News & Insight • Weekly Newsletters

23 May 2025 | William Buckhurst | Charlie Todd

That Was The Week That Was

MACRO

The US House of Representatives passed Donald Trump’s “big and beautiful” tax bill by just one vote. The non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said that the bill will increase US national debt by more than $3.3trn over ten years, taking public debt to GDP from around 98% of GDP to 125%.

After a couple of softer monthly inflation prints, CPI in the UK came in sharply higher for April.  Driven by higher energy rates after regulators raised the price cap, as well as jumps in water bills, road tax and airfares. 

Japan CPI continued to be higher than expected at 3.6%, with core inflation jumping from 3.2% to 3.5%, perhaps forcing the Bank of Japan into a late year hike of interest rates.

It is yet to be seen how patient bond markets will be, but the week ended with the US 30- year hitting 5.04% and the UK equivalent at 5.48%. Longer-dated Japanese bond yields also marched higher as the 30-year hit a high of 3.07%.

Oil continues to march to Trumps beat as it fell during the week following reports that Opec+ was considering a third consecutive production increases in July and that a hike of 411k barrels per day, three times the amount initially planned, was under discussion. Reasons for the hikes have included punishing over producing members to keeping President Trump happy.

COMPANY NEWS

• Rio Tinto CEO Jakob Stausholm announced he would step down later this year after five years in the role
• Ashtead Technology said it had traded in line with expectations year-to-date as record key customer backlogs boosted its confidence in future demand. Yet the shares have been weak and continue to trade on an historically low valuation.
• Nike announced that they would start selling products on Amazon again after a six-year absence.
• Alphabet was among the S&P 500’s top performers on the week, as investors cheered a slate of AI-focused announcements from Google’s annual I/O developer conference this week. 
• Booz Allen fell over 16% as its forecast disappointed. It has been directly impacted by DOGE cost cutting.
• Intuit shares rose 8% on results. The company responsible for TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks and Mailchimp grew revenue 15% as AI innovations continued to help its software platforms.
• Johnson Matthey rose 30.7% after reporting in line results but announced that it had agreed to sell its Catalyst Technologies division to Honeywell for £1.8bn, well above analysts valuations of the unit, as they focus on clean air and platinum metal chemicals.
• Greggs showed there was still some life on the UK highstreet as the shares rose 9.2% as sales growth of 2.9% beat the 2.7% expected. It stated it had opened 66 new stores (whilst closing 46) and had moved some of its produce behind the counter to offset theft.
• US software specialist, Snowflake, fluttered 7% higher after reporting strong earnings and raised its forecast based on strong demand for data analytics as enterprises continue to invest heavily in AI.
• Telecoms have performed well this year. Vodafone continued the trend, but results were not amazing, falling short in several metrics. UK performance was better than expected and free cash flow guidance was above estimates.

TRADE WARS

More will he, won’t he?  Will he row back / chicken out? (recent term has been the TACO Trade – Trump Always Chickens Out).

President Trump announced on his Truth Social platform on Friday that he would consider slapping a 50% tariff on imports from the EU next month. Trump attacked the bloc for “Trade Barriers, VAT Taxes, ridiculous Corporate Penalties, Non-Monetary Trade Barriers, Monetary Manipulations, [and] unfair and unjustified lawsuits against American Companies”.

"IT WAS ALL YELLOW”

The stock market resembled the Coldplay pop song Yellow on Friday as any Uranium linked stocks – the element is sometimes called yellow cake – rose sharply as President Donald Trump signed executive orders to ease regulatory requirements on approvals for new nuclear reactors and enhance fuel supply chains.

He was looking to support the nuclear energy sector and put in place a "total and complete reform" of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The executive orders also look to speed up the deployment of new nuclear power reactors in the US – they will have 18 months.

The executive orders from the Trump White House also create a regulatory framework for the Departments of Energy and Defense to build nuclear reactors on federal land which "allows for safe and reliable nuclear energy to power and operate critical defense facilities and AI data centers." It also targets increased US uranium mining and looks to expand domestic uranium enrichment.

Market participants were ‘looking how [Nuclear-related stocks] shine for you’ as Cameco Corporation rose 11.1% and Oklo ‘looked at the stars’ and rose 23.0%.

Earlier in May, nuclear utility Constellation Energy under-performed quarterly expectations but kept its 2025 guidance steady. Chief Executive Joe Dominguez told analysts that the company has "made tremendous progress on new power agreements that we expect to announce soon. As Presidents Trump and Biden repeatedly have emphasized, it is vital for our national security and for our economy that America lead the AI race, and I am so proud that Constellation is playing such an important role."

THE WEEK IN HISTORY

1916: The first time British Summer Time (BST) is enacted

2003: The Euro exceeds its initial trading value as it hits $1.18 for the first time since its introduction in 1999