(Reuters) – Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller on Thursday laid out the case for the world’s continued reliance on the U.S. dollar and the currency’s dominance in international trade, a key advantage for the U.S. economy on the global stage.

“Recent commentary warning of a possible decline in the status of the U.S. dollar raises concerns about the effects of sanctions against Russia, U.S. political dysfunction, the rise of digital assets, and China’s efforts to bolster usage of the renminbi,” Waller said in remarks prepared for delivery to a conference sponsored by the Global Interdependence Center and the University of the Bahamas in Nassau.

But none of those concerns has translated to a notable decline in the dollar’s “outsized” role in the world economy, he said. Indeed, increased use of digital assets like stablecoins, which are overwhelmingly tied to the dollar, tends to increase the U.S. currency’s international profile, Waller noted.

U.S. adversaries have few alternatives to the dollar, with international investors shy about using China’s currency, for instance, for a range of reasons including lack of confidence in Chinese institutions.

And in times of international stress, investors flock to U.S. Treasuries as a way to stabilize the value of their assets.

“I do not expect to see the U.S. dollar lose its status as the world’s reserve currency anytime soon, nor even see a significant decline in its primacy in trade and finance,” Waller said. “Recent developments that some have warned could threaten that status have, if anything, strengthened it, at least so far.”

(Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Paul Simao)

By Luc Cohen and Jack Queen

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Donald Trump will become the first former U.S. president to stand trial on criminal charges after a New York judge on Thursday set a March 25 trial date and denied his request to dismiss the case, which stems from hush money paid to a porn star.

Justice Juan Merchan’s ruling during a testy hearing in Manhattan means that Trump will stand trial in at least one of the four criminal cases he faces as he pursues the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 U.S. election.

Trump, 77, had asked Merchan to toss the 34-count felony indictment, which charges him with falsifying business records to cover up the $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. Merchan took less than 10 minutes to deny Trump’s request and confirm the trial date.

Merchan said the trial could last five or six weeks, ending in late April or early May. Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat.

A guilty verdict would not prevent Trump from running for president or taking office, even if incarcerated. But Reuters/Ipsos polling has found a conviction could erode his support among voters.

Trump attended the hearing, sitting next to his lawyers at the defense table and occasionally conferring with them.

Afterward, Trump repeated his claim that the case is politically motivated.

“They want to keep me nice and busy so I can’t campaign,” Trump said.

‘SEE YOU ON MARCH 25’

Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche told the judge during the hearing that it would not be fair for him to stand trial while running for president.

“It should not happen in this country,” Blanche said.

Merchan responded, “That’s not a legal argument. I’ll see you on March 25.”

Blanche said he might try to move the trial out of Manhattan, where Trump is likely to face a liberal-leaning jury pool.

A handful of protesters held signs denouncing Trump and shouted “no dictators in the U.S.A.” outside the courthouse.

The case centers on former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Daniels – whose real name is Stephanie Clifford – to prevent her from publicly speaking ahead of the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she has said she had with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied this occurred.

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to violating federal campaign finance laws and served time in prison.

The trial is set to start before any of Trump’s three other criminal cases. The case is widely seen as less consequential than the others, as it concerns Trump’s conduct before he took office rather than actions he took during and after his presidency that concerned national security and the nation’s democratic system.

Bragg has said Trump’s actions undermined the integrity of the 2016 election, as Trump was trying to cover up information that might have cost him votes.

Trump may effectively have wrapped up the Republican nomination by the time the trial is scheduled to start. He has won the first four state nominating contests, and dozens more will have taken place before the trial date.

Opinion polls show Trump holding a wide lead over his lone remaining primary challenger, Nikki Haley, and effectively tied with Biden. But one in four Republicans and about half of independent voters have indicated they would not vote for Trump if he is convicted in any of his criminal cases, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Tuesday.

IN GEORGIA, ANOTHER HEARING

Trump’s political and legal calendars are increasingly overlapping ahead of his expected rematch with Biden, who defeated him in the 2020 election.

