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    in Finance

    China’s May retail sales grow at fastest pace since December 2023 as subsidies help boost consumption

    Retail sales jumped 6.4% from a year earlier in May, sharply beating analysts’ estimates for a 5% growth and accelerating from the 5.1% growth in the previous month.
    Growth in industrial output slowed to 5.8% year-on-year in May, slightly weaker than analysts’ expectations for a 5.9% rise.
    Fixed-asset investment, reported on a year-to-date basis, expanded 3.7% this year as of May from a year earlier.
    The urban survey-based unemployment rate in May came in at 5.0%, the lowest level since November last year.

    Huge waiting lines are seen in front of jewelry retailer stores at Yu Garden in Shanghai, China, on May 17, 2025, as the city offers consumption vouchers to stimulate consumer spending.
    Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

    China’s retail sales in May grew at their fastest rate since late 2023, as government subsidies helped boost consumption, with analysts calling for stronger policy support to sustain the recovery.
    Retail sales last month jumped 6.4% from a year earlier, data from National Bureau of Statistics showed Monday, sharply beating analysts’ estimates for a 5% growth in a Reuters poll and accelerating from the 5.1% growth in the previous month.

    The spike in sales growth comes as a welcome respite for the world’s second-largest economy that has been struggling with persistent deflation.
    Linghui Fu, NBS spokesperson, attributed the improving consumption in May to the ongoing consumer goods trade-in program, a surge in online shopping ahead of the “618” e-commerce event and a rise in foreign tourists as the country expanded its visa-free entry list to include more countries.
    However, he added that it has been “particularly challenging” for China’s economy to maintain stable growth since the second quarter, naming heightened uncertainty in trade policies among factors dragging growth. Fu made the comments at a press conference following the data release.
    The country’s industrial output slowed to 5.8% year on year in May from 6.1% in the prior month. The latest reading came in slightly weaker than analysts’ expectations for a 5.9% rise.
    Fixed-asset investment, reported on a year-to-date basis, expanded 3.7% this year as of May from a year earlier, undershooting Reuters’ forecast for a 3.9% growth and slowing from a 4% growth in the first four months. Within the fixed-asset investment, the contraction in property investment deepened, falling 10.7% in the first five months, government data showed.

    “The rise of retail sales came as a surprise,” said Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint asset management, while cautioning that the falling property prices could dampen consumer sentiment.
    A separate release Monday by the NBS showed prices of new homes in the more affluent tier 1 cities continued to decline, falling 1.7% in May from a year ago, while those in tier 2 and tier 3 cities dropped 3.5% and 4.9%, respectively.
    The NBS official noted that more work was needed to stop the slump in real estate market.
    A tariff deal reached by Beijing and Washington in mid-May gave temporary relief to the country’s exports, prompting some businesses to frontload shipment while doubling down on alternative markets. Both sides struck a 90-day truce to roll back most of the triple-digit levies added on each other’s goods in early April.
    Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC last week that U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports will stay at their current level of 55%.

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    China’s exports grew less than expected in May, though surging shipments to Southeast Asian nations, European Union countries and Africa helped offset the sharp decline in U.S.-bound goods. China’s exports to the U.S. plunged over 34% from a year ago, their sharpest drop since February 2020.
    The past two months’ trade data indicated resilience in China’s exports, according to Goldman Sachs, signaling “the difficulty for bilateral tariffs to meaningfully reduce total Chinese exports.”
    Separately, China’s urban survey-based unemployment rate in May came in at 5.0%, easing from 5.1% in April to the lowest level since November last year.

    Spurring consumption

    Sluggish domestic demand has been a pressing issue for Chinese policymakers. Consumer prices have seen an year-on-year decline for four consecutive months, slumping 0.1% in May. Deflation in the factory-gate or producer prices has also deepened, falling 3.3% from a year ago.
    However, Beijing may feel less urgency in rolling out additional easing steps as exports appear more resilient than expected and the GDP growth is on track to exceed 5% in the first half-year, according to Goldman Sachs.

