US Proposals To End Russia's War Involve Ukraine Giving Up Land, Some Weapons, Sources Say

The longest slide in US stocks since August has created an opportunity for dip buyers, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s trading desk.

Worries over everything from the durability of the artificial intelligence trade to the Federal Reserve's monetary policy path have contributed to a four-day selloff that shaved 3.4% from the S&P 500 Index through Tuesday's close. To Andrew Tyler, head of global market intelligence at JPMorgan, that decline represents a "technical washout" in equities that may have already ended.

"Given that there have not been any changes to the fundamental story, nor does our investment hypothesis rely on the Fed easing, we are dip-buyers," Tyler wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday.

With stocks higher on Wednesday morning, traders are awaiting earnings from AI-bellwether Nvidia Corp. after the close and the September non-farm payrolls report later in the week. The two events "could set the stage for the next run to or through all time highs," Tyler wrote.

Though the S&P 500 is still expensive by historical standards, the selloff has taken its 12-month forward price-to-earnings ratio to 21.9, the lowest level since August, according to Bloomberg data. At the same time, a Deutsche Bank measure showed equity positioning slipping back to neutral last week with discretionary investors turning underweight, suggesting they may have dry powder to buy stocks in the near-term.

To be sure, stretched positioning and elevated valuations in equities have drawn warnings from some market participants in recent days: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. President John Waldron said on Wednesday that markets could see further losses. Algebris Investments' founder and chief executive officer, meanwhile, warned investors to reduce allocation to the world's top technology companies as he made a bearish case for AI.

The S&P 500 is down 3% this month, on pace for its worst November since 2008, amid worries over whether artificial intelligence is generating enough revenue or profit to justify the massive spending on infrastructure.

Tyler, on the other hand, noted several encouraging signs, such as improving market breadth, with roughly 50% of S&P 500 stocks closing higher on Tuesday.

Regarding Nvidia's earnings and AI, Tyler wrote that the bank doesn't "see investors blindly chasing low/unprofitable companies tied to the AI theme" even if earnings are strong.

"If the net result of NVDA's earnings is the market expressing a more concentrated view on AI, then that is a positive, pushing the index higher while also assuaging bubble concerns," he said.

Source: Bloomberg Europe

Kevin Hassett, one of President Donald Trump's finalists to become Federal Reserve chair, said there's space for Congress to look at enacting tariff rebate checks next year.

"We're making so much progress on reducing the national debt that I think it's fair to think about what other policies we might pursue" in a so-called reconciliation bill in 2026, Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, said Wednesday in a discussion hosted by Bloomberg Economics.

"With all the tariff revenue that's coming in without causing stagflation, I think it would definitely be on the table to think about," he said, referring to the payments proposal which Trump has been advocating.

Hassett also said consumer price pressures may not yet be fully tamed following a surge in recent years.

"We lost control of inflation in recent memory, and it's more under control now — maybe not all the way there," he said.

Because wages didn't go up in step with prices as inflation soared, real incomes declined, so "people are right to say that there's been a problem with affordability," Hassett said. He said that Alan Greenspan had called out "reckless" fiscal spending when he was Fed chair, and highlighted the inflation risk of such policies.

Asked whether he himself would do that if he became Fed chief, Hassett said he wouldn't have called inflation "transitory" if it wasn't — alluding to current Fed Chair Jerome Powell's characterization of the 2021 acceleration in price increases at the time.

The NEC director said Trump's policies are now helping to push real wages higher. "But if you were to be as fiscally irresponsible as the previous Congress was, then you would for sure see inflation go up," he said.

Federal budget data show that the US debt continues to climb in dollar terms. The government ran a $1.78 trillion deficit for the fiscal year through September, little changed from the $1.82 trillion logged for 2024.

Source: Bloomberg

President Donald Trump's administration continues to face claims that US officials are wrongfully deporting migrants in violation of court orders and other legal protections amid his ramped up immigration enforcement.

Immigrant advocates sued this week on behalf of a transgender woman sent to Mexico despite an immigration judge's order blocking the move due to her risk of being tortured or killed. A government lawyer acknowledged that the woman was "inadvertently" deported, according to emails filed in court. Her attorneys say the administration then failed to ensure she could safely return to the US.

Such cases aren't new. Government officials have been in court for months fighting Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a migrant from El Salvador who sued to challenge his mistaken deportation to his home country. That case is poised to come to a head later this week, when a judge will hear arguments on the administration's latest plan to send him to Liberia.

In the meantime, the number of suits is growing. Other recent cases alleged that a 16-year-old boy was deported unlawfully to Guatemala and that a man claiming US citizenship was sent to Laos after a judge temporarily barred the removal.

