Finance

Goldman Sachs on Tuesday beat estimates for its third quarter on stronger-than-expected investment banking and fixed income trading.
The company said in a release that profit surged 37% from a year earlier to $4.1 billion, or $12.25 a share. Revenue rose 20% to $15.18 billion.
The bank’s equities traders appear to have underdelivered compared with expectations, producing a 7% increase in revenue to $3.74 billion, about $160 million below the estimate.

David Solomon, CEO Goldman Sachs, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box on April 22nd, 2025.

Goldman Sachs on Tuesday beat estimates for its third quarter on stronger-than-expected investment banking and fixed income trading.
Here’s what the company reported:

Earnings per share: $12.25 vs. $11 expected, according to LSEG
Revenue: $15.18 billion vs. $14.1 billion expected, according to LSEG

The company said in a release that profit surged 37% from a year earlier to $4.1 billion, or $12.25 a share. Revenue rose 20% to $15.18 billion.
Investment banking was the engine for Goldman’s beat this quarter, with fees jumping 42% to $2.66 billion, or roughly $500 million more than what analysts surveyed by StreetAccount had expected.
Trading desks across Wall Street have benefited as President Donald Trump’s tariff policies have roiled markets for bonds, currencies, commodities and stocks. Investment banking activity including mergers and IPOs has also gained steam, with the industry’s revenue climbing 22% in the third quarter, per Dealogic.
Goldman Sachs gets the majority of its revenue from Wall Street activities including trading and investment banking. The bank cited more completed mergers and debt underwriting deals for its third-quarter revenue increase.
Fixed income trading revenue rose 17% to $3.47 billion, topping the StreetAccount estimate by about $280 million, on greater activity in interest rate products, mortgages and commodities.

But the bank’s equities traders appear to have underdelivered compared to expectations, producing a 7% increase in revenue to $3.74 billion, about $160 million below the estimate.
On Monday, Goldman announced it was acquiring Industry Ventures, a venture capital firm with $7 billion in assets under supervision, to bolster its asset management division.
Shares of the bank were down about 2% in premarket trading Tuesday. They’ve climbed 37% this year as of Monday’s close.
JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup also released earnings Tuesday, with Bank of America and Morgan Stanley set to report results Wednesday.
This story is developing. Please check back for updates. More

On October 13th the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel prize in economics to three people. Philippe Aghion of the London School of Economics and Peter Howitt of Brown University have made big contributions to researchers’ understanding of how economic growth happens, and shared half the prize. The other half went to Joel Mokyr (pictured, centre) of Northwestern University, along with half the prize money of 11m Swedish kronor ($1.2m). The award is well deserved—and a reflection of how intellectual currents are changing. More

UNITED STATES – NOVEMBER 10: Jeremy Siegel, the Russell E. Palmer Professor of Finance at the Wharton School, addresses the Securities Industry Association during their annual meeting in Boca Raton, Florida, Thursday, November 10, 2005. 
Matt Stroshane | Bloomberg | Getty Images

China’s control over crucial rare earth materials has been a “threat for a long time” to Western supply chains and the U.S. should create a strategic reserve of the metals, University of Pennsylvania professor emeritus of finance Jeremy Siegel told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Monday.
“It’s scandalous that we don’t have a rare earth strategic reserve [and] that we let China monopolize 90% of refining rare earth materials,” Siegel said. “Where were we, realizing the importance of these?”

Siegel’s strategic reserve proposal comes as the U.S.-China trade war intensified Friday, with President Donald Trump vowing to impose “massive tariffs” on Beijing in response to its limits on rare earth mineral exports to the U.S., and threatening to cancel a planned meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump’s announcement erased $2 trillion in value from the stock market.
The U.S. created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 1975 in response to the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo.
Today, almost three quarters of the world’s rare earth minerals, used in everything from smartphones to fighter jets, are mined in China, which processes 90% of the metals, according to Bank of America analysts.
“Export controls could create a choke point in global supply chains,” BofA global economist Claudio Irigoyen wrote Sunday in a note to clients.
But Siegel said he’s confident the U.S. and China will resolve their latest trade conflict before Trump’s Nov. 1 deadline for more tariffs.   