    That said, there are still reasons to stay cautious, said Tianchen Xu, senior economist at Economist Intelligence Unit, anticipating private consumption to see a “triple whammy” — tightening dining curbs on officials, the end of a frontloaded 618 shopping festival and the suspension of government consumer subsidies. 
    Local governments in several cities across the country recently paused the consumer goods trade-in program, as the first two batches of central government subsidies have been exhausted with additional funding yet to arrive, Goldman Sachs pointed out.
    Any additional stimulus will likely only come when the economy starts to show sign of weakening, economists said.
    “Absent further demand-side stimulus, we expect that the consumption recovery will be short-lived,” Jianwei Xu, senior economist at Natixis, told CNBC via email.
    Beijing is likely to expand modestly its annual fiscal quota to fund the subsidy program toward the end of the third quarter or start of the fourth quarter, said Robin Xing, chief China economist at Morgan Stanley, if the economic growth falters to below 4.5%. More

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    Why aren’t Chinese consumers spending enough?

    China’s consumer spending shows little sign of picking up soon.
    Analysts point to one main factor: stagnant income.
    Chinese consumers are also turning to lower-priced products, or moving away from big cities to places where the cost of living is lower.

    Customers look at clothes advertising discounts of 80% or 70% in a supermarket in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China, on June 9, 2025.
    Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images

    BEIJING — China’s consumer spending shows little sign of picking up soon, given uncertainty about future wealth, changing preferences and lack of a social safety net.
    It’s been four straight months of declining consumer prices, consumer confidence is hovering near historic lows, and the real estate market is struggling to turn around. Analysts repeatedly point to one main factor: stagnant income.

    Disposable income in China has halved its pace of growth since the pandemic hit in 2020, now growing only by an average of 5% a year, Jeremy Stevens, Beijing-based Asia economist at Standard Bank, said in a report Wednesday.
    Most jobs aren’t giving much of a raise. Out of 16 sectors, only three — mining, utilities and information technology services — have seen wage growth exceed that of gross domestic product since 2020, he said.
    Monthly business surveys for May showed contraction in the labor market across the board, especially as factories navigate U.S. tariffs. The unemployment rate among young people aged 16 to 24 and not in school remained high in April at 15.8%. The official jobless rate in cities has hovered around 5%.

    A record high of 64% Chinese households said in the third quarter of 2024 that they would rather save money rather than spend or invest it, according to a quarterly survey by the People’s Bank of China.
    While that moderated to 61.4% in the fourth quarter, according to the latest survey released in March, it reflected a trend of more than 60% of respondents preferring to save that’s been recorded since late 2023.

    And for the respondents who planned to increase spending, education was the top category, followed by health care and tourism, according to the PBOC’s fourth-quarter survey released in March.
    More than half of respondents viewed the job market as becoming more difficult or hard to tell.
    People in China have been culturally inclined to save, especially since limited insurance coverage means individuals must often bear most of the cost of a hospital treatment, higher education and retirement. The real estate slump of the last few years has also weighed on spending since property accounts for most of household wealth in China.
    One way to make people more willing to spend is to more than double pension payouts, by increasing the share of state assets paid to the Ministry of Finance, Luo Zhiheng, chief economist at Yuekai Securities, said in a note.
    He added that increasing public holidays and offering services sector consumption vouchers could also help.

    In the last few weeks, Chinese authorities have stepped up plans to further support employment and improve social welfare. But policymakers have avoided the mass cash handouts that the U.S. and Hong Kong gave residents to stimulate spending after the pandemic.
    Coming out of the pandemic, analysts cautioned that retail sales in China would recover very slowly as major uncertainties for consumers remained unresolved.
    In the decade before the pandemic, “Chinese consumers were willing and able to buy any innovation, even innovations that were not that really innovations,” said Bruno Lannes, Shanghai-based senior partner with Bain & Company’s consumer products and retail practices.
    “In today’s world they are more rational. They know what they want,” he said on a webinar Thursday.
    China is scheduled to report retail sales for May on Monday. Analysts polled by Reuters predict a slowdown to 4.9% year-on-year growth, down from 5.1% in April.