Hundreds of lawsuits have been filed challenging Trump's hard-line immigration policies. While only a small portion involve wrongful deportation claims, those cases have been thorny for the government, especially when the Justice Department has admitted that authorities made mistakes.

The transgender woman who was sent to Mexico, Britania Uriostegui Rios, arrived at a US point of entry on Tuesday but wasn't allowed to enter despite assurances from the government they would permit it, according to the ACLU of Louisiana, one of the groups representing her.

Nora Ahmed, legal director of the ACLU of Louisiana, said in an interview that if she's allowed to reenter, her lawyers want her released under supervision until officials identify another country to deport her to because the US government "can't be trusted."

Ahmed said that because detainees aren't guaranteed government-funded legal counsel in US immigration court — like they would be in a criminal case — mistakes are more likely to happen and migrants often have little recourse. Uriostegui Rios was "lucky" to have contact information for a lawyer working on her immigration case when she was sent to Mexico, Ahmed said.

Spokespeople with the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department didn't respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

The case of Abrego Garcia, who was living in Maryland when he was first detained, was an early legal test of how the Trump administration would handle wrongful deportations. The government acknowledged it erred by sending Abrego Garcia to a notorious El Salvador prison but fought court orders directing officials to take steps to bring him back. The administration eventually returned him to the US to face charges of human smuggling, which he has denied.

A Maryland federal judge is scheduled to hear arguments on Thursday about whether the administration can deport Abrego Garcia to Liberia over his objection. A different judge presiding over his criminal case in Tennessee ruled that he could go free pending a trial, but he's remained in custody in connection with his immigration status.

During a pre-hearing conference on Monday, US District Judge Paula Xinis in Greenbelt, Maryland, said she was leaning against at least some of the government's arguments for why Abrego Garcia's challenge to his immigration-related detention should fail, but that she would keep an open mind.

According to Uriostegui Rios' lawsuit in a Louisiana federal court, the US deported her to Mexico on Nov. 11 even though an immigration judge held in March that she couldn't be sent there for now under the United Nations Convention Against Torture.

The following day, a Justice Department lawyer acknowledged in an email that Uriostegui Rios was "inadvertently" removed to Mexico and that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement "stands ready to remedy the inadvertent removal by allowing your client to voluntarily reenter the United States if your client wishes to do so," according to a copy of the correspondence included with the complaint.

Uriostegui Rios' lawyers argued the US government had an obligation to find their client and bring her back. The Justice Department attorney replied that there were "practical barriers to that position." In the days that followed, the woman's lawyers said she was moving slowly toward the US border to avoid detection because she was "constantly afraid of being discovered, tortured, or killed because of her transgender identity." Uriostegui Rios also faced challenges because she arrived in Mexico with no money and serious mental health conditions, her lawyers wrote in the emails.

In another case in Louisiana, the ACLU and National Immigration Project are seeking the return of the man deported to Laos, arguing he shouldn't have been removed given his claim of citizenship. The judge is weighing whether the government violated her directive to keep him in the country for now.

The Homeland Security department disputes the allegation, posting on social media that the judge's restraining order "was not served to ICE until AFTER the criminal illegal alien was removed."

The administration is facing another lawsuit filed this month in Washington on behalf of the teenager sent to Guatemala. His lawyers say he was granted "Special Immigrant Juvenile Status" by the US government that shielded him against deportation. They alleged that officials also failed to properly follow the removal process before putting him on a plane.

The Justice Department hasn't responded to the lawsuit in court yet.

The case is Uriostegui Rios v. Trump, 25-cv-1798, US District Court, Western District of Louisiana (Alexandria).

Source: Bloomberg Europe

A global pledge to triple nuclear power capacity by 2050 has drawn support from two more nations, meaning 33 countries now back efforts to expand the world's fleet of atomic plants.

Senegal and Rwanda signed up to the goal Friday during the COP30 talks in Belém, Brazil, as the World Nuclear Association said its latest assessment indicates the target to install about 1,200 gigawatts by mid-century is now achievable — if countries fully implement their promises.

"The path to tripling nuclear capacity is open, but it demands bold, pragmatic and visionary leadership," Sama Bilbao y León, the association's director general, said in a speech at the UN talks. "Governments must act now."

While there are dozens of reactors under construction, other forecasts suggest the world will struggle to meet the ambition agreed during COP28 in Dubai to triple the nuclear fleet from 2020 levels by mid-century. Capacity is forecast to rise to as much as 992 gigawatts by that date under a high-growth scenario, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a September report.

