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Wall Street is holding steadier following its see-saw ride that bracketed the weekend. The S&P 500 was up 0.1% in early trading Tuesday. The index is coming off its best day since May, which followed its worst day since May. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was edging up 27 points, and the Nasdaq composite was flat. Worries are still high that President Donald Trump’s tariffs may be hurting the economy. But increased hopes for cuts to interest rates by the Federal Reserve, along with a stream of stronger-than-expected profit reports from U.S. companies, are helping to support the market.Wall Street headed higher in early trading Tuesday as markets’ anxiety over last week’s poor jobs data appears to have dissipated as investors turn their attention to another batch of corporate earnings.Futures for the S&P 500 gained 0.3% before the bell, while Nasdaq futures climbed 0.4%. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average were effectively unchanged.Palantir Technologies is heading toward another record high after booking its first $1 billion in quarterly sales and raising its outlook for the year. Shares surged more than 6% to $170 before markets opened, which would be tops for the company that has already notched record highs four times this year. One year ago, Palantir shares were going for about $24 each.Shares of Caterpillar fell 3.5% in premarket after the farming and industrial equipment maker’s second-quarter profit fell short of Wall Street targets. The Texas company’s operating profit in the period fell 18% from last year, which company executives blamed on “unfavorable manufacturing costs” related to higher tariffs.Coming later this week are earnings reports from The Walt Disney Co., McDonald’s and DoorDash, along with updates on U.S. business activity.Investors appeared to have recovered some confidence after worries over how President Donald Trump’s tariffs may be punishing the economy sent a shudder through Wall Street last week.Reports from big U.S. companies have largely come in better than expected and could help steady a U.S. stock market that may have been due for some turbulence. A jump in stock prices from a low point in April had raised criticism that the broad market had become too expensive.At the same time, signs of weakness in hiring by U.S. businesses have raised expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates at its next meeting in September, potentially a plus for markets.Elsewhere, at midday in Europe, Germany’s DAX gained 0.8%, while the CAC 40 in Paris edged 0.2% higher. Britain’s FTSE 100 was up 0.5%.In Asian trading, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index gained 0.6% to 40,549.54 while the Kospi in South Korea jumped 1.6% to 3,198.00.In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng rose 0.7% to 24,902.53. The Shanghai Composite index surged 1% to 3,617.60.Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 jumped 1.2% to 8,770.40, while the SET in Thailand climbed 1.3%.India’s Sensex was the sole outlier, losing 0.5% on concerns over trade tensions with the United States as the Trump administration pushes for cutbacks in oil purchases from Russia.India has indicated that it will continue buying oil from Russia, saying its stance on securing its energy needs is guided by the availability of oil in the markets and prevailing global circumstances.“Trump’s threats of ‘substantial’ tariff hikes on account of imports of Russian crude pose a quagmire for India,” Mizuho Bank said in a commentary. “Between exacerbated U.S.-imposed geoeconomic headwinds and financial/macro setbacks from Russian oil advantages lost, pain will be hard to avert.”The Indian rupee hit another all-time low, dipping to 87.7 against the U.S. dollar.In energy trading, U.S. benchmark crude oil shed 73 cents to $65.56 per barrel, while Brent crude, the international standard, gave up 64 cents to $68.12 per barrel.The U.S. dollar rose to 147.60 Japanese yen from 147.09 yen. The euro slipped to $1.1541 from $1.1573. Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Wells Fargo and Google Cloud are further cementing their longstanding strategic partnership with the introduction of artificially intelligent agents into Wells Fargos systems, the companies announced today. As part of the agreement, Wells Fargo employeeseveryone from tellers to investment bankers to C-suite executiveswill be able to utilize AI agents via Google Agentspace, Google Clouds agentic AI platform. The rollout will begin immediately with 2,000 Wells Fargo employees and will continue to be expanded over the coming months. What does it mean for customers? Quicker, better servicetheoretically. The AI agents are expected to help Wells Fargos teams become faster at automating tasks, quicker at analyzing information, and overall more efficient at their jobs, the companies say. For example, Wells Fargos banking business generates some 50,000 credit-related memos every year. A custom-built AI agent could conceivably tap into complex financial data, trends, and risk assessments to generate the first draft. Wells Fargo’s adoption of Google Agentspace marks a bold step forward in making banking simpler and smarterfor our customers and employees, says Tracy Kerrins, consumer CIO and head of enterprise generative AI at Wells Fargo. By leveraging advanced agentic AI capabilities, we can get answers and insights faster, work more efficiently, and free up time to focus on what matters most: helping people reach their financial goals. What guardrails are in place? One thing that both Wells Fargo and Google Clouds team are putting front and center is what they describe as a more responsible approach to AI deployment. In a statement, the two companies said their collaboration is underpinned by rigorous ethical and regulatory frameworks so that these powerful tools are used in a way that promotes accuracy, fairness, transparency, accountability, and security. As companies across various industries team up with tech platforms to roll out generative AI products, some have drawn the ire of privacy and copyright advocates, among others. Financial services are seen as particularly complicated use cases for AI given the strict regulatory and compliance requirements under which banks operate, to say nothing of the need to maintain consumer trust and protect sensitive private financial data. A report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) earlier this year found that while AI can lead to reduced costs and improved efficiency for financial institutions, AI also poses risks, including potentially biased lending decisions, data quality issues, privacy concerns, and new cybersecurity threats. In the near term, itll be interesting to see if agentic AI proves to be a difference-maker for Wells Fargo in a competitive financial services space. Our work with Wells Fargo is a defining moment for agentic AI in the financial services industry, says Matt Renner, president of global revenue at Google Cloud. By equipping everyone from branch bankers to corporate teams with Google AI tools, Wells Fargo will unlock new levels of efficiency.