“It’ll be worked out, and it won’t be too negative for either country,” Siegel said. Trump’s remarks were “just a prelude to saying, ‘All right there are our chips, we’ve got cards [and] you’ve got cards…and let’s negotiate.'”
Siegel, author of 1994’s Stocks for the Long Run, said the November 1 deadline is actually a sign that Trump hopes to negotiate with his Chinese counterpart.
 “Trump said 100% [tariffs] but he said, ‘Listen, I said the November 1 date, which for me is like forever,'” Siegel said. “It’s actually the farthest date he’s ever set for the start of a tariff, which means he wants to have that solved.” 
Siegel added that the market will likely snap back following trade talks between Washington D.C. and Beijing. The S&P 500 is about 1.2% higher in early trading Monday after crumbling 2.7% on Friday.
“Once it’s resolved, given all the other good things that are happening, I see no reason why we can’t continue on to new highs,” Siegel said.
The S&P 500 is regaining some 40% of its Friday losses early Monday, while the Nasdaq Composite has climbed about 2% as technology stocks rebound from last week’s retreat. More

“The root cause of the tension is due to a lack of mutual trust,” Larry Hu, chief China economist at Macquarie, said in a note Monday.
Hu and other analysts describe the announcements of the last few days as a “misperception” on both sides.
“On the specific episode the market is focused on, the two sides may still return to the table to find a short-term fix. However, it won’t be a lasting solution,” said Jianwei Xu, senior economist for Greater China at Natixis.

Chinese and U.S. flags flutter near The Bund, before U.S. trade delegation meet their Chinese counterparts for talks in Shanghai, China July 30, 2019.
Aly Song | Reuters

BEIJING — The flare-up in tensions between the U.S. and China over the weekend highlights the deepening mistrust dividing the world’s two biggest economies.
In the two days after Beijing ended its Golden Week holiday on Wednesday, the country announced a new framework for restricting rare earths exports, placed more U.S. companies on a blacklist and charged U.S.-linked ships with fees for docking at Chinese ports.

U.S. President Donald Trump then threatened 100% more tariffs on Chinese goods, a move which was followed by Beijing asserting its rare earths restrictions are a “legitimate” measure.
“The root cause of the tension is due to a lack of mutual trust,” Larry Hu, chief China economist at Macquarie, said in a note Monday.
“During the London talks in June, both countries agreed to a deal involving ‘rare earth for tech,'” he said. “Unsurprisingly, both feel betrayed when they perceive the other as acting in bad faith.”
The escalation in trade tensions is a result of a “misperception” on both sides, Hu said. Here’s how he and other analysts say both sides are seeing things differently.
Beijing may feel it needs to respond to a new U.S. rule released on Sept. 29 which expands the scope of export controls to majority owned subsidiaries of companies on a U.S. list — while Washington likely saw the change as a technical adjustment.

On the flip side, Beijing may see its rare earths restrictions as mimicking Washington’s wide-reaching effort to restrict China’s access to high-end tech, while the U.S. perception is that the restrictions are a negotiation strategy that aims to create leverage before a potential meeting between the two countries’ presidents.

