Intel stock rises on report Trump administration eyes stake in company

Stocks

Summary:

Intel shares rose over 3% after reports the Trump administration may take a stake to support its delayed $100B Ohio chip complex, part of broader efforts to boost U.S. semiconductor manufacturing.

Intel stock (INTC) rose more than 3% at the start of trading Friday following a report that the US government is considering taking a stake in the struggling chipmaker.

According to Bloomberg, the plan could see the government help Intel build out its planned chip complex in Ohio, which the company has had to delay as part of its ongoing turnaround effort. Intel announced the facility in 2022 with an initial investment of $20 billion that could grow to $100 billion over time.

Intel declined to comment on the report.

In a statement, a company spokesperson said, "Intel is deeply committed to supporting President Trump's efforts to strengthen U.S. technology and manufacturing leadership. We look forward to continuing our work with the Trump Administration to advance these shared priorities, but we are not going to comment on rumors or speculation."

Shares of Intel are up 18% over the past 12 months and 22% year to date.

The report follows President Trump's meeting with Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan on Monday.

The Ohio site was supposed to include two new manufacturing plants and start producing chips by 2025, but that's since been delayed into the 2030s. CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who took over when former CEO Pat Gelsinger was ousted by the company's board due to the slow turnaround in 2024, has since delayed the plant even further.

The Trump administration is making a major push to reshore American chip manufacturing.

Intel and rivals TSMC (TSM), Samsung, and others have been working to build more chip fabrication plants in the US since the Biden administration signed the CHIPS Act in 2022.

Part of Intel's plan under Gelsinger was to turn Intel into a contract chip manufacturer, similar to TSMC. But the gambit has run into trouble. So far, the foundry's main customer is still Intel, and the company is reportedly facing headwinds in getting its 18A chip technology up to the level needed to satisfy clients.

Intel has signed agreements to build chips for Amazon (AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT), using its chip designs.

Trump initially called for Tan to resign as CEO of Intel due to his investments in Chinese tech firms but backed away from the stance after meeting with him on Monday.

Intel is still far away from making any meaningful headway in the AI space, ceding the market to both Nvidia and rival AMD.

Earlier this week, the White House announced the US government will take a 15% cut of the sale of Nvidia and AMD chips shipped to China, an unconventional arrangement that highlights the government's increased focus on the semiconductor industry.

Source: finance.yahoo

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Devin

Economic

The blue-chip Dow briefly hit a record high on Friday, as UnitedHealth's shares jumped after Berkshire Hathaway raised its stake in the health insurer, while investors assessed mixed data to gauge the Federal Reserve's monetary policy path this year.

A meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin was also on the radar, with markets hoping it could pave the way for a resolution to the Ukraine conflict and determine the outlook for crude prices. The meeting will take place at 1900 GMT.

UnitedHealth Group (UNH.N), opens new tab gained 13.5% and was on track to log its biggest daily rise since 2008 after Warren Buffett's company (BRKa.N), opens new tab revealed a new investment in the health insurer, while Michael Burry's Scion Asset Management also turned more bullish on the company.

Rising costs in the broader healthcare sector and an about 40% slump in heavyweight UnitedHealth's shares this year have left the Dow (.DJI), opens new tab lagging its Wall Street peers on the road to record highs. The price-weighted index last scaled an all-time high on December 4.

The healthcare sector (.SPXHC), opens new tab gained 1.3% on Friday and is on track for its best weekly performance since October 2022.

More broadly, Wall Street's main stock indexes are on track for their second week of gains, buoyed by expectations that the Fed could restart its monetary policy easing cycle with a 25-basis-point interest rate cut in September.

The central bank last lowered borrowing costs in December and said U.S. tariffs could add to price pressures. However, recent labor market weakness and signs that tariff-induced inflation was yet to reflect in headline consumer prices have made investors confident of a potential dovish move next month.

"The question is has the tariff gotten into the price of goods yet? And it appears that there hasn't," said Joe Saluzzi, co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading.

