Donald Trump continued browbeating Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy into making concessions that he believes could end Europe’s most-deadly war in eight decades. Speaking today in an interview on Fox, the US President warned Putin faces “a rough situation” if he doesn’t behave, while chiding Zelenskiy “to show some flexibility.”
The comments followed a whirlwind stretch of diplomacy in which Trump traveled to Alaska for a tête-à-tête with his Russian counterpart. Three days later, European Union leaders joined Zelenskiy for roundtable discussions at the White House.
While the meetings didn’t yield tangible agreement among the warring parties, they offered a fillip for negotiation. European officials have started conferring with their American counterparts over a Ukraine security package once the fighting ends. Details will need to be hammered out before Trump gets to send invitations to the ballyhooed trilateral summit he’d like to convene.
Investors aren’t waiting for the dust to settle. The mere hint of peace pushed European defense stocks lower. More broadly, a huge rally in European defense stocks has stalled this summer, as investors await evidence from company order books of promised government military spending that fueled their optimism. --Jonathan Tirone
What You Need to Know Today
With investors’ summer holiday ending, traders are bracing for a big selloff. Options traders are increasingly nervous about a plunge in technology stocks and are grabbing insurance to protect themselves. Gains last quarter in our Magnificent 7 Total Return Index could be hiding areas of weakness lurking beneath the market’s surface. The US is looking increasingly concentrated, writes John Authers at Bloomberg Opinion, with more equities hovering closer to values last seen two decades ago than the heights scaled by today’s hottest tech stocks. Previous extremes of concentration came with the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000, and then with the market crises of 2008 and 2020.
Commodity markets continue searching for equilibrium from the impact of Trump’s trade tariffs. The mercurial leader stunned the logistics industry heading into the weekend with additional steel and aluminum levies on more than 400 consumer items. Customs brokers and importers in the US were given little notice to account for the change, which went into effect today. Miners and trading houses are also coming to grips with the new normal. Trafigura hired a team of precious metal traders to delve deeper into highly profitable gold and silver markets. BHP, the world’s biggest miner, said China’s export resilience and policy support will underpin future commodity demand despite uncertainties swirling around global trade. Underscoring the value investors place on trade networks, we’re told that Qun Xiao, the former co-head of a commodities trading team at Goldman Sachs, plans to begin trading with $1 billion at his own hedge fund startup later this year.
International students traveling to the US for university continue to plunge. Total arrivals on student visas decreased 28% to just under 79,000, the biggest monthly drop so far this year, data from the International Trade Administration show. US universities have already warned that first-time foreign student enrollment on campuses are projected to fall by about 30% this fall, potentially costing the education sector $2.6 billion in tuition revenue.
The man who bred the world’s biggest rhino herd has just been arrested on charges of smuggling the endangered animals’ horns. South Africa’s John Hume was charged today with violating environmental and biodiversity laws. He’s accused of leading a syndicate that trafficked the horns of 964 rhino. Elsewhere, more Africans are demanding a map commensurate with their true land mass. The African Union is supporting the Correct the Map campaign to promote the so-called 2018 Equal Earth projection. Groups are urging the World Bank and United Nations to officially adopt the Equal Earth map, a more accurate representation of land-mass areas.
The Equal Earth projection retains the relative sizes of land masses.
China’s Xiaomi intends to sell its first electric vehicle in Europe by 2027, declaring plans to take on Tesla and BYD globally after gaining traction with its year-old EV business. The company has gained some $120 billion of market value over the past year, galvanized by a drive into EVs that’s gained momentum against much larger and more experienced rivals. Xiaomi’s move comes as US tariffs soften the EU to more Chinese investment.
The House of Guinness is on deck at Netflix and prepared to tap into viewer obsession with family drama. Set in the late 19th century, when eldest sons were still considered natural heirs, the eight-part drama follows the four children of Benjamin Guinness, whose sprawling beer empire made him one of the wealthiest men in Ireland.
