The S&P 500 (^GSPC) and Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) are both hovering near record highs as escalating tariffs and a growing debate about monetary policy have done little to shake markets.

The Nasdaq Composite led the gains last week, rising more than 1.6%. Meanwhile the S&P 500 popped about 0.7% while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) was just above the flat line.

In the week ahead, 112 S&P 500 companies are set to report quarterly results. Reports from Alphabet (GOOGL, GOOG), Tesla (TSLA), and Chipotle (CMG) will be in focus.

Meanwhile, a quiet week of economic data releases will be highlighted by updates on activity in the services and manufacturing sectors as the Federal Reserve enters its blackout period ahead of its July 29-30 policy meeting.

Rate debate heats up

On Thursday, Fed governor Christopher Waller made his clearest call yet for an interest rate cut in July. During a speech in New York, Waller said the Fed should cut rates in July, adding that the federal funds rate is more than one full percentage point higher than it should be.

“With inflation near target and the upside risks to inflation limited, we should not wait until the labor market deteriorates before we cut the policy rate,” Waller said.

However, recent moves in market pricing have shown investors growing less optimistic about rate cuts. Last week, signs of stickiness in consumer inflation combined with a stronger-than-expected June retail sales report and weekly unemployment filings pushed out interest rate cut bets.

As of Friday, markets were pricing in just a 5% chance that the Federal Open Market Committee would cut rates in July, per the CME FedWatch Tool. A month ago, markets had priced in closer to a 13% chance.

“We expect the committee to arrive at a consensus to cut rates in September as the hawkish case weakens with the job market loosening further and no signs of tariffs spilling over into a broader inflationary trend,” Citi chief US economist Andrew Hollenhorst wrote in a note to clients on Friday.

Read more: How the Fed rate decision affects your bank accounts, loans, credit cards, and investments

In a recent speech, Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller said the Federal Reserve should cut interest rates at its upcoming July meeting. (Reuters/Brendan McDermid/File Photo) · REUTERS / Reuters

Earnings scorecard

Big banks kicked off the second quarter earnings reporting period with a string of better-than-expected results. Netflix (NFLX) followed those up on Thursday night with an estimate-beating report. Both the streaming giant and the large financial banks said that the US consumer continues to hold strong.

On an aggregate level, the S&P 500 is now pacing to report earnings growth of 5.6% compared to the same quarter a year ago, per FactSet data. This is above the 4.8% analysts were expecting just last week.

The return to office is in full swing, but you might notice more men around the water cooler.

According to the Department of Labor, men are returning to the office in greater numbers than women. In 2024, 29% of employed men reported working from home, down from 34% the previous year. Approximately 36% of women worked from home last year, unchanged from 2023.

What’s behind these numbers? It’s likely a result of return-to-office initiatives in male-dominated industries like tech, Cory Stahle, senior economist at Indeed, told Yahoo Finance.

Women accounted for only about a quarter of computer and mathematical jobs in 2024, according to the data. For some roles, like computer programmers and computer hardware engineers, the share is even lower — 17.8% and 14.3% — respectively.

“Many of these return-to-office efforts are coming at a time when demand for workers in male-dominated industries has weakened, giving employers the upper hand,” Stahle said.

As for the unbudging number of women working remotely over that two-year period, there could be an explanation for that finding as well, according to Stahle.

Female-dominated fields such as private education and health services, leisure and hospitality, and state and local government have been less affected by return-to-work mandates, he said. “Many of the jobs in these industries are already in-person roles.”

Obstacle for gender equity

Whether women are trying to move up or break into fields where office time is required, the trend away from remote arrangements could have far-reaching repercussions for gender equity.

Here’s why: Nearly 9 in 10 CEOs said in a 2024 survey that they “will reward employees who make an effort to come into the office with favorable assignments, raises, or promotions.”

That could also play out in the gender wage gap that has persisted across industries for decades. Last year, women earned an average of 85% of what men earned, according to Pew Research Center.

Will the pay gap get worse if in-office attendance is a prerequisite for pay bumps?

“In theory, remote work can be viewed as either a positive or negative amenity: It may offer greater scheduling flexibility, enhancing work-life balance, but it may also limit access to face-to-face mentoring and raise concerns about potential career growth penalties,” said Zoë Cullen, a lead researcher for a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) study on remote work.

We do know that roughly 8 in 10 CEOs envision a full return to the office in the next three years, and many of those making it mandatory have threatened employees with termination if they fail to follow the company’s return-to-office mandate.

The massive economic stimulus and boost to clean power from a 1.2 trillion yuan ($167 billion) mega-dam in Tibet has proven alluring enough for Chinese leaders to set aside concerns about potential damage to biodiversity and relations with India.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang launched construction of the hydropower project on the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo river on Saturday, and unveiled the China Yajiang Group, a new company that will be charged with managing the dam’s development, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

While much is still unknown about the project, its cost alone shows the epic scale engineers are envisioning, with the estimate more than four times larger than the $37 billion the Three Gorges Dam cost upon completion in 2009. That promises an economic jolt for sectors like construction, cement and steel, and a major new source of clean power that could eventually help the country reach its goal of net zero emissions by 2060.