In a separate court hearing on Thursday, Trump’s lawyers asked a Georgia judge to disqualify the prosecutor who charged him and several allies with crimes involving trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state. The prosecutor, Fani Willis, has admitted to a romantic relationship with a lawyer on her team.

Trump also faces federal charges in Washington over his efforts to overturn his election loss and in Florida over his handling of classified documents after leaving office. Trump has pleaded not guilty in every case.

Trump, who has pushed to delay his criminal trials until after the November election, would have the power to dismiss the two federal cases if he were to return to the presidency. Trump would not have the authority to pardon himself if convicted on the state charges in New York or to derail the Georgia state prosecution.

Prosecutors in the hush money case have said Trump’s New York-based family real estate company recorded his 2017 reimbursements to Cohen as legal expenses, violating a state law against falsifying business records to conceal another crime. They have said Trump was seeking to cover up federal campaign finance law violations as well as violations of a state law that prohibits promoting a candidacy by unlawful means.

Trump lawyers have argued that he should not face state charges for alleged violations of federal election law. Bragg’s office has said the state law that penalizes falsifying business records applies to both federal and state elections.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Gabriel Araujo and Andrew Goudsward; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Will Dunham and Noeleen Walder)

(Reuters) – General Motors Chief Executive Mary Barra said on Thursday that the automaker was looking at the best path to unlock value at its self-driving unit Cruise.

Shares of GM rose about 2%.

Cruise is an “incredibly valuable asset”, Barra said at an event hosted by Wolfe Research.

The Detroit automaker will focus on relaunching the unit this year, she added while reiterating her support for the unit.

Barra’s comments come one month after GM said it would cut spending by about $1 billion at the money-losing robotaxi unit in 2024. It had said earlier in December that it would slash 24% of its workforce at Cruise.

“As we get further along, (Cruise) is going to be a huge opportunity from a personal autonomous vehicle perspective,” Barra said.

GM is also navigating regulatory scrutiny after one of automated vehicles designed by Cruise hit a pedestrian last year.

(Reporting by Nathan Gomes in Bengaluru and Joseph White in Detroit; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar and Tasim Zahid)

By Mike Scarcella

(Reuters) – Pfizer has agreed to pay $93 million to settle antitrust claims by wholesale drug distributors that accused it of conspiring with India’s Ranbaxy Laboratories to delay sales of less expensive, generic versions of the cholesterol drug Lipitor.

Attorneys for Lipitor purchasers including Rochester Drug Co-Operative Inc and Puerto Rico’s Drogueria Betances LLC disclosed the agreement in a filing on Wednesday in U.S. court in Trenton, New Jersey.

The distributors’ case will continue against Ranbaxy, the attorneys filing said.

The proposed settlement, which requires a judge’s approval, comes after more than a decade of litigation. Pfizer did not admit liability.

Pfizer in a statement called the allegations “factually and legally without merit.” It said the settlement was “fair, reasonable and the best way to resolve this litigation.”

A representative for Sun Pharma, which acquired Ranbaxy in 2014, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Pfizer introduced Lipitor in 1997, and the drug drove more than $130 billion in sales during its first 14 years on the market.

The pharma distributors claimed Pfizer fraudulently sought to extend its patent rights over Lipitor. They accused the company of paying Ranbaxy to delay introducing a generic version of Lipitor and engaging in sham litigation with Ranbaxy over the drug.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said the settlement provides “immediate economic relief” to class members and avoids the risk of continued litigation, potential appeals and no recovery. They said they will seek up to about $31 million in legal fees from the settlement fund.

The case is In re: Lipitor Antitrust Litigation, U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey, No. 3:12-cv-02389-PGS-JBD.

(Reporting by Mike Scarcella; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

By Joe Skipper and Steve Gorman

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) -A moon lander built by Houston-based aerospace company Intuitive Machines was launched from Florida early on Thursday on a mission to conduct the first U.S. lunar touchdown in more than a half century and the first by a privately owned spacecraft.

