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President Joe Biden is directing federal agencies to develop a comprehensive strategy to identify and manage financial risks to government and the private sector posed by climate change. An executive order Biden issued Thursday calls for concrete steps to mitigate climate risks, while protecting workers’ life savings, spurring job creation and helping the United States lower greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. New regulations could be issued on the banking, housing and agriculture sectors, among others. “Extreme weather related to climate change can disrupt entire supply chains and deprive communities of food, water or emergency supplies,″ the White House said in a statement Thursday. Snowstorms can knock power grids offline, while floods made worse by rising sea levels can destroy homes and businesses. Read: Biden hails Israel-Hamas cease-fire, sees ‘opportunity’ The new strategy is intended to identify public and private financing needed to mitigate such risks and help safeguard Americans’ financial security, the White House said. Biden has made slowing climate change a top priority and has set a target to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by up to 52% below 2005 levels by 2030. He also has said he expects to adopt a clean energy standard that would make electricity carbon-free by 2035, along with the wider goal of net-zero carbon emissions economywide by 2050. The executive order directs White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy and economic adviser Brian Deese to develop a government-wide strategy within four months to identify and disclose climate-related financial risks. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and the White House Office of Management and Budget also would be involved, while the Labor Department will analyze how to protect pensions from climate-related risk. Yellen also will be directed to share climate-related financial risk data and issue a separate report within six months. The Securities and Exchange Commission has already begun work on potential regulations that would require companies to disclose risks related to global warming, while Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said his agency has begun taking steps to assess climate change-related risks to the banking system. Whether through rising seas or extreme weather, climate change “already presents increasing risks to infrastructure, investments and businesses. Yet, these risks are often hidden,” the White House said. “From signing a loan for a new home or small business to managing life savings or a retirement fund, it is important for the American people to have access to the information needed to understand the potential risks associated with these significant financial decisions,” the administration explained. The new executive order “ensures that the right rules are in place to properly analyze and mitigate these risks″ and disclose them to the public, “empowering the American people to make informed financial decisions,″ the White House said. Read: US civil rights leader urges Biden To give 60 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to India Environmental groups hailed the executive order, saying Biden recognizes the enormous risks posed by climate change. “The Biden administration affirmed today it recognizes that corporate disclosure and voluntary commitments alone are not sufficient for addressing systemic climate risks and that regulators must act,″ said Ben Cushing, a financial advocacy campaign manager for the Sierra Club. Twelve Republican senators wrote a letter to Powell earlier this year accusing the central bank of moving “beyond the scope of the Federal Reserve’s mission” by increasing scrutiny of climate threats.

Shares were mixed in Asia on Thursday after benchmarks closed broadly lower on Wall Street in a third day of retreat. The price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies declined further. Stocks rose in Tokyo and Sydney but fell in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Japan’s government reported that exports rose 38% in April from a year earlier while imports climbed nearly 13%, indicating a recovery in overseas demand even as the country weathers its worst bout of coronavirus outbreaks so far. Exports to the U.S. rose 45% while those to China jumped nearly 34% in a strong rebound after last year’s shocks from lockdowns and other precautions taken to curb the pandemic. Read:Asian stocks follow Wall St lower as inflation worries mount The Nikkei 225 regained lost ground, edging 0.2% higher to 28,067.53, while Sydney’s S&P/ASX 200 surged 0.9% to 6,993.90. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng skidded 0.7% to 28,381.13 while Seoul’s Kospi declined 0.5% to 3,157.70. Shares rose in Singapore and Jakarta but fell in Taiwan. On Wednesday, the S&P 500 index dropped 0.3% to 4,115.68 after recovering from a 1.6% slide earlier in the day. The benchmark index is on track for its second weekly loss in a row. Bank stocks were among the biggest decliners. Goldman Sachs fell 1.7% and Wells Fargo lost 1.5%. Retailers and other companies that rely directly on consumer spending also pulled the market lower. Home Depot slid 0.7%, Gap fell 3% and L Brands dropped 3.1%. Energy sector stocks, the biggest gainers so far this year, bore the heaviest losses as the price of U.S. crude oil skidded 3.