Power Construction Corp. of China and China Energy Engineering Corp. both rose by their daily limit of 10% in Shanghai, while China Energy Engineering’s Hong Kong shares surged as much as 51%. Huaxin Cement Co. more than doubled in Hong Kong before giving up some gains, while Anhui Conch Cement Co. gained as much as 7.6% in Hong Kong. Chinese commodity futures for steel rebar and hot rolled coil also rose on the news.

The project carries risks, as well. The dam could become a source of tension between China and India, as the Yarlung Tsangpo runs through the state of Arunachal Pradesh in northeast India and feeds into one of its major rivers, that then goes into Bangladesh.

Environmentalists in China have long worried about the irreversible impact of dam construction in the Yarlung Tsangpo gorge, where the river drops 2,000 meters (6,560 feet) in elevation over a 50-kilometer (31-mile) stretch. The area is home to a national nature reserve and is one of the country’s top biodiversity hotspots.

There are also challenges involved in getting materials and workers to such a remote site, while stringing power lines to get the electricity where its needed will add costs.

Beijing has said that there won’t be any adverse impact to downstream areas and has promised to put in place measures to ensure safety and environmental protection.

The project will consist of five cascade dams and be located around the city of Nyingchi in the southeast of the autonomous region of Tibet, Xinhua said. Engineers will figure out ways to straighten some of the river’s bends and divert water through tunnels, according to the report.

State engineers have said the gorge has the potential for 70 gigawatts of electricity generation — more than triple that of Three Gorges, the world’s largest power project, and in excess of the total power capacity of Poland.

It’s also unclear how the Yajiang Group will finance what’s likely one of the world’s costliest ever infrastructure projects, but given China’s history of lending for dams and the ability of future hydropower sales to help repay loans, that seems unlikely to be a problem.

Earlier this year, the National Development and Reform Commission included construction of a dam on the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet and a power transmission project from there to the Hong Kong area in its annual report to the National People’s Congress.

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Led at the time by Gordon Brown, the U.K.’s Chancellor of the Exchequer in the period from 1999-2002 famously sold off about half of the country’s gold reserves at what turned out to be a generational bottom of roughly $275 per ounce for the yellow metal.

In a bit more than two decades since, the price of gold has risen roughly 12-fold to its current $3,350 per ounce, the U.K. thus missing out on a substantial windfall.

Is the sceptered Isle about to repeat that mistake?

Facing the need to come up with as much as £20 billion this year to narrow the government budget gap, Rachel Reeves — the country’s current Chancellor of the Exchequer — is eyeing the sale of what might be £5 billion or more in seized bitcoin (BTC), according to a weekend article in The Telegraph.

While it’s uncertain how much bitcoin the government controls, the Telegraph report noted one raid in 2018 recovered 61,000 Bitcoin from the proceeds of a Chinese Ponzi scheme. At the current price of roughly £90,000, that would be worth more than £5 billion.

Differences between the Brown gold sale and the current possible bitcoin sale abound. Most importantly is the stage of the cycle. Bitcoin might go way up, way down, or remain flat from here, but — ahead 75% year-over-year and more than 1,000% over the past five years — the price is at anything but a generational bottom the way gold was at the turn of the century.

Strategic partnership to deliver transcriptomics-powered, organoid-based preclinical testing for high-impact drug discovery

SEOUL, South Korea, July 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — CorestemChemon, a leading GLP-certified preclinical CRO based in South Korea, has entered into a strategic partnership with ATG Lifetech, a biotechnology company specializing in transcriptome analytics and organoid-based modeling. This collaboration aims to deliver next-generation, precision-driven non-clinical solutions to pharmaceutical companies and biotech ventures across the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

Through this partnership, the two companies will co-develop:

A transcriptome-based evaluation platform for predictive drug efficacy and safety profiling

Disease-relevant organoid models for liver, heart, and the blood-brain barrier (BBB)

A high-throughput transcriptomics analytics service for differentiating true vs. false positives in tumorigenicity studies

Shared access to regulatory-aligned expertise for global clients targeting FDA/EMA pathways

“ATG Lifetech’s disruptive transcriptome and organoid platforms will significantly elevate the scientific fidelity of our preclinical services,” said a CorestemChemon spokesperson. “This alliance positions us to compete as a global CRO partner offering best-in-class biological relevance and regulatory readiness.”

Organoid-based assays are increasingly recognized for their translational advantage, offering up to 5x greater predictive accuracy in toxicity and efficacy screening compared to conventional 2D cell cultures, according to industry benchmarks. When integrated with whole-transcriptome analysis, these platforms enable earlier go/no-go decisions in drug pipelines, helping clients de-risk clinical entry and reduce overall development timelines.

“Investors should note that this partnership directly supports CorestemChemon’s strategic growth plan to expand high-margin, IP-driven CRO services globally. Revenue-generating service offerings are expected to begin rolling out by late 2025, with significant global demand already projected.”

ATG Lifetech brings validated expertise from its international collaborations, including with ACROBiosystems (Switzerland), and has been selected as a core developer in several South Korean government-backed biopharma initiatives.

The two companies plan to showcase their joint research outputs at a major toxicology and preclinical science conference in Q4 2025. Global service launches will follow, focused on biotech and pharmaceutical customers in need of high-content, biologically faithful preclinical testing.