*By Michael Teich*
Investors may be concerned that current trade tensions will escalate into a full-blown trade war, but such fears could be overblown, said JPMorgan global market strategist Alex Dryden.
“It’s not as bad as it seems,” he said in an interview with Cheddar Wednesday. “Cooler heads will prevail.”
The Dow Industrials marked a 7-day losing streak Wednesday, the longest losing stretch the index has seen since March 2017. While the threat of a potential trade war has been lingering for weeks on Wall Street, it was most recently ignited when President Donald Trump said he was considering taxing an additional $200 billion worth of Chinese goods.
Dryden said the U.S.’s end game is to open up the Chinese economy, but if the U.S. does ultimately find itself in a trade war, “the consumer is the end loser,” said Dryden.
“It drives up inflation and drives up prices.”
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/stocks-stabilize-as-u-s-china-tensions-persist).
Oracle soars as it cashes in on the AI boom, Plus: Starbucks shares continue to fall under its new CEO, and does anybody actually want a new iPhone Air?
Swedish buy now, pay later company Klarna is making its highly anticipated public debut on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, the latest in a run of high-profile initial public offerings this year. The offering priced at $40 Tuesday, above the forecasted range of $35 to $37 a share, valuing the company at more than $15 billion. The valuation easily makes Klarna one of the biggest IPOs so far in 2025, which has been one of the busier years for companies going public. Other popular IPOs so far this year include the design software company Figma and Circle Internet Group, which issues the USDC stablecoin..
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison wrested the title of the world’s richest man from longtime holder Elon Musk early Wednesday as stock in his software giant rocketed more than a third in a stunning few minutes of trading. That is according to wealth tracker Bloomberg. A college dropout, the 81-year-old Ellison is now worth $393 billion, Bloomberg says, several billion more than Musk, who had been the world’s richest for four years. The switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle. Forbes still has Musk as the richest, however, valuing his private businesses much higher.