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.5% to 33,896.04. The Nasdaq fared better than the rest of the market, shedding less than 0.1%, to 13,299.74. Smaller company stocks also lost ground. The Russell 2000 index lost 0.8%, to 2,193.64. Digital currencies fell sharply after China’s banking association issued a warning Wednesday over the risks associated with digital currencies. Bitcoin’s price was down 6.2% to $38,140, well below its all-time high of over $64,800 reached a month ago, according to the crypto news site Coindesk. It swung in a huge range of as low as $30,202 and as high as $43,621 over the course of the day. That the headline out of China rattled crypto investors suggests the market was already weak, said Willie Delwiche, investment strategist at All Star Charts. “If Bitcoin had been holding up better, a headline like that would be dismissed more readily, but it comes at a time when Bitcoin was already well off its highs,” he said. “It gave people who were looking for a reason to sell cover.” The Bitcoin skid comes after longtime Bitcoin advocate Tesla recently recently said it would no longer accept Bitcoin as payment for its cars, reversing its earlier position. The selling was so intense that the web site of Coinbase, an online brokerage for digital currencies, was temporarily down in the morning. Coinbase’s stock dropped 5.9%, ending about 34% below the peak it reached on April 16, just two days after its IPO. Investors continue to focus on whether rising inflation will be temporary or whether it will endure. Prices are rising for everything from gasoline to food as the economy recovers from its more than year-long malaise. The fear is that the Federal Reserve will have to dial back its extensive support if inflation persists. That includes record-low interest rates and the monthly purchase of $120 billion in bonds meant to goose the job market and economy. Read:Amazon’s profit more than triples as pandemic boom continues The minutes from the central bank’s April meeting of policymakers, which were released Wednesday afternoon, reaffirmed the view that the Fed’s decision to keep its benchmark interest rate ultra-low remains the best policy approach, though some officials cautioned that some factors pushing inflation higher may not be resolved quickly. Treasury yields mostly rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note slipped to 1.66% from 1.67% late Wednesday. In other trading, U.S. benchmark crude oil added 11 cents to $63.46 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It dropped $2.50 on Wednesday to $63.35 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard for pricing, rose 9 cents to $66.75 per barrel. The dollar fell to 109.14 Japanese yen from 109.23 yen on Wednesday. The euro rose to $1.2185 from $1.2174.

The merger of Discovery and AT&T’s WarnerMedia operations, marrying the likes of HBO and CNN with HGTV and Oprah Winfrey, is another illustration of the head-spinning speed in which streaming has transformed the media world. The companies are essentially placing a $43 billion bet that they’ll still be in the mix when consumers decide how to spend their monthly entertainment budgets. The agreement was announced Monday after AT&T CEO John Stankey and his Discovery counterpart, David Zaslav, worked out the details in Zaslav’s Manhattan brownstone over the past two months. “I think, together, the combination makes us the best media company in the world,” said Zaslav, who will run the new company if approvals are granted, probably sometime next year. Read:Asian stocks follow Wall St lower as inflation worries mount The deal also represents a strategic retreat for AT&T. The hope for the newly merged company is that, with a wider array of material than either can offer on its own, it can join Netflix, Amazon and Disney in the widely acknowledged top tier of streamers. Analysts say it also makes it imperative that services below that tier — think Paramount+ or Peacock — find some way to ramp up or risk being left behind. WarnerMedia and Discovery both launched their own streaming services, HBO Max and Discovery+, within the past two years. It’s still not clear whether the merger will result in a single streaming service or several bundled together, but it will have a vast array of content to offer: scripted and reality TV, movies, sports including the NBA and NCAA men’s basketball tournament, and news with CNN. With consumers figuring out which streaming services they use regularly and which they can give up, that depth means a better chance they will use this new one regularly, said Raj Venkatesan, professor of business administration at the University of Virginia. The average U.S. household spends $40 a month on streaming services. “It either has something for everyone in the family, or is so diverse that it is hard to explain,” said Jim Nail, an analyst for Forrester Research. David Schweidel, a business professor at Emory University, questioned whether consumers will be better off with the deal. “If I do decide to cut the cord and I need three to five services to get what I had before, that bill could easily approach what I was paying for cable before,” Schweidel said. “This may end up hurting consumers.” Read:Amazon’s profit more than triples as