The company’s Nova-C lander, dubbed Odysseus, lifted off shortly after 1 a.m. EST (0600 GMT) atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket flown by Elon Musk’ SpaceX from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

A live NASA-SpaceX online video feed showed the two-stage, 25-story rocket roaring off the launch pad and streaking into the dark sky over Florida’s Atlantic coast, trailed by a fiery yellowish plume of exhaust.

About 48 minutes after launch, the six-legged lander was shown being released from Falcon 9’s upper stage about 139 miles above Earth and drifting away on its voyage to the moon.

“IM-1 Odysseus lunar lander separation confirmed,” a mission controller was heard saying.

Moments later, mission operations in Houston received its first radio signals from Odysseus as the lander began an automated process of powering on its systems and orienting itself in space, according to webcast commentators.

Although considered an Intuitive Machines mission, the IM-1 flight is carrying six NASA payloads of instruments designed to gather data about the lunar environment ahead of NASA’s planned return of astronauts to the moon later this decade.

Thursday’s launch came a month after the lunar lander of another private firm, Astrobotic Technology, suffered a propulsion system leak on its way to the moon shortly after being placed in orbit on Jan. 8 by a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan rocket making its debut flight.

The failure of Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, which was also flying NASA payloads to the moon, marked the third time a private company had been unable to achieve a “soft landing” on the lunar surface, following ill-fated efforts by companies from Israel and Japan.

Those mishaps illustrated the risks NASA faces in leaning more heavily on the commercial sector than it had in the past to realize its spaceflight goals.

Plans call for Odysseus to reach its destination after a weeklong flight, with a Feb. 22 landing at crater Malapert A near the moon’s south pole.

If successful, the flight would represent the first controlled descent to the lunar surface by a U.S. spacecraft since the final Apollo crewed moon mission in 1972, and the first by a private company.

The feat also would mark the first journey to the lunar surface under NASA’s Artemis moon program, as the U.S. races to return astronauts to Earth’s natural satellite before China lands its own crewed spacecraft there.

IM-1 is the latest test of NASA’s strategy of paying for the use of spacecraft built and owned by private companies to slash the cost of the Artemis missions, envisioned as precursors to human exploration of Mars.

By contrast, during the Apollo era, NASA bought rockets and other technology from the private sector, but owned and operated them itself.

NASA announced last month that it was delaying its target date for a first crewed Artemis moon landing from 2025 to late 2026, while China has said it was aiming for 2030.

Small landers such as Nova-C are expected to get there first, carrying instruments to closely survey the lunar landscape, its resources and potential hazards. Odysseus will focus on space weather interactions with the moon’s surface, radio astronomy, precision landing technologies and navigation.

Intuitive Machine’s IM-2 mission is scheduled to land at the lunar south pole in 2024, followed by an IM-3 mission later in the year with several small rovers.

Last month, Japan became the fifth country to place a lander on the moon, with its space agency JAXA achieving an unusually precise “pinpoint” touchdown of its SLIM probe last month. Last year, India became the fourth nation to land on the moon, after Russia failed in an attempt the same month.

The United States, the former Soviet Union and China are the only other countries that have carried out successful soft lunar touchdowns. China scored a world first in 2019 by achieving the first landing on the far side of the moon.

(Reporting by Joe Skipper in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles. Editing by Gerry Doyle)

By Lewis Krauskopf

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The number of S&P 500 companies discussing artificial intelligence has climbed to a new high in fourth-quarter conference calls, Goldman Sachs strategists said, in the latest sign AI is a focal point for markets and corporate America.

The proportion of S&P 500 companies mentioning “AI” rose to 36%, up from 31% in the third quarter, Goldman strategists said in a research note published late Wednesday, at which point they said 360 companies representing 80% of the index’s market cap had reported results.

Information technology stayed the sector with the most companies discussing AI, while energy had the largest increase in companies discussing the technology, according to the strategists led by David Kostin.

“Several companies discussed the strong demand for their AI product offerings and services,” Goldman said in the note. “Many companies have also sought to weave AI into existing product offerings to improve the end-user’s experience and drive further demand.”

