South Korea’s Kospi breached the 5,000 mark Thursday as markets in Asia rebounded after U.S. President Donald Trump walked back on his threat to impose tariffs on European countries over Greenland. Trump also said at the World Economic Forum in Davos that he would not use force to acquire the Arctic island, calming nerves over a possible U.S. military action, adding that he had “formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland,” along with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. The Kospi was last up 1.99%, while the small-cap Kosdaq index gained 1.73%. Battery maker Samsung SDI soared 15.28%, while conglomerate Doosan gained 8.61%, and heavyweight Samsung Electronics climbed 3.95%.
U.S. equities leaped after Wednesday after President Donald Trump called off new Europe tariffs, saying a deal framework has been reached over Greenland. Stocks were already rising after the president earlier said in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that he would not use force to acquire Greenland. The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 588.64 points, or 1.21%, to end at 49,007.23. The S&P 500 gained 1.16% and closed at 6,875.62, while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 1.18% to settle at 23,224.82. Even with the day’s gains, the three leading indexes are still in the red for the week. The Dow is pacing for a 0.6% decline. The S&P 500 is heading for a 0.9% drop, and the Nasdaq is off 1.2% week to date.
Gold fell more than 1% to around $4,780 per ounce on Thursday, easing from a fresh record hit in the previous session after President Donald Trump retreated from a proposed tariff threat against Europe over Greenland. He said a deal was nearing to resolve the dispute over the Arctic island and ruled out the use of force, easing concerns over potential US military action and reducing geopolitical risk. However, uncertainty lingered as European lawmakers halted approval of the EU–US trade agreement reached in July. At the same time, a sharp selloff in Japanese government bonds, driven by election-related tax-cut pledges, raised fiscal concerns and helped sustain some haven demand.
WTI crude oil futures edged up toward $61 per barrel on Thursday, extending gains for a fourth straight session, supported by easing geopolitical tensions that reduced downside risks to energy demand. President Trump said he would hold off on tariff measures against Europe after progress toward a framework agreement on the Arctic island and ruled out the use of military force. Additional support came from force majeure at a major Kazakh oilfield, with production at two large fields potentially offline for another week, while weak Venezuelan exports signalled slow output recovery. However, these supply risks were offset by oversupply concerns after the IEA reaffirmed that global oil supply is expected to significantly exceed demand this year, despite a slight upgrade to its demand growth forecast.
Japan’s exports growth in the final month of 2025 missed analysts’ estimates, rising 5.1% year on year, as shipments to the U.S. saw a double-digit decline. Reuters-polled analysts had estimated exports growth would remain unchanged from November at 6.1%. Japanese exports fell during the middle of 2025, hit by U.S. tariff worries, but saw a rebound toward the end of the year after a trade deal with the U.S. was announced that saw duties slashed to 15%. Exports to the U.S. in December, however, resumed their decline, dropping 11.1%, after an 8.8% jump in the prior month. The gain in November was the first time exports to the U.S. rose since March.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte have “formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland.” Trump said that as a result of that negotiation, he would no longer impose punitive tariffs on a slew of European countries that were set to begin Feb. 1. In an interview with CNBC’s Joe Kernen minutes after posting the statement, Trump described the Greenland framework as the “concept of a deal.” Asked for more details about the proposal, Trump said, “It’s a little bit complex, but we’ll explain it down the line.” But he suggested that the framework involves mineral rights for the U.S., as well as the Trump administration’s proposed “Golden Dome” missile defense system. “They’re going to be involved in the Golden Dome, and they’re going to be involved in mineral rights, and so are we,” Trump told Kernen. Asked to confirm that the tariffs were no longer coming next month, Trump said, “No, we took that off because it looks like we have, pretty much the concept of a deal.”
President Donald Trump said Wednesday he is nearing the end of a search to replace Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and hinted he has his candidate in mind. In a CNBC interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the president said a search that began in September and once included as many as 11 candidates is nearly over. “I’d say we’re down to three, but we’re down to two. And I probably can tell you, we’re down to maybe one, in my mind,” the president said to CNBC’s Joe Kernen. Still, Trump declined to name the one. The candidate list included past and current Fed officials, economists and Wall Street investors. The finalists had been widely believed to be Former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh, current Governor Christopher Waller, National Economic Council chief Kevin Hassett and BlackRock fixed income head Rick Rieder.
A meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to take place on Thursday with “land deals” over Ukraine on the table, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff told CNBC. ″[There’s been] lots of progress in the last six to eight weeks,” Witkoff said, noting that he and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner would be meeting Ukrainian officials Wednesday evening before meeting top Russian officials. “And then we’ll be seeing the Russians, Jared and I, sometime on Thursday evening,” Witkoff told CNBC’s Sara Eisen at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Putin would be present at the meeting, Witkoff said, noting that the Kremlin had requested the talks. Witkoff said discussions over a U.S.-led 20-point peace plan making progress. “We’re bringing everyone closer ...hopefully we’ll have something good to announce soon,” he said.
China’s technology giants are entering a new phase of the artificial intelligence race called ‘agentic commerce,’ as firms such as Alibaba and ByteDance race to turn chatbots into full-service shopping and payment tools. Alibaba last week updated its Qwen AI chatbot, allowing users to complete transactions directly within the interface, including ordering food and booking air tickets. The upgrade connects Qwen to Alibaba’s broader e-commerce ecosystem, allowing users to compare tailored product recommendations from platforms such as Taobao or its travel site Fliggy, before finally completing payments through Alipay, all without leaving the chatbot.
Walmart will trim its stake in PhonePe by about 12% in the Indian payments firm’s much-anticipated initial public offering, while Tiger Global and Microsoft plan to exit their stakes, according to updated draft papers dated Wednesday. PhonePe, which competes with Google Pay and Paytm in India, had received regulatory approval for its stock market listing after confidentially filing for an IPO in September, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing sources. It aims to list by mid-2026, a source told Reuters last September. Walmart, which holds an about 72% stake in PhonePe, is selling nearly 46 million shares in the IPO, while smaller shareholders Tiger Global and Microsoft are fully exiting their stakes, the updated draft red herring prospectus showed. The three firms will together sell around 50.7 million shares in the offering.
Apple plans to revamp Siri later this year by turning the digital assistant into the company’s first artificial intelligence chatbot, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday. The chatbot, code named Campos, will be embedded deeply into the iPhone, iPad and Mac operating systems and will replace the current Siri interface, the report said, citing people familiar with the plan. Siri’s revamp is a crucial part of Apple’s strategy to catch up to its Big Tech peers in the AI race after its initial "Apple Intelligence" rollout in 2024 met with lukewarm reception. Earlier this month, Apple struck a deal with Google to use its Gemini models to power Siri, in a major win for the Alphabet-owned firm that also has its own line of smartphones. Campos will run a higher-end version of the custom Google model, comparable to Gemini 3, that is known internally as Apple Foundation Models version 11, according to the report.
Johnson & Johnson on Wednesday forecast 2026 sales and profit ahead of Wall Street estimates, even with the expected impact of a drug pricing deal with the Trump administration and about $500 million it sees in tariffs on its medical devices business. The company said the deal it struck with President Donald Trump earlier this month to cut some prescription drug prices would cost it "hundreds of millions of dollars." J&J is one of 16 big pharmaceutical companies that have reached agreements to lower U.S. drug prices in exchange for exemptions from Trump-imposed tariffs. “We can’t disclose specific details, but it’s hundreds of millions of dollars," Chief Financial Officer Joseph Wolk said in an interview. “It’s a credit to the team here that we were able to surpass what (analyst) expectations are for 2026 by a pretty sizable amount while digesting that impact."