pandemic boom continues HBO Max and HBO have a combined global subscriber base of about 63.9 million, and Discovery+ has about 15 million subscribers. That compares with Netflix, which has more than 200 million subscribers worldwide, and Disney+, which counts over 100 million. In a call with investors, Zaslav said he believes that the standalone company could garner “200, 300, 400 million” subscribers at some point in the future, but there were no details regarding a timeline. The deal is a stark reminder of how much the entertainment world has changed, said Tim Hanlon, CEO of the media consultants Vertere Group. “I think most consumers now look at live television as being something of an anachronism,” he said. While it increases the pressure on smaller streaming services like Peacock or Paramount+ to find partners, those two are affiliated with the NBC and CBS television networks — so doing so would require a rethinking of the broadcast industry regulatory process, Hanlon said. It’s the second time this year that AT&T has calved off a major acquisition as it navigates a rapidly evolving media landscape. In February, the company spun off satellite TV service DirecTV for a fraction of the $48.5 billion it paid in 2015. Dallas-based AT&T acquired the former company Time Warner for more than $80 billion less than five years ago in a bid to control both sides of the entertainment process: the broadband and wireless services that help deliver entertainment to homes, and the entertainment itself. But the costs involved in trying to do both became a burden. “That vision clearly has not panned out,” said CFRA analyst Tuna Amobi. The new company will be able to cut costs by $3 billion annually, the companies said, money that could go toward original streaming content. It will house almost 200,000 hours of programming and bring together more than 100 brands under one global portfolio, including DC Comics, Cartoon Network, Eurosport, Magnolia, TLC and Animal Planet. Read:Facing $11B tax bill, Samsung heirs donate mass art trove That likely means layoffs as the companies consolidate. The deal is also likely to force major decisions on familiar brands. For instance, CNN Chief Executive Jeff Zucker said he expected to leave at the end of the year. But with the new company being led by Zaslav — who worked with Zucker at NBC in the 1990s — that equation could change. Zaslav called Zucker an extraordinary talent. “It’s all about the talent, and so we’ll be figuring out how do we get the best people to stay,” he said. Shares of Discovery Inc., which is based in Silver Spring, Maryland, fell $1.80, or 5%, to close Monday at $33.85 after initially jumping to $39.70. AT&T’s shares finished the day down 87 cents, or 2.7%, at $31.37, down from a session high of $33.88.

Asian stock markets followed Wall Street lower for a second day Thursday after unexpectedly strong U.S. consumer price increases fueled worries inflation might drag on an economic recovery. Market benchmarks in Shanghai, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia retreated. Overnight, Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index recorded its biggest one-day drop since February after consumer prices rose in April at their fastest year-on-year pace since 2008. Rising prices reflect growing industrial and consumer activity after last year’s global shutdown to fight the coronavirus pandemic. But investors worry surging inflation might disrupt the recovery or prompt central banks to withdraw stimulus and near-zero interest rates. Read:Asian shares mixed as vaccine wait tempers Wall St optimism The market reaction was “mild, reflecting the belief that this jump in inflation will eventually calm,” Tai Hui of JP Morgan Asset Management said in a report. The Federal Reserve says this surge should be temporary, but “if inflation does not calm,” the challenge to the U.S. central bank’s credibility “could be disruptive,” Hui said. The Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.6% to 3,441.37 and the Nikkei 225 in Tokyo tumbled 1.8% to 28,628.73. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong lost 0.8% to 28,010.86. The Kospi in Seoul sank 0.1% to 3,158.88 and Sydney’s S&P-ASX 200 was 0.4% lower at 7,018.00. New Zealand also retreated. On Wall Street, the S&P 500 lost 2.1% to 4,063.04. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 2% to 33,587.66 in its biggest decline since January. The Nasdaq gave up 2.7% in its largest pullback since March. Apple, Microsoft and Amazon all fell more than 2%. Tesla fell 4.4%, bringing its pullback this month to nearly 17%. Read:Asia stocks mixed after Wall St falls on Biden tax report Bond yields, or the difference between market price and the payout at maturity, snapped higher as prices fell. Bond prices fall if investors worry the value of that payout will be eroded by higher inflation. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 1.69% from Tuesday’s 1.62%, a big move. In energy markets, benchmark U.S. crude fell 46 cents to $65.62 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 80 cents on Wednesday to $66.08. Brent crude, used to price international oils, sank 53 cents to $68.79 per barrel in London. It rose 77 cents the previous session to $69.32 a barrel. The dollar gained to 109.67 yen from Wednesday’s 109.60 yen. The euro edged up to $1.2083 from $1.2080.

