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LONDON — Stock markets on both sides of the Atlantic climbed on Wednesday after a mixed Asian showing, with hopeful traders tracking talks on a key US stimulus package. 

Uncertainty about the global economic outlook caused by the coronavirus pandemic, meanwhile, caused investors to hedge their bets, helping gold to fresh highs day after the haven asset broke through $2,000 per ounce for the first time.

"Stocks are back in rally mode," said Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at the IG trading group.

"That both equities and the supreme risk-off asset [gold] are moving higher just shows how conflicted investors are — they can't avoid being tempted by equities, but they can also read the unending stories of bankruptcies," he added.

Among upbeat news in Europe were strong rebounds for the UK services sector and sales of new cars after both plummeted during the country's lockdown.

The IHS Markit/CIPS Services purchasing managers' index (PMI) for Britain rose to 56.5 in July from 47.1 in June.

A reading above 50 indicates an expansion, and July's rebound indicated "the very early stages of recovery... from an exceptionally low base", said Tim Moore, economics director at IHS Markit.

 'Bulls engaged' 

Most of the markets' focus was on the United States, where Republicans and Democrats are negotiating over a fresh economic rescue package, with some reports suggesting decent progress.

"The political wrangling has been going on for over one week, but dealers are still a little optimistic that an agreement will be reached," said David Madden at CMC Markets. 

"It was reported that talks have been productive, so that has been keeping the bulls engaged."

But ongoing China-US tensions prevented traders from getting too invested in equities.

"Rising trade tensions between the US and China could open up an unwelcome can of worms," said Stephen Innes at AxiCorp. 

"The market's primary thesis on what ultimately matters for growth assets is whether a US-China geopolitical escalation morphs into an economic dustup."

LONDON — BP plunged into a quarterly net loss of almost $16.85 billion as the coronavirus pandemic ravaged oil demand and prices, triggering huge asset writedowns, the British energy company said on Tuesday.

The company responded by cutting its dividend for the first time since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in 2010 that damaged BP's finances and reputation.

"The ongoing severe impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to create a volatile and challenging trading environment”, BP said in Tuesday's earnings statement.

"Looking ahead, the outlook for commodity prices and product demand remains challenging and uncertain," it added.

The quarterly loss after tax of nearly $16.85 billion compared with net profit of $1.82 billion in the second quarter of 2019, BP said.

"In particular, our reset of long-term [oil] price assumptions and the related impairment and exploration write-off charges had a major impact" this time around, said chief executive Bernard Looney. 

Looking to save cash, the group announced a quarterly dividend of 5.25 US cents per share, down from 10.5 cents in the first quarter.

Nevertheless, BP's share price surged 7.5 per cent in London midday deals.

"For quite some time now there has been ongoing speculation about the sustainability of BP's dividend, against a backdrop of rising debt levels and concern around the company's ability to continue to pay it in a world of lower oil prices, so this... decision to reduce the pay-out is welcome," said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK.

BP rival Royal Dutch Shell last week posted a net loss of $18.1 billion for the second quarter.

Greener future 

Alongside its results, BP set out details on how it expects to achieve "net zero" carbon emissions for the company by 2050.

Switching from an international oil company to an "integrated energy company", BP said that over the next decade its oil and gas production is expected to fall by at least one million barrels of oil equivalent a day, or 40 per cent when compared with 2019 levels. 

"This coming decade is critical for the world in the fight against climate change, and to drive the necessary change in global energy systems will require action from everyone," Looney said. 

The Irish national, who became CEO of BP in February, had previously said he wanted "net zero" carbon emissions for the company by the middle of the century.

Looney took over the helm this year shortly before the tenth anniversary of the explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico that triggered the worst oil spill in US history.

The disaster killed 11 employees and cost the British firm tens of billions of dollars in damages and compensation, including $1.1 billion for the latest quarter.

Greenpeace's senior climate campaigner Mel Evans on Tuesday described BP's target to slash oil output by 2030 as "a necessary and encouraging start".