Saluzzi also said while markets have largely priced in a September rate cut, investors might be overlooking risks, with low volatility and rich valuations pointing to a sense of complacency.

At 12:07 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI), opens new tab rose 87.49 points, or 0.20%, to 44,998.75, the S&P 500 (.SPX), opens new tab lost 18.18 points, or 0.28%, to 6,450.36 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC), opens new tab lost 101.44 points, or 0.47%, to 21,609.23.

In a mixed day for economic data, a report showed retail sales in July rose as expected, but consumer confidence and factory production numbers indicated tariffs were taking a toll on other pockets of the economy.

Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee was also cautionary in his remarks.

Trump has said he will unveil tariffs on steel and semiconductors next week.

Among other stocks on the move, Applied Materials (AMAT.O), opens new tab tumbled 13.3% after the chip equipment maker issued weak fourth-quarter forecasts.

Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab rose 5.8% after a report said the Trump administration was in talks for the U.S. government to potentially take a stake in the chipmaker.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 1.26-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 1.45-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The S&P 500 posted 9 new 52-week highs and no new lows while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 66 new highs and 62 new lows.

Source: Reuters

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Adam

Stocks

Economic

Mainland Chinese traders bought a record HK$35.9 billion ($4.6 billion) worth of Hong Kong-listed stocks on Friday, adding to their already hefty purchases so far this year.

The amount surpassed an earlier record of HK$35.6 billion set in April after Donald Trump announced sweeping global tariffs, according to Bloomberg-compiled data going back to late 2016. A gauge of Chinese stocks in Hong Kong pared a decline of 1.5% to finish the session 1% lower.

Mainland Chinese Investors Buy Record Amount of Hong Kong Stocks_1

Southbound Buying Hits Fresh Record of HK$35.9B

The latest buying spree takes the year-to-date Southbound flows to HK$940 billion, putting it on track for an annual record and inching closer to the HK$1 trillion estimated by some analysts. Mainland investors’ appetite for Hong Kong shares has expanded given cheaper valuations for dividend stocks and the appeal of Chinese tech firms following DeepSeek’s breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.

The inflows have helped push the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index up 24% so far this year, making it one of the world’s best performers. The funds also have squeezed Hang Seng Connect AH Premium Index to the lowest level since 2019, with onshore traded A shares tracked by the gauge now trading at a 22% premium over their Hong Kong counterparts.

Mainland Chinese Investors Buy Record Amount of Hong Kong Stocks_2

A/H Premium Slips to Lowest in Six Years

Meanwhile, animal spirits have seen a revival in the domestic market, where a liquidity-driven rally drove a popular stock gauge close to a decade high.

Source: Bloomberg

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Adam

Commodity

Gold continues to benefit from strong and steady central bank demand, and the more recent pivot of North American and European investors into gold-backed ETFs could have a major impact once markets digest the implications of the U.S. debt situation, according to Ryan McIntyre, managing partner at Sprott Inc.

In an interview with Kitco News this week, McIntyre discussed the various factors that are driving the gold market – some longer-running, some more recent – and the impacts each is likely to have over the coming months.

Bedrock central bank demand

The first of the longer-term factors that have helped push gold prices to record highs are bullion purchases by central banks, which rose considerably since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

McIntyre said central bank demand is still exerting significant influence on the market, both in terms of providing a floor for prices, but also by signaling to other market players.

“I think it's still a bit of a bedrock, like it has been over the past three years,” he said.

But what’s really changed over the past year or so has been the increased buying on the retail side. “To me, that's the story in terms of incremental demand,” he said. “You've seen it mainly reflected in the amount of physical gold held by gold-backed ETFs. We've seen that actually increase for the first time in many years after bottoming out in May of last year.”

Gold ETF holdings are rising

McIntyre noted that gold holdings are up about 11% year-to-date, but they're still down about 17% from their peak back in October of 2020. “Still plenty of room to go before we hit an all-time high of gold held by gold-backed ETFs,” he said. “But you have seen the institutional and retail investor come along a little bit. To me, that's a new story.”

