Daily Stock Market Report (Mon 12 May 2025) - US-China Agreement, SNX, IGG, VLG, CWK, VCT, OPT, LIKE, TAND

Good morning!
Welcome back to another week. Today's Agenda is complete.2pm: let's wrap it up there, thank you!

US-China Trade Talks amp; Agreement
When I wrote The Week Ahead last week, I mentioned that there would be "ice-breaker" talks between the United States and China in Switzerland over the weekend.
I did not expect - and I don't think anybody else anticipated it - that the two countries would almost immediately agree to reduce their tariffs by anything like this:

Source: BBC
For 90 days, starting on Wednesday, the US tariff on China is reduced to 30%, and the Chinese tariff on the United States is reduced to 10%.
These are still much higher than they were a few months ago. But I would expect the majority of trade to resume at these rates.
The two countries "will establish a mechanism to continue discussions about economic and trade relations". Perhaps this may lead to further progress and a normalisation of tariffs back to where they were before this episode began?
As I've been saying from the start, I think Trump's main objective is to be able to point to concessions he achieves from other countries. If he gets that, I think he's quite happy...