Stocks post two-day gains as U.S. consumers hold up

The Wall Street adage to never bet against the U.S. consumer still holds true — to some degree. February’s retail sales, while lower than expected, still registered an increase. For the skeptics, that is like desperately squinting for a silver lining. It might very well be. But the dark clouds, in the form of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, are more ominous than usual.

Tariffs, after all, are a tax on imported goods that will likely be passed on to the consumer. That has weighed on consumer sentiment, as measured by surveys like those from the University of Michigan. Even U.S. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett acknowledged that Trump’s tariffs will cause some uncertainty.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has already lowered its growth outlook for the U.S. because of that. While the Trump administration is confident that stocks will recover their footing, strategists may also start revising downward their market forecast if the outlook does not clear up.

Second winning session for U.S. markets
U.S. markets rose Monday. The S&P 500 climbed 0.64%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was higher 0.85% and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.31%. That was the second consecutive session of gains for all three indexes. Europe’s regional Stoxx 600 index added 0.79%. Shares of QinetiQ shed nearly 21%, tumbling to the bottom of the Stoxx 600, after the British defense firm downwardly revised its revenue outlook for the year.

OECD revises growth forecast downward
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development forecast global gross domestic product growth to hit 3.1% this year, down from 3.3% in its December projections. It also revised down its estimate for U.S. GDP expansion to 2.2% in 2025 from 2.4%. “Higher trade barriers in several G20 economies and increased geopolitical and policy uncertainty” are weighing on sentiment, the OECD said Monday.

U.S. consumers spend more
U.S. retail sales rose 0.2% in February, missing the Dow Jones estimate for a 0.6% rise, according to the advanced reading on Monday from the Commerce Department. That said, the figure is better than the decline of 1.2% in January — which was steeply revised downward from the original estimate of a 0.9% fall.

Certainty about tariff uncertainty
U.S. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett acknowledged that there will be more uncertainty regarding tariffs before things settle down. “Between now and April 2, there’ll be some uncertainty,” Hassett told CNBC, referring to the date when Trump said he will announce “reciprocal” tariff plans. “But as April comes along, markets will see that the reciprocal trade policy makes a great deal of sense,” Hassett added.

Iran responsible for Houthi attacks: Trump
Oil prices rose on Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social that the U.S. would consider any attack by the Yemeni militant group Houthis, “as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN.” U.S. crude oil futures rose 40 cents, or 0.6%, to close at $67.58 per barrel. Global benchmark Brent gained 49 cents, or 0.69%, at settle at $71.07 per barrel.

[PRO] ‘Awkward’ dot plot: Goldman
At the conclusion of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting Wednesday, Fed members will release an updated “dot plot,” a chart showing interest rate projections for the next few years. Here’s why the dot plot might be “awkward,” according to Goldman Sachs analysts.

AI that can match humans at any task will be here in five to 10 years, Google DeepMind CEO says

Speaking at a briefing in DeepMind’s London offices on Monday, Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, said he thinks artificial general intelligence — which is as smart or smarter than humans — will start to emerge in the next five or 10 years.

Hassabis’ forecast on reaching AGI is conservative compared with some of his industry peers. Dario Amodei, CEO of AI startup Anthropic, told CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January that he sees a form of AI that is “better than almost all humans at almost all tasks” emerging in the “next two or three years.”

Other tech leaders see AGI arriving even sooner. Cisco’s Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel thinks there’s a chance we could see an example of AGI emerge as soon as this year.