The shift has been global, but also regional: Asian investors have been buying steadily for years, but Europe and then North America jumping in is what turned global flows positive overall.

“Absolutely,” McIntyre said. ”And to me, I think it really is all about people's feelings of uncertainty.”

He said that much of the world has been worried about the future for the past decade, if not longer – but not so much in the United States.

“They've been pretty comfortable with their existing holdings, S&P 500-type stocks, that type of thing,” he said. “And I think for the first time in a while, they started to reassess a little bit on the risk side in terms of how much risk they're taking and how much they're willing to take.”

Americans grow apprehensive

McIntyre said that with all the turmoil going on in the US government, he thinks Americans are finally starting to question what they have as a safety net. “Gold obviously has great history as a safe-haven asset, and people have gravitated towards it,” he said. “I think it's really as simple as that.”

When asked about the potential for a ‘stagflation’ scenario, in which the U.S. economy sees rising inflation in the midst of low or negative economic growth, McIntyre said he could see inflation playing out both ways.

“I could see it being higher, but I can also see it being lower as well,” he said. “I'm not convinced one way or the other, due to the economy. But what I can definitely say is that, from a currency debasement standpoint, you have to believe that's going to strengthen, no matter what the economy does or doesn't do.”

McIntyre said the fiscal position “particularly the United States, but this applies to several other Western countries as well, is in such a different place than it's been in a long time, and the fact that we're running 7% deficits relative to GDP here, and more than half of that just relates to net interest, is kind of crazy.”

Debt interest set to negate growth

“I think about it this way: The current forecast of [Sprott], and most people, including the Congressional Budget Office for the United States, they're basically forecasting the economy to grow about 4% a year, nominal,” he said. “If interest is three plus percent of GDP, it's basically consuming over three-quarters of the growth. We're not that far away from it actually consuming what the economy's going to grow at – just in interest alone, let alone new borrowing required – which is an absolutely scary proposition. Once you get to the point where interest is basically overwhelming the growth, that to me is an obvious signal that the debt cannot be repaid.”

“And not only that, but it's going to accelerate the worsening of the fiscal position,” he added. “That would literally be impossible to pay at that point. And even the Congressional Budget Office forecasts that net interest expense will be above 4%, so above the phenomenal growth rate that it’s forecasting now.”

McIntyre said that one of the biggest threats looming over the value of the dollar is that the United States will have to print a lot of extra money to cover these deficits, and ultimately to pay the debt itself.

“The government has taken on an inordinate amount of extra expense relative to GDP,” he added. “The government is actually supplementing the economy now, and has been since the COVID crisis, so that deficit we're running at 6% to 7%, could easily be close to 10% without that government support.”

“The sovereign risk is the most unpredictable element of the whole thing: When do people really start pricing it into the yields and everything else?” he said. “That's the biggest risk that is on the horizon – and it's not so far away anymore, in my eyes.”

But while some of gold’s major drivers are relatively steady, incremental, and linear, others are far less predictable. Chief among these are two that have dominated the conversation in financial market circles since Trump took office: Trade tariffs and the Fed’s independence.

Markets tuning out tariff talk

McIntyre acknowledged that gold’s recent run-up to an all-time high of $3,500 per ounce happened against the backdrop of extreme tariff uncertainty, but the market has since built up some immunity to the administration’s announcements and threats.

“I think people have gotten more comfortable with announcements versus reality,” he said. “It just changes so frequently, I just think people are discounting it to a degree – rightly or wrongly, I don't know – but it's so hard to keep up with just in its own right. There's so many tariffs, whether it's on specific products or products from different countries. There are so many nuances.”

“Some of it's misinformation, some of it's real,” he added. “You get all these different crosswinds. Just even in the Trump administration, conflicts get resolved between different people over Truth Social and other social media within hours. One person says one thing, someone else has to correct it or adjust it. I think people are somewhat desensitized to a degree.”