U.S. chipmakers at risk

There’s a clear impact for businesses, reflected in part by Friday’s stock market sell-off.
“One rule in the new package requires that companies obtain a license from China’s Commerce Ministry to export products manufactured anywhere in the world if that product contains Chinese rare earths worth at least 0.1% of the product’s value,” Gabriel Wildau, managing director at Teneo, said in a note Saturday. “In theory, this rule could force companies like Nvidia, TSMC and Intel to obtain permission from Chinese regulators to sell their products inside the U.S.”
Wildau pointed out that “this Chinese rule is modeled after the U.S. Commerce Department’s own ‘foreign direct product rule,’ which imposes a license requirement on any product made with U.S. origin technology, no matter where the product is produced.”
Chinese stocks fell Monday following the U.S. stock market decline, although U.S. stock futures rebounded on hopes the tensions weren’t as bad as initially feared.
“On the specific episode the market is focused on, the two sides may still return to the table to find a short-term fix. However, it won’t be a lasting solution,” said Jianwei Xu, senior economist for Greater China at Natixis. “The trust between them is already gone.”
Trump has signaled he would meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the APEC meeting in South Korea at the end of October. China has yet to confirm or deny such plans.
The view from within the Asian country is that the U.S. will maintain its pressure on China, even as the two countries’ leaders are expected to meet, said Liu Weidong, research fellow at a state-affiliated think tank, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of American Studies.
“History has shown that U.S. pressure is ineffective, and will only lead to a more confrontational relationship between China and the U.S.,” Liu said in comments translated by CNBC.
He cast the latest rare earths restrictions as a demonstration of China’s efforts to warn “unfriendly” foreign companies while welcoming others, and as an attempt to maintain bilateral stability through “moderate and controlled countermeasures.”
Trump and Xi spoke over the phone last month, but have yet to meet in person since the U.S. leader began his term in January. Trump previously indicated that he might visit China next year, followed by Xi traveling to the U.S.
The two countries are still negotiating since the effective dates for some of the announced measures are set for after the APEC summit in South Korea, said Nomura’s Chief China Economist Ting Lu.
“Despite mounting tensions, there remain opportunities for diplomatic resolution, as the timeline creates a strategic buffer: Trump’s tariff implementation, which is scheduled for 1 November, precedes Beijing’s 1 December deadline for rare-earth export restrictions by a full month.” More

A BOTTLE OF Château d’Yquem 2010 is a fine thing. Apricot, toasted almond, citrus zest, juicy lemon, white truffles: it is all there. Until recently, the cost of the world’s finest sweet wine rose steadily. By 2023 a given bottle from the producer went for 60% more than in the mid-2010s. At the time, all forms of opulence were becoming more expensive. Classic cars, aged whiskies and enormous mansions shot up in value. From 2015 to 2023 a “luxury-investment index” produced by Knight Frank, a property firm, rose by 70%. More