Amazon’s pandemic boom isn’t showing signs of slowing down. The company said Thursday that its first-quarter profit more than tripled from a year ago, fueled by the growth of online shopping. It also posted revenue of more than $100 billion, the second quarter in a row that the company has passed that milestone. Amazon is one of the few retailers that has benefited during the pandemic. As physical stores temporarily closed, people stuck at home turned to Amazon to buy groceries, cleaning supplies and more. That doesn’t seem to be dying down. Also read: Amazon gets Thursday night games, NFL nearly doubles TV deal In the first three months of this year, the company reported profit of $8.1 billion, compared to $2.5 billion the year before. Earnings per share came to $15.79, about $6 more per share than what Wall Street analysts expected, according to FactSet. Revenue jumped 44% to $108.5 billion. Seattle-based Amazon is one of four American companies that have reported quarterly revenue above $100 billion. The others are iPhone maker Apple, oil and gas company Exxon Mobil and retailer Walmart. Also read: Amazon takes early lead as union vote count gets underway Amazon said revenue will remain at that level in the second quarter, expecting between $110 billion and $116 billion. Part of the reason why: It plans to hold Prime Day, its popular sales event, during the quarter. Amazon didn’t specify a date for Prime Day, but said it would happen before the end of June. Besides online shopping, Amazon’s other businesses grew, too. Sales at its cloud-computing business, which helps power the online operations of Netflix, McDonald’s and other companies, grew 32% in the quarter. And at its unit that includes its advertising business, where brands pay to get their products to show up first when shoppers search on the site, sales rose 77%. Amazon’s growth comes as it faces activism from within its workforce. Workers at a warehouse in Alabama tried to unionize, saying they wanted better pay and more break time. But a majority of voters batted down that effort. This week, Amazon announced it was giving more than 500,000 workers a raise of between 50 cents and $3 an hour starting next month to attract new workers. The company already pays at least $15 an hour. Also read: Amazon jumps into health care with telemedicine initiative The online shopping giant has been on a hiring spree to keep up with a surge in orders. It had 1.27 million employees at the end of March, adding more than 430,000 people in the last year. Shares of Amazon.com Inc., which are up 40% in the last year, rose 2.6% in after-hours trading Thursday.

Samsung’s founding family will donate tens of thousands of rare artworks, including Picassos and Dalis, and give hundreds of millions of dollars to medical research to help them pay a massive inheritance tax following last year’s death of chairman Lee Kun-Hee. The Lee family, including his wife and three children, expects to pay more than 12 trillion won ($10.8 billion) in taxes related to inheritance, which is more than half the wealth Lee held in stockholdings and real estate, Samsung said Wednesday. This would be the largest amount in South Korea and more than three times the country’s total estate tax revenue for last year. The family plans to divide the payment in six installments over five years, while making the first payment this month. “It is our civic duty and responsibility to pay all taxes,” the Lee family said in a statement. They had until Friday to report the extent of the inheritance and payment plans to tax authorities. Also Read:'Samsung EDGE' campus program launched Raising cash for the tax payment is crucial for the Lee family to extend its control over Samsung’s business empire, which extends from semiconductors, smartphones and TVs to construction, shipbuilding, and insurance. Some analysts say the process could result in a shakeup across the group. The late Lee owned 4.18% of Samsung Electronics, which is one of the world’s biggest makers of computer memory chips and smartphones, but also held stakes in Samsung affiliates that collectively owned a larger share than his in the crown jewel electronics company. This was part of a complex shareholding structure that has allowed Lee and his family to exert broad control over the group. In Wednesday’s news release, Samsung did not mention how Lee’s wife and children would split his assets between them, and there’s speculation they haven’t yet reached a final agreement. Most market analysts believe that Lee’s shares will be distributed in a way that would strengthen the leadership of his only son and corporate heir, Lee Jae-yong, the de facto chief of Samsung Electronics who is currently serving a prison term over bribery and other crimes. Lee’s other children are Lee Boo-jin, CEO of Samsung’s Shilla luxury hotel chain, and Lee Seo-hyun, who heads the Samsung Welfare Foundation. Giving away the late chairman’s vast collection of masterpieces could help smoothen the payment, because his family wouldn’t need to pay taxes on donated artworks. The family plans to donate 23,000 pieces from Lee’s personal collection to two state-run museums. They include old Korean paintings, books and other cultural assets designated as national treasures, and modern Korean painters such as Park Soo-keun and Lee Jung-seop. There are also the works of Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, Joan Miro and Salvador Dali, Samsung said. The Lee family will also donate 1 trillion won ($900 million) to help fund infectious disease research and treatment for children with cancer and rare illnesses. About half of that money will be used to help finance the establishment of a new, 150-bed hospital providing specialized treatment for infectious diseases. Experts had raised the need for