“From an investment standpoint, from our side, focused on commodities and precious metals in particular, the only thing we know is the more that there's uncertainty, the better it is for gold,” McIntyre said. “It obviously has been very good for gold prices and will continue to be. To me, it's whether people can really live with the amount of uncertainty given what they own as investments. If you're a gold investor, it's neutral to positive depending on exactly what it is, but it's likely not a negative.”

Attacks on Fed independence

Trump’s recent attacks on Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell and the FOMC’s wait-and-see monetary policy have been much more difficult to tune out, as unlike trade policy, they strike at the heart of the credibility of the U.S. dollar, both domestically and internationally as a reserve currency.

McIntyre said part of the problem is that markets are so fixated on the Fed these days, because they’re desperate for lower rates to bail them out.

“Currently, I would say a lot more people focus on the Fed and what interest rates might be doing rather than what the economy's doing,” he said. “The only reason people care about the economy is how it impacts rates because everyone's so leveraged, including the government.”

“To me, one of the most fearful things was removing that person from the BLS last week due to the labor numbers [being] theoretically manipulated, which of course is very unlikely,” he said. “But again, it's an eroding of confidence in institutions. And you don't know when the psyche changes, but when it does change, it's so hard to reverse. You never want to get close to having people switch to that kind of fearful mindset, on a sovereign level, because it's pretty tough to reverse.”

Investment case for gold

“That's why ultimately I think all roads lead to gold for people looking for a safe haven,” McIntyre said. “This doesn’t mean it should be their only asset, obviously. But we definitely think it should be at least 10% of people's net worth. It's a very small market, physically, so to the extent, you actually do get some move en masse – particularly from the United States because they tend to be lower participants in the gold market versus the rest of the world – it could mean big changes for the gold price.”

“From an investment standpoint, you should be looking at this through the lens of opportunity cost,” he added. “If you do one investment, it's obviously precluding you from doing other investments, and if there are a lot of great other opportunities, it might be a tough call. But because there are a lot of pockets of extreme overvaluation, to me, it's such an easy call to move into gold versus other things.”

“Let's say everything stays the same,” he suggested. “Then it's all good. You don't have to worry; 90% of your portfolio will be fine. And then conversely, if it goes a bit the other way, reverts back a little bit more towards normalcy, then you're going to be really happy that you have gold. It's such a small market physically, it doesn't take a lot of money to move into that area to really move the price up, as we've seen, by central bank buying initially, and now ETF buying over the past year or so.”

McIntyre said that one of the things that confirms we’re not in a frothy market is the continued outflows from gold mining equities. “Usually when people are really excited about gold, you usually see big inflows into that area, and you're actually seeing the opposite,” he noted. “To me, that's another great indicator that it's not frothy in this area.”

Silver also set to outperform

And while Sprott remains firmly bullish on gold, McIntyre said he sees equal upside in silver despite the gray metal lacking much of gold’s safe haven appeal.

“I think gold is the ultimate safe-haven asset, full stop, and silver is the little sibling, if you will,” McIntyre said. “I think you should definitely have gold in your portfolio, and silver on more of a tactical basis. We still think silver will do very well. If gold's going up, silver will go up. It tends to be a little bit more volatile than gold, so people should be aware of that.”

“Typically, when people move into silver, because it's an even smaller space than gold, you tend to get some exaggerated moves upward as well,” he added. “It wouldn't surprise me at all if silver did at least as well as gold over the next 12 to 24 months.”

Source: kitco

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Adam

Economic

U.S. President Donald Trump's criticism of Goldman Sachs' research on tariff risks could prompt some analysts to water down their research, investors and academics said, an outcome that could leave investors with less reliable information.

The reams of research that banks such as Goldman produce are used by institutional investors, such as hedge funds and asset managers, in deciding how to allocate capital.