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E-Commerce
Over seven days in July, a rotating crew of GM workers drove a Chevrolet Silverado EV Work Truck for 1,059.2 miles on a single charge. Thats higher than the Guinness World Record for longest distance driven by an EV on one charge749 miles, set earlier in July by Lucid Air Grand Touring. Its also significantly more than the Silverado EVs EPA-estimated range of 493 miles. But the feat required some driving conditions customers likely wouldnt want to replicate themselves, like not using the AC at all during the summer heat, and driving at speeds of just 25 miles per hour. [Photo: GM] Range anxiety has become a common concern for EV drivers and potential EV customers who fear getting stranded with a dead battery far from a charging site. Automakers and engineers continue to make battery developments to improve EV range, but how many miles you get out of a charge also depends on a whole bunch of other factorslike the weather, the weight in the vehicle, if youre driving uphill, if youre using air conditioning, and even your driving style, like if youre accelerating quickly or slamming on the breaks. GM engineers knew they would have to control for all those variables. They didnt make any changes to the software of the battery for this test, but they did make hardware changes, including lowering the position of the windshield wiper to reduce drag, inflating the tires to their highest acceptable pressure to lower rolling resistance, and removing the spare tire to make the vehicle lighter. Engineers also optimized the trucks wheel alignment, put a tonneau cover over the truck bed, and turned off climate control inside the vehicle (if a driver has the AC on while its extremely hot outside, an EV range can be up to 50% less than under optimal conditions). They also chose to do the test during a warmer time of year, because EV batteries can struggle in the cold. Workers who got behind the wheel took careful considerations around their driving behavior, too, mapping out routes that traveled on slower roads rather than highways and driving just 20 miles per hour to 25 miles per hour where safe to do so, says Jon Doremus, an engineering manager at Chevrolet who led the project. (Before July 2025, the Guinness world record for longest journey by an electric car on a single charge was 649 miles, also set by Lucid; Chevrolet didnt involve Guinness World Records in this project.) The rotating crew of Silverado drivers were also mindful of how hard they were breaking and accelerating. One of the terms that the engineers used was drive like there is an egg between your foot and the gas pedal, so very, very gently accelerating and very gently decelerating, Doremus says. For the majority of the driving time, there was just one person in the truck, which reduced weight. The project spanned seven days and included trips around GMs Milford Proving Ground and Detroits Belle Isle. In total, about 40 different GM workers drove during the test; the team made a sign-up sheet available to anyone from the company to participate. We knew this was going to mean a lot of hours driving in a truck that didnt have AC, so you need to take shifts and have a lot of people rotating out to not get fatigued, Doremus says. (Drivers could crack the windows up to 2 inches, and there was also a battery-operated fan in the truck.) Forgoing air conditioning in July, avoiding highways, and traveling light (for an electric truck that has a towing capacity of 10,000 pounds) may not be choices that the average Chevy customer also decides to make. GM engineers know that. I don’t expect people are going to do these things on their daily vehicles, but thats not to say theres not a lot to learn and pick from this to get a better range, Doremus says. He says the experiment shows just how many factors people can control to try to get more out of their EVs, and what important role driving behavior plays. If you do want to get better range out of your vehicles and you’re willing to sacrifice some of your commute time, maybe it makes sense to take a local highway instead of the interstate and go 45 to 50 instead of 70 to 75 [miles per hour], he adds. Its also not the first GM engineering test that doesnt exactly mimic the standard, day-to-day driving experience. Do we expect the average customer to go out to Yuma [Arizona], where it’s 120 degrees [Fahrenheit] right now, tow a trailer at max payload and go up and down the steepest grades we can find? Doremus says. Probably not, but we do it, because we want to make sure the truck can do that in case somebody ever does get in that situation. Workers who participated included some who were super familiar with the Silverado EVbut also those who hadnt ever driven an electric truck before. For the latter, Doremus says the exercise quelled some range anxiety. They realized that there’s a lot within my control to maximize this, this range, he says. Yeah, on paper, I may only be able to go 493 miles, but if I got into a situation where I needed to stretch my range as much as possible, there’s a lot of things that I can do to drive efficiently.
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E-Commerce
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