such facilities equipped with negative pressure rooms and other advanced systems following the emergence of COVID-19. About 300 billion ($267 million) of the funds will go into a decadelong program with the Seoul National University Children’s Hospital to help families pay for the treatment of children with cancer and rare diseases and support clinical trials and drug development. “Members of the (Lee family) hope to honor the life of the late Chairman Lee and his commitment to corporate citizenship and co-prosperity by giving back to communities,” Samsung said. Before his death in October, Lee was credited for transforming Samsung Electronics from a small television maker into a global giant in semiconductors and consumer electronics. But his leadership was also marred by corruption convictions that highlighted the traditionally murky ties between the country’s family-owned conglomerates and politicians. He had been hospitalized for years following a heart attack in 2014. Lee Jae-yong, who has since helmed the group in his capacity as vice chairman of Samsung Electronics, is currently serving a 2 1/2-year sentence for his involvement in a 2016 corruption scandal that spurred massive protests and ousted South Korea’s president. The younger Lee has vowed to improve Samsung’s public image, declaring that heredity transfers at the group would end and that he wouldn’t pass the management rights he inherited to his children. He also said Samsung would stop suppressing employee attempts to organize unions, although labor activists have questioned his sincerity. A growing number of politicians, religious and business leaders have been calling for President Moon Jae-in to pardon Lee. They say it would help Lee strengthen Samsung’s global leadership in semiconductors and he could possibly use his business reach to help the country secure more coronavirus vaccines. Critics point out that Samsung didn’t show signs of trouble when Lee was in jail in 2017 and 2018, and that prison terms have never really stopped corporate leaders from relaying their management decisions from behind bars. Health officials have denied thinly sourced local reports that Samsung has been providing behind-the-scenes help in their negotiations with global pharmaceutical companies over coronavirus vaccines.

Apple is following through on its pledge to crack down on Facebook and other snoopy apps that secretly shadow people on their iPhones in order to target more advertising at users. The new privacy feature, dubbed “App Tracking Transparency,” rolled out Monday as part of an update to the operating system powering the iPhone and iPad. The anti-tracking shield included in iOS 14.5 arrives after a seven-month delay during which Apple and Facebook attacked each other’s business models and motives for decisions that affect billions of people around the world. “What this feud demonstrates more than anything is that Facebook and Apple have tremendous gatekeeping powers over the market,” said Elizabeth Renieris, founding director of the Technology Ethics Lab at the University of Notre Dame. Also read: Apple signals return of right-wing 'free speech' app Parler But Apple says it is just looking out for the best interests of the more than 1 billion people currently using iPhones. “Now is a good time to bring this out, both because of because of the increasing amount of data they have on their devices, and their sensitivity (about the privacy risks) is increasing, too,” Erik Neuenschwander, Apple’s chief privacy engineer, told The Associated Press in an interview. Once the software update is installed -- something most iPhone users do -- even existing apps already on the device will be required to ask and receive consent to track online activities. That’s a shift Facebook fiercely resisted, most prominently in a series of full-page newspaper ads blasting Apple. Until now, Facebook and other apps have been able to automatically conduct their surveillance on iPhones unless users took the time and trouble to go into their settings to prevent it -- a process that few people bother to navigate. “This is an important step toward consumers getting the transparency and the controls they have clearly been looking for,” said Daniel Barber, CEO of DataGrail, a firm that helps companies manage personal privacy. In its attacks on Apple’s anti-tracking controls, Facebook blasted the move as an abuse of power designed to force more apps to charge for their services instead of relying on ads. Apple takes a 15% to 30% cut on most payments processed through an iPhone app. Online tracking has long helped Facebook and thousands of other apps accumulate information about their user’s interests and habits so they can show customized ads. Although Facebook executives initially acknowledged Apple’s changes would probably reduce its revenue by billions of dollars annually, the social networking company has framed most of its public criticism as a defense of small businesses that rely on online ads to stay alive. Also read:  Apple CEO escalates battle with Facebook over online privacy Apple, in turn, has pilloried Facebook and other apps for prying so deeply into people’s lives that it has created a societal crisis. In a speech given a few weeks after the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol, Apple CEO Tim Cook pointed out how personal information collected through tracking by Facebook and other social media can sometimes push people toward more misinformation and hate speech as part of the efforts to show more ads “What are the consequences of not just tolerating but rewarding content that undermines public trust in life-saving vaccinations?” Cook asked. “What are the consequences of seeing thousands of users join extremist groups and then perpetuating an algorithm that recommends