🚀 Concerns in the banking sector

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Market Overview
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Year To Date Performances:

1. Global bank stocks tumbled on Friday as fears over bad U.S. loans spread through markets worldwide, sparked by Zions Bancorporation and Western Alliance disclosing loan losses that reignited worries about loose lending practices. Major U.S. lenders like JPMorgan, Citi, and Bank of America fell in pre-market trading, while Europe’s Stoxx Banking Index dropped nearly 3%, with Spain’s Sabadell plunging 9% and Deutsche Bank and Barclays also sliding sharply. Asian financials weren’t spared, as Japan’s Mizuho fell 4% and Hong Kong’s HSBC dropped 2%. Analysts described the selloff as largely sentiment-driven, with investors reacting to potential credit risks rather than systemic failures. While experts said the issues appear isolated, they warned that shaken confidence could still trigger short-term volatility in the sector.

2. Ron Conway, the influential tech investor behind early bets on Google, Airbnb, and Stripe, resigned from the Salesforce Foundation’s board after CEO Marc Benioff suggested he would support President Trump sending federal troops to San Francisco. Conway, a prominent Democratic donor and longtime ally of Benioff, said their “values were no longer aligned” following the comments, which Benioff later attempted to clarify as a call for local leadership to ensure public safety. The fallout comes as right-wing figures like Elon Musk and Trump seized on Benioff’s remarks to criticize San Francisco’s crime and governance. Salesforce praised Conway’s decade-long service, noting the foundation’s $250 million in donations to education causes, but his exit underscores growing political tensions in the tech community as San Francisco’s safety and leadership remain hot-button issues.

3. Micron Technology plans to stop supplying server chips to data centers in China, marking a full retreat from that segment after Beijing’s 2023 ban on its products in critical infrastructure crippled the business, according to Reuters sources. The Idaho-based chipmaker, which earned 12% of its revenue from mainland China last year, will continue selling to Lenovo and other Chinese customers operating data centers abroad, as well as to automakers and mobile device firms within China. The exit underscores the toll of escalating U.S.-China tech tensions, which began under former President Trump and have intensified with mutual sanctions and security accusations against firms like Huawei, Nvidia, and Intel. While the ban has allowed rivals Samsung, SK Hynix, and Chinese chipmakers to capture China’s AI-driven data center boom, Micron has offset losses with record global revenues fueled by surging demand for AI infrastructure elsewhere.

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