{"id":11582045,"date":"2025-07-28T10:14:47","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T14:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/?p=11582045&preview=true&preview_id=11582045"},"modified":"2025-07-28T11:49:17","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T15:49:17","slug":"wall-street-us-eu-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/2025\/07\/28\/wall-street-us-eu-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Wall Street coasts for now ahead of a week packed with potential flashpoints"},"content":{"rendered":"

By STAN CHOE, AP Business Writer<\/strong><\/p>\n

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 U.S. stock indexes are drifting on Monday after the United States agreed to tax cars and other\u00a0products coming from the European Union at a 15% rate<\/a>, lower than President Donald Trump had earlier threatened. Many details are still to be worked out, though, and Wall Street is heading into a week full of potential flashpoints that could shake markets.<\/p>\n

The S&P 500 was virtually unchanged in midday trading after\u00a0setting an all-time high every day last week<\/a>. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 8 points, or less than 0.1%, as of 11:30 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.2% higher, coming off its own record.<\/p>\n

Tesla added 3.5% after its CEO, Elon Musk, said it signed a deal with Samsung Electronics that could be worth more than $16.5 billion to provide chips for the electric-vehicle company. Samsung\u2019s stock in South Korea jumped 6.8%.<\/p>\n

Other companies in the chip and artificial-intelligence industries were strong, continuing their run from last week after Alphabet said it was increasing its spending on AI chips and other investments by $10 billion to $85 billion this year. Chip company Advanced Micro Devices rose 3.7%, and server-maker Super Micro Computer climbed 6.7%.<\/p>\n

They helped offset a 9.7% drop for Revvity. The company in the life sciences and diagnostics businesses reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than Wall Street expected, but it also gave a forecasted range for profit over the full year whose midpoint fell below analysts’ estimates.<\/p>\n

Companies are broadly under pressure to deliver solid growth in profits following big jumps in their stock prices the last few months. Much of the gain was due to hopes that Trump would walk back some of his stiff proposed tariffs, and critics say the broad U.S. stock market looks expensive unless companies produce bigger profits to justify the moves.<\/p>\n

Many more fireworks may be ahead this week. \u201cThis is about as busy as a week can get in the markets,\u201d according to Chris Larkin, managing director, trading and investing, at E-Trade from Morgan Stanley.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of U.S. companies are lined up to report how much profit they made during the spring, with nearly a third of all the businesses in the S&P 500 index scheduled to deliver updates. That includes market heavyweights Apple, Amazon, Meta Platforms and Microsoft. Those companies have grown so huge that their stock movements can almost solely dictate what the overall S&P 500 index does. Microsoft alone is worth roughly $3.8 trillion,<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve will announce its latest decision on interest rates.<\/p>\n

Trump has been loudly and angrily calling for the Fed to cut interest rates, a move that could give the economy a boost. But Fed Chair Jerome Powell has been insisting that he wants to wait for more data about how Trump\u2019s tariffs are affecting the economy and inflation before the Fed makes its next move. Lower interest rates can give inflation more fuel, and the economy only recently came out of its scarring run where inflation briefly topped 9%.<\/p>\n