more?” It’s part of Apple’s attempt to use the privacy issue to its competitive advantage, Barber said, a tactic he now expects more major brands to embrace if the new anti-tracking controls prove popular among most consumers. In a change of tone, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently suggested that Apple’s new privacy controls could actually help his company in the long run. His rationale: The inability to automatically track iPhone users may prod more companies to sell their products directly on Facebook and affiliated services such as Instagram if they can’t collect enough personal information to effectively target ads within their own apps. “It’s possible that we may even be in a stronger position if Apple’s changes encourage more businesses to conduct more commerce on our platforms by making it harder for them to use their data in order to find the customers that would want to use their products outside of our platforms,” Zuckerberg said last month during a discussion held on the audio chat app Clubhouse. In the same interview, Zuckerberg also asserted most people realize that advertising is a “time-tested model” that enables them to get more services for free or at extremely low prices. “People get for the most part that if they are going to see ads, they want them to be relevant ads,” Zuckerberg said. He didn’t say whether he believes most iPhone users will consent to tracking in exchange for ads tailored to their interests. Google also depends on personal information to fuel a digital ad network even bigger than Facebook’s, but it has said it would be able to adjust to the iPhone’s new privacy controls. Unlike Facebook, Google has close business ties with Apple. Google pays Apple an estimated $9 billion to $12 billion annually to be the preferred search engine on iPhone and iPad. That arrangement is currently one element of an antitrust case filed last year by the U.S. Justice Department. Facebook is also defending itself against a federal antitrust lawsuit seeking to break the company apart. Meanwhile, Apple is being scrutinized by lawmakers and regulators around the world for the commissions it collects on purchases made through iPhone apps and its ability to shake up markets through new rules that are turning it into a de facto regulator. “Even if Apple’s business model and side in this battle is more rights protective and better for consumer privacy, there is still a question of whether we want a large corporation like Apple effectively ‘legislating’ through the app store,” Renieris said.

Asian stock markets were mixed Friday after Wall Street fell following a report that President Joe Biden will propose raising taxes on wealthy investors. Shanghai, Hong Kong and Seoul rose while Tokyo and Sydney retreated. Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index lost 0.9% overnight after Bloomberg News, citing unidentified sources, said Biden will propose raising taxes on people who make more than $1 million on stock trades. That added to a mix of better corporate profits and U.S. hiring, unease that inflation and interest rates might rise and renewed coronavirus infections that have prompted some governments to tighten anti-disease controls. Also read: Asian shares mixed as vaccine wait tempers Wall St optimism Investors are struggling “to navigate through a very muddled global outlook” and earnings reports that have “priced in a slow return to pre-pandemic life,” said Edward Moya of Oanda in a report. The Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.2% to 3,473.01 while the Nikkei 225 in Tokyo lost 0.7% to 28,983.31. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong gained 1% to 29,032.89. The Kospi in Seoul advanced 0.2% to 3,183.84 while Sydney’s S&P-ASX 200 shed 0.2% to 7,039.20. New Zealand rose while Singapore and Jakarta retreated. Selling on Wall Street was widespread following the report about Biden’s tax plan. According to Bloomberg, it would raise the capital gains tax to 39.6% for investors who make more than $1 million, or more than double the current rate for Americans in that income bracket. It said a separate surtax on investment income could boost the total tax rate for wealthy investors as high as 43.3%. Technology stocks, banks and companies that rely on consumer spending accounted for much of the skid. Treasury yields held mostly steady. The S&P 500 declined to 4,134.98. It is down 1.2% for the week after hitting a high on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.9% to 33,815.90. The Nasdaq composite slid 0.9% to 13,818.41. The last round of U.S. government stimulus helped to lift retail investors in the biggest global market. Now, investors are weighing other proposals out of Washington, including tax changes and Biden’s proposed $2.3 million infrastructure spending package. Also read: Asian shares sink after tech rout pulls Nasdaq 3.5% lower Investors also are looking for signs of possible economic improvement as the bulk of companies in the S&P 500 are reporting quarterly results. Also Thursday, the Labor Department reported the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell again last week to its lowest level since the pandemic struck. China, the world’s second-largest economy and a major importer, rebounded late last year and the United States is showing solid signs of recovery. Europe and other parts of the world lag behind. In energy markets, benchmark U.S. crude rose 33 cents to $61.76 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract advanced 8 cents on Thursday to $61.43. Brent crude, used to price international oils, gained 27 cents to $65.67 per barrel in London. It added 8 cents the previous session to $65.40 a barrel. The dollar declined to 107.94 yen from Thursday’s 108.10 yen. The euro advanced to $1.2024 from $1.2008.