    A shift out of big cities

    Another factor behind negative CPI reads is that Chinese consumers are turning to lower-priced products, either partly benefiting from the overproduction of relatively high-quality goods, or moving away from big cities to places where the cost of living is lower.
    Shanghai lost 72,000 permanent residents last year, while Beijing saw a 26,000 drop, Worldpanel and Bain & Company pointed out in a report Thursday. The two cities are typically categorized as “tier 1” cities in China.
    As a result of the population shift, smaller cities categorized as “tier 3” and “tier 4” experienced far higher growth in the volume and value of daily necessities sold last year — helping offset a decline in the tier 1 cities, the report said. The study covered packaged food, beverages, personal care and home care.
    It found that while the overall volume of such goods sold in China rose by 4.4% last year, average selling prices fell by 3.4%, as consumers preferred lower-priced products and businesses increased promotions.
    The trend is even influencing flower sales.
    The Kunming International Flora Auction Trading Center in Yunnan province, Asia’s largest flower market, said in May that more demand is coming from less affluent lower-tier cities, resulting in higher volumes but lower average selling prices.
    Business has quieted down after the busy May holiday season, Li Shenghuan, a flower seller near the trading center, said Friday. She said flower prices have come down slightly, partly because more people have been growing flowers. She expects demand to pick up around the National Day holiday in early October.
    For a sense of the disparity, rural per capita disposable income has been less than half that of cities for years, according to official data. Per capita disposable income in urban areas last year was 54,188 yuan ($7,553). That’s far less than the $64,474 reported for the U.S. as of December.

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    Standard Bank’s Stevens pointed out that the ratio of consumption to income in rural areas has “substantially increased” and surpassed pre-pandemic levels, while that of urban households has declined. But he noted that lower-income households don’t have the scale of wealth that higher-income groups do in order to meaningfully increase consumption in the near term.
    The top 20% accounts for half of total income and consumption in China, and 60% of total savings, he said. “Policy support for low-income groups, while well-meaning, is insufficient without structural wage reform.”
    In addition, China’s “common prosperity” rhetoric “has introduced institutional realignments and policy shifts that, while well-intentioned, have added to the uncertainty,” Stevens said, noting the changes have “yet to fully find a new equilibrium.” More

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    Can China reclaim its IPO crown?

    One after another, blockbuster Chinese listings are coming to Hong Kong. In May Hengrui Pharmaceuticals, a drug manufacturer, and CATL, a battery-maker, sold $5.3bn-worth of shares between them. Seres, which makes electric vehicles, hopes to raise $2bn in the coming weeks. Shein, a fast-fashion firm, may abandon plans for an offering in London for one in Hong Kong. All told, in April more than 130 applications were under consideration by the local exchange, up from fewer than 60 at the start of 2024. On current trends, the city will be the world’s largest venue for stock debuts this year. More

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    New ETF gives investors opportunity to act like private equity giant as shift away from public stocks picks up

    Private markets will hold 10% of investor money in the years ahead, predicts Jan Van Eck, CEO of ETF and mutual fund manager VanEck, up from roughly 2% currently.
    VanEck has launched an ETF providing exposure to private investments through the shares of publicly traded alternative asset managers, but there are unique risks.

    The S&P 500 is less than 3% from an all-time high. Six of its 11 sectors are within 5% of an all-time high. But even as the U.S. stock market index proves its resilience during a volatile stretch for investors, more money from within portfolios is expected to shift in to privately traded companies.
    Jan Van Eck, CEO of ETF and mutual fund manager VanEck, says the trend of companies staying private for longer rather than seeking an initial public offering is here to stay and it offers new opportunities.