Wall Street’s weekly performance was near the flat line heading into Friday. Things started OK on the final trading day of the week, until President Donald Trump ‘s new China trade threats tanked the stock market. The S & P 500 lost 2.71% on Friday — the worst single-session decline since April 10, the day after soaring on the White House pausing “reciprocal” tariffs. For the week, the index sank 2.43%. The Nasdaq also suffered its worst day since April 10, losing 3.56% on Friday. It sank 2.53% for the week. .SPX 5D mountain S & P 500 weekly performance After Friday’s close, Trump followed up his broader morning social media warning with an announcement of an extra 100% tariff on imports from China, saying the duties will be “over and above any tariff that they are currently paying.” He also added export controls on “critical software.” Both are set to begin Nov. 1. The president said the moves were being made to “financially counter” new export controls that China imposed on rare earths — these are key elements needed in the modern-day production of everything from iPhones to missiles. In another dose of uncertainty for markets, earlier on Friday, the 10th day of the government shutdown, the Trump administration started laying off federal workers. Nvidia’s big week The big week for Nvidia began Monday, when shares fell after GPU rival Advanced Micro Devices announced a blockbuster chip-buying agreement with OpenAI. The deal, which sent AMD stock soaring nearly 24% in a session, could result in OpenAI taking a 10% stake in the company. Investors shouldn’t worry about Nvidia’s dip on Monday, Jim Cramer said, since the AMD-OpenAI deal is not enough to threaten its dominance in the heated AI chip race. “In the end — I know this is going to be facetious — I think everybody wins,” Jim said Monday, referring to OpenAI’s huge $100 billion equity-and-supply agreement with Nvidia last month. The Information on Tuesday reported that Oracle is seeing thin margins on its business of renting out Nvidia chips as a cloud provider to clients like OpenAI. For the three months ending in August, Oracle’s cloud business reportedly had 14% gross margins on $900 million in sales, which is much lower than Oracle’s overall gross margin of roughly 70%, according the The Information. Oracle shares fell as much as 5% as a result during Tuesday’s session. That same day, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang pushed back on those claims during an interview with Jim at the October Monthly Meeting, saying that Oracle is “going to do incredibly well.” Although margin pressure in the near-term isn’t out of the question with new chips, that won’t be the case down the line. “When you first ramp up a new technology, there’s every possibility that you might not make money in the beginning. But over the life of the system, they’ll be wonderfully profitable,” Huang said from the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday afternoon. During the hour-long interview, Huang also argued that if the United States wants the future to be built on American technology, the country must win the generative artificial intelligence race against China. “Just as we want the world to be built on the American dollar, we would like the world to be built on the American tech stack, including developers in China.” The tech stack expands to more than just Nvidia as Huang also cited holdings Apple, Amazon , and Microsoft . Huang also gave Club members updates on three other Nvidia partners . In addition, Huang said America refocusing on energy growth will help the U.S. win on AI and fuel continued prosperity. “Without energy growth, there is no industrial growth, without industrial growth, there’s no stock price growth, there’s no economic growth, there’s no national security,” he said. Among the stocks that will benefit from AI’s need for energy is GE Vernova . During Wednesday’s Morning Meeting , Jim said, “We bought the right one.” GE Vernova has a booming business in natural gas-powered turbines, which can be hooked up to data centers to generate additional energy needs outside the power grid. NVDA 5D mountain Nvidia weekly performance Nvidia shares certainly had some big moves this week — down days on Monday and Tuesday, and then up days on Wednesday and Thursday. Friday was looking higher until Trump’s China threat slammed the market. When it was all said and done, Nvidia shares closed down 2.4% from their Oct. 3 close. Portfolio moves We purchased more shares of GE Vernova on Tuesday as the stock dropped below its all-time high set in early August. We upgraded the stock, which Jim has called “the best story in the market,” to a buy-equivalent 1 rating . “Our conviction in the long-term demand for AI infrastructure has increased over the past few weeks following OpenAI’s announcement of new partnerships to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of AI data centers using Nvidia systems and 6 gigawatts of AMD GPUs,” Jeff Marks, the Investing Club’s director of portfolio analysis, wrote in Tuesday’s trade alert. The Club offloaded some Salesforce shares on Monday. We booked profits on the lagging enterprise software name after it popped on OpenAI’s announcement that Slack, which is owned by Salesforce, would be integrated into the AI startup’s software engineering tool, known as Codex. “Monday’s pop eases some of the pain, but there’s still a significant overhang on the stock tied to concerns on Wall Street that artificial intelligence is ‘eating’ the software industry,” Marks wrote in the trade alert. Salesforce needs to make a big splash at this month’s Dreamforce client and developers conference to quite critics. On Monday, we also added Corning to our Bullpen watch list for consideration as a portfolio name. Sales of Corning ‘s fiber optic cables should surge as modern AI data centers require far more fiber than earlier generations of these energy-intensive facilities. That’s a key reason why the stock is up 75% year-to-date, versus the S & P 500 ‘s 11.4% gain. Another reason to like Corning: the company’s huge deal with Apple , announced in August, to produce all of the cover glass for iPhones and Apple Watches. On Friday, we trimmed our BlackRock position for the first time. Despite the selling in the overall market, the stock was not that far off its record-high close from Oct. 3. BlackRock shares were also still up nearly 10.5% year to date. We put some of those proceeds to work — adding to our newer names, Nike and Boeing . The Club has been buying these two stocks recently to build up the size of our positions. Despite last month’s earnings pop, Nike shares have lost nearly 14% year to date. Boeing has fared much better — gaining 19% in 2025. Nike’s turnaround Investors got an update on Nike’s turnaround plan this week. In a CNBC interview that aired Monday, CEO Elliott Hill said that it will “take a while” for Nike to return to profitable growth. Hill also said that fixing the company’s operations in China is crucial and part of his bigger effort to revive the brand. “The difference in the Chinese market versus the United States, as an example, is that it’s a mono-brand store. Physical retail is Nike only, and that, I think, we went too sportswear-oriented and not sport enough. Now, we’re reevaluating the concepts that we have in China,” Hill said. Nike’s new direction is sports-themed stores. “We have a running-led store that is starting to sell through really well [in China] because it’s anchored in sport. It has a point of view around sport. There are 5,000 [Nike stores there], so it’s just going to take time for us to roll those concepts out, but feel good about the consumer-led sports-led concepts there,” the CEO added. NKE 5D mountain Nike weekly performance Jim touted Nike stock shortly after the interview and said he still believes in management’s plan to revive the sports apparel and retail giant, which has lost nearly 14% year-to-date. “This fellow Elliott Hill. He’s about sports. He’s competitive,” Jim said on “Squawk on the Street” this week. “He will not lose because he’s got such a great brand, and they can make a comeback.” On Thursday, Nike got solid marks in the fall 2025 edition of Piper Sandler’s “Taking Stock with Teens” survey. Nike remained the No. 1 favorite footwear brand for all teens. Signs of stabilization among the cohort made Piper analysts more bullish on Nike. After ending five consecutive losing weeks, however, shares of Nike lost more than 9% this week. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) 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