Companies also noted that spending on capital expenditures and research and development “will likely rise in the near term as they ramp up AI investments,” Goldman said.

The Goldman report is in line with a Reuters analysis earlier in the fourth-quarter reporting season that found AI mentions picking up.

Such management enthusiasm has been reflected in stock performance as well, according to Goldman.

A Goldman stock basket of companies pursuing or enabling AI technology outperformed the equal-weight S&P 500 by 19 percentage points year-to-date as of Wednesday.

Shares of IBM rose to a more than 10-year high late last month after the company gave a better-than-expected revenue outlook backed by strong demand for its AI service.

Chipmaker Nvidia, which has been at the center of the frenzy over AI, has seen its shares soar nearly 50% this year after more than tripling in 2023, becoming the third largest U.S. company by market value, surpassing Amazon and Alphabet.

Nvidia’s quarterly results this coming Wednesday “will be closely watched as a barometer of AI momentum,” Goldman said.

(Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

By Caroline Valetkevitch

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Global stock indexes mostly rose, Treasury yields declined and the dollar weakened against the Japanese yen on Thursday after a larger-than-expected drop in U.S. retail sales in January prompted a slight repositioning of expectations for interest rate cuts.

The Commerce Department report showed retail sales dropped 0.8% last month, the biggest fall since February 2023. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast retail sales dipping 0.1%.

However, winter storms were seen as possible factors affecting the data, with economists noting that a fairly healthy labor market remains supportive for consumer spending.

A separate report showed initial jobless claims fell 8,000 to a seasonally adjusted 212,000 for the week ended Feb. 10, slightly below the 220,000 estimate.

Investors are closely watching economic data for clues on when the Federal Reserve might begin cutting interest rates.

Bets for an at least 25-basis-point rate cut in May edged up to 40.6%, while odds for June stood at 82%, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool.

A warmer reading of U.S. inflation earlier this week prompted traders to cut the chances of a prompt rate cut from the Fed, which lifted the dollar and sparked a sell-off in the fixed income market.

Traders also are once again watching dollar/yen as it topped 150 in the last few days, a critical level that puts the market on alert for possible Japanese intervention to weaken its currency.

The yen strengthened despite unexpectedly weak Japanese gross domestic product figures for the fourth quarter of 2023, which saw the country overtaken by Germany as the world’s third-largest economy.

Against the yen, the dollar was down 0.47% at 149.83. The dollar index fell 0.45% at 104.21, while the euro was up 0.49% at 1.0778.

The yield on the benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasury note fell 5 basis points to 4.212% and was on track for a second straight decline following a jump on Tuesday after the hot reading on consumer prices.

“Clearly the retail sales came in somewhat below expectations and fits with our narrative that this is going to be a slower growth environment as we traverse 2024, but one where we still expect that there will be persistent economic growth, meaning that our base case is avoiding a recession in mid-2024,” said Bill Northey, senior investment director at U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Billings, Montana.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 229.41 points, or 0.61%, to 38,653.68, the S&P 500 gained 13.69 points, or 0.27%, to 5,014.71 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 12.74 points, or 0.08%, to 15,846.41.

MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe rose 4.33 points, or 0.58%, to 749.28, while Europe’s STOXX 600 index rose 0.67%.

Earlier on Thursday, enthusiasm for all things AI also pushed Taiwan stocks to a record high.

Japan’s Nikkei closed 1.2% higher, climbing as high as 38,188.74 during the session, the most since January 1990.

U.S. crude gained 1.06% to $77.45 a barrel and Brent rose to $82.37 per barrel on the day. Spot gold added 0.75% to $2,007.29 an ounce.

(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; additional reporting by Amanda Cooper in London, Ankur Banerjee in Singapore and Chuck Mikolajczak in New York; Editing by Jacqueline Wong, Tomasz Janowski and Susan Fenton)

By Medha Singh

(Reuters) – Shares of smaller AI firms rallied on Thursday after the world’s most dominant artificial intelligence chipmaker, Nvidia, disclosed stake in them, offering clues on its growth strategy.