To have any chance of achieving the nuclear target, nations will need to follow the lead of a country that so far isn't a signatory to the pledge: China.

Asia's top economy, and the world's biggest polluter, has roughly 30 reactors under development and in April approved a 200 billion yuan ($28 billion) program to add a further 10. In comparison, the US — the world's largest nuclear generator — has connected three new commercial reactors in the last two decades.

"The world is not on pace because the West is not on pace," said Mark Nelson, chief of staff at The Nuclear Company, a US-based firm focused on deployment of the technology.

China's bewildering pace of development is on display in the southeastern Fujian province, where the country's newest nuclear plant — the Zhangzhou facility — was completed in five years across a vast sweep of Dongshan Bay. A first reactor began producing power in 2024 and another will follow later this year. Two more are already under construction, with an additional pair also planned.

Construction projects in other parts of the world have typically struggled to stick to deadlines or stay within budget.

In the US, two reactors at the Vogtle plant in Georgia were seven years late and more than double an original budget. Two reactors at the Hinkley Point C project in the UK are now years behind schedule and expected to cost billions of pounds more than planned.

Improving the industry's recent record outside China is seen as crucial, as the AI boom and industrialization in developing economies pushes electricity demand growth to its fastest rate in years — bolstering the case for more nuclear capacity. Microsoft Corp. and Meta Platforms Inc. are among firms to have struck recent deals for US electricity supply from existing or revived nuclear plants.

The scale of China's buildout has aided its success, allowing the nation's nuclear industry to drive down material costs, expand its specialist workforce, standardize supply chains and refine technologies — most importantly, the homegrown Hualong One reactor design.

"When you do something over and over and over again, you become very good at it," Bilbao y León told Bloomberg Television in an interview last month. "It's not one project, it's a program. This is what we're trying to do everywhere else in the world."

Source: Bloomberg Europe

Gold (GLD) is grinding its way higher again, and the move could be telling investors something about where the market wants to go next. The metal has now risen for a second straight session, climbing as much as 0.7% and trading around $4,090 an ounce, even as equities slipped and leveraged positions were unwound. A Bank of America survey suggested bullion may be one of the more favored global assets for 2026second only to the yenat a moment when the next big test for risk appetite arrives Wednesday with Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA)'s earnings.

Behind the scenes, longer-term buyers and central banks appear to be absorbing much of the forced selling triggered by recent volatility. Saxo Bank's Ole Hansen noted that this steady demand could be building the groundwork for another advance in 2026. Gold has gained about 55% this year and is still positioned for its strongest annual performance since 1979, supported by persistent central-bank purchases and investors hedging against risks tied to sovereign debt and currencies. Even after pulling back from last month's record, the broader precious-metals complexsilver, palladium and platinumalso traded higher.

The macro picture remains complicated as the longest US government shutdown in history delays key economic releases, leaving traders with limited visibility. Hopes for a near-term rate cut have softened after recent comments from Federal Reserve officials, with interest-rate swaps now pricing roughly even odds for a December move after nearly assuming a quarter-point reduction two weeks ago. Investors will receive two important signals this week: Thursday's delayed September jobs report and Wednesday's release of the minutes from the Fed's Oct. 2829 meeting, which could offer insight into how reserve-management purchases and future liquidity decisions may shape demand for precious metals.

Source: Yahoo Finance

The US trade deficit shrank in August as imports declined by the most in four months, official data showed Wednesday after a lengthy delay due to a government shutdown.

The goods and services trade gap narrowed almost 24% from the prior month to $59.6 billion, the Commerce Department said. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists was for a $60.4 billion deficit.

The trade report had been scheduled for release on Oct. 7 but was delayed by the longest federal government shutdown, which ended last week. The agency said an updated release date for the September trade data, initially slated for Nov. 4, has yet to be determined.

In August, the value of imports decreased 5.1%, while exports edged up. The figures aren't adjusted for inflation.

A month earlier, the trade deficit widened as companies raced to import goods and materials before President Donald Trump unveiled new tariffs on global trading partners.

The large monthly swings in trade this year have introduced similar volatility in the government's measure of economic activity — gross domestic product. Prior to the August data, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's GDPNow forecast saw net exports contributing 0.57 percentage point to third-quarter GDP.

The slump in imports was led by a sharp drop in inbound shipments of nonmonetary gold, the agency said. Imports of capital goods including computer accessories and communications equipment also fell.

On an inflation-adjusted basis, the merchandise trade deficit narrowed to $83.7 billion in August, the smallest since the end of 2023.

Source: Bloomberg