The latest global market volatility has reinforced China’s status as a distinct market, even if its growth has slowed recently. While U.S. tech stocks plunged and Japanese stocks swung wildly in a historic two days of price action , Chinese stocks suffered less . As of the end of the Asia trading week Friday, before the U.S. market open, the Nasdaq 100 and Nikkei 225 were both down by about 2.5% over the last five trading days, according to Wind Information. In contrast, the Shanghai composite was down by 1.5% and the MSCI China index was up by 0.2%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was up by 0.9%. “If we continue [to have] volatile markets in the US and other developed markets, people are going to look elsewhere to generate returns,” Matt Wacher, chief investment officer, Asia-Pacific, for Morningstar Investment Management, said in a phone interview Friday. “We think the fundamentals will win out in the end and capital will come back to some of the companies in China because they’re too compelling an investment opportunity to pass up,” he said. Fund flow data from EPFR showed that international investors significantly increased their purchases of Chinese stocks on Monday, Aug. 5, before trimming holdings the next day. The investors remained net buyers of Chinese stocks for the third quarter so far as of Aug. 6, the data showed. “We believe that there are reasons for international investors to look towards redeploying some allocation back to the China equity market after being relatively lightly positioned,” William Yuen, investment director, Invesco, said in an emailed statement Friday. “Valuations of Chinese equities are near historical lows and the stock market is broad and deep enough to enable investors to search for growth opportunities,” he said. “The economy has also shown signs of stabilizing, as policy easing measures take effect. Finally, the low correlation of the China stock market with the U.S. stock market could provide investors with diversification benefits.” Chinese stocks, especially those traded on the mainland, have historically been less correlated to global market moves due to Beijing’s capital controls and other restrictions. International investors without operations in China have gradually been able to access some of those mainland stocks, called A shares, via stock-connect programs through Hong Kong. However, this year ”foreign long-only funds and hedge funds have been actively selling” A shares, HSBC analysts pointed out in an Aug. 6 report. That’s left net inflows from both fund types at 13 billion yuan ($1.81 billion) for the year through Aug. 2, the report said. On the flip side, semiconductor company Montage Technology and state-owned train company CRRC — both listed in Shanghai — led net inflows during that time, according to HSBC. Both stocks have fallen over the last five trading days. The latest global market volatility was spurred in part by the unwinding of the Japanese yen carry trade, after the Bank of Japan’s rate hike and growing expectations for U.S. rate cuts. A carry trade is a practice in which investors borrow money in a currency from a country with low interest rates, and invest in currencies with higher yields. The investors then profit from the difference in rates, but can lose money if this suddenly changes. A worrying U.S. jobs report on Aug. 2 helped fuel expectations that the Federal Reserve will soon finally cut interest rates, shifting assumptions about how much certain assets might yield in returns versus others. It hasn’t been hard for investors to choose where to put most of their money when the 10-year Treasury yield has traded above 4% — versus 2.17% for the Chinese equivalent. HSBC’s multi-asset team expects a stock market sell-off from unwinding the Japanese yen carry trade could last one month. If the Fed does cut rates, that could support the case for Chinese stocks, Steven Sun, head of research, HSBC Qianhai Securities, and a team said in the Aug. 6 report. U.S. rate cuts would mean the People’s Bank of China could then further ease its monetary policy, “which is critical for China’s nascent property market recovery,” the analysts said. They added that a weaker U.S. dollar makes the Chinese yuan more attractive to foreign inflows, while U.S. rate cuts are generally positive for emerging markets such as China. China’s latest trade and inflation data released in the last several days indicated that domestic demand is holding up, although the economy isn’t necessarily firing on all cylinders. The National Bureau of Statistics is scheduled to release additional data for July on Thursday, of which retail sales will be key to watch after it grew by just 2% in June. However, global institutions’ caution on Chinese stocks won’t likely change quickly. “Investors should still prefer the US to Chinese financial markets,” Paul Christopher, head of global investment strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, said in an email. “Times of economic stress typically favor US markets, even when the US is the source of stress. We believe that’s because the US economy is more diverse than those that are export-oriented (as China’s still is).” “The real problem with China’s investment outlook isn’t the current market volatility, but the Chinese economy’s ongoing weakness and the disappointing policy response so far,” he said. “Deflation is the central problem.” He noted that last month’s ” Third Plenum ” meeting focused on “resilience to external shocks” instead of a range of domestic problems. Chinese stocks have struggled to rebound amid dour sentiment about the massive property market and other economic challenges since the Covid-19 pandemic. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index is clinging to gains for the year so far — after a record losing streak of four down years. “I think what you saw over the last few days has been that some of those names, Alibaba , Tencent , have held up pretty well in the face of that global volatility,” Morningstar’s Wacher said. “I think that’s because they’re already priced pretty reasonably from a valuation perspective, not much more to fall.” Tencent, the largest stock by market capitalization in the Hang Seng Index, and Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares both closed Friday with gains of more than 3% for the week. “In Alibaba’s case, it’s still got a very good management team, similar to Tencent,” Wacher said, pointing to efforts aligned with investors’ interests in balance sheets and cutting costs. “We think that their inwardly focused on China consumption, and China consumption will turn around,” he said. “They’re going to generate most of their income within China, less susceptible to trade wars and shenanigans that go on in the global economy. Compelling opportunities from that perspective.”
