Category: 3. Business

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.

U.S. stocks rose Tuesday as investors regained footing after a slow start to December, buoyed by gains in bitcoin and technology shares.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 188 points, or 0.4%, while the S&P 500 advanced about 0.5%. The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.8%, led by strength in AI-related technology names.

Bitcoin surged roughly 6%, recovering losses from the prior day, providing a boost to market sentiment. Shares of Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) increased nearly 2% as investors focused on AI-driven growth opportunities.

Smaller AI and semiconductor companies also saw sharp gains. Credo Technology jumped 17% to an all-time high following better-than-expected earnings, while Astera Labs rose about 6%.

Analysts said optimism is also fueled by expectations that the Federal Reserve may cut interest rates at its Dec. 10 policy meeting. Markets are pricing in more than an 87% chance of a reduction, up from mid-November levels.

December tends to show seasonal strength, and technical indicators have improved, said Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide. Yet concerns over AI spending and high valuations remain.

(Bloomberg) — Wall Street resumed its advance after a brief pause, with dip buyers lifting stocks as cryptocurrencies staged a rebound in the wake of a rough start to December. Bonds and the dollar stabilized.

Equities snapped back, with the S&P 500 rising for the sixth time in seven trading days. The Nasdaq 100 climbed 1%. Riskier corners of the market — which bore the brunt of the recent selling — from small caps to the most-shorted companies and unprofitable tech bounced back.

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Following a plunge of as much as 8% on Monday, Bitcoin reclaimed its $90,000 mark. The largest token has fallen almost 30% since hitting a record in early October. The downturn accelerated when roughly $19 billion in leveraged bets were wiped out.

“There was a sense of calm across markets today, with cryptos finding some love after what has been a brutal last couple of weeks,” said Fawad Razaqzada at Forex.com. “The lack of any major news certainly played a part in the calmer tone.”

The S&P 500 rose to around 6,845. Breadth wasn’t amazing, with 280 shares actually falling. Nvidia Corp. led gains in tech megacaps. Boeing Co. rallied as the planemaker expects to generate cash again in 2026.

Short-dated Treasuries outperformed the rest of the curve, with two-year yields down one basis point to 3.52%. The dollar wavered.

Read: SEC Chief Wants to Boost IPOs by Easing Rules for Small Firms

Anyone looking to bet against US stocks this month would be wise to consider the strength of the American economy and ongoing enthusiasm around artificial intelligence.

That’s the view at 22V Research, where strategists say an increase in consumer spending and investments in AI are likely to support productivity, allowing firms to deliver the profits needed to power stocks higher.

“Being short here requires high confidence in a much weaker economic backdrop or a significant change in the outlook for AI capex,” according to strategists led by Dennis Debusschere.

Meantime, Barclays Plc strategists noted that S&P 500 implied moves ahead of Federal Reserve meetings have declined since early 2023, with realized moves hovering near zero recently. It’s a trend that underscores the fading influence of monetary policy, they said.

After cutting interest rates by more than a percentage point, Fed officials are now wondering where to stop – and finding there’s more disagreement than ever.

In the past year or so, prescriptions for where rates should end up have diverged by the most since at least 2012, when US central bankers started publishing their estimates. That’s feeding into an unusually public split over whether to deliver another cut next week, and what comes after that.

“Nothing is going to change our view that the Fed eases next week, but it is looking more like a hawkish cut,” said Andrew Brenner at NatAlliance Securities. “We can see at least three dissents next week.”

Corporate Highlights:

Michael Burry called Tesla Inc. shares “ridiculously overvalued” and said shareholder dilution is set to continue after the proposed $1 trillion pay package for co-founder Elon Musk, according to a Substack post. Cloud-computing provider Vultr is building a 50-megawatt cluster of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. artificial intelligence processors at a data center in Ohio, a move aimed at offering AI infrastructure at a lower cost. Boeing Co. expects to generate cash again in 2026, a significant reversal in the planemaker’s finances as it prepares to boost monthly production rates and pushes ahead with certification for the much-delayed 777X jetliner. Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. was fielding a second round of bids on Monday, including a mostly cash offer from Netflix Inc., in an auction that could wrap up in the coming days or weeks, according to people familiar with the discussions. Crypto exchange Kraken is acquiring a tokenized assets platform in a vote of confidence for stock trading tied to blockchains. Cloudflare Inc. climbed after Barclays launched coverage on the infrastructure software company with an overweight rating and a $235 price target. MongoDB Inc., a database software company, reported stronger-than-expected results. It also raised its full-year forecast. Six Flags Entertainment Corp. rallied after Truist Securities upgraded the theme park operator’s stock to buy from hold. Analog chipmaker SiTime Corp., which specializes in chips that keep circuits in sync inside data centers, is in talks to acquire Renesas Electronics Corp.’s timing unit, according to people familiar with the matter. Bank of Nova Scotia topped estimates on better-than-expected results at its capital-markets unit while forecasting faster growth next year in its core Canadian banking division. Laurentian Bank of Canada is set to become the latest small Canadian bank to exit the market after reaching an agreement to sell itself to Fairstone Bank for C$1.9 billion ($1.4 billion) while hiving off its retail banking unit to focus on commercial lending. Novo Nordisk A/S is planning a large study of its next-generation obesity shot CagriSema in children, a sign the drugmaker is pressing forward with the compound despite disappointing results in other trials. ISS A/S slumped in Copenhagen amid concerns over the Danish company’s role in the renovation of a Hong Kong apartment fire where a deadly fire broke out on Nov. 26. TotalEnergies SE has emerged as the leading bidder to buy a stake in Galp Energia SGPS SA’s major oil discovery offshore Namibia, according to people familiar with the matter. Vale SA and Glencore Plc are considering a joint copper project in Canada as the two companies look to increase their exposure to a metal projected to be in short supply as the world electrifies. Samsung Electronics Co. unveiled its first so-called trifold smartphone, flaunting its engineering prowess in foldable devices even as the broader category has yet to catch on with mainstream consumers. Taiwanese prosecutors charged Tokyo Electron Ltd. for failing to prevent staff from allegedly stealing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. trade secrets, escalating a dispute involving two Asian linchpins of a chip industry increasingly vital to national and economic security. Some of the main moves in markets:

Stocks

The S&P 500 rose 0.5% as of 11 a.m. New York time The Nasdaq 100 rose 1% The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.5% The Stoxx Europe 600 rose 0.2% The MSCI World Index rose 0.4% Bloomberg Magnificent 7 Total Return Index rose 1% The Russell 2000 Index rose 0.4% Most Short Rolling rose 0.8% GS Non Profitable Tech rose 1.7% Currencies

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed The euro was little changed at $1.1606 The British pound was little changed at $1.3203 The Japanese yen fell 0.3% to 155.90 per dollar Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin rose 5.2% to $90,921.17 Ether rose 7.7% to $3,007.09 Bonds

The yield on 10-year Treasuries advanced one basis point to 4.10% Germany’s 10-year yield was little changed at 2.75% Britain’s 10-year yield was little changed at 4.49% The yield on 2-year Treasuries declined one basis point to 3.52% The yield on 30-year Treasuries advanced two basis points to 4.76% Commodities

West Texas Intermediate crude fell 0.1% to $59.25 a barrel Spot gold fell 1.5% to $4,167.82 an ounce ©2025 Bloomberg L.P.

AWS and NVIDIA are collaborating on a strategic partnership with HUMAIN, the global company based in Saudi Arabia building full-stack AI capabilities, with AWS building a first-of-its-kind “AI Zone” in Saudi Arabia featuring up to 150,000 AI chips, including GB300 GPUs, dedicated AWS AI infrastructure, and AWS AI services, all within a HUMAIN purpose-built data center. “The AI factory AWS is building in our new AI Zone represents the beginning of a multi-gigawatt journey for HUMAIN and AWS. From inception, this infrastructure has been engineered to serve both the accelerating local and global demand for AI compute,” said Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN. “What truly sets this partnership apart is the scale of our ambition and the innovation in how we work together. We chose AWS because of their experience building infrastructure at scale, enterprise-grade reliability, breadth of AI capabilities, and depth of commitment to the region. Through a shared commitment to global market expansion, we are creating an ecosystem that will shape the future of how AI ideas can be built, deployed, and scaled for the whole world.”

LONDON, Dec 2 (Reuters) – Billionaire investor Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management started the final month of the year with positive returns in several funds, a person familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

The $179 billion hedge fund finished November 0.4% largely flat in its multi-strategy fund, Apex Strategy. It had generated a 16.2% return from the start of the year to November 30, the source said.

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The fund posted a 3.1% return for the month in its AQR Delphi Long-Short Equity Strategy, bringing the overall performance to a positive 16.4% for the year. AQR’s Managed Futures Full Volatility Strategy lost 0.4% for the month of November but is still up 19.2% year-to-date.

The hedge fund’s Helix Strategy, which follows trends in a diverse set of harder-to-access markets, returned 0.7% in November and is up 13.7% for the year to date.

All returns listed were net of fees.

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Billionaires Michael and Susan Dell pledged $6.25bn Tuesday to provide 25 million American children under 10 an incentive to claim the new investment accounts for children created as part of Donald Trump’s tax and spending legislation.

The historic gift has little precedent, with few single charitable commitments in the past 25 years exceeding $1bn, much less multiple billions. Announced on GivingTuesday, the Dells believe it’s the largest single private commitment made to US children.

It is also unusual in that it will operate through investment accounts set up by the US Department of the Treasury that will be managed by private companies. Dubbed “Trump Accounts,” the program has not yet launched but was passed into law on 4 July as part of the president’s signature legislation.

“We believe that if every child can see a future worth saving for, this program will build something far greater than an account. It will build hope and opportunity and prosperity for generations to come,” said Michael Dell, the founder and CEO of Dell Technologies whose estimated net worth is $148bn, according to Forbes.

Through their gift, the Dells will deposit $250 into each qualified child’s investment account, which they said the treasury plans to launch on 4 July 2026. Dell said they wanted to mark the 250th anniversary of US independence.

Under the new law, the treasury will deposit $1,000 into the accounts of children born between 1 January 2025 and 31 December 2028 and the funds must be invested in an index fund, which tracks the overall stock market.

But it will be up to the families of other children to put money into the accounts. When the children turn 18, they can withdraw the funds to put toward their education, to buy a home or to start a business.

The Dells hope their gift will encourage families to claim the accounts and deposit more money into it, even small amounts, so it will grow over time along with the stock market. They also hope companies and other philanthropists will donate to these accounts.

In 2024, about 13% of children and young people in the US lived in poverty, according to the Annie E Casey Foundation, and experts link the high child poverty rates to the lack of social supports for new parents, like paid parental leave.

The Dells will put money into the accounts of children who live in zip codes with a median family income of $150,000 or less.

While the funds in the Trump Accounts may help young adults whose families or employers can contribute to them over time, they won’t immediately help to diminish childhood poverty. Cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and child care that were also included in the spending package are likely to reduce the support children from low-income families receive.

Michael Dell said they had not initially envisioned committing so much to boost the child investment accounts, but Susan Dell said over time, they decided to increase the size of their commitment.

“We’re thrilled to be spearheading this in the philanthropy sector and are so excited because we know that more people are going to jump on board because really, we can’t think of a better idea and better way to help America’s children,” she said.

By Stephen Nellis

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 2 (Reuters) – Axiado, a Silicon Valley-based startup that is making a chip designed to ​save space and power in artificial intelligence servers, said on Tuesday it has ‌raised $100 million in fresh capital.

Inside AI data centers, thousands of powerful servers must work together in concert to ‌train models. Doing so requires coordination over an internal network, and all servers contain a handful of chips whose job it is to handle those instructions and manage the server’s circuit board while keeping it secure from hackers.

Those board management chips tend to use older technologies, ⁠and Axiado is working to consolidate ‌all of them into a single, smaller chip. At a time when major chip firms such as Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices are ‍working to pack as many of their graphics processing units into servers as possible and data centers are trying to make room for liquid cooling equipment, saving space counts.

“Real estate is really valuable there,”​ Andrew Homan, managing partner at Maverick Silicon, which led the funding round,‌ told Reuters. “If you can open up footprint, that’s a huge value-add to any of the big incumbents that are building these systems.”

But Axiado’s chip also employs AI on its own. The chip can learn what normal behavior from a server looks like when a given software program is running on the server.

Using that knowledge,⁠ the Axiado chip can check for any divergences ​from normal behavior that might represent a cybersecurity threat. ​Axiado’s chip can also learn to control the server’s cooling system, dialing it up and down, saving up to 50% of ‍the energy used in ⁠cooling.

“Our AI engine learns the behavior. Based on the behavior itself, I can tell that particular load will take a certain level of capacity of the ⁠GPU, so you don’t need to run if you had a full scale,” Gopi Sirineni,‌ founder and CEO of Axiado, told Reuters.

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in ‌San Francisco; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

The meeting will provide a platform for bipartite dialogue between GAPKI and JAPBUSI under JAGASAWITAN to address their achievements and problems in OSH in the palm oil industry, particularly on the gender-responsive OSH theme.

Outputs

• Improve understanding on gender responsive OSH in the palm oil sector.
• Feedback and recommendations from relevant stakeholders in OSH in the palm-oil sector.

Agenda