    High-profile examples include Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Sam Altman’s OpenAI and fintech Stripe.
    According to Van Eck, allocations to private assets will jump from a current average portfolio holding level of approximately 2% to 10% in the years ahead.
    Some ETFs have begun to invest small portions of their assets in privately held company shares, including SpaceX, such as the ERShares Private-Public Crossover ETF (XOVR). VanEck has launched an ETF tackling the private opportunity in a different way: taking big positions in the publicly traded shares of the investment giants, including private equity firms and other alternative asset managers, that own many private companies.
    The VanEck Alternative Asset Manager ETF (GPZ), which launched this month, has a portfolio holdings list that includes Brookfield, Blackstone, KKR, Brookfield Asset Management and Apollo, which combined make up almost 50% of the fund. TPG, Ares and Carlyle are also big positions, in the 5% range each.
    The new ETF extends an existing focus on private markets for VanEck. For over a decade, it has offered investors access to private credit, through the VanEck BDC Income ETF (BIZD), which invests in the business development companies that lend to small- and mid-sized private companies. That ETF has a high level of exposure to Ares, Blue Owl, Blackstone, Main Street and Golub Capital, which make up about half of the fund. It pays a hefty dividend of 11%. 

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    Investing private through a publicly traded ETF

    “You have to believe this is a secular trend and growth will be higher than that for normal money managers, including ETF and mutual fund managers,” said Van Eck.
    He cautions, however, there is more volatility in these funds compared to the public equity market overall.  “You have to size it appropriately,” he added. More

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    Starbucks moves to the next phase in its turnaround: Winning over employees

    Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol pitched his turnaround strategy to store managers at the company’s Leadership Experience in Las Vegas.
    Store managers applauded coming changes, like more seating inside cafes and full-time assistant managers.
    Niccol’s “back to Starbucks” strategy centers on the idea that the company’s culture has faltered in recent years, and winning over employees as well as investors is critical as it faces staffing concerns and a union push.

    Customers order at a Starbucks in Manhattan Beach, California, on July 19, 2024.
    Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

    As Starbucks aims to bring back customers and assuage investors with its turnaround strategy, it is also winning over its store managers with promises to add more seating inside cafes and promote internally.
    Since CEO Brian Niccol’s first week at the company, he’s been pledging to bring the company “back to Starbucks” to lift sluggish sales. That goal was in full view at the company’s Leadership Experience, a three-day event in Las Vegas for more than 14,000 store leaders this week.

    Starbucks unveiled a new coffee called the 1971 Roast, a callback to the year that its first location opened at Pike Place in Seattle. The finalists at Starbucks’ first-ever Global Barista Championships referred to “back to Starbucks” as they prepared drinks for judges. Even the wifi password was “backtostarbucks!”.
    To investors, Niccol has already presented a multi-part strategy that involves retooling the company’s marketing strategy, improving staffing in cafes, fixing the chain’s mobile app issues and making its locations cozier. The company also laid off roughly 1,100 corporate workers earlier this year, saying it aimed to operate more efficiently and reduce redundancies.
    Starbucks shares have climbed nearly 20% since April, and are trading just shy of where they were after a nearly 25% spike the day Niccol was announced as CEO.
    While Starbucks has taken major steps to win back customers and Wall Street, it’s also trying to regain faith among its employees. Staffers have had concerns about hours and workloads for years, sparking a broad union push across the U.S.
    To excite the chain’s store managers, Starbucks executives’ pitch this week focused on giving them more control. Before launching new drinks, like a protein-packed cold foam, the company is first testing them in five stores to gain feedback from baristas.

    When the chain increases its staffing this summer, managers will have more input on how many baristas they need. And next year, most North American stores will add an assistant manager to their rosters.
    “You are the leaders of Starbucks. Your focus on the customer is critical. Your leadership is critical. And as you return to your coffeehouses, please remember: coffee, community, opportunity, all the good that follows,” Niccol said on Tuesday.
    A culture shift

    Brian Niccols, CEO of Starbucks, speaking with CNBC on Oct. 31st, 2024. 