Leading analyst Craig Moffett suggests any plans to move U.S. iPhone assembly to India is unrealistic.
Moffett, ranked as a top analyst multiple times by Institutional Investor, sent a memo to clients on Friday after the Financial Times reported Apple was aiming to shift production toward India from China by the end of next year.
He’s questioning how a move could bring down costs tied to tariffs because the iPhone components would still be made in China.
“You have a tremendous menu of problems created by tariffs, and moving to India doesn’t solve all the problems. Now granted, it helps to some degree,” the MoffettNathanson partner and senior managing director told CNBC’s “Fast Money” on Friday. “I would question how that’s going to work.”
Moffett contends it’s not so easy to diversify to India — telling clients Apple’s supply chain would still be anchored in China and would likely face resistance.
“The bottom line is a global trade war is a two-front battle, impacting costs and sales. Moving assembly to India might (and we emphasize might) help with the former. The latter may ultimately be the bigger issue,” he wrote to clients.
Moffett cut his Apple price target on Monday to $141 from $184 a share. It implies a 33% drop from Friday’s close. The price target is also the Street low, according to FactSet.
“I don’t think of myself as the biggest Apple bear,” he said. “I think quite highly of Apple. My concern about Apple has been the valuation more than the company.”
Moffett has had a “sell” rating on Apple since Jan. 7. Since then, the company’s shares are down about 14%.
“None of this is because Apple is a bad company. They still have a great balance sheet [and] a great consumer franchise,” he said. “It’s just the reality of there are no good answers when you are a product company, and your products are going to be significantly tariffed, and you’re heading into a market that is likely to have at least some deceleration in consumer demand because of the macro economy.”
Moffett notes Apple also isn’t getting help from its carriers to cushion the blow of tariffs.
“You also have the demand destruction that’s created by potentially higher prices. Remember, you had AT&T, Verizon and T. Mobile all this week come out and say we’re not going to underwrite the additional cost of tariff [on] handsets,” he added. “The consumer is going to have to pay for that. So, you’re going to have some demand destruction that’s going to show up in even longer holding periods and slower upgrade rates — all of which probably trims estimates next year’s consensus.”
According to Moffett, the backlash against Apple in China over U.S. tariffs will also hurt iPhone sales.
“It’s a very real problem,” Moffett said. “Volumes are really going to the Huaweis and the Vivos and the local competitors in China rather than to Apple.”
Apple stock is coming off a winning week — up more than 6%. It comes ahead of the iPhone maker’s quarterly earnings report due next Thursday after the market close.
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In a year that hasn’t been kind to many big-name stocks, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is standing near the top. Berkshire shares have posted a 17% return year-to-date, while the S&P 500 index is down 6%.
That performance places Berkshire among the top 10% of the U.S. market’s large-cap leaders, and the run has been getting Buffett more attention ahead of next weekend’s annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. It’s also good timing for the recently launched VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF(OMAH), which holds the top 20 most heavily weighted stocks in Berkshire Hathaway, as well as shares of Berkshire Hathaway.
“It’s a really well-balanced portfolio chosen by the most successful investor the world has ever seen,” Adam Patti, CEO of VistaShares, said in an appearance this week on CNBC’s “ETF Edge.”
Berkshire’s outperformance of the S&P 500 isn’t limited to 2025. Buffett’s stock has tripled the performance of the market over the past year, and its 185% return over the past five years is more than double the performance of the S&P 500.
