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Stocks rose in Europe and Asia while U.S. markets treaded water—or, rather, hovered just below the surface—as the ‘sell America’ trade kept going in a second day, although with less intensity.
The big news was in Hong Kong, where Chinese EV battery giant CATL began trading after notching the biggest public offering of the year. After raising $4.6 billion in the secondary offering, the world’s largest EV battery group saw its shares rise as much as 18.4% above the subscription price, before closing with an over 16% gain.
Across the rest of Asia, and in Europe, shares largely rose. Europe’s Stoxx 600, DAX, and FTSE were all up some 0.5% in early trading, while Asian markets broadly rose—with the exception of India’s Nifty 50, which dropped 1.1%.
In the U.S., though, futures were down slightly across the board, as was the U.S. dollar against the euro, yen and Swiss franc. Still stunned by Moody’s downgrade of U.S. debt—and the spectre of more coming from President Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’, investors in American assets took a pause.
With American markets stuck in the doldrums, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon issued a warning: asset prices are high, and investors are underestimating what could happen to the credit markets in a downturn.
“People feel pretty good because you haven’t seen an effect of tariffs,” Dimon said. “The market came down 10%, it’s back up 10%; I think that’s an extraordinary amount of complacency.”
Here’s a snapshot of today’s action prior to the opening bell in New York:
- The S&P 500 rose 0.09% Monday. The index is up 1.4% YTD.
- S&P futures traded down 0.3% this morning, premarket.
- The Stoxx Europe 600 was up 0.5% in early trading.
- Asia was up (mostly): Japan was up 0.1%. Hong Kong rose 1.5%. Shanghai was up 0.4% and India’s Nifty 50 was off 1.1%.
- Tesla, Nvidia and Palantir were all down over 3% premarket.
- Bitcoin was sitting above $105,000 this morning.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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https://fortune.com/2025/05/20/global-stock-markets-share-prices/
Ian Mount
