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The S&P 500 was little changed on Thursday, as investors grappled with fears of rising rates and worries about a ballooning U.S. deficit. The 30-year Treasury yield hit its highest since October 2023 as lawmakers passed a bill that investors fear could worsen the U.S. deficit.

 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 1.35 points, closing at 41,859.09. The S&P 500 lost 0.04% and ended at 5,842.01, while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.28% and settled at 18,925.73.

 

In a party-line vote early Thursday, House members approved the bill that includes lower taxes and additional military spending. The measure, which now goes to the Senate — could increase the U.S. government’s debt by trillions and raise the deficit at a time when fears of a flare-up in inflation due to Trump tariffs are already weighing on bond prices and boosting yields. The Congressional Budget Office puts the price tag for bill at nearly $4 trillion.

The House’s draconian cuts to former President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law won’t fly in the Senate, key Republican senators said Thursday.

 

Just hours after the House narrowly passed a massive tax and spending bill gutting key clean-energy tax incentives, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the Senate was planning its own effort.

 

“They give us a good product to work with but we have senators who want to write our own bill,” Thune said.

 

Other Republican senators said they were already planning to make changes.

 

Softening aggressive phaseouts of key tax credits for clean electricity production and nuclear power projects are among the top priorities, said Senator Lisa Murkowski, a moderate Republican from Alaska who has bucked her party on key votes before.

Oil fell to its lowest settling price in almost two weeks as US stockpiles gained and OPEC+ members discussed another major production increase, just as demand faces headwinds from the US-led trade war.

 

West Texas Intermediate slid 0.6% to settle just above $61 a barrel. Brent dropped to settle below $65. If OPEC+ approves the potential increase of 411,000 barrels a day when it meets on June 1, it will mark the third month in a row the cartel has agreed to boost supplies by triple the initially scheduled amount.

The US Senate voted to block a California program banning gasoline-powered cars and other vehicles by 2035, sending the measure to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature.

 

The 51-44 vote Thursday rolls back an Environmental Protection Agency waiver issued under former President Joe Biden allowing California to enact emissions standards even stricter than the US government’s requirements to increase sales of electric and other zero-emission vehicles.

 

The decision to repeal waivers for the state automobile programs overturns a decades-old practice — enshrined in the Clean Air Act of 1970 — of allowing the most populous US state to set stringent pollution standards that go beyond federal government requirements. That authority, first envisioned as a way to help California combat smog, has helped put Sacramento in the driver’s seat, designing pollution curbs that apply widely across the nation in other states that have opted to follow along.

Apple Inc. is aiming to release smart glasses at the end of next year as part of a push into AI-enhanced gadgets, but it has shelved plans for a smartwatch that can analyze its surroundings with a built-in camera.

 

Company engineers are ramping up work on the glasses — a rival to Meta Platforms Inc.’s popular Ray-Bans — in a bid to meet the year-end 2026 target, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Apple will start producing large quantities of prototypes at the end of this year with overseas suppliers, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the products haven’t been announced.

Aditya Mittal, chief executive officer of steelmaker ArcelorMittal SA, is investing $1 billion into Bill Chisholm’s purchase of the NBA’s Boston Celtics, according to a person familiar with the transaction.

 

While Chisholm will still be the largest shareholder, Mittal will have a significant stake in the team, said the person who asked not to be identified because the deal is private. Chisholm’s group originally agreed to buy the Celtics in March from the Boston Basketball Partners in two parts, with the first transaction valuing the team at $6.1 billion, a record price for a control sale of a sports franchise.

Southwest Airlines Co. continues to see softness in air travel demand that emerged earlier this year and pushed many carriers to pull back their profit forecasts.

 

“We have not seen in the industry an inflection back,” Southwest CFO Tom Doxey said at a Wolfe Research conference on Thursday. The airline expects unit revenue to be flat to down 4% this quarter, after seeing the measure come in 6 points below its outlook at the start of 2025.

