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Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at online trading platform IG, said:

Goldman Sachs (GS) CEO David Solomon said on Monday that the prospect of a recession "has increased" amid the uncertainties of a trade war and the new challenges facing CEOs who are unsure about how to plan for the future.

Solomon made his comments to analysts after releasing first-quarter results showing market trading volatility helped lift overall revenue and profits while investment banking fees dropped, the latest sign of how complicated 2025 is turning out to be for some of the biggest names on Wall Street.

The CEO warned of more challenges to come, saying in a statement on Monday that "we are entering the second quarter with a markedly different operating environment than earlier this year" — a nod to the unknowns triggered by President Trump's aggressive slate of new tariffs.

He told analysts that economic growth had been "slowing down" even before the new trade policies from the Trump administration, and the implementation of those policies "reset the prospect of forward growth pretty significantly all over the world."

Read more on Yahoo Finance

A trial which could see social media giant Meta forced to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp begins in the US later on Monday.

The tech giant, which also owns Facebook, faces an antitrust lawsuit from the US government which alleges the firm bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 to eliminate competition, creating a social media monopoly in the process.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved the acquisitions at the time but as a competition watchdog has continued to monitor the outcomes, and experts say if it wins the case and forces a sale to break up Meta, it could change the landscape of the social media sector.

Mike Proulx, vice president research director at analyst firm Forrester, said the case’s possible ramifications, and the ongoing uncertainty around the future of TikTok, could see a “new social media world order” appear.

“The ramifications of this trial, coupled with TikTok’s future in limbo, potentially puts the very core of the social media market at play. No longer would Meta be its centre of gravity.

“We haven’t seen anything like this since around 2006-2011 – social media’s earliest days.

“We’d likely see a renaissance of social media start-ups looking to grab a piece of new social media world order.”

Stock was trading around 1.7% higher in premarket on

Vicky McKeever writes:

Shares in iPhone maker Apple (AAPL) were down less than 1% in pre-market trading on Monday morning, as investors tried to make sense of the latest developments around US president Donald Trump's tariffs.

Late on Friday, the US Customs and Border Protection agency published a list of exclusions from Trump's higher 125% tariff on China and his baseline 10% global levy, which included smartphones, computers and semiconductors. The White House later published a clarification of exceptions, confirming these exemptions.

However, Trump said in a social media post on Sunday: "Nobody is getting 'off the hook' for the unfair trade balances, and non monetary tariff barriers"

"These products are subject to the existing 20% fentanyl tariffs, and they are just moving to a different tariff 'bucket'," he said.

"We are taking a look at semiconductors and the whole electronics supply chain in the upcoming national security tariff Investigations," Trump added.

Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: "The net effect is positive for tech, especially for giants like Apple (AAPL), which could’ve seen their entire pricing strategy thrown into disarray under the proposed 145% China tariffs.

"Instead, this reprieve, and news that further tariffs will be a couple of months away, gives Apple (AAPL) time to build up its US inventory to cover the current iPhone sales cycle without needing knee-jerk price hikes," he added. "Decisions on pricing can then be made alongside the launch of its latest handset in September."

AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould writes:

Gold surged to a fresh all-time high on Monday, driven by investor anxiety over rapidly shifting US trade policy, before paring back gains, before pulling back slightly.

Bullion briefly traded above $3,245 an ounce, surpassing Friday’s previous record. The rally extended a strong run for the precious metal, which rose more than 6% last week, buoyed by ongoing weakness in the dollar.

However, it has since retreated from those peaks and at the time of writing, gold futures were muted at $3,244.70 per ounce, while the spot price slipped 0.3% to $3,231.03 an ounce.

“Gold seems to be the clear beneficiary of the debates raging around the US dollar, and we’ve witnessed the gold price in absolute beast mode,” Chris Weston, head of research at Pepperstone Group, said.

Gold’s rally has been underpinned by renewed safe haven demand, as markets contend with a deteriorating outlook for global trade following Donald Trump’s intensification of tariffs on Chinese goods, despite selective exemptions for consumer electronics.

Goldman Sachs (GS) raised its 2025 gold price forecast to $3,700 per ounce on Sunday, up from $3,300 — the third upward revision by the Wall Street bank this year. The bank cited elevated geopolitical risks and increased demand for hedging against economic downturns. In a more extreme scenario, it said, gold could reach as high as $4,500 per ounce by the end of 2025.

The bank also highlighted bullion’s role as a buffer against rising recession risks in the US.

Read more on Yahoo Finance UK

US stock futures jumped Sunday evening, as Wall Street took in a weekend full of diverging messages from US president Donald Trump's administration on its tariff policy.

Futures tied to the S&P 500 (ES=F) rose 1.1%, while those on the tech-heavy Nasdaq (NQ=F) jumped 1.5%. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM=F) were up 0.6%.

Pedro Goncalves writes:

The average price of a UK property coming to market climbed to a record £377,182 in April, in the first monthly rise in almost a year.

The average asking price for properties hitting the market this month increased by 1.4%, or £5,312, according to Rightmove (RMV.L).

According to the property site, this marks the first new price peak since May 2024 and exceeds the typical April increase of 1.2%, even as the number of homes available for sale has reached a 10-year high for this time of year.

“The increased choice seems to be bringing more movers into the market, with both buyer and seller numbers up as the market remains resilient,” said Colleen Babcock, property expert at Rightmove (RMV.L).

“Confidence from new sellers is a good sign for the overall health of the market, but they do need to be careful when setting their asking price. The high level of supply in the market right now means that buyers are likely to have plenty of homes in their area to choose from, and an overpriced home will stick out for the wrong reasons.

Read more on Yahoo Finance UK

From our US team:

China on Friday struck back at President Trump's ballooning tariffs, raising its duties on imports of US goods to 125% from 84%.

The countermeasures came into effect Saturday, further intensifying a US-China trade war that has roiled US stocks as US tariffs on Chinese imports have ballooned to 145% in some cases. The trade conflict has weighed on investor sentiment, even as Trump instituted a 90-day pause on steep Liberation Day tariffs and the EU matched a US pause on retaliatory duties.

Trump and his top advisers sowed confusion this weekend, when it was revealed that the US had excluded smartphones, computers, and other consumer electronics from tariffs.

Then on Sunday, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that those electronics would soon be covered under levies that he said would be separate from those imposed on specific countries.

Trump himself added to the muddied message when he claimed in a lengthy Sunday post on social media that there was "no exception" for those products.

"We are taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations," he said.

Read more on Yahoo Finance

After the government wrested control of British Steel from its Chinese owners over the weekend, the effort has now turned to sourcing enough coal to keep the blast furnaces running at the company's Scunthorpe plant.

The moves came after Jingye, which owns the plants, said its blast furnaces were "no longer financially sustainable" with losses of around £700,000 a day.

The vote was passed in an unusual weekend session at parliament.

If the furnaces cool down a certain amount the plant could become inoperable.

Treasury minister James Murray says officials are "working as fast as they possibly can to get those raw materials into the blast furnaces".

It's a new April week, and Monday is promising a day that's light on economic releases.

This morning we've already had an update on house prices from Rightmove. Later on, there'll be a US consumer inflation expectations release.

We'll also be on tariff watch for new updates in the US international trade saga.

Let's get to it.