Asian shares were mixed Friday as jubilance over positive U.S. economic data and a Wall Street record high were tempered by caution in the region, where the coronavirus vaccine rollout has lagged. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 gained 0.1% to 29,674.31 in morning trading. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell nearly 0.1% to 7,052.30. South Korea’s Kospi was little changed, inching up less than 0.1% to 3,194.49. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng inched down less than 0.1% to 28,771.21, while the Shanghai Composite added 0.2% to 3,406.93. The contrast in the speed of the vaccine rollout has been striking between the U.S. and Asia. Nearly half of American adults have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, and about 30% of adults in the U.S. have been fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Japan, where inoculations for the public have barely started, has seen a resurgence of infections in recent weeks. The country’s western metropolis of Osaka reported over 1,200 new infections Thursday, its highest since the pandemic began. A top ruling party official suggested the possibility of canceling the Tokyo Olympics, set to start in July, if infections continue to surge. Also read: Asian shares fall back after S&P 500 hits fresh record high  Prakash Sakpal and Nicholas Mapa, senior economists for ING, said the markets are watching the meeting between Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and President Joe Biden, set for the weekend, data from China, including GDP and retail sales, as well as for further news on the pandemic. “Asian markets will likely track gains overnight with optimism driven by positive US data highlighted by retail sales. Investors now turn their focus to a string of China data reports,” they said in a report. Wall Street notched more milestones, as a broad market rally pushed the S&P 500 to an all-time high and the Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed above the 34,000 mark for the first time. The S&P 500 rose 1.1%, with technology, health care and communication stocks accounting for much of the upward moves. Only energy and financial companies closed lower. Bond yields fell. The rally came as investors welcomed a suite of encouraging economic reports showing how hungry Americans are to spend again, how fewer workers are losing their jobs and how much fatter corporate profits are getting. Expectations are very high on Wall Street that the economy — and thus corporate profits — are in the midst of exploding out of the cavern created by the pandemic, thanks to COVID-19 vaccinations and massive support from the U.S. government and Federal Reserve. New data on retail sales and jobless claims Thursday helped bolster the view that the economic recovery is accelerating. Also read: Asian shares sink after tech rout pulls Nasdaq 3.5% lower “Another day, another record,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer for Independent Advisor Alliance. “The stock market continues to validate the optimistic forecasts from last year, which predicted a strong economy that was driven by consumers emerging from their homes, emboldened by vaccinations or by a belief that the worst of COVID was behind us.” The S&P 500 rose 45.76 points to 4,170.42, surpassing its previous record high of 4,141.59 set on Tuesday. The Dow climbed 305.10 points, or 0.9%, to 34,035.99. The Nasdaq composite added 180.92 points, or 1.3%, to 14,038.76, while the Russell 2000 index of smaller companies picked up 9.35 points, or 0.4%, to 2,257.07. U.S. retail sales jumped 9.8% in March from February, blowing past economists’ forecasts for 5.5% growth. Much of the surge was due to $1,400 payments from the U.S. government’s latest economic rescue effort hitting households’ bank accounts. Economists said it shows how primed people are to spend as the economy reopens and conditions brighten. That’s huge for an economy that’s made up mostly of consumer spending. Another report gave an encouraging read on the job market, showing 576,000 people applied for unemployment benefits last week. That’s well below the 700,000 that economists had forecast and down from 769,000 the prior week. It’s also the lowest number since the pandemic. Adding to the optimism, more big U.S. companies reported even healthier profits for the first three months of 2021 than analysts had forecast. Expectations are already high for this earnings reporting season, which unofficially got underway on Wednesday and could result in the strongest growth in more than a decade. “You’ve got various pockets of the market now starting to show a broadening recovery,” said Sameer Samana, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute. BlackRock, PepsiCo and UnitedHealth Group all reported bigger profits for the first quarter than analysts expected. BlackRock rose 2.1%, PepsiCo added 0.1% and UnitedHealth climbed 3.8%. Also read: Asian shares fall on fears over US-China tariffs standoff Even Delta Air Lines, which reported weaker results for the start of 2021 than expected, highlighted areas of optimism. It said it could return to making profits by late summer if the recovery it’s seeing in air travel continues. Its shares fell 2.8%. In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude fell 19 cents to $63.27 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, slipped 19 cents to $66.75 a barrel. In currency trading, the U.S. dollar inched up to 108.91 Japanese yen from 108.77 yen. The euro cost $1.1956, down from $1.1984.

