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Asian shares slide and US futures and dollar drop after Wall Street's winning week

Specialist John McNierney, left, and trader Anthony Carannante work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Key Points

  • After Moody’s downgraded the US sovereign credit rating over rising debt, Asian shares slid and US futures dropped (S&P 500 -0.9%, Dow -0.6%) while the dollar eased to ¥145.14.
  • Weak Chinese April data—retail sales up 5.1% year-on-year and industrial output slowing to 6.1%—stoked growth concerns, sending Hong Kong’s Hang Seng down 0.7% and Shanghai Composite down 0.2%.
  • Despite recent volatility, Wall Street notched its fifth straight weekly gain, with the S&P 500 rising 0.7% to within 3% of its record high on hopes of tariff relief and softer US inflation reports.
  • US consumer sentiment fell again in May and one-year inflation expectations surged to 7.3%, underscoring persistent economic uncertainty and its potential impact on spending.
  • MarketBeat previews top five stocks to own in June.

HONG KONG (AP) — Asian shares fell Monday and U.S. futures and the dollar weakened after Moody’sRatings downgraded the sovereign credit rating for the United States because of its failure to stem a rising tide of debt.

The future for the S&P 500 lost 0.9% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.6%. The U.S. dollar slipped to 145.14 Japanese yen from 145.65 yen. The euro was unchanged at $1.1183.

Chinese markets fell after the government said retail sales rose 5.1% in April from a year earlier, less than expected. Growth in industrial output slowed to 6.1% year-on-year from 7.7% in March.

That could mean rising inventories if production outpaces demand even more than it already does. But it also may reflect some of the shipping boom before some of U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs on Chinese goods took effect.

“After an improvement in March, China’s economy looks to have slowed again last month, with firms and households turning more cautious due to the trade war,” Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics said in a report.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 0.7% to 23,184.74 and the Shanghai Composite Index edged 0.2% lower to 3,361.72.

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 gave up 0.4% to 37,605.85 while the Kospi in Seoul dropped 1% to 2,600.57.

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 declined 0.1% to 8,333.80.

Taiwan's Taiex was 0.8% lower.

Wall Street cruised to a strong finish last week as U.S. stocks glided closer to the all-time high they set just a few months earlier, though it may feel like an economic era ago.

The S&P 500 rose 0.7% to 5,958.38 for a fifth straight gain. It has rallied to within 3% of its record set in February after it briefly dropped roughly 20% below it last month.

Gains have been driven by hopes that Trump will lower his tariffs against other countries after reaching trade deals with them.

The Dow industrials added 0.8% to 42,654.74, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.5% to 19,211.10.

Trump’s trade war sent financial markets reeling because they could slow the economy and drive it into a recession, while also pushing inflation higher.

This week featured some encouraging news on each of those fronts. The United States and China announced a 90-day stand-down in most of their punishing tariffs against each other, while a couple of reports on inflation in the United States came in better than economists expected.

That uncertainty has been hitting U.S. households and businesses, raising worries that they may freeze their spending and long-term plans. The latest reading in a survey of U.S. consumers by the University of Michigan showed sentiment soured again in May, though the pace of decline wasn’t as bad as in prior months.

Perhaps more worryingly, expectations for coming inflation keep building, and U.S. consumers are now bracing for 7.3% in the next 12 months, according to the University of Michigan’s preliminary survey results. That’s up from a forecast of 6.5% a month before.

Charter Communications rose 1.8% after it said Friday that it has agreed to merge with Cox Communications in a deal that would combine two of the country’s largest cable companies. The resulting company will change its name to Cox Communications and keep Charter’s headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut.

CoreWeave jumped 22.1% after Nvidia disclosed that it had increased its ownership stake in the company, whose cloud platform helps customers running artificial-intelligence workloads. Nvidia now owns 7% of CoreWeave, up from its nearly 6% stake before CoreWeave’s initial public offering of stock in March.

Novo Nordisk’s stock that trades in the United States fell 2.7% after the Danish company behind the Wegovy drug for weight loss said that Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen will step down as CEO and that the board is looking for his successor. The company cited “recent market challenges” and how the stock has been performing recently.

Hope remains that this week’s better-than-expected signals on inflation could give the Federal Reserve more leeway to cut interest rates later this year if high tariffs drag down the U.S. economy.

In oil trading early Monday, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 18 cents to $61.79 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gave up 20 cents to $65.21 per barrel.

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