BlackRock is seeing a shift among Big Tech investors.
Jay Jacobs, the firm’s U.S. head of equity ETFs, finds they’re going for targeted themes like artificial intelligence.

“One of the biggest trades we’re seeing this year is simply people leaving the traditional tech sector and getting more granular into AI-specific ETFs, like BAI [the iShares A.I. Innovation and Tech Active ETF] from BlackRock,” Jacobs told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week.
The fund gives investors exposure from semiconductor manufacturers to large language models in the AI ecosystem, according to Jacobs. 
BlackRock’s iShares website listed Nvidia, Broadcom, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft as BAI’s top holdings as of this week.
Factset calculates that electronic technology and technology services stocks make up more than 85% of its holdings. On Friday, the ETF tumbled roughly 5% along with the tech-heavy Nasdaq. However, BAI is up 36% since its inception last Oct. 21.

‘People want to play this potentially very disruptive theme’

Jacobs is also bullish on blockchain-related stocks, noting strong enthusiasm around ethereum has fueled significant investor interest.

He contends BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHA), a passively managed fund that tracks the ether’s spot price, has been a beneficiary of the trend. It’s up almost 42% over the past 12 weeks based on Friday’s close.
“Ethereum is really a bet on blockchain technology and other ways to use it through things like stablecoins and tokenization,” said Jacobs. “People want to play this potentially very disruptive theme.”
The Amplify ETFs founder and CEO sees opportunity in the cryptocurrency space, too. The firm offers blockchain exposure through the Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK). It’s an actively managed fund that invests in companies directly involved in developing or deploying blockchain infrastructure, according to the Amplify ETF website.
“There are a variety of use cases around blockchain, whether that’s stablecoins for payments… or its tokenization of assets, which can happen with real estate or stocks,” Christian Magoon said in the same interview. “We think this is a major theme that’s going to impact not only technology but also fintech and, of course, the crypto community.”
Magoon also pointed to new regulations as a tailwind for the industry. In July, President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act stablecoin legislation into law, which could boost investor confidence in stablecoins.
“We’re a pioneer in that space, and we think the upside is gonna continue, especially given the current administration and some of the regulatory moves we’re seeing from exchanges as well as large capital market participants,” he added.
BLOK fell more than 5% on Friday, but it’s still up almost 89% for over the past year. 

Disclaimer More

ONE OF THE year’s surprises has been how few countries chose to retaliate against Donald Trump’s tariffs with levies of their own. Better, most surmised, to placate the president than risk a costly confrontation. China has been an exception. It matched Mr Trump’s threats tit-for-tat until the two sides struck a last-minute truce in the spring. More