wall street

By&nbspAP with Doloresz Katanich

Published on
09/10/2025 – 16:44 GMT+2

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Traders on Wall Street showed caution on Thursday morning although US stocks continue to hover near their record highs.

The S&P 500 rose 0.1% in the first few minutes of trading on Thursday, before slipping 0.35%. The index is coming off its eighth gain in the last nine days.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.41%, and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.43%, following a tech rally that kept US markets in a good mood over recent weeks. On Wednesday, AI chip giant Nvidia and the tech-heavy Nasdaq index both hit new records.

However, the rally has been increasingly accompanied by a growing chorus of concerns that AI-related investments are overpriced. On Wednesday, the Bank of England and the IMF both issued warnings about growing risks of an AI-led market bubble bursting. The announcements add to the current uncertainty due to the shutdown in the US, among others.

“Concerns around excessive valuations, elevated levels of government borrowing, uncertain economic growth, and political turbulence are omnipresent,” said Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell.

“There are a multitude of factors that could trigger a market pullback, but for now, it is another day where there are more bulls than bears.”

In other corporate news, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest contract chipmaker, on Thursday reported its third-quarter revenue climbed 30% year-on-year, beating market forecasts.

“There is no real sign of a slowdown in AI-driven demand in the latest numbers from TSMC,” Mould said. “The chip manufacturing giant may have seen a slight easing in demand month-on-month, but year-on-year the levels of growth are still impressive for a company of its size.”

Shutdown weighs on the market sentiment

Trading has been relatively muted recently following the US government’s latest shutdown. The closure is delaying the release of several major economic reports that usually move the market. Stocks have been drifting without them or other signals to change expectations for cuts to interest rates by the Federal Reserve, one of the major reasons the stock market has been on a tear since April.

Oil prices fell after Israel and Hamas agreed Wednesday to pause fighting in Gaza so that the remaining hostages there can be freed in the coming days in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

The acceptance of elements of a plan put forward by the Trump administration represents the biggest breakthrough in months in the devastating two-year war.

US benchmark crude dipped 21 cents to $62.34 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, edged down 18 cents to $66.07 per barrel.

Gold shed some of its stellar gains but was still at $4,054.50 per ounce as of Thursday morning in the US.

Corporate news fuelling the trade

PepsiCo shares inched up over 1% on Thursday after the snack and beverage giant reported better-than-expected revenue in the third quarter despite weaker demand for its snacks and drinks in North America.

PepsiCo’s net income fell 11% to $2.6 billion (€2.24bn), but adjusted for one-time items, the company earned $2.29 per share, beating analysts’ forecasts by 3 cents.

Delta Air Lines easily topped Wall Street expectations for third-quarter profit. Delta expects recent momentum to carry through the end of the year and forecasts full-year profit of $6 per share, in the upper half of its previous guidance range. Delta shares rose 5.8% in premarket, lifting other major airlines’ shares along with it. United rose 3.9% and American jumped 4.9%.

Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, the maker of weight-loss drug Wegovy, announced that it was acquiring San Francisco’s Akero Therapeutics for $4.7bn (€4.05bn) in cash.

Meanwhile, Ferrari saw its shares lose more than 13.8% after the Italian luxury sports carmaker offered a cautious earnings forecast on Thursday.

European sentiment remains mixed

Elsewhere, European markets opened in a mixed mood as traders weighed the details of the Israel–Hamas peace deal and mounting concerns over an AI bubble, with corporate updates, the looming US shutdown, and France’s political turmoil humming in the background.

Germany’s DAX added 0.28% while France’s CAC 40 was mostly flat. Britain’s FTSE 100 fell 0.29%.

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.