “But we have to ask ourselves what triggered that sell-off, and I think it was irrational. I don’t think it’s telling us that we have a big recession coming,” she said.

• Bargain buys: Big investors such as BlackRock and UBS are among those hunting for cheap stocks after Monday’s sell-off, focusing on megacap tech groups.

• US politics: Recent market volatility is a warning to Kamala Harris that her campaign cannot count on a rebounding economy ahead of November’s election.

Here’s what I’m keeping tabs on today and over the weekend:

• Economic data: Brazil publishes inflation data for July. Canada publishes employment data.

• Results: Bridgestone, Hargreaves Lansdown and RTL report.

• Paris Olympics: The Games will hold medal ceremonies for athletes beaten by competitors later revealed to have been doping, ahead of the closing ceremony on Sunday.

How well did you keep up with the news this week? Take our quiz.

Five more top stories

1. US President Joe Biden, alongside the leaders of Egypt and Qatar, has made an urgent push to conclude ceasefire talks and a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas, setting August 15 as the date at which negotiations must resume.

2. Perplexity AI has increased its monthly revenues and usage seven-fold since the start of the year, after closing a new $250mn round of funding. The AI-powered search engine answered roughly 250mn queries last month, compared with 500mn queries for the whole of 2023.

3. One of the largest wildfires in California’s history, so far covering 450,000 acres, has burnt through swaths of forest earmarked for conservation under carbon credit plans backed by companies including oil refining and power groups.

4. Mexico’s central bank cut its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points yesterday, warning that the recent turmoil in global financial markets had hit the country on top of the prolonged “weakness” in the economy since the end of last year.

5. Coca-Cola is selling €1bn of new debt that it may use to help pay potential charges arising from a dispute with the US Internal Revenue Service, in which it could owe $16bn. The proceeds will add to the $7bn of fresh borrowing by the company this year.

The Big Read

Microsoft chief Satya Nadella’s bet on OpenAI in July 2019, long before its flagship ChatGPT became a household name, has since created one of the industry’s most successful partnerships. Last year, a quashed coup against co-founder Sam Altman only served to remind investors of how central the start-up had become to the tech giant’s artificial intelligence ambitions. But since the crisis, Nadella has been working to execute an AI strategy independent of the start-up.

We’re also reading . . . 

• Latin American development: Deep policy fatigue in the US is hampering development in Central and South America, Adam Tooze writes.

• Flipping burgers: Research on entry-level McDonald’s workers is shedding new light on questions surrounding low-wage pay and inequality, writes Soumaya Keynes.

• Big Tech verdict: Branding Google a monopoly opens the door for change, John Thornhill writes.

Chart of the day

The US’s trucking industry has begun to show signs of life after one of the deepest downturns in its history. Demand has picked up recently even as prices remain suppressed by excess fleet capacity, soaring fixed costs and increased competition for limited freight loads.

Take a break from the news

The FT’s Simon Kuper explains why Olympic medals are usually a signal that a country is doing important things right, far beyond sport.

Additional contributions from Benjamin Wilhelm and Tee Zhuo