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Economists credit US President Donald Trump’s tariff campaign with reducing trade between Germany and the US, its top trading partner last year.

China overtook the United States as Germany’s largest trading partner during the first eight months of 2025, preliminary data from the German statistics office has shown.

The data indicated that German imports and exports with China totalled $190.7bn (163.4 billion euros) from January to August, while trade with the US amounted to $189bn (162.8 billion euros), according to Reuters calculations.

The US was Germany’s top trading partner in 2024, ending an eight-year streak for China. Germany had sought to reduce its reliance on China, citing political differences and accusing Beijing of unfair practices.

But trade dynamics shifted again this year, with US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House and his renewed tariff campaign.

The tariffs have pushed down German exports to the US, which fell 7.4 percent in the first eight months of the year compared with 2024.

In August, exports to the US also fell 23.5 percent year-on-year, showing that the trend is accelerating.

“There is no question that US tariff and trade policy is an important reason for the decline in sales,” said Dirk Jandura, president of the BGA foreign trade association.

Jandura added that US demand for classic German export goods, such as cars, machinery and chemicals, had fallen.

With the ongoing tariff threat and the stronger euro, German exports to the US are unlikely to rebound any time soon, said Carsten Brzeski, global head of macro at the financial institution ING.

Exports to China fell even more sharply than those to the US, dropping 13.5 percent year-on-year to $63.5bn (54.7 billion euros) in the first eight months of 2025.

By contrast, imports from China rose 8.3 percent to $126.4bn (108.8 billion euros).

“The renewed import boom from China is worrying – particularly as data shows that these imports come at dumping prices,” said Brzeski.

He warned that the trend not only increases German dependence on China, but could add to stress in key industries where China has become a major rival.

“In the absence of economic dynamism at home, some in Germany may now be troubled by any shifts on world markets,” said Salomon Fiedler, an economist at the bank Berenberg.

Stock markets have come a long way from the stereotypical trading floors we may know from the movies and TV. Most trading is electronic these days. And, while the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq still ring an opening and closing bell, it’s largely symbolic. After-hours trading in various forms is increasingly common and could soon become the norm.

Several established brokers already offer after-hours trading. Key exchanges and infrastructure providers are looking for regulatory approval to extend their hours of operation. And Sept. 29 will see the launch of the new, SEC-approved, 24X National Exchange. This will initially trade U.S. equities from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m ET every weekday.

But just because you can trade at almost all hours, should you?

Image source: Getty Images.

Is 24/7 trading a good thing?

The convenience of being able to manage your portfolio at an hour that suits you is one of the biggest benefits of extended trading. Regular market hours of 9:30 a.m to 4 p.m. ET may not suit many retail investors who can’t easily trade during office hours. That’s even more so for international investors who own U.S. stocks and live in a different time zone.

Depending on what type of investor you are, there’s also an appeal to being able to react to events as they unfold — we live in a 24-hour news cycle and the current after-hours and pre-market trading sessions will only take you so far.

Perhaps a company just issued a disappointing earnings release or announced a change in leadership that you think will impact its performance. Maybe there’s other breaking news such as trade deals, overseas developments, or economic data that might significantly impact a particular business. Extended trading hours give you a chance to react as things happen.

Drawbacks of 24/7 trading

On the other hand, trading outside the regular hours can carry more risk and prove costly. People are more likely to make emotional investment decisions when they can trade at any time they want, whether that’s panic selling or impulse buying. This can damage your portfolio in the long run.

Another big issue is that there isn’t as much liquidity. If you’re trading outside of regular hours, you may not be able to execute the trades you want. And if you can, you may find there’s a wide bid-ask spread. With fewer people trading, the gap can widen between what investors are willing to pay and the price the seller wants.

In terms of prices, thinner order books can translate to increased volatility. Price discovery is also harder. The securities information processors (SIPs) that collect and distribute real-time data don’t yet operate out of hours, so you may find two different systems give different prices.

Finally, if you plan to trade out of hours today, many brokerages have restrictions on which equities you can trade and what types of orders you can place. For example, Charles Schwab (SCHW 1.08%), one of the leaders in extended trading, will only take limit orders during non-traditional hours. Similarly, Robinhood (HOOD 3.13%) doesn’t offer fractional trading on all its securities and only supports certain order types in extended or overnight trading.

