Europe's lack of speed and agility diminishes competitiveness, says Barclays analyst
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CNBC
3 hours ago
- CNBC
CNBC Daily Open: The U.S. economy is not built on rock and roll
Despite the noise around tariffs and inflation fears, the U.S. economy seems to be holding its ground — for now. June retail sales came in stronger than expected, and weekly jobless claims dropped below forecasts. Add to that a solid start to earnings season, and you've got a recipe for record highs: both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq notched fresh peaks. So, is the economy truly resilient in the face of the Trump administration's shifting trade winds? Or are we simply in the eye of the storm, with August 1 — the Trump tariff deadline — looming on the horizon? Remember, economic data is always a step behind. The real impact of tariffs may not show up for months, especially if businesses and consumers are stockpiling ahead of time and foreign exporters are cutting their prices. Even when the new tariffs hit, the effects might be muted at first as inventories for now, investors can take comfort in the fact that markets are being lifted by fundamentals — not just fear or speculation. And yes, to borrow a line from Starship: the U.S. economy is still built on rock-solid data… not on rock and roll. Netflix posts earnings beat. Revenue for the streaming giant grew 16% during the second quarter of 2025. The company also updated its full-year revenue forecast, noting that it expects revenue to be between $44.8 billion and $45.2 billion, up from a range of $43.5 billion to $44.5 billion, reflecting the weakening of the U.S. dollar, "healthy" member growth and ad sales, it said in a statement. S&P and Nasdaq storm to new records. U.S. stocks climbed Thursday due to solid earnings and economic data, with the S&P 500 up 0.54% for a record close of 6,297.36 — its ninth this year. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.75% for its tenth record close of 2025, ending at 20,885.65. The pan-European Stoxx 600 gained 0.96% after a raft of earnings reports. Trump takes aim at solar and wind projects. U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum will now have the final say on whether those projects can proceed on U.S.-owned lands, as a way of "levelling the playing field" for coal and natural gas "after years of assault" by Biden administration, according to an Interior Department's internal memo Thursday. Layoffs at Amazon continue. The company confirmed layoffs in its cloud computing division Thursday. The company declined to say which units within Amazon Web Services were impacted, or how many employees will be let go as a result of the job cuts, but AWS' training and certification unit was one of the groups to see cuts, according to a memo viewed by CNBC. [PRO] The U.S. consumer pushes back on recession fears. U.S. consumers appear to prove economic pessimists wrong this summer as they flex their spending muscle, according to June's retail sales report. But some alternative data suggests that the consumer is hanging in there. AI-generated music is going viral. Should the music industry be worried? With more than 1 million monthly listeners on Spotify, psychedelic rock band The Velvet Sundown is raking in thousands of dollars. However, the "band" was recently confirmed to primarily be the work of generative artificial intelligence 一 something that had been heavily suspected and has the music industry asking itself questions.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Goldman Sachs And Barclays Join Forces To Fund A $395 Million Loan Backed By Amazon's Data Centers
Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Barclays (NYSE:BCS) have teamed up to issue a $395 million loan backed by a group of eleven Amazon distribution centers. The two banks jointly originated the debt, which will be bundled into a commercial mortgage-backed securities deal, CoStar News reports. Bond rating firm Moody's has already released an early analysis of the transaction, which is backed by approximately 1.55 million square feet of warehouse space, comprising a portfolio of single-tenant distribution centers with an average size of around 141,000 square feet. All the properties are leased solely to Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and are co-owned by Stonemont Financial Group and Stonepeak Partners. Don't Miss: Named a TIME Best Invention and Backed by 5,000+ Users, Kara's Air-to-Water Pod Cuts Plastic and Costs — This AI-Powered Trading Platform Has 5,000+ Users, 27 Pending Patents, and a $43.97M Valuation — The Importance Of Last Mile Distribution The type of last-mile distribution hubs involved in this deal has become increasingly valuable to Amazon's supply chain, enabling the e-commerce giant to offer high-speed delivery options throughout the U.S. Amazon leases each of the properties, which have an average expiration term of 9.8 years, under separate agreements. Amazon has recently been aggressively expanding its industrial real estate footprint, adding both distribution centers and data centers to its portfolio to stay ahead of the growing demand for e-commerce and AI. Part Of Amazon's Aggressive Infrastructure Increase In April, Amazon announced that it was investing $4 billion in rural America to expand its delivery network. According to a study by Amazon and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, when Amazon opens a facility, the median household income in the county increases by $1,225 per year. Additionally, poverty rates decrease by an average of 3.3%. Trending: With Point, you can Amazon announced plans to invest at least $20 billion in Pennsylvania in early June, following its previous announcements of $10 billion for North Carolina and $5 billion for its new cloud infrastructure in Taiwan. The Growing Trend Of Infrastructure Securitization The deal underscores a growing trend of capital flowing into physical infrastructure and logistics assets through securitization, according to Reuters. Insurers like Prudential and MetLife (NYSE:MET) are deploying huge pools of capital into structured assets offering stable, higher-yield alternatives to government bonds. , Getting Creative To Circumvent Tightening Lending Standards Reuters reports that many banks significantly tightened lending standards in 2023, particularly affecting commercial and industrial loans. As alternatives, property owners increasingly turned to structured financing like CMBS. The Federal Reserve's Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey for Q1 2025 reported, 'tighter lending standards and weaker demand for commercial and industrial loans to firms of all sizes,' marking the most significant tightening outside the pandemic period. Commercial real estate brokerage, JLL highlighted a growing trend for single-asset single-borrower transactions, which often back large-scale industrial and logistics assets. From January to August 2024, industrial deals accounted for over 33% of SASB volume, up from just 7% in 2023. This growth reflects lender and borrower confidence in financing prized logistics properties through CMBS Read Next: Warren Buffett once said, "If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die." Here's , starting today. Image: Shutterstock This article Goldman Sachs And Barclays Join Forces To Fund A $395 Million Loan Backed By Amazon's Data Centers originally appeared on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
