JD.com’s quarterly profit halved as the Chinese e-commerce giant continued its costly push into the highly competitive food-delivery space, challenging established players Meituan and Alibaba Group. Net profit for the second quarter slumped 51% to 6.18 billion yuan, equivalent to about $861 million, though it beat analysts’ expectations of 3.625 billion yuan. The figure was also sharply lower than the 10.89 billion yuan recorded in the first quarter. Revenue grew by a better-than-expected 22% to 356.66 billion yuan. Retail sales, which make up the bulk of the company’s revenue, rose 21%, while logistics sales increased 17%. “We saw robust growth in user traffic, quarterly active customers, and user shopping frequency on JD’s platform,” Chief Executive Sandy Xu said. That was driven by sustained momentum across both the core retail business and new businesses including food delivery, she said. JD.com, whose business is mainly focused on e-commerce, diversified into food delivery in February as part of a strategy to gain market share in the fast-growing sector.

The Swiss market recovered after a flat start on Thursday, and after staying positive till well past noon, suffered a setback but regained some strength to eventually end the day's session modestly higher. The benchmark SMI climbed to 12,026.48 around mid morning, touched a low of 11,952.94 by mid afternoon, but recovered to settle with a gain of 22.76 points or 0.19% at 12,001.61. Schindler Ps and Zurich Insurance gained 1.52% and 1.41%, respectively. Novartis and Swiss Life Holding climbed by about 1.1% and 1%, respectively. UBS Group, Amrize, Richemont and ABB closed modestly higher. Swiss Re closed down 3.45%. Partners Group and Straumann Holding ended lower by about 1.7% from previous closing levels. Julius Baer, SIG Group, Sandoz Group, Alcon, Swatch Group, Kuehne + Nagel, Givaudan and Holcim lost 0.4 to 1.4%. Data from the Federal Statistical Office showed Switzerland's producer and import prices continued to decline in July. Producer and import prices dropped 0.9% year-on-year in July, faster than the 0.7% decrease in June. The price index has been falling since May 2023. The producer price index showed a flat change, while import prices dropped by 2.8%. On a monthly basis, producer and import prices dropped 0.2 percent in July after falling 0.1 percent in the prior month. Meanwhile, prices were expected to remain flat.

Europe
Amid expectations of a rate cut from the Federal Reserve in September, and hopes the meeting between the Presidents of the U.S. and Russia will help end the war in Ukraine, the major European markets closed on a positive note on Thursday, although the U.K. market underperformed other major markets in the region. The pan European Stoxx 600 gained 0.55%. The U.K.'s FTSE 100 closed 0.13% up after spending much of the day's trading session in negative territory. Germany's DAX and France's CAC 40 gained 0.79% and 0.84%, respectively. Switzerland's SMI settled with a gain of 0.19%. Among other markets in Europe, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Norway, Russia, Spain and Sweden ended higher. Denmark, Iceland, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Turkiye closed weak. In the UK market, Admiral Group gained more than 6.5%, lifted by a whopping 67% surge in half-year pretax profit. Aviva climbed about 2.5% after reporing a 22% jump in operating profit in the first half of 2025. National Grid shares gained 1.8% after the company agreed to sell its Grain LNG business to a consortium comprising Centrica plc and Energy Capital Partners LLC. Centrica surged 3.7%. In Germany, Rheinmetall climbed more than 3%. RWE closed 2.5% down, after reporting a sharp drop in earnings. RWE reported net income of 1.45 billion euros in the first half, compared to year's 4.11 billion euros. Earnings per share were 1.98 euros, down from 5.52 euros a year ago.

United States
After recovering from an early move to the downside, stocks showed a lack of direction over the course of the trading session on Thursday. The major averages spent the day bouncing back and forth across the unchanged line before eventually closing narrowly mixed. While the S&P 500 crept up 1.96 points or less than a tenth of a percent to a new record closing high of 6,468.54, the Nasdaq edged down 2.47 points or less than a tenth of a percent to 21,710.67 and the Dow slipped 11.01 points or less than a tenth of a percent to 44,911.26. The early weakness on Wall Street came following the release of a Labor Department report showing producer prices in the U.S. increased by much more than expected in the month of July. The Labor Department said its producer price index for final demand shot up by 0.9 percent in July after coming in unchanged in June. Economists had expected producer prices to rise by 0.2 percent. The report also showed a substantial acceleration by the annual rate of producer price growth, which surged to 3.3 percent in July from an upwardly revised 2.4 percent in June. Despite the lackluster performance by the broader markets, networking stocks saw significant weakness, with the NYSE Arca Networking Index tumbling by 2.4 percent after ending the previous session at a record closing high. Considerable weakness was also visible among computer hardware stocks, as reflected by the 2.1 percent slump by the NYSE Arca Computer Hardware Index. Steel, airline and housing stocks have also shown notable moves to the downside, while pharmaceutical, retail and banking stocks some strength on the day.

Asia
After a day of consolidation on the US stock markets, trading on the stock markets in East Asia and Australia was mixed on Friday. In the US, unexpectedly sharp rises in producer prices only slightly dampened expectations of an interest rate cut in December. In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 index rose by 1.2 per cent to 43,170 points. The Japanese economy grew by 0.3 per cent in the second quarter of the year compared to the previous quarter, exceeding expectations of 0.1 per cent, which provided a boost.

Bonds
In the U.S. bond market, treasuries gave back ground in reaction to the hotter-than-expected wholesale inflation data. Subsequently, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, is up by 3.3 basis points at 4.273 percent.

Analysis
UBS lowers Jenoptik target to EUR 18.50 (19) – Neutral
UBS raises MTU target to EUR 485 (450) – Buy
JPMorgan raises Vestas target to DKK 164 (161) – Overweight