Market Brief, North America

Futures on US stock markets are tumbling this morning as outsized performance gains from China’s DeepSeek artificial intelligence start-up raise uncomfortable questions about the competitive moats surrounding America’s biggest tech firms. According to artificial intelligence experts, a thinly-resourced open-source large language model released by the Chinese company last week shows comparable performance to those built by US firms like OpenAI and Meta, suggesting that the race among Silicon Valley firms to invest tens of billions of dollars in advanced chips may not pay off—at least not for those on the vanguard. DeepSeek’s chatbot topped downloads on Apple’s App Store over...

Financial markets are back in risk-on mode after US President Donald Trump appeared to suggest that he could avoid putting tariffs on Chinese imports, backing off a campaign pledge to hit the country with a 60-percent levy. In a previously-recorded interview with Fox News that aired in the United States last night, Trump said “We have one very big power over China, and that’s tariffs, and they don’t want them. And I’d rather not have to use it, but it’s a tremendous power over China,” also noting that he had a “great relationship” with Chinese president Xi Jinping prior to...