SECURITY: US On "Verge" Of Achieving Military Objectives In Iran - Rubio

President Donald Trump's net approval rating on trade and inflation has plunged in the wake of last week's Supreme Court ruling, which invalidated the bulk of his tariff agenda, per Silver Bulletin. It is unclear if the SCOTUS ruling is related to the drop, but a trend line appears to have started in the days after the decision. Trump's handling of the economy recorded a smaller drop.

• Silver Bulletin notes several highly negative surveys released in the last few days: "Ipsos/The Washington Post/ABC: -21 net approval rating. CNN/SSRS: -27 American Research Group: -26." The outlet adds that "some of the numbers look even more bearish for Trump than that topline would imply," noting that the share of voters who strongly disapprove of Trump has risen from 31 percent to 45 percent.
• Trump approval a red light for front-line Republicans ahead of November's midterms. According to DDHQ, Democrats now have a 5-point lead on the generic congressional ballot, an advantage that is historically correlated with a strong midterm performance.
• Republicans may be disappointed that Trump declined to outline a clear plan to tackle inflation at yesterday's State of the Union Address. Analysis from Semafor shows that Trump's speech dedicated far less time to the economy than previous SOTU speeches.
• NBC News notes, “Trump said little to acknowledge the economic pain and pessimism that many Americans report they feel when it comes to wages and costs, instead declaring that prices are coming down."  

Figure 1: Trump's net approval rating on the issues

Source: Silver Bulletin

• Stocks are moderately higher Wednesday, led by Information Technology sector shares ahead Nvidia Corp and a slew of corporate earnings expected after today's close (includes APA Corp, Salesforce Inc, Paramount Skydance and Synopsys Inc).
• Optimism of positive forward guidance in the face of increased capital expenditures tied to AI has been gaining after Meta announced it's intent to use millions of Nvidia chips to for AI expansion efforts last week, and a "multiyear deal with AMD involves deploying up to 6 gigawatts of the company’s graphics processing units for artificial intelligence data centers" CNBC reported yesterday.
• Mag-7 companies are all up between 1-2.5% inb the first half.
  • Alphabet (GOOGL): Parent company of Google.
  • Amazon (AMZN): E-commerce and cloud computing leader.
  • Apple (AAPL): Technology and consumer electronics.
  • Meta Platforms (META): Social media (Facebook, Instagram).
  • Microsoft (MSFT): Software, cloud computing, and AI.
  • Nvidia (NVDA): AI chip and hardware manufacturer.
  • Tesla (TSLA): Electric vehicles and clean

• EU sources sketch out the bloc's evolving strategy on Chinese trade -- On MNI Policy MainWire now, for more details please contact sales@marketnews.com