Berkshire Hathaway is one of 2025’s top performing stocks.
In addition to this long-term track record of success in the market, Berkshire Hathaway is getting a lot of attention right now for the record amount of cash Buffett is holding as he trimmed stakes in big stocks including Apple, which has proven to be a great strategy. The S&P 500 has experienced extreme short-term volatility since President Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20. Even after a recent recovery, the S&P is still down 8% since the start of Trump’s second term.
“The market has been momentum driven for many years, the switch has flipped and we’re looking at quality in terms of exposure, and Berkshire Hathaway has performed incredibly well this year, handily outperforming the S&P 500,” said Patti.
Berkshire Hathaway famously doesn’t pay a dividend, with Buffett holding firm over many decades in the belief that he can re-invest cash to create more value for shareholders. In a letter to shareholders in February, Buffett wrote that Berkshire shareholders “can rest assured that we will forever deploy a substantial majority of their money in equities — mostly American equities.”
The lack of a dividend payment has been an issue over the years for some shareholders at Berkshire who do want income from the market, according to Patti, who added that his firm conducted research among investors in designing the ETF. “Who doesn’t want to invest like Buffett, but with income?” he said.
So, in addition to being tied to the performance of Berkshire and the stock picks of Buffett, the VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF is designed to produce income of 15% annually through a strategy of selling call options and distributing monthly payments of 1.25% to shareholders. This income strategy has become more popular in the ETF space, with more asset managers launching funds to capture income opportunities and more investors adopting the approach amid market volatility.
People shop for produce at a Walmart in Rosemead, California, on April 11, 2025.
Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty Images
A growing number of Americans are using buy now, pay later loans to buy groceries, and more people are paying those bills late, according to new Lending Tree data released Friday.
The figures are the latest indicator that some consumers are cracking under the pressure of an uncertain economy and are having trouble affording essentials such as groceries as they contend with persistent inflation, high interest rates and concerns around tariffs.
In a survey conducted April 2-3 of 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 79, around half reported having used buy now, pay later services. Of those consumers, 25% of respondents said they were using BNPL loans to buy groceries, up from 14% in 2024 and 21% in 2023, the firm said.
Meanwhile, 41% of respondents said they made a late payment on a BNPL loan in the past year, up from 34% in the year prior, the survey found.
Lending Tree’s chief consumer finance analyst, Matt Schulz, said that of those respondents who said they paid a BNPL bill late, most said it was by no more than a week or so.
“A lot of people are struggling and looking for ways to extend their budget,” Schulz said. “Inflation is still a problem. Interest rates are still really high. There’s a lot of uncertainty around tariffs and other economic issues, and it’s all going to add up to a lot of people looking for ways to extend their budget however they can.”
“For an awful lot of people, that’s going to mean leaning on buy now, pay later loans, for better or for worse,” he said.
He stopped short of calling the results a recession indicator but said conditions are expected to decline further before they get better.
“I do think it’s going to get worse, at least in the short term,” said Schulz. “I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of reason to expect these numbers to get better in the near term.”
The loans, which allow consumers to split up purchases into several smaller payments, are a popular alternative to credit cards because they often don’t charge interest. But consumers can see high fees if they pay late, and they can run into problems if they stack up multiple loans. In Lending Tree’s survey, 60% of BNPL users said they’ve had multiple loans at once, with nearly a fourth saying they have held three or more at once.
“It’s just really important for people to be cautious when they use these things, because even though they can be a really good interest-free tool to help you kind of make it from one paycheck to the next, there’s also a lot of risk in mismanaging it,” said Schulz. “So people should tread lightly.”
Lending Tree’s findings come after Billboard revealed that about 60% of general admission Coachella attendees funded their concert tickets with buy now, pay later loans, sparking a debate on the state of the economy and how consumers are using debt to keep up their lifestyles. A recent announcement from DoorDash that it would begin accepting BNPL financing from Klarna for food deliveries led to widespread mockery and jokes that Americans were struggling so much that they were now being forced to finance cheeseburgers and burritos.
Over the last few years, consumers have held up relatively well, even in the face of persistent inflation and high interest rates, because the job market was strong and wage growth had kept up with inflation — at least for some workers.
Earlier this year, however, large companies including Walmart and Delta Airlines began warning that the dynamic had begun to shift and they were seeing cracks in demand, which was leading to worse-than-expected sales forecasts.