Visa shares ticked up less than 1% after the credit card company beat Wall Street’s second-quarter sales and profit targets. The company said consumer spending remained resilient last quarter, somewhat contrary to recent consumer confidence surveys that showed Americans increasingly concerned about the impact of Trump’s tariffs.
Coming after the bell are the latest quarterly results from tech giants Microsoft and Meta, the parent company of Facebook.
CEOs say they’re unsure how long their companies can keep piling up profits due to the lack of clarity about Donald Trump’s trade war.
Investors fear Trump’s tariffs could bring a recession if left unaltered because they could freeze global trade and send prices higher for all kinds of products.
Later Wednesday, the government offers up its first estimate of first-quarter gross domestic product in the U.S. Economists are forecasting that growth in the January-March period slowed to less than 1%.
The government also issues its latest report on consumer spending, which includes the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation.
Elsewhere, the eurozone logged 0.4% growth in the first quarter of the year, stronger than in the last quarter of 2024. But the outlook has been dimmed by higher tariffs on exports from the 20-nation region using the euro.
Germany’s DAX gained 0.7% after the country’s center-left Social Democrats voted to approve a coalition agreement. The vote’s results announced Wednesday pave the way to elect Friedrich Merz as the new German chancellor.
In Paris, the CAC 40 also rose 0.7%, while Britain’s FTSE 100 rose a modest 0.2%.
In Asian trading, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index climbed 0.6% to 36,045.38.
Japanese automakers’ shares were mixed even after Trump signed an order relaxing some U.S. tariffs on imports of autos and auto parts.
Shares in Toyota Motor Corp. lost 1.6% while Honda Motor Co. gained 0.4%. Nissan Motor Co. lost 0.2%.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng rose 0.5% to 22,119.41, while the Shanghai Composite index slipped 0.2% to 3,279.03 as surveys showed export orders to Chinese manufacturers declined in April as higher U.S. tariffs on goods from China began to take effect.
South Korea’s Kospi dropped 0.3% to 2,556.61, while the S&P/ASX 200 in Australia surged 0.7% to 8,126.20.
In energy markets, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 45 cents to $59.97 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, shed 43 cents to $62.85 per barrel.
The U.S. dollar rose to 142.93 Japanese yen from 142.35 yen. The euro fell to $1.1379 from $1.1386.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