The rally showed Nvidia’s growing influence in the AI world as its market value grows at a scorching pace, making it the third most-valuable U.S. company.

Its largest investment of $147.3 million was in Arm Holdings, the chip designer that Nvidia failed to buy after the $80 billion deal hit the antitrust hurdle two years ago.

Nvidia had indicated interest in purchasing shares of Arm during the British company’s Nasdaq debut last year. Shares of Arm were up nearly 4%.

Nvidia disclosed its stakes as of Dec. 31 in a 13F filing late on Wednesday. The regulatory disclosure is closely watched by investors and is generally associated with moves made by fund managers rather than public companies.

Shares of biotech firm Recursion Pharmaceuticals, in which Nvidia invested nearly $76 million, gained 12.7%.

Last year, Nvidia had said it would invest in Recursion to speed up training of the Salt Lake City, Utah-based firm’s AI models for drug discovery.

The Silicon Valley megacap firm also invested nearly $3.7 million in conversational voice assistants developer SoundHound AI, sending its shares 53% higher to $3.47.

SoundHound shares were the most actively traded across U.S. exchanges minutes after the opening bell, with 70 million shares changing hands, nearly seven times its 25-day moving average volume, according to LSEG data.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said Nvidia’s backing solidifies SoundHound’s brand within the “AI revolution” and could be the beginning of a broader investment into the company.

Nvidia also bought stake in Israel-based medical device company Nano-X Imaging, which uses AI software to analyze reports. Nano-X shares rose 80% higher.

Autonomous driving technology TuSimple Holdings, which delisted from the Nasdaq last week, drew $3 million in capital from the chipmaker.

“This is a way to collaborate with one of the smartest people in the business.. and gives Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang the opportunity to collaborate on projects moving forward,” said Thomas Hayes, chairman at Great Hill Capital.

Shares of other micro-cap AI firms rose in tandem, with Guardforce AI adding 10% and BigBear.ai Holdings gaining 7.7%.

Global X Robotics and Artificial Intelligence ETF was up 1%.

(Reporting by Medha Singh in Bengaluru, Additional reporting by Bhanvi Satija and Johann Cherian; Editing by Arun Koyyur)

By Medha Singh

(Reuters) -Shares of five smaller AI firms surged on Thursday before the bell after the world’s most dominant artificial intelligence chipmaker, Nvidia, disclosed stakes in them, offering clues on its growth strategy.

Nvidia’s regulatory disclosure came close on the heels of it becoming the third most-valuable U.S. company, fueled by a rapid rise demand for its data center chips.

Its largest investment of $147.3 million was in Arm Holdings, the chip designer that Nvidia failed to buy after the $80 billion deal hit the antitrust hurdle two years ago.

Nvidia had indicated interest in purchasing shares of Arm during the British company’s Nasdaq debut last year.

Shares of Arm that has said its processors complement Nvidia’s chips for AI work in data centers were up 2.1%.

Shares of biotech firm Recursion Pharmaceuticals, in which Nvidia invested nearly $76 million, gained 18.3%.

Last year, Nvidia said it would invest in Recursion to speed up training of the Salt Lake City, Utah-based firm’s AI models for drug discovery.

The Silicon Valley megacap firm also invested nearly $3.7 million in conversational voice assistants developer SoundHound AI, sending its shares 23% higher.

It bought shares of Israel-based medical device company Nano-X Imaging, which uses AI software to analyze reports. Nano-X shares rose 80% higher.

Autonomous driving technology TuSimple Holdings, which delisted from the Nasdaq last week, also drew $3 million in capital from the chipmaker.

“This is a way to collaborate with one of the smartest people in the business.. and gives Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang the opportunity to collaborate on projects moving forward,” said Thomas Hayes, chairman at Great Hill Capital.

Nvidia revealed its new stakes as of Dec. 31 in a 13-F filing with the U.S. SEC late on Wednesday.

