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Not so happily ever after for the auto industry. One top analyst says there’s a “fairy tale” problem with Trump’s car tariffs.
Wall Street is making bank. Last quarter, some of the biggest U.S. banks pulled in equities trading revenue that surpassed the post-pandemic trading peak.
Boeing gets grounded. The company’s stock dropped after reports that Chinese airlines have been ordered not to accept any more deliveries from the U.S.-based plane manufacturer.
The U.S. is experiencing a flight risk. Data shows that arrivals by plane from non-U.S. citizens have declined sharply — which could cost the country’s economy billions.
Google hit with a ‘404 error’ in Japan. A Japanese regulator issued a cease-and-desist order to the company Tuesday, saying its practices are monopolistic.
Meta faces a ‘dislike’ from U.S. regulators. Mark Zuckerberg’s company heads to court in one of the biggest antitrust cases in decades; here’s what to watch for.
Hedge funds hit the brakes; retail investors see green
Main Street is doubling down, while Wall Street might be ducking for cover.
Retail investors’ purchases of U.S. stocks surged this past week, with everyday traders “aggressively buying the dip,” according to Vanda Research, and charging into the market like it’s 2021 — despite the S&P 500 being down around 8% year-to-date.
Meanwhile, the so-called “smart money” hedge funds have offloaded nearly $45 billion in equities over the last month. Goldman Sachs reported that hedge funds had their biggest weekly stock sale since 2010. And the big banks (Goldman, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley) generated over $12 billion in equities trading revenue in the first quarter, capitalizing on surging client activity — which might not signal bullish sentiment but rather the opposite: scrambling to reposition.
So retail is betting on a bounce, while institutions are playing defense. Quartz’s Catherine Baab breaks down the growing disconnect.
Bumpy road ahead for the U.S. auto industry
U.S.-based automakers just hit a major pothole: The S&P Global Mobility is cutting 700,000 car and light truck sales from its 2025 forecast, the auto industry tracker revealed in a report published Monday. It’s one of the largest single-month changes the group has ever made to the forecast.
This comes amid President Donald Trump’s erratic tariff policies. Earlier this month, a universal 25% tariff on all light-vehicle imports to the U.S. went into effect — and a matching 25% tariff on auto parts is coming May 3. Monday, the president said he’d be open to short-term exemptions for automakers that import parts from Canada and Mexico, but not everyone is taking his word for it. At the time the report was being written, S&P said “there is no visibility into details.”
The group continued, explaining that “only changes reactive to the 2020 Covid global manufacturing pause and the 2008-09 global financial crisis were larger than the changes to the sales and production forecasts for April 2025.” Quartz’s Kevin Ryan looks at the rocky road ahead.
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