U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media at the White House in Washington D.C., U.S., June 27, 2025.
Ken Cedeno | Reuters
Something I rarely, if ever, say: What a wonderful Monday morning!
On Friday stateside, the S&P 500 broke its previous record. Celebrations were shared with the Nasdaq Composite, which also hit a new high. The tech-heavy index enjoyed a liftoff from Nvidia and Microsoft, both of which reached all-time highs (and probably made some insiders at Nvidia multi-millionaires over the past month).
Tariff relief buoyed sentiment in markets. China announced it had finalized details of its deal with the United States. And even though U.S. President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs are due to kick in (again) one week later, he suggested that his administration “can do whatever we want” regarding the 90-day pause.
Postponing the return of those tariffs would give investors further cheer and put another feather, perhaps of the chicken variety, in their caps.
That said, as Trump giveth, so does he taketh away.
The S&P 500 was up as much as 0.76% at one point during Friday’s trading session, but stumbled after the U.S. president slammed the door shut on trade talks with Canada over its digital services tax.
Investors took the news in their stride. The index only dipped slightly, but that nonetheless shaved off some gains.
U.S. markets open just before Asia heads to bed. May it be in Trump’s nature to be a giver, to borrow Chappell Roan’s words — so Monday can end as well as it began.
What you need to know today
And finally…
Chinese technology giant Baidu has launched its own ChatGPT rival, Ernie bot.
CFOTO | Future Publishing | Getty Images
China’s biggest public AI drop since DeepSeek is about to hit the market
On Monday, Chinese technology giant Baidu plans to make its Ernie generative AI large language model open source, a move by China’s tech sector that could be its biggest in the AI race since the emergence of DeepSeek.
“Baidu just threw a Molotov into the AI world,” said Alec Strasmore, founder of AI advisory Epic Loot. “OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek, all these guys who thought they were selling top-notch champagne are about to realize that Baidu will be giving away something just as powerful,” Strasmore said, comparing Baidu’s move to Costco creating Kirkland.
— Kevin Williams