    Niccol’s “back to Starbucks” strategy centers on the idea that the company’s culture has faltered. Its Leadership Experience, typically held every couple of years, was the first since 2019 — three CEOs ago.
    “We are a business of connection and humanity,” Niccol said on Tuesday afternoon, addressing a crowd of more than 14,000 managers. “Great people make great things happen.”
    As more customers order their lattes via the company’s app, its cafes have lost their identity as a “third place” for people to hang out and sip their drinks.
    To return to Starbucks’ prior culture, the company is unwinding previous decisions – like removing seats from its cafes. In recent years, the chain has removed 30,000 seats from its locations. Those renovations have irritated both customers and employees; the manager of Niccol’s local Starbucks in Newport Beach, California, even asked him to remove her store from its renovation list because she wanted to keep the seating, according to Niccol.
    “We’re going to put those seats back in,” Niccol said, bringing a big wave of applause from the audience.
    He earned more applause from the audience when discussing the chain’s plans to promote internally as it eventually adds 10,000 more locations in the U.S.
    Although historically roughly 60% of Starbucks store managers have been internal promotions, the company wants to raise that to 90% for its retail leadership roles. Thousands of new cafes means 1,000 more district managers, 100 regional directors and 14 regional vice presidents for the company – and more upward career mobility for its store leaders.
    Staffing more broadly has been a concern for Starbucks and its employees, fueling a wave of union elections across hundreds its stores. Past management teams have cut down on the labor allotted to stores, helping profit margins at the cost of burning out baristas and slowing service.
    Under Niccol, Starbucks is changing the trend. The company is accelerating plans to roll out its new Green Apron labor model by the end of the summer, because tests have shown that it improves service times and boosts traffic. As part of the model, managers will have more input on how much labor their store needs.
    And Chief Partner Officer Sara Kelly received a standing ovation from the crowd for her announcement that most North American locations will receive a full-time, dedicated assistant store manager next year.
    “For much of the time, your store is operating without you there, and you share that even when you’re not in the store, you’re not able to fully disconnect, and it can feel like the weight of everything is on your shoulders … It affects everything, the partner experience, the customer experience, the performance of your store,” Kelly said, addressing the store managers in the audience.
    Schultz’s stamp of approval
    Underscoring the challenges Niccol faces in recapturing the company’s brand, the two speakers who scored the most applause from store managers are no longer actively involved in the company.
    Former chairwoman Mellody Hobson scored standing ovations during both her entry and exit onto the arena’s stage. Hobson, wiping tears from her eyes, thanked the Starbucks employees whom she said always made her feel welcome in their stores.
    She stepped down from her position earlier this year, ending a roughly two-decade tenure that culminated with her becoming the first African American woman to become the independent chair of a Fortune 500 company. Hobson also serves as co-CEO of Ariel Investments.
    Hobson ceded her position as chair of the board to Niccol when he joined the company in September. Niccol credited her with poaching him from Chipotle as Starbucks sought to find a leader who could turn around its flailing business.
    “A quick conversation [with Hobson] turned into something really special for me,” Niccol said.
    And Hobson’s longtime friend Howard Schultz also earned standing ovations from store managers.

    Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz drinks from a Starbucks mug while testifying before a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing to answer questions about the company’s compliance with labor law on Capitol Hill in Washington., U.S., March 29, 2023. 
    Julia Nikhinson | Reuters

    Schultz, the three-time CEO who grew Starbucks from a small chain into a coffee powerhouse, made a surprise appearance at the Leadership Experience on Wednesday morning. It marked the first time that he’s appeared with Niccol publicly since the board tossed out his handpicked successor, Laxman Narasimhan, and selected the then-Chipotle CEO to take the reins.
    Starbucks has long been plagued by questions about its succession, given Schultz’s former willingness to return to the helm of the company. But since Niccol’s appointment, industry analysts have thought that he might finally be the CEO who manages to escape Schultz’s lingering influence over the coffee giant.
    The ghost of Schultz lingered earlier in the event. Niccol shared a story about being inspired hearing Schultz speak at Yum Brands, Niccol’s then-employer, back in 2008. The 71-year-old chairman emeritus also appeared in video form on Tuesday afternoon to thank Hobson for her service to the company.
    During his conversation with Niccol on Wednesday, Schultz co-signed his plan to get “back to Starbucks,” saying that he did a cartwheel in his living room the first time that he heard about it.
    He also asked managers to bring that energy back to their own Starbucks locations.
    “Be true to the coffee, be true to your partners,” Schultz told the audience. “And I know we’re going to come out of here … like a tidal wave and surprise and delight the world and prove all those cynics wrong again, just as we did in 1987.” More

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    Boeing Dreamliner crash, military escalations darken mood at Paris Air Show

    The crash of Air India Flight 171 and the Israel-Iran conflict are casting a shadow over what was supposed to be a relatively upbeat Paris Air Show.
    Air India Flight 171 was the first-ever deadly crash of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
    Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg and Stephanie Pope, who leads the commercial airplane unit, are canceling their plans to go to the Paris Air Show after the crash.

