Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving money around the world.
Asian equity markets are under pressure this session, with Hong Kong's Hang Seng extending its losing streak to five straight days, shedding roughly eight hundred thirty points over that stretch and now trading just below the twenty-five thousand one hundred twenty level. Australian shares are following suit, with the ASX two hundred slipping beneath nine thousand one hundred, dragged lower by weakness in financials and tracking Friday's broadly negative close on Wall Street.
Across the Atlantic, JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon is pushing back hard against the UK government's budget plans, warning Chancellor John Healey directly against raising taxes on banks. Dimon pointed to New York as a cautionary tale, arguing that elevated tax burdens have already cost the city finance jobs, and signaling that London could face similar consequences if Prime Minister Burnham's October budget moves in that direction.
Meanwhile in tech, Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft are collectively committing nearly six hundred billion dollars in capital expenditures, a staggering infrastructure buildout driven by surging demand in cloud computing. Analysts watching the space say the spending race shows no sign of slowing, and the question now is which of the three platforms emerges with the clearest return on that investment.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