Trump's comments -- in which he lambasted Goldman, its economics team and CEO David Solomon and accused them of making "a bad prediction" -- have triggered a debate on Wall Street about the possible fallout, according to interviews with banking industry sources and investors.

At one Wall Street bank, Trump's comments spurred informal conversations among staff, a source familiar with the matter said. The source said they also discussed how to incorporate government data in the wake of Trump's decision to fire the head of BLS, claiming -- without evidence -- that its data had been politicized. Still, the bank was not considering changing the way research operates.

"This is going to come down to a person’s ability to withstand a barrage of criticism from the Oval Office, and the extent to which these banks provide support for their chief economists," said Dave Rosenberg of Rosenberg Research, who has worked in the economics departments at several banks. "If we notice that research is being watered down ... then we’ll know that this has had an effect."

Jack Ablin, chief investment strategist at Cresset Capital, said if banks do start self-censoring, smaller investors who do not have the resources to do their own analysis are likely to suffer most.

Trump's criticism is his latest attack on corporate America and other institutions, and is a break from historical norms, where presidents have typically avoided calling out private companies and executives for things they do not like.

Some companies that have considered passing on tariff costs to customers have faced public criticism, and Trump, who came to politics after running businesses, has intervened directly in private business decisions by making a deal with Nvidia to give a portion of its revenues from sales to China of AI chips to the government.

Trump “certainly is taking a number of steps that diverge from the traditional view of the respective roles of the government and private industry,” said Henry Hu, a securities law professor at the University of Texas.

In a social media post earlier this week, Trump said foreign companies and governments were mostly absorbing the cost of his tariffs, counter to Goldman's research.

"Given that sell-side Wall Street analyst predictions have been about as accurate as random guessing, small investors will do just fine with the president exercising his First Amendment right about flawed Wall Street research," a White House official told Reuters.

On Wednesday, Goldman's U.S. head economist David Mericle defended its research on CNBC, vowing to "keep doing" what the bank considers informative research.

Goldman declined requests for further comment.

Other major banks, including Wells Fargo, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America and Citigroup, declined to comment.

REPUTATIONAL RISKS

There has already been evidence of self-censorship. A senior JPMorgan Asset Management investment strategist, Michael Cembalest, earlier this year said during a webinar that he refrained from voicing some of his thoughts on U.S. tariffs publicly. Shortly after Cembalest's comments, Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan's CEO, said that he expects analysts to speak their minds. Both Cembalest and the bank declined to comment for this story.

Hu said there is a risk involved in even appearing to give way to political pressure.

“Goldman’s reputational capital is at stake here,” he said. “If their views on the economy become biased, and they are shown to be wrong, why would anyone choose Goldman to advise them on anything?”

Mike Mayo, banking analyst at Wells Fargo, said independent research is critical for investment bank's reputation. "Investment banks live and die by their reputation and independence. That transcends all other considerations."

Wall Street research has long been tightly overseen, one source said, with supervisory analysts reviewing research reports to ensure that language is not inflammatory, emotive or partisan and that reports are objective and cite sources.

That person said that if analysts feel unable to speak openly then investors will pay more or take greater risk. Liquidity will suffer and there will be less foreign participation in U.S. markets, the person said.

It was large losses by smaller investors that triggered the first major probe of Wall Street research in the aftermath of the dot com stock bubble of the late 1990s. Eliot Spitzer, then New York Attorney General, found that Wall Street analysts had swapped their honest opinions for unwarranted "buy" ratings on companies to help their banks win underwriting and advisory business. The result: a $1.5 billion global settlement payout by Wall Street and lifetime bans for some analysts.

It remains to be seen whether the current kerfuffle will have an outsized impact on Wall Street or if it is a storm in a teacup, said Steve Sosnick, market strategist at IBKR.

"It does raise a lot of questions," he added.

Source: reuters

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Daniel Carter

Cryptocurrency

● US offers $6M bounty for leaders of Garantex.

● Treasury sanctions Russian crypto exchange and alleged successor platform.

● Investigators link $96B in transactions to criminal organizations.