 

A number of US carriers withdrew their full-year earnings outlooks last month, saying a surprise collapse in demand in February and March clouded the forecast for the rest of 2025. Concern over trade wars, inflation, government job cuts and questions about border policies contributed to an erosion in domestic travel demand.

Hinge Health Inc. shares rose 19% after the digital physical therapy provider and a group of investors raised $437 million in an initial public offering priced at the top of a marketed range.

 

Shares in the San Francisco-based company increased to $38.19 each as of 1:50 p.m. on Thursday in New York, versus the IPO price of $32 apiece.

 

The current trading gives Hinge Health a market value of nearly $3 billion based on the outstanding shares listed in its filings, not including preferred stock that could convert to common shares. It has a fully diluted value of about $3.5 billion when taking employee options and restricted share units into account.

The Trump Administration told Harvard University it can’t enroll international students, delivering a major blow to the school after the government froze billions of dollars of federal funding.

 

“Harvard’s leadership has created an unsafe campus environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals, including many Jewish students, and otherwise obstruct its once-venerable learning environment,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Thursday.

 

The US revoked Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, meaning the school can no longer enroll foreign students. Existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status, according to the notice. The New York Times first reported the government’s action. Harvard didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

President Donald Trump will attend the Group of Seven summit in June, the White House said, as tensions over trade and his efforts to halt Russia’s war in Ukraine cloud US ties with some of its closest allies.

 

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that Trump would attend the gathering from June 15 to 17.

 

This year’s G-7 leaders summit will be held in Kananaskis, Alberta, taking Trump to Canada — a nation whose economy and sovereignty have faced threats from the US president — highlighting how his policies to reshape global trade and defense ties have upended longstanding relationships.

OpenAI is helping to develop a major data center in the United Arab Emirates, a big overseas expansion of its Stargate effort to build out AI infrastructure.

 

The ChatGPT maker is partnering on a 5-gigawatt data center cluster in Abu Dhabi with G42, an AI company backed by the country’s sovereign wealth fund. As part of the deal, G42 plans to make a reciprocal dollar-for-dollar investment in AI infrastructure in the US, OpenAI said. Bloomberg previously reported OpenAI’s plan to be an anchor tenant in the project.

Investors of clean-power stocks are running for the exits after a massive tax and spending bill that would gut former President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law narrowly passed the House of Representatives.

 

The bill now moves to the Senate, where some lawmakers are skeptical of provisions that would end subsidies for green energy years earlier than planned. But even as some Wall Street analysts suggested a final bill isn’t likely to be as damaging to the industry, renewable energy stocks are tumbling.

 

Shares of Sunrun Inc., America’s biggest rooftop-solar company, fell as much as 42% on Thursday — the most ever in intraday trading. Equipment provider SolarEdge Technologies Inc. slid as much as 27%. NextEra Energy Inc., the biggest US developer of wind and solar projects, slid as much as 10.7%, the most since October 2023.

From the US to Japan, long-term borrowing costs for the world’s biggest economies are surging as investors question the ability of governments to cover massive budget deficits.

 

Thirty-year bond yields this week reached 5.15% in the US, approaching levels last seen in 2007, while those in Japan exceeded the highest on record in data since 1999, with auctions in both countries drawing tepid demand. Long-dated bonds in the UK, Germany and Australia also faced selling pressure.

AT&T Inc. agreed to buy the consumer fiber operations of Lumen Technologies Inc. for $5.75 billion, expanding its fast broadband service in major cities like Denver and Las Vegas.

 

AT&T will pay cash for the unit of Lumen, according to a statement Wednesday. Talks between the companies were reported earlier by Bloomberg News. The sale is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close in the first half of next year.

 

The deal helps AT&T increase its long-term goal of putting its fiber-optic lines within reach of more homes and businesses. The Dallas-based wireless and broadband company now says it aims to reach 60 million locations by 2030, about double where AT&T Fiber is available today. Lumen had said earlier that the consumer fiber business didn’t fit with its focus on serving enterprise customers.

A US judge blocked President Donald Trump’s efforts for now to shutter the Department of Education, including a plan to slash the workforce in half and remove thousands of employees.

