Author: usaeverydaylife

What does a donut tell us about the state of the economy?Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee thought about that Wednesday as he toured Mel-O-Cream Donuts in Springfield, Illinois.Even inside a donut shop, the effects of tariffs on the economy can be seen. “It’s sort of surprising, because donuts seem like a very local product, and yet they get some ingredients like palm oil that are coming from Indonesia,” Goolsbee said. The Trump administration set tariffs on Indonesia at 19%.”They have to now figure out what are the tariff rates, and the tariffs went up a significant amount. If that…

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The Tokyo Tower stands amid buildings at dusk in Tokyo, Japan.Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesJapan’s economy expanded 0.3% in the second quarter of 2025 compared to the first three months of the year, beating forecasts despite tariff headwinds out of the United States.This was compared to the revised 0.1% growth seen in the first quarter, and was higher than the 0.1% increase expected by economists polled by Reuters.The GDP beat can be mainly attributed to net exports, which contributed 0.3 percentage points to GDP growth.On a year-over-year basis, Japan’s GDP expanded 1.2% in the second quarter, falling short of…

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Here are Thursday’s biggest calls on Wall Street: Mizuho reiterates Nvidia, Dell and Advanced Micro Devices as outperform The firm raised its price target on several semis companies Wednesday evening. “Raising Ests/PT for NVDA to $205 (prior $192) AMD to $205 (prior $183) as Hyperscaler capex continues to tick higher, while China adds another tailwind. Raise DELL PT to $160 (prior $150) with strong Tier 2 CSP [cloud service providers] ramps. ” Bank of America adds Advanced Micro Devices to the US1 list Bank of America added the stock to its top ideas list. “We are adding Advanced Micro Devices…

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Here are the opening calls for the day Happy Friday from Singapore. Asia markets are set for a mixed open.Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was set to start the day marginally lower with futures tied to the benchmark at 8,838, compared with the index’s last close of 8.873.8.Japan’s Nikkei 225 was set to open higher, with the futures contract in Chicago at 42,795, while its counterpart in Osaka last traded at 42,770, against the index’s last close of 42,649.26.Futures for Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index stood at 25,316, pointing to a weaker open compared with the HSI’s last close of 25,519.32.South Korean markets…

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“We want to beat Disney in family animation,” then Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said in an interview in September 2020. At the time, anyone would say that was a tall order. Disney has almost a century of experience of producing animated films, dating back to 1937’s “Snow White.” Since then, the studio has produced hits that many kids would be familiar with. Think “Cinderella,” “Alice in Wonderland” and “Sleeping Beauty.” Add to that Pixar’s “Toy Story,” “The Incredibles” and “Inside Out” and it’s not hard to see that Hastings had his work cut out for him. And then came the…

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While other large-cap names were thriving off their April lows, shares of PepsiCo (PEP) actually made a new 52-week low in May. This week, the beverage and snack heavyweight completed an upside rotation, pushing above its 200-day moving average for the first time since October. Today we’ll dig into the dynamics of this impressive turnaround story, show how a much larger rotation could be taking place, and identify key levels to watch to confirm further bullish breakouts. After achieving a series of new 52-week lows in April and May, PEP stabilized around the $127 level with a series of lows…

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Marc Benioff, chairman and chief executive officer of Salesforce.com speaks during the grand opening ceremonies for the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco on May 22, 2018.David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesActivist Starboard Value, one of the first investors to publicly push Salesforce to make changes three years ago, increased its stake in the U.S. software company by almost 50% in the second quarter, according to a regulatory filing on Thursday.The hedge fund reported owning 1.3 million shares in Salesforce on June 30, compared with 849,679 shares at the end of the first quarter when it boosted its stake…

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Sam Altman turned OpenAI into a cultural phenomenon with ChatGPT.Now, three years later, he’s chasing where the real money is: Enterprise.Last week’s rollout of GPT-5, OpenAI’s newest artificial intelligence model, was rocky. Critics bashed its less-intuitive feel, ultimately leading the company to restore its legacy GPT-4 to paying chatbot customers.But GPT-5 isn’t about the consumer. It’s OpenAI’s effort to crack the enterprise market, where rival Anthropic has enjoyed a head start.One week in, and startups like Cursor, Vercel, and Factory say they’ve already made GPT-5 the default model in certain key products and tools, touting its faster setup, better results…

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