Weekly Stock Market Update & SPY Technical Analysis
Officials from the United States and China are holding several meetings this week, with several key topics on the agenda. Artificial intelligence, critical minerals, rare earths, agriculture, investments, and trade are all on the table.
Leading up to this meeting, one of those topics has transformed from a trade issue into a matter of national security. Let’s discuss these two a bit more in specific:
- How AI has become a trade issue: the U.S. and China are at war…just not the conventional kind. China recognizes that the U.S. relies on it for manufacturing and several critical components in the AI buildout. Meanwhile, thanks to Nvidia, the U.S. has a stronghold on advanced AI models, able to power the world’s leading AI systems.
- AI as a national security threat: the AI models that become dominant over the next decade could play a major role in cybersecurity, military systems, intelligence gathering, biotechnology, infrastructure, and the broader technology ecosystem. Both the U.S. and China increasingly view leadership in AI as important to their economic and military competitiveness.
As you can imagine, the results of this meeting are likely to impact several industries and key growth areas of the market right now. Nvidia is one piece of the puzzle…the largest company in the world has been unable to breakout into a rally, despite its massive influence. That’s because the U.S. continues to restrict Nvidia from shipping its most advanced chips to China for security reasons. If the U.S. green lights more chip sales, then it could bolster Nvidia’s global position. However, it’ll be one for the other…the U.S. may bargain with China to loosen up export controls on several critical minerals, which may impact the near term price action on companies involved in the critical mineral / rare earths space.
We’ll be covering these events in real time as they develop, and taking action to capitalize on the opportunity and cut back depending on the details.
China, the U.S. and Agriculture
We’ve already covered this idea and wrote up several analyses on John Deere ($DE) and AGCO corp ($AGCO), but let’s quickly refresh our memory.
China is a major buyer of U.S. agricultural exports, and it might be one of the main topics this week, especially ahead of the election. America’s farmers got hit hard as a result of the tariffs the Trump administration placed on global countries. China struck back by reducing agricultural imports from the U.S. by 66% in 2025. But this isn’t a new move by China, the country had already been reducing soybean purchases since 2016. Since then, China’s share of soybeans sourced from the U.S. fell from roughly 41% in 2016 to about 15% in 2025 (Reuter’s).
These are not all the topics that will be discussed, and we should always account for any unexpected twists, especially with two of the world’s most powerful nations speaking. The results of this meeting can shift the trading and investing field over the coming years, our job is to uncover the implications and take the action necessary to capitalize on the opportunity and cut back on the risk.
🚨 Apart from China, U.S.-Iran tensions are still actively developing. We will update these in real time throughout the week. The biggest focus here is the price of oil…remember that China buys Iran oil, which matters this week in particular because it can be another bargaining point.