SoundHound shares were the most actively traded across U.S. stocks trading before the bell, with 29 million shares changing hands by 8:05 a.m. ET, nearly three times its 25-day moving average, according to LSEG data.

Shares of other small-cap chipmakers rose in tandem, with C3.ai adding 1.4% and BigBear.ai Holdings gaining 7.3%.

(Reporting by Medha Singh in Bengaluru, Additional reporting by Bhanvi Satija and Johann Cherian; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri and Arun Koyyur)

By Amanda Cooper

LONDON (Reuters) – Global stocks rose on Thursday, powered by a rally in technology shares that pushed Japan’s Nikkei to a new 34-year high, while the dollar steadied around three-month peaks as investors assessed the chances of when U.S. rates might fall.

A warmer reading of U.S. inflation earlier this week prompted traders to cut the chances of a prompt rate cut from the Federal Reserve, which lifted the dollar and sparked a sell-off in the fixed income market.

However, with other measures of economic activity pointing to resilient U.S. growth, analysts say investors are banking increasingly on a soft landing – a gradual slowing in growth and inflation that does not result in recession.

Stocks particularly have got a boost this week and on Thursday were fired up by another scorching rally in big U.S. tech shares, which tend to be more sensitive to the growth outlook, that spread to other markets.

The MSCI All-World index, which is trading around two-year highs, was up 0.27%, while in Europe, the STOXX 600 benchmark rose 0.6%, lifted by strong semiconductor stocks and auto shares after results from carmakers Renault and Stellantis.

The dollar was holding around its highest in three months, buoyed by the fact that investors are banking on far fewer rate cuts this year than they were just weeks ago.

“The market is assessing the probabilities here around the rate outlook – probably a soft landing where growth is acceptable and inflation continues to converge towards 2%, I think, remains the market’s base-case scenario, and our base case too,” Samy Chaar, chief economist at Lombard Odier, said.

“What has totally shifted is the fact that the inflation risk has collapsed, but the risk of some form of decent growth that is leading to sticky inflation has increased and therefore pricing for cuts has come down,” he said.

Optimism about the growth outlook sent Wall Street stocks higher overnight, as chipmaker Nvidia overtook Apple as the third-largest U.S. company by market value.

AI BOOM

Enthusiasm for all things AI also pushed Taiwan stocks to a record high on Thursday, with chipmaker TSMC up nearly 8%.

Japan’s Nikkei closed 1.2% higher, climbing as high as 38,188.74 during the session, the most since January 1990, inching closer towards the record high set in December 1989.

Traders are now pricing in an 82% chance of a Fed cut in June, the CME FedWatch tool showed. Markets at the end of 2023 had priced in rate cuts starting as early as March.

Investors now anticipate 97 basis points of cuts in the year, closer to the 75 bps the Fed had forecast in December.

U.S. retail sales numbers later on could offer some insight into how consumer spending held up in January.

Central bankers everywhere will be a little less keen on cutting rates if the Fed delays, said Ben Bennett, APAC investment strategist at Legal & General Investment Management.

“But it’s only one inflation print, and we all know how hard it is to forecast inflation, so the market impact is probably relatively small unless we get a second high print in a row.”

Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said on Wednesday the Fed should be wary of waiting too long before it cuts rates.

That sent Treasury yields lower, with the yield on 10-year Treasury notes down 4 basis points to 4.224%.

Separate data releases on Thursday showed the economies of Japan and the United Kingdom slipped into recession. The Japanese yen strengthened marginally but was still around its weakest since November. The dollar was down 0.3% on the day at 150.04 yen.

The 150 level has been seen in the past as a potential catalyst for intervention by Japanese monetary authorities. It was just past this level that led them to intervene to shore up the yen in late 2022.

Sterling, meanwhile, eased 0.1% to $1.2551.

Brent crude traded down 0.6% at $81.08 a barrel, while U.S. crude eased 0.68% to $76.12.

(Additional reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Singapore; Editing by Jacqueline Wong, Tomasz Janowski and Susan Fenton)