New York Post
5 hours ago
- New York Post
Douglas Murray: A 50-day deadline is 50 days to kill. Force Putin's hand now
Who would ever have thought that dealing with the Middle East would look easy? But that is what President Trump has shown since he came into office. And though there is still needs to be a hostage-return and cease-fire deal in Gaza, the President's strong and decisive action against the mullahs in Iran helped pacify the world's least pacifist region. By contrast, the other great foreign policy challenge President Trump inherited remains as complicated as hell. The president and vice president's duffing-up of President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office in February might have been a low point in US-Ukraine relations. But in the months since then it is Vladimir Putin who has started to annoy President Trump. Because it is Putin who has been so completely unwilling to budge. Every time a cease-fire has looked close, the Russian president has sent even more rocket and drone barrages towards Ukraine. As the months have progressed Trump has admitted to losing patience with his Russian counterpart. That culminated this week in the president's announcement of two new steps in his efforts to stop the war. The first, mentioned alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the White House, is for America to sell high-quality US weapons to America's European allies, who will in turn pass them on to the Ukrainians. This is a clever move on the president's part — making sure that Ukraine continues to be able to defend itself without committing the financial resources that Trump has repeatedly told his voters he wouldn't send. The second announcement was that America could impose secondary tariffs on Russia. Again, it is a smart idea. Every morning, the NY POSTcast offers a deep dive into the headlines with the Post's signature mix of politics, business, pop culture, true crime and everything in between. Subscribe here! The allegedly 'stringent' sanctions that the Biden administration placed on Russia since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 have failed to work. The Russian economy has not faltered. It has gone onto a wartime footing and a full armaments-producing capability. And while America and other Western allies might not have any dealings with the Russian economy, much of the rest of the world still does. In fact, despite all the tough talk from Europe, there are reports that EU countries bought more Russian natural resources in the past year than they sent in financial aid to Ukraine. Talk about mixed messaging. But for the past three years, Russia has had plenty of other countries it can still sell its oil and natural gas to. These include Turkey, India and South Korea. So Trump suggested this week that he is considering putting secondary tariffs on such countries. That is, if countries want to help fund Putin's war efforts by buying his natural resources then they will have to pay at least 100% tariffs when dealing with the United States. In effect these countries would have to choose which market they'd rather operate in. Would they rather have access to the greatest market in the world — the US — or would they like to continue to barter at Vladimir Putin's decrepit trade stall? It's a smart policy, and we'll see if the president follows through on it. But in the meantime there is one vast, looming problem. The president has given Russia 50 days' notice on the secondary tariffs issue. As President Zelensky said in an exclusive sit-down with The Post this week, this gives Putin 50 days to continue escalating the conflict. As Zelensky said to Caitlin Doornbos, 'Fifty days, for us, is just — every day is scary.' He is right. It is hard to communicate to readers living in the realm of peace just what a 'normal' night is like even in the capital of Kyiv these days. Even a quiet night will include the sound of multiple Russian drones and UAVs flying at the city, plus the bursts of gunfire as under-equipped Ukrainian forces try to shoot the Russian weapons down from the sky. Putin has shown before that he likes to 'outsmart' Trump. In March, the two leaders agreed to an immediate cease-fire against all energy and infrastructure. Within hours, Putin carried out one of his biggest attacks to date on Ukraine's energy facilities. It is almost certain that if Putin thinks he has 50 days before anything happens he will use those 50 days to up his attacks and then stall for more time. Perhaps Trump can do with Putin what he so successfully did with the Iranian mullahs. Which was to offer to count to 10 and then go ahead and surprise them. We'll see. The battle is not just a fight for Ukraine's survival. It is also a battle of nerves between two of the most steel-nerved leaders in the world. How many voters really care about Epstein? Twitter (X) is not the real world. Who knew? If you were on the social media site for the past week you'd have thought that the most important issue to American voters is the dead criminal Jeffrey Epstein. There´s a huge amount we still don't know about the convicted sex offender. And there's plenty about him — the sources of his wealth, high-profile connections, and manner of his death — the public deserve to know about. But outside the Twitter-sphere Epstein isn't the story at the moment. Some MAGA influencers have decided that the release or otherwise of all known information about Epstein is a 'make or break' issue between them and the President. The President has expressed understandable frustration that he should be distracted from matters like, say, the economy, and keep getting asked about Epstein. Online personalities threaten that Trump is going to lose all support from his base unless every file relating to Epstein is released. And yet despite this bragging threat, the polls show otherwise. President Trump's approval rating among Republican voters actually went up this week, according to two separate polls. So whether or not the administration is right in its attitude towards the files, Trump himself is absolutely wise to look at his Twitter critics and say, 'Oh yeah, you and whose online army?'