Round-the-clock trading is coming

A mix of forces is driving us closer to 24-hour trading. Those include technological advances, shifts in regulatory attitudes, globalization, and investor demand. Most recently, the SEC and Commodity Futures Tradition Commission said extended trading is a joint priority. Even so, we’re more likely to see 22-hour or 23-hour trading windows on weekdays than a full shift to 24/7 markets.

Here are some of the drivers toward extended trading hours:

• Tokenized assets are gaining traction. These are essentially a way to issue a token that represents ownership of anything from real estate to equities to online art. They originated in the cryptocurrency world, but are starting to have an impact on all asset classes. One of the attractions of the blockchain is that it doesn’t have set trading hours.
• Nasdaq hopes to launch 24/5 trading by the second half of 2026. It says it is working with regulators and infrastructure providers to make this possible. The exchange is also awaiting SEC approval for tokenized stock trading.
• The NYSE wants to offer 22/5 trading on NYSE Arca, its electronic trading system. If regulators approve, it wants to extend its hours from 1:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. ET every weekday. The idea is to launch at the end of next year.
• Back-end infrastructure is shifting to accommodate longer hours. The SIP operating committees have asked the SEC to approve plans for 23/5 operations. Clearing houses are doing the same. This would give investors the information they need to trade effectively, no matter the time.

Not quite 24/7, but nearly

We’re on the cusp of a seismic shift in how markets work. Exchanges, SIPs, clearing houses, and brokerages are all laying the groundwork for systemic change that will make after-hours trading more normal.

As an investor, it’s worth thinking about how this might impact your activities. That includes making a plan to handle breaking news and avoid panic decisions, understanding what brokerage automation tools might help, and being clear on how longer trading windows might fit with your goals and strategies.

By&nbspAP with Doloresz Katanich

Published on
11/09/2025 – 8:13 GMT+2

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Klarna stock opened at $52 (€45) a share on Wednesday, a 30% premium on the company’s $40 pricing. It took roughly three-and-a-half hours for the specialists on the floor of the NYSE to manually price the first batch of trades of the company. The shares rose as high as $57 before losing some momentum and ending at $45.82, up 14.6%.

More than 34 million shares worth approximately $1.37 billion (€1.17bn) were sold to investors, making it the largest IPO this year, according to Renaissance Capital. That’s notable because 2025 has been one of the busier years for companies going public.

Founded in 2005 as a payments company, Klarna entered the US buy-now-pay-later market in 2015 in partnership with department store operator Macy’s. Since then, Klarna has expanded to hundreds of thousands of merchants and embedded itself in internet browsers and digital wallets as an alternative to credit cards. The company recently announced a partnership with Walmart.

The company is trading under the symbol “KLAR”. While Klarna was founded in Sweden and is a popular payment service in Europe, company executives said they made the decision to go public in the US as a signal that Klarna’s future growth opportunities lay with the American shopper.

“It’s the largest consumer market in the world, and it’s the biggest credit card market in the world. It’s a tremendous opportunity, from our perspective,” said CEO and co-founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski in an interview with The Associated Press ahead of the IPO.

Over the years and in multiple interviews, Siemiatkowski has made it clear that Klarna wants to steal away customers from the big credit card companies and sees credit cards as a high-interest, exploitative product that consumers rarely use correctly.

Klarna’s most popular product is what’s known as a “pay-in-4” plan, where a customer can split a purchase into four payments spread over six weeks. The company also offers a longer-term payment plan where it charges interest. The business model has caught on globally, particularly among consumers who are reluctant to use credit cards. The company said 111 million consumers worldwide have used Klarna.

The buy-now-pay-later market is booming

Klarna and other buy-now-pay-later companies have attracted increased public interest in recent years as the business model has caught on. State and federal regulators, as well as consumer groups, have expressed some degree of worry that consumers may overextend themselves financially on buy-now-pay-later loans just as much as they do with credit cards.

Siemiatkowski says the company is actively monitoring how consumers use their products, and the average balance of a Klarna user is less than $100 (€85.50). Because the company issues loans that are six weeks or less, Klarna argues it can more easily adjust its underwriting standards depending on economic conditions.

With Klarna going public, its co-founders are now billionaires. At Klarna’s IPO price of $40, Siemiatkowski’s 7% stake in the company is worth around $1bn (€850 million), while Victor Jacobsson, who left the company in 2012, owns an 8.4% stake in the company now worth $1.3bn (€1.11bn). Siemiatkowski said he did not sell shares as part of the IPO.