'Massive writedowns' 

In the immediate future, BP will focus on rebuilding its finances and Looney has already decided to axe around 10,000 jobs, or 15 per cent of its global workforce owing to the coronavirus fallout on energy demand and prices.

After companies worldwide closed their doors and airlines grounded planes at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak towards the end of the first quarter, oil prices dropped off a cliff, even briefly turning negative.

However, prices have rebounded sharply in recent months to around $40 a barrel as governments ease lockdowns and businesses slowly reopen.

"The collapse in oil prices has hit BP's profits hard," Hargreaves Lansdown equity analyst Nicholas Hyett said Tuesday. 

"The oil major now expects oil prices to hover between $50 and $60 a barrel for the next 30 years, and that's meant massive writedowns in the value of the group's oilfields."

BP recently announced the sale of its petrochemical business to privately-owned rival Ineos for $5.0 billion.

NEW YORK/ LONDON — Gold prices hit $2,000 an ounce for the first time on Tuesday, the latest surge in a commodity seen as a refuge amid economic uncertainty.

The precious metal hit the symbolically important benchmark near 16:15 GMT before retreating somewhat. 

Gold prices have risen more than 30 per cent this year as the coronavirus outbreak has weakened the economy and clouded the outlook.

Earlier, Asian stocks rallied following another record close on Wall Street, with investors cheered by forecast-beating US data and hopes for fresh stimulus for the world's top economy, while European equities traded narrowly mixed.

The dollar was largely higher and oil prices slid 2 per cent.

Tech fuelled a surge in New York, sending the Nasdaq to a new all-time high on Monday, as traders looked for firms likely to benefit from people being forced to stay or work from home.

There was also a cheer for figures showing the US manufacturing sector expanded last month at its fastest pace since March last year, which followed strong factory readings from China and Europe.

Still, AxiCorp's Stephen Innes said: "The composition of China's economic recovery offers a roadmap to the rest of the world that is not especially bullish for a consumer-driven rebound.”

"It's easier to normalise the supply-side of the economy than the demand side in a post-pandemic-shock environment."

Attention is now on Washington, where Democrats and Republicans are battling to hammer out a new package to save the US economy from the ravages of the pandemic.

With extra unemployment benefits and a moratorium on evictions now dried up, there are worries millions of Americans will suffer if nothing is passed soon, which would batter the already stuttering economy.

Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said a meeting with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of Staff Mark Meadows had been "productive".

Expectations for a deal

In the Senate, Chuck Schumer said both sides were "moving closer" but added there were a "lot of issues that are still outstanding".

Reports said Donald Trump, facing an election in November and trailing in polls, was considering using an executive order to re-impose the ban on evictions and push through a payroll tax cut.

Leaders of top companies including Walmart, Facebook, Microsoft, Google-parent Alphabet and Starbucks urged lawmakers to push a deal through, warning of a "catastrophic" impact on the economy and employment if a new round of federal aid is withheld.

While Washington was locked in dispute, there was still an expectation they would reach a consensus.

"There's a big desire from both parties to get some kind of stimulus passed. I think the market is expecting that," said Bob Phillips, at Spectrum Management Group.

 Rodrigo Catril of National Australia Bank added: "For now it seems that the market is travelling with the expectation that a deal will eventually be struck, so it is a matter of when not if."

LONDON — EasyJet flew into an expected loss during its third quarter as the coronavirus pandemic kept the bulk of planes grounded, the British no-frills airline said on Tuesday.

The group reported a pre-tax loss of £324.5 million ($419 million, 355 million euros) in the three months to June, its third-quarter.

This compared with profit of £174 million a year earlier.

But EasyJet, which returned to the skies on June 15 with a very limited schedule, said it had been encouraged by the level of recent customer demand.

"Our bookings for the remainder of the summer are performing better than expected and as a result we have decided to expand our schedule over the fourth quarter to fly about 40 per cent of capacity," said Chief Executive Johan Lundgren. 

The carrier had previously forecast 30 per cent capacity.

EasyJet shares soared 8 per