 

US District Judge Myong Joun in Boston wrote in a Thursday ruling that the personnel cuts would “likely cripple the department” and ordered the administration to reinstate employees to carry out duties required under US law, including managing federal student loans, aiding state education programs and enforcing compliance with civil rights laws.

Deutsche Bank AG won’t move ahead with a plan to add restrictions on financing oil and gas, as it assesses the legal risks of doing so, according to its chief executive.

 

“The legal environment has changed, and we are currently analysing this in detail in order to minimise potential risks for the bank,” CEO Christian Sewing told shareholders at Deutsche Bank’s annual general meeting on Thursday.

 

At the same time, Sewing sought to reassure investors that Deutsche Bank isn’t backing away from its climate goals. Germany’s largest lender has “largely completed” an update of its guidelines for the oil and gas industry, which includes limits on the financing of oil sands, hydraulic fracking in certain geographies and Arctic exploration, he said. But the timeline of the update’s implementation is currently unclear, he said.

Six unions representing Walt Disney Co. theme-park workers in Florida called on companies to work with employees who are losing their legal status in the US after the Trump administration revoked protected status for hundreds of thousands Venezuelan immigrants, forcing Disney to suspend dozens of employees.

 

“These workers — our colleagues, friends, and neighbors — have contributed immensely to the success of the Walt Disney Company and to the vibrant culture of Central Florida,” the Service Trades Council Union, labor coalition, said in a joint statement Thursday. “The cancellation of TPS was not just a policy decision; it was a cruel and calculated attack on immigrant communities.”

TP ICAP Group Plc was hit by a German court ruling ordering it to pick up a potentially multimillion-euro tax bill because the broker allowed its managers to commit crimes with Cum-Ex trading.

 

A Hamburg court issued the judgment in a case brought by M.M. Warburg & Co, which sued TP ICAP and others over losses of €291 million ($329 million) — the amount the German lender had to repay to authorities in the affair.

 

While TP ICAP won dismissal of a part of the suit, it lost a portion where the judges ruled that it needs to reimburse Warburg for some of those losses. How much is still to be determined. Warburg claims it’s €82 million. The court said in the ruling that working out the exact amount is likely to take “considerable effort.”

Bitcoin surpassed $111,000 for the first time, with traders increasingly bullish on the prospects of the original cryptocurrency amid mounting institutional demand and support from Donald Trump’s administration.

 

Bitcoin climbed as much as 3.3% on Thursday to hit a record of $111,878, before paring some of the increase. Smaller tokens also rose in a broad rally, with second-ranked Ether at one point up about 7.3%.

 

A wave of optimism is buoying Bitcoin after the advancement of a key stablecoin bill in the US Senate fueled hopes of greater regulatory clarity for digital-asset firms under President Trump, who is avowedly pro-crypto. Surging demand from Michael Saylor’s Strategy, which has stockpiled over $60 billion worth of Bitcoin, and a growing list of token hoarders is another driving force behind the rally.

Investec shares surged in South Africa and the UK after the dual-listed bank posted a record dividend for the third year in a row.

 

The specialist lender with operations in the UK and South Africa posted a 7.8% increase in “pre-provision” adjusted operating profit to £1.04 billion ($1.4 billion) — the first time the gauge has surpassed the £1 billion mark — buoyed by a 5% jump in revenue, it said in a statement on Thursday.

 

The stock price jumped 3.3% to 120.65 rand by 3:08 p.m in Johannesburg, while advancing as much as 3.6% in London.

Russia said its air defenses downed 485 Ukrainian drones over a period of two days, a sustained attack that delayed more than 100 flights as airports around Moscow temporarily halted operations.

 

Since 8 p.m. local time on Tuesday, Russian defenses repelled unmanned aerial vehicles over 13 regions as well as Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula the Kremlin seized in 2014, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said Thursday on its Telegram channel. That included 63 over the capital region. No injuries have been reported.

 

All four airports in the greater Moscow area have suspended flight operations multiple times over the past day, according to a flight safety watchdog.

