The New York Stock Exchange on Nov. 25, 2024.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
This report is from today’s CNBC Daily Open, our international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.
What you need to know today
Stabilizing the yuan a priority for Beijing
The offshore Chinese yuan has weakened more than 3% against the U.S. dollar, presenting headaches for Beijing, which wants to avoid currency volatility even as a cheaper yuan boosts exports. On Monday, China left its benchmark lending rates unchanged, suggesting that keeping the yuan stable is taking precedence over boosting the domestic economy.
Slowing Chinese investment in the U.S.
Chinese investments in the U.S. have slowed drastically in recent years, according to the latest American Enterprise Institute data. Just $1.66 billion flowed into the U.S. in 2023, down sharply from $46.86 billion in 2017. That trickle’s not likely to pick up during U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s second term because of “an ideological mismatch,” analysts said.
First winning week for U.S. stocks in 2025
Markets in the U.S. rose on Friday to end the week higher for the first time in 2025. Asia-Pacific markets climbed on Monday. During the trading day, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index jumped to its highest level since Dec. 31. Mainland China’s CSI 300 added around 0.5% as Beijing kept its loan prime rates unchanged.
Clock restarted for TikTok
TikTok said in a statement on X that it’s restoring service in the U.S. after Trump wrote on his social media app Truth Social he would “issue an executive order on Monday” to delay a ban on TikTok. On Saturday, Perplexity AI submitted a bid to TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to create a new merged entity combining Perplexity, TikTok U.S. and new capital partners, CNBC learned.
Trillionaires within a decade, Oxfam predicts
The combined wealth of billionaires surged to $15 trillion from $13 trillion in 2024, according to Oxfam on Sunday. It’s the second-largest annual increase in billionaire wealth since Oxfam records started. With the rate of wealth accumulation by the rich accelerating, the charity organization predicts that there’ll be at least five trillionaires within a decade.
TSMC confident of continued funding under Trump
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co expects that it’ll continue to receive the $6.6 billion it was promised under the Biden administration’s CHIPS and Science Act even after Trump takes office, TSMC Chief Financial Officer Wendell Huang told CNBC in an exclusive interview. On the campaign trail, Trump criticized the CHIPS Act and accused Taiwan of stealing the chip business from U.S.
[PRO] Trump to determine direction of markets
The inauguration of Trump will happen later Monday. Investors will want to keep an eye on what executive orders Trump will sign beginning from the first day of his presidency, especially as they relate to tariffs and corporate policies. Those orders could chart the direction of stocks for much longer than just the near term.
The bottom line
The S&P 500 surged above the shiny 6,000 level following Trump’s election victory but has largely erased all its gains and reverted to its pre-election level in the past few weeks. As Trump prepares to enter the White House, however, it seems like investors are gearing up to play the market based on his agenda again.
Stocks finally ended last week on a positive note, their first weekly gain for the year. For the week, the S&P 500 advanced 2.9% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 3.7%, their best weekly performance since the week of the U.S. presidential election in November. The Nasdaq Composite added 2.5%, its best week since early December.
Banks largely contributed to the bump in the indexes as better-than-expected earnings reports from big banks lifted their shares higher. Shares of Goldman Sachs popped around 12% on the week and JPMorgan Chase climbed 8% in the same period. Overall, the financial sector rallied more than 6% last week, outperforming the S&P.
Trump’s term as president might provide more forward momentum for bank stocks. Rising business and consumer confidence, an extension of tax cuts and deregulation of the finance industry are potential drivers of the sector, according to Chris Senyek, chief investment strategist at Wolfe Research.
“We still see Financials as the biggest sectoral winner under the Trump administration,” Senyek wrote in a note on Friday.
That said, apart from anticipation of Trump sitting in the Oval Office, muted back-to-back inflation readings for December also buoyed animal spirits in the markets: All sectors of the market ended the week in the green.
The better-than-expected economic data has helped “revive the goldilocks narrative for equities, and likely prompted some re-risking,” Barclays strategist Emmanuel Cau wrote in a Friday note.
Typically, any change involves increased risks. That’s true with Trump 2.0 — but as the number “two” suggests, a change we’ve seen before might mitigate a tiny bit of that uncertainty.
— CNBC’s Alex Harring, Hakyung Kim and Sarah Min contributed to this report.