    The Boeing 787-9 civil jet airplane of Vietnam Airlines performs its flight display at the 51st Paris International Airshow in Le Bourget near Paris, France. (Photo by: aviation-images.com/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
    aviation-images.com | Universal Images Group | Getty Images

    Kelly Ortberg’s first Paris Air Show as Boeing CEO was set to be relatively upbeat.
    Under his leadership that began in August, the company has made strides in ramping up production of its bestselling 737 Max jets, increasing cash-generating deliveries of new planes, and indicating that it’s turning a corner from a series of manufacturing and safety crises and years of lost ground to rival Airbus. Shares are up more than 13% this year, outpacing the S&P 500.

    But after an Air India flight crashed on Thursday, marking the first fatal air disaster of a Boeing Dreamliner, Ortberg canceled plans to go to the massive air show that begins on Sunday.
    The trade event is a big draw for the industry and is held every other year, alternating with the Farnborough Air Show in the U.K. Boeing, Airbus and other aerospace giants host champagne-flowing parties, hold flashy deal-signing ceremonies with executives flanked by model planes, and show off their new aircraft with extreme maneuvers for spectators below.
    “As our industry prepares to start the Paris Air Show, Stephanie and I have both canceled plans to attend so we can be with our team, and focus on our customer and the investigation,” Ortberg said in a note to employees late Thursday, referring to Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Stephanie Pope.
    All but one of the 242 people aboard Air India Flight 171 were killed when the more than 11-year-old Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner that was headed for London on a sweltering day crashed into a medical student dining hall seconds after takeoff from Ahmedabad in western India. The sole survivor was an India-born British national in seat 11A.
    The cause of the crash is unknown and will take weeks or months to determine. Questions focus on how the plane so quickly and evenly lost altitude, appearing to glide into a fireball crash. Cockpit voice and data recorders, known as “black boxes,” will provide key information.

    Firefighters work to put out a fire at the site where an Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed in Ahmedabad, India, June 12, 2025.
    Amit Dave | Reuters

    “It is important that we do not speculate about the accident and let the investigators do their work,” Ortberg wrote.
    The plane’s engine maker, GE Aerospace, said it will postpone an investor day scheduled for Tuesday.

    Escalating military conflict

    The crash isn’t the only outside factor changing the gathering in Paris.
    Shortly before the Paris Air Show was set to begin, Israel launched overnight missile strikes on Iran. Hours later, Iran launched drones toward Israeli territory. Airlines canceled flights, with jets in the air diverting or returning to their destinations, while hundreds of others skirted the airspace.
    The escalating tensions will make military budgets and spending an even bigger focus for the air show, but they also raise concerns about how conflicts and geopolitical tensions could impact demand for commercial air travel.

    The show goes on

    Despite the crash and other external concerns, Boeing, Airbus and Embraer are expected to lock in hundreds of airplane orders. Wait times for popular new aircraft models already stretch into the next decade with demand still strong.
    Boeing forecast on Saturday that the world will need 43,600 commercial airplanes over the next two decades, with emerging markets driving growth. It expects those markets will account for more than half of the world’s fleet in 2044, up from a 40% share last year.

    Some of the order signings could come from previously undisclosed customers, though there are many new orders on the line, aviation analysts say.
    Ongoing issues, such as a lack of trained workers, have delayed deliveries of new planes, while on-again, off-again tariffs have raised concerns about more expensive aircraft and components.
    Pricing has also firmed up. A new Airbus A321neo was going for $65 million as of the end of April, up from $58 million at the start of 2023, while a new Boeing 737 Max 8 cost about $55.5 million in April, compared with $50.25 million in early 2023, according to Ishka an aviation data and advisory firm.
    With aircraft still in short supply, lease rates are also going up for older planes for airlines that prefer not to make multimillion-dollar aircraft purchases up front or that might need them for shorter time periods. A 12-year-old Boeing 737 costs $241,000 a month to rent as of the end of April, up nearly 42% from two years earlier, and an Airbus A320 of the same age was $239,000 a month, a 50% gain, according to IBA Insight, another aviation data firm.