Microsoft, on an accelerated growth push, is buying speech recognition company Nuance in a deal worth about $16 billion. The acquisition will get Microsoft deeper into hospitals and the health care industry through Nuance’s widely used medical dictation and transcription tools. Microsoft will pay $56 per share cash. That’s a 23% premium to Nuance’s Friday closing price. The companies value the transaction including debt at $19.7 billion. Shares of Burlington, Massachusetts-based Nuance surged about 16% in Monday trading. Nuance has been a pioneer in voice-based artificial intelligence technology and was instrumental in helping to power Apple’s digital assistant Siri. It has since shifted its focus to health care, including a product that listens in on exam room conversations between physicians and patients and automatically writes up the doctor’s recommendations, such as for prescriptions or lab work. “This clinical documentation essentially writes itself, giving physicians time back to focus on patient care,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on a conference call about the deal Monday. Microsoft and Nuance had already formed a business partnership in 2019. That relationship grew during the pandemic, enabling Nuance to bring its patient-physician transcription services into telehealth appointments using Microsoft’s video conference app Teams. The Redmond, Washington, software giant said that this month’s deal will double its potential market in the health care provider industry to nearly $500 billion. “Put Microsoft and Nuance together and it allows Microsoft to go after the exploding health care market, which is on fire right now as it’s modernizing, adopting digital engagement and moving to the cloud,” said Forrester analyst Kate Leggett. Nuance’s products include clinical speech recognition software offerings such as Dragon Ambient eXperience, Dragon Medical One and PowerScribe, all of which are now built on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. The companies said Nuance products are used by more than 55% of physicians and 75% of radiologists in the U.S., and by 77% of U.S. hospitals. Revenue from its health care cloud business grew 37% year-over-year in fiscal 2020. “AI is technology’s most important priority, and health care is its most urgent application,” Nadella said. Microsoft also has its own digital voice assistant, Cortana, but its use has been limited compared to similar consumer-oriented systems from Amazon, Google and Apple. Nuance has sought to refine its voice recognition technology beyond consumer use to better understand the complexities of medical jargon. Aside from health care, Nuance provides voice-related AI technology in other products, including security features that can recognize and authenticate individual voices so they can unlock an online account. Nuance also sells automated call-center and customer-service chatbot services to retailers, telecommunications firms and other sectors. Scott Guthrie, who leads Microsoft’s cloud and AI division, said Monday that Nuance’s medical industry expertise could eventually expand to other uses, such as interpreting conversations between financial advisers and their clients.   The transaction is Microsoft’s second largest deal following its $26 billion purchase of LinkedIn in 2016. Last September, it bought video game maker ZeniMax for $7.5 billion. Leggett said the Nuance deal fits a push by cloud computing providers like Microsoft to supply “industry-specific AI,” or technology that’s tailored to the special needs of the health industry and other sectors. That gives Microsoft access to a new set of customers, said Gartner analyst Greg Pessin. “Right now the CIO is who they market to, with Office and Teams and the operating systems,” Pessin said. “This is a different market, with chief medical officers and the doctors. It opens up a new arm for Microsoft’s health care initiative.” Mark Benjamin will continue as Nuance CEO. The transaction is expected to close this year. It still needs approval from regulators and Nuance shareholders. Nuance had 7,100 employees as of September, more than half of whom were outside the U.S. — including crews that help transcribe and edit recorded speech that the AI technology might not fully understand.