But with Klarna’s 20-year-long incubation period before going public, and several fundraising rounds, major parts of Silicon Valley are walking away with a handsome return for their patience. Sequoia Capital, the storied venture capital firm that was an early backer in the company, has accumulated a 21% ownership in Klarna worth roughly $3.15bn (€2.69bn). Silver Lake, another major VC firm, owns roughly 4.5% of the company.

Klarna reported second-quarter revenue of $823 million (€703.64mn) in August before going public and had an adjusted profit of $29m (€24.8mn). The delinquency rate on Klarna’s “pay-in-4” loans is 0.89% and on its longer-term loans for bigger purchases, the delinquency rate is 2.23%. Those figures are below the average 30-day delinquency rates on a credit card.

Klarna will now be the second-largest buy-now-pay-later company by market capitalisation behind Affirm. Shares of Affirm have surged more than 40% so far this year, putting the value of the company around $28bn (€23.94bn), helped by a belief among investors that buy-now-pay-later companies may take away market share from traditional banks and credit cards. Affirm fell slightly on Wednesday.

Klarna’s primary underwriters for the IPO were JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.

Some investors and analysts alike have expressed mixed feelings about Palantir Technologies (PLTR 4.00%) over the past couple of years. Yes, demand for the company’s software has been booming and translating into fantastic earnings growth. But this also has resulted in a soaring valuation as other investors piled into the stock. Palantir has traded for as much as 289 times forward earnings estimates in recent times, a level that many consider exorbitant.

But in recent weeks, Palantir stock has pulled back, dropping as much as 18% since early August. And this movement has pushed the stock price to a few dollars away from Wall Street’s average 12-month price forecast. Is it finally time to buy this high-growth player? Let’s find out.

Image source: Getty Images.

Why has Palantir soared?

So, first, let’s consider why Palantir, up a mind-blowing 1,900% over the past three years, has climbed so much in the first place. It’s important to note that, though Palantir has existed for more than 20 years, the company only launched an initial public offering five years ago. The company took its time refining its products and strategy and working to move closer to profitability before deciding on such an operation.

And though Palantir stock advanced in the months following its IPO, the stock truly started to pick up major momentum about two years ago. This coincides with the launch of the company’s Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP), software that, integrating the power of AI, helps customers bring together all of their disparate data and use it to supercharge decision-making and growth.

Palantir, in the past, was most associated with government contracts, but the launch of AIP boosted the commercial business — and now both government and commercial revenues are soaring in the double digits quarter after quarter. Uses for AIP are vast, from the military applying it to real-time decision making on the battlefield to commercial customer United Airlines using it to predict maintenance issues.

All of this has helped Palantir reach profitability and grow the commercial business from a handful of customers just four years ago to 485 today.

This may be the beginning…

Chief executive Alex Karp in recent quarters has said growth is in its early stages, and in the latest letter to shareholders wrote, “This is still only the beginning of something much larger.” Considering the AI market is set to grow from billions of dollars today to trillions of dollars in just a few years, according to analysts’ forecasts, this may be very true.

Palantir’s AIP offers customers an opportunity to quickly and easily apply AI to their operations, and this sort of service already is showing itself to be in high demand — as need for AI grows, this could continue.

As mentioned above, the one problem that Palantir has faced over the past year or so is valuation. As some investors looked at the company’s booming sales and stellar ability to balance growth with profitability, they rushed to get in on this AI player. And that pushed many Wall Street analysts to warn investors about buying the stock at current valuations.

Now, though, following recent declines, the stock has been trading for less than $160. The average Wall Street share price target is about $151. Since Palantir has neared this average estimate, some investors may view the stock as more reasonably priced than it was in the past. The stock traded for more than $181 at its high in August.

And this also has lowered valuation, with the stock now trading at 243x forward earnings estimates, down from 289x just a month ago.

PLTR PE Ratio (Forward) data by YCharts

Is Palantir a buy?

Does this mean that now, on the dip, is a good time to buy Palantir? It’s important to note that, if you’re a value investor, you’ll still find Palantir expensive at today’s valuation. But it’s also important to say that it’s hard to apply such valuation measures to high growth tech stocks — since these measures reflect earnings estimates in the near term but don’t include the potential a few years down the road.

Meanwhile, demand for Palantir’s software is going strong and future prospects look bright so there’s reason to be confident about the company’s future. And Palantir’s recent drop, bringing it near Wall Street’s average 12-month price forecast, shows the stock may be approaching a level that could appeal to investors — especially those who thought the price was too high in the past.

All of this means, if you’re a growth investor looking for a potential long-term AI winner, it’s a great idea to buy Palantir now on the dip.