LVMH lost its place among Europe’s top five listed companies as the luxury-goods maker endures its worst year-to-date slide since the 2008 financial crisis.

 

The French company’s shares fell about 3% on Thursday, taking their decline for this year to 25%. Its market value of about €239 billion ($270 billion) slipped below that of Swiss packaged-foods maker Nestle SA.

Stocks were mixed Thursday following a sizable sell-off on Wall Street as worries about a ballooning deficit deepened.

 

The 30-year Treasury yield hit its highest since October 2023 as lawmakers passed a bill that investors fear could worsen the US deficit.

 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 92 points, or 0.2%. The S&P 500 fell 0.1%, while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.2%.

Bank of England rate-setter Swati Dhingra said there was new evidence that Brexit had dealt a bigger blow to Britain’s services trade than previously realised.

 

Dhingra said on Thursday that early results from her research showed that UK services firms that were affected by trade barriers erected after Brexit have suffered a 8.5% fall in exports to the European Union relative to other developed countries.

 

“We’ve congratulated ourselves how well we’ve been doing on services exports,” Dhingra said at the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence conference in London. “So has everyone else. We’re not exceptional. If anything, we’ve actually lagged behind.”

Northvolt AB will stop making cells at its last remaining factory in northern Sweden at the end of June, marking the demise of what was once Europe’s best hope of a homegrown battery champion.

 

An absence of buyers to save the battery maker led the trustee managing its bankruptcy estate to conclude production needs to wind down, according to a statement on Thursday that confirmed an earlier report by Bloomberg News.

 

“The bankruptcy estate does not foresee any realistic prospects for a purchaser to assume control of the production in the near term,” trustee Mikael Kubu said in the statement.

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said the central bank could cut interest rates in the second half of 2025 if the Trump administration’s tariffs on US trading partners settle around 10%.

 

“If we can get the tariffs down closer to 10% and then that’s all sealed, done and delivered somewhere by July, then we’re in good shape for the second half of the year,” Waller said Thursday during an appearance on Fox Business.

 

“Then we’re in a good position at the Fed to kind of move with rate cuts through the second half of the year,” he added.

 

Fed officials have held the central bank’s benchmark interest rate steady this year, citing an overall solid economy and uncertainty surrounding President Donald Trump’s tariff policies.

Deutsche Bank AG has reduced its exposure to companies that are sensitive to the new US tariffs, after the German lender conducted a series of internal stress tests.

 

“We have selectively reduced risk and customer limits in tariffs-sensitive sectors and downgraded individual customer ratings,” Chief Financial Officer James von Moltke told investors at the bank’s annual shareholder meeting.

 

Deutsche Bank said last month that it had added a “dedicated tariff overlay” to its credit provisions to account for the impact of the trade war and the worsening economic environment. Among the sectors most exposed are the automobile and steel industries, von Moltke said now.

 

“The overall quality of our loan book remains stable,” he told shareholders on Thursday.

Initial unemployment insurance filings edged lower last week, a further indication that companies are retaining workers.

 

Jobless claims totalled a seasonally adjusted 227,000 for the week ending May 17, a drop of 2,000 from the prior period and just below the Dow Jones estimate for 230,000, the Labour Department reported Thursday. The four-week moving average nudged higher to 231,500.

 

Continuing claims, which run a week behind, totalled 1.9 million, up 36,000 from the prior period. The four-week moving average rose to 1.89 million, its highest level since Nov. 27, 2021.

Oil declined for a third day with OPEC+ members discussing another super-sized production increase for July, just as demand faces headwinds from the US-led trade war.

 

Brent traded near $64 a barrel, touching the lowest in a week. If OPEC+ approves the potential increase of 411,000 barrels a day when it meets on June 1, it will mark the third month in a row the cartel has agreed to boost supplies by triple the initially scheduled amount.NewsLive TVMarketPopular CategoriesCalculatorsTrending NowLet's Connect with CNBCTV 18Network 18 Group :©TV18 Broadcast Limited. All rights reserved.