US authorities have launched a coordinated strike against Garantex, a Russian-operated cryptocurrency exchange accused of processing billions in illicit transactions. According to officials, the platform has been linked to laundering proceeds from hacking, ransomware attacks, and terrorism financing.

The State Department has awarded up to $6 million as a reward for the exchange’s leadership. This includes a $5 million reward for Russian national Aleksandr Mira Serda, while an additional $1 million is earmarked for other senior members. People have been encouraged to communicate with the US Secret Service in secure channels in case they have credible leads.

Sanctions Target Garantex and Alleged Successor

The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control has re-designated Garantex and sanctioned Grinex, which investigators allege was created to bypass restrictions. The sanctions also targeted three executives and six of their companies based in Russia and Kyrgyzstan and disconnected them from the US financial network.

Investigators estimate that between April 2019 and March 2025, Garantex handled at least $96 billion in cryptocurrency. A large portion of this activity is assumed to be connected to criminal organizations operating on the territory of several countries.

According to the officials, the action against both Garantex and its successor is a systematic effort to prevent the re-emergence of sanctioned entities under different names. This would be done to close down financial channels through which illicit actors transfer money without checks.

Part of Expanding US Offensive on Crypto Crime

The measures against Garantex are part of a broader strategy to block the use of cryptocurrency for transnational crime. US agencies are intensifying efforts to dismantle digital networks that enable anonymous, rapid, and unregulated transfers.

Authorities have warned that any exchange facilitating illegal activity will face the same aggressive sanctions. New platforms replacing sanctioned entities are expected to be swiftly targeted to prevent criminals from evading enforcement.

By combining financial sanctions with multi-million dollar rewards, US officials are reinforcing their commitment to dismantling illicit crypto operations and holding those involved accountable.

Source: CryptoSlate

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Adam

Economic

The push and pull of conflicting data sets and the crosscurrents of the Fed's dual mission were on full display this week. And so was the specter of stagflation.

Producer prices surged in July, heating up far ahead of forecasts and offering an uncomfortable surprise of mounting pricing pressures on their way to consumers. At the same time, the number of Americans filing new applications for jobless benefits fell last week, signaling low layoffs.

But the reading also suggested people on the hunt for jobs are having a tough time. Firings aren't ramping up, but neither are hirings — which the latest jobs report and its revisions made quite clear.

The data didn't spark a second-guessing of a coming rate cut in September. But the market blinked. Odds of the Fed holding firm next month increased from 0% on Wednesday to 9% on Thursday after the releases, according to data from the CME Group. And the chances of a jumbo cut of 50 basis points in September have evaporated.

Things change fast, but the main takeaway hasn't changed: Markets are still pricing in over a 90% chance the central bank will reduce rates when officials meet again.

But while those odds held fast, so has the conviction of market contrarians who predict the Fed won't lower rates. Observers who haven't bought into the inevitability of a September cut say that Thursday's figures reinforced their position.

"There is nothing in the latest week's jobless claims data to alter the Federal Reserve's view of the labor market or our call that the Fed will hold off on cutting rates until December," said Nancy Vanden Houten, lead economist at Oxford Economics, in an email on Thursday.

The perplexing brew of economic commentary, data, and expectations will make Fed Chair Jerome Powell's speech next week at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium all the more relevant.

The stock market is at a record high on cut vibes, and "investors are hungry for additional validation," as Clark Geranen, chief market strategist at CalBay Investments, put it in a note to clients on Thursday.

There's a school of thought that the public cares more about inflation because it weakens all of us to some degree, whereas job losses can devastate a life or a household but are felt more narrowly by those unlucky enough to get axed by HR.

No doubt there are political and social dynamics that can make that theory more or less convincing. But Fed officials say they prioritize their dual mandates of stable prices and maximum employment using more dispassionate criteria: Which goal is more out of sync?

But therein lies stagflation's biggest rub: It's easy for policymakers to get it wrong when you have more than one way to stumble into error.