Trade Secrets

WTF Dailies August 19, 2025

S&P 500 Futures fell 0.1% in Asian trade, with focus squarely on the upcoming Jackson Hole Symposium, where Fed Chair Jerome Powell is set to speak this week.

Sage Kakkat

18 Aug 2025 — 7 min read

S&P 500 Futures fell 0.1% in Asian trade, with focus squarely on the upcoming Jackson Hole Symposium, where Fed Chair Jerome Powell is set to speak this week.
Most Asian stocks moved in a flat-to-low range on Tuesday, cooling from strong gains in the prior session as investors turned cautious over Russia-Ukraine peace talks and upcoming cues from the Federal Reserve.
Regional markets took middling cues from a largely flat overnight session on Wall Street, with U.S. markets also cooling after a strong performance earlier in August.
A spate of recent record highs left Asian markets open to profit-taking, especially amid increased caution.
Markets were also watching for any more developments in U.S. attempts to broker a Russia-Ukraine peace treaty, after President Donald Trump met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a cadre of European leaders at the White House on Monday.
China’s Shanghai Shenzhen CSI 300 and Shanghai Composite indexes were flat on Tuesday after surging to multi-year highs on Monday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 0.2%.
India’s Nifty 50 index rose slightly after surging 1% in the prior session.
Chinese and Indian stocks had rallied on Monday amid hopes for a swift resolution to the Russia-Ukraine war, especially after Trump met Russian President Vladimir Putin last week. But Trump on Monday signaled a long road towards reaching a peace deal, denting hopes for a quick resolution.
The Russia-Ukraine war has become a major point of contention for China and India, given that the U.S. threatened steep tariffs against the countries over their purchases of Russian oil. While Trump did not outline any additional tariffs on China, he did sign orders imposing up to 50% tariffs on Indian goods from later in August.
Chinese markets were also muted in anticipation of a host of major earnings this week. Tech giant Xiaomi (OTC:XIACF) Corp (HK:1810) fell 1% in HK trade, and is set to report its June quarter earnings later in the day.
The company is expected to have benefited from government subsidies on electronics goods, while its earnings are also expected to be complemented by Xiaomi’s growing precense in the electric vehicle market.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 and TOPIX indexes moved little on Tuesday after surging to record highs in the prior session.
Japanese markets were encouraged by strong second-quarter gross domestic product data, which helped inspire some confidence in the Asian economy, as it grapples with sticky inflation and economic headwinds from Trump’s trade tariffs. The strong GDP data also drummed up bets on an interest rate hike by the Bank of Japan later this year.
Among individual stocks, SoftBank Group Corp. (TYO:9984) fell nearly 2% after it announced a $2 billion investment in beleaguered U.S. chipmaker Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC). The move stands to make Softbank (OTC:SFTBY) one of Intel’s biggest shareholders, and comes as the Japanese tech conglomerate invests aggressively in chipmaking and artificial intelligence.
Other Asian markets moved in a flat-to-low range. Australia’s ASX 200 fell 0.6% after hitting record highs on Monday. A private survey showed Australian consumer sentiment improved in August amid optimism over more interest rate cuts by the Reserve Bank.
South Korea’s KOSPI fell 0.5%, pressured by profit-taking in major tech stocks. Singapore’s Straits Times index rose 0.3%, remaining close to record highs hit last week.

Market Close

U.S. equity markets sold off today, led by sharp declines in tech giants NVIDIA and Meta. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes recorded their worst session since August 1, but performance was better outside of the mega-cap names. More than 300 of the companies on the S&P 500 index were up over the day, helping the equal-weighted index move higher.
The tone in European stock markets meanwhile was upbeat, with investors likely hopeful that progress is being made on a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.
U.S. government bonds rallied across the curve, with 10-year yields down 3 basis points (0.03%), while softer-than-expected Canadian inflation data helped drive a rally in local government bonds.
The U.S. dollar appreciated against a trade-weighted basket of major international currencies, while WTI oil was lower as markets consider what any potential peace agreement might mean for sanctions on Russian oil.
Retailers should help provide a check on the health of consumers this week, with home-improvement leader Home Depot kicking us off this morning. The overall message was cautious, with comparable sales up 1% over the second quarter, weaker than analyst expectations, with the slowdown in sales seen in recent years continuing.
Home Depot's CFO flagged that consumers were avoiding larger home-improvement projects due to high interest rates and economic uncertainty, and these headwinds continue to weigh on the housing market in general. While we saw a rebound in new housing starts in July from the sharp decline reported in June, overall activity remains weak, and a drop in permits suggests little prospect of a near-term pick-up. Next up will be Lowe's and Target results on Wednesday, before we close out with industry bellwether Walmart on Thursday, with all these reports likely to help provide some indication of how retailers are managing tariffs and their early impact on spending.
The U.S data calendar will remain relatively light this week, with Thursday's S&P Flash U.S. PMI surveys for August probably the highlight.
In Canada, CPI data for July released earlier this morning showed a smaller-than-feared pick-up in inflation, particularly for the Bank of Canada's preferred trimmed mean measure that strips out the noisier components of the basket to better capture the trend in underlying price pressures. This appears to be adding to market bets that the Bank of Canada might cuts rates at its September meeting, although investors appear to remain uncertain, with around a 40% chance of a 25 basis point move (0.25%) currently priced for that meeting.
Markets appear more confident that the Fed will cut rates next month and will likely be looking for signs that easing is on the way from Fed Chair Powell's speech at the annual Jackson Hole symposium on Friday. Powell might hint that a rate cut is approaching, but any strong signals seem unlikely, with key payrolls and inflation data still to be released ahead of the September FOMC meeting.

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