    Orders: How many and who’s buying?

    U.K.-based IBA predicted manufacturers could see between 700 and 800 commercial aircraft orders during the Paris show, a tally that includes firm orders, options, and looser commitments like purchase intention letters and memoranda of understanding.
    Customers could include Ethiopian Airlines and Polish carrier Lot, as well as Vietnam Airlines, AirAsia, Royal Air Maroc, Etihad and Saudi carrier Riyadh, said Ishka.
    “A large deal from China is inevitable sometime, for replacement if not growth reasons,” Ishka said in a note last week.
    Air India, which Ishka had previously listed as a potential customer, was no longer expected to buy new planes given last week’s tragedy.

    Read more CNBC airline news

    Return of the big jets

    Airplane customers are going bigger as international travel continues to bring in money.
    “It used to be all about single-aisle orders,” said Richard Aboulafia, managing director at aerospace consulting firm AeroDynamic Advisory. Now, “everyone is booking these monster twin-aisle orders for international traffic.”
    He said major international airlines like Turkish Airlines, Gulf carriers and others have expanded in recent years, competing for more global travelers, “slicing the pizza into smaller pieces.”
    Since orders are placed years in advance, Aboulafia said he doesn’t expect a big impact on demand because of the crash, though some might be held back during the show.
    “It’s a terrible tragedy. It doesn’t make anyone’s lives easier,” he said. “I just don’t think given what we know now it has anything to do with the design or the build of the airplane. It sure doesn’t look like it.” More

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    in Finance

    Israel-Iran attacks and the 2 other things that drove the stock market this week

    What was shaping up to be a relatively calm week quickly got volatile on Friday, following Israel’s overnight strike on Iran. Here is a closer look at the three biggest themes that defined the market this week. 1. Geopolitics: The attack on Iranian nuclear infrastructure rippled through financial markets on Friday. U.S. stocks sold off on the increased tensions overseas. The S & P 500 and Nasdaq Composite tumbled 1.13% and 1.3% on Friday, respectively. Meanwhile, Brent crude futures and West Texas Intermediate crude futures added around 7% and 7.5%, respectively. Gold rose to a two-month high, as well, as investors see it as a safe haven from all the volatility. Prior to the attack, stock benchmark were on track to close the week in the positive. Instead, the S & P 500 and Nasdaq lost 0.4% and 0.6% over that stretch, snapping back-to-back weekly wining streaks. Despite a modest gain Friday, part of the safe-haven trade, the U.S. dollar index had a tough week. On Thursday, we wrote about how long-term fundamental investors should view the weaker dollar. Another big geopolitical event for investors was an announcement by U.S. and Chinese delegations that the two sides agreed on a trade-deal framework, particularly focused on rare-earth minerals. 2. Economic data: Investors received good news on the inflation front on Wednesday and Thursday. On Wednesday, the c onsumer price index, a measure of goods and services inflation across the U.S. economy, showed that core prices rose less that expected last month. The May producer price index , a gauge of wholesale inflation in the country, came in lower than expected Thursday, too. The labor market continued to show it was softening but not breaking. Weekly jobless claims for the week ending June 7 were unchanged, while continuing claims were still at multiyear highs. On the whole, the batch of economic data was encouraging as the rate of inflation subsides and unemployment remains low, providing the consumer with more buying power. 3. AI updates: It was also a week chock full of company specific news and events within the generative artificial intelligence race. AI remains one of the most important, if not the most important, drivers for financial markets. On Monday, we heard from Apple, when the company hosted its annual worldwide developer conference. Though expectations were about as muted as we’ve ever seen, the event still managed to disappoint due to the lack of AI updates. Meta Platforms, on the other hand, got investors excited this week when news broke that the company took a large investment in Scale AI and will bring the startup’s CEO on board to help start a new “superintelligence” unit within the company with the goal of achieving artificial general intelligence. Early Wednesday morning, we heard from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who spoke at the company’s GTC event in Paris. While there weren’t many new updates, Huang reaffirmed that there is still a lot more accelerated compute capacity that needs to be built out, highlighting demand from hyperscale customers and sovereign entities alike. Europe, he argued, is likely to 10 times its compute capacity over the next two years. Outside the portfolio, Oracle and Advanced Micro Devices made news on AI, too. Oracle stock jumped Thursday after reporting better-than-expected quarterly results the prior evening. Impressively, the stock soared again Friday, despite the broader market sell-off, en route to its best week since 2021 . BMO Capital also upgraded Oracle to a buy rating. Oracle CEO Safra Catz’s comments on its cloud infrastructure business confirmed that there’s growing demand for AI computing power. Indeed, Oracle said revenues from that business should surge 70% year over year in its fiscal 2026. Elsewhere, Advanced Micro Devices unveiled its new AI server chip for 2026 at a company event Thursday, part of its attempt to rival Nvidia’s market-leading offering. AMD also announced that it’s landed a new high-profile customer OpenAI, the startup behind ChatGPT and Club holding Microsoft’s AI partner. The chip isn’t expected to launch until 2026, though. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long AAPL, META, NVDA. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED. More

