Donald Trump last night declared ‘America is back’ after stocks on Wall Street soared to a record high.
The flagship S&P 500 index – stuffed full of US corporate titans from Nvidia and Apple to Goldman Sachs and Boeing – passed 7,000 for the first time.
‘The S&P 500 just hit 7,000 for the first time ever. America is back,’ the US president said on social media platform Truth Social.
The milestone was reached ahead of last night’s interest rate decision by the Federal Reserve, the US central bank and eagerly-anticipated results from tech giants Microsoft, Meta and Tesla.
And it followed more than a week of turmoil on financial markets – including sharp falls in the value of the US dollar – after Trump announced plans to seize control of Greenland and threatened trade partners from Canada to Europe with punishing tariffs.
The turmoil saw investment giant St James’s Place yesterday deliver a £440m boost to UK stocks amid concerns that the artificial intelligence (AI) bubble in the US could burst, causing ‘carnage’.
Boost: US President Donald Trump celebrated a record-breaking run on the S&P500 after a week of turmoil on the financial markets
SJP, which manages £212billion in funds, said it has been reallocating more towards British stocks and bonds, equivalent to £440million across seven funds.
It came as the boss of US tech firm Cisco Systems said AI was ‘probably’ in a bubble, implying some stocks’ stratospheric valuations are too high and could plummet.
A mania for America’s huge tech firms has helped divert investor cash across the Atlantic to Wall Street in recent years.
But SJP’s rethink yesterday suggested a change of attitude even as the FTSE 100 soared to a recent record.
Hamish Gibberd, a portfolio manager at SJP, said US equities’ narrow concentration in tech left the market more vulnerable to setbacks.
He said: ‘By contrast, despite multiple expansions over 2025, the UK continues to trade at a substantial relative discount.’
He pointed to the fact that ‘earnings quality is stable, IPO [initial public offering] activity is improving, and companies are returning more capital to shareholders’.
Meanwhile, on the subject of AI, Cisco boss Chuck Robbins told the BBC: ‘There’s been a lot of discussion about: “Is this a bubble?” The answer is probably ‘Yes’, but we had a bubble in 2000 with the internet. And look at where we are today.
‘So the winners emerge, and there’s carnage along the way, but it is going to be bigger than the internet.’
It was the latest warning that the sky-high values of some US tech firms could not last.
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