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    in Finance

    Power play: Two money managers bet big on uranium, predict long shelf life for gains

    The uranium trade’s shelf life may last years.
    According to Sprott Asset Management CEO John Ciampaglia, a “real shift” upward is underway due to increasing global energy demand — particularly as major tech companies look to power artificial intelligence data centers.

    “We’ve been talking about uranium and nuclear energy non-stop for four years at Sprott, and we’ve been incredibly bullish on the segment,” he told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week.
    Ciampaglia’s firm runs the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust (SRUUF), which Morningstar ranks as the world’s largest physical uranium fund. It’s up 22% over the past two months.
    The firm is also behind the Sprott Uranium Miners ETF (URNM), which is up almost 38% over the past two months. The Sprott website lists Cameco and NAC Kazatomprom JSC as the top two holdings in the fund as of June 12. 
    “It’s [uranium] a reliable form of energy. It has zero greenhouse gases. It has a very good long-term track record,” Ciampaglia said. “It provides a lot of electricity on a large scale, and that’s right now what the grid is calling for.”
    Ciampaglia finds attitudes are changing toward nuclear energy because it offers energy security with a low carbon footprint. Uranium is “incredibly energy-dense” compared to most fossil fuels, he said, which makes it a promising option to ensure energy security. 

    He cited the 2022 energy crisis in Europe after Russia cut its oil supply to the region and April’s grid failure in Spain and Portugal as cases for more secure energy sources.
    “We think this trend is long term and secular and durable,” Ciampaglia said. “With the exception of Germany, I think every country around the world has flipped back to nuclear power, which is a very powerful signal.”

    ‘You need reliable power’

    VanEck CEO Jan van Eck is also heavily involved in the uranium space.  
    “You need reliable power,” he said. “These data centers can’t go down for a fraction of a second. They need to be running all the time.”
    His firm is behind the VanEck Uranium and Nuclear ETF (NLR), which is up about 42% over the past two months. According to VanEck’s website as of June 12, its top three holdings are Oklo, Nuscale Power and Constellation Energy.
    But he contends there’s a potential downside to the uranium trade: Building new nuclear power plants can take years.
    “What’s going to happen in the meantime?” Van Eck said. “Investors are not patient, as we know.”
    Van Eck also thinks it’s possible the Trump administration’s positive attitude toward nuclear power could fast track development.
    He highlighted nuclear technology company Oklo during the interview. Its shares soared on Wednesday after the company announced it was anticipating a deal with the Air Force to supply nuclear power to a base in Alaska.
    The agreement came not long after President Donald Trump in May signed a series of executive orders to rework the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, expedite new reactor construction and expand the domestic uranium industry. 
    “Trump controls federal land, so that’s not a NIMBY [not in my backyard] kind of potential risk,” said Van Eck. “They’re going to leverage that hard to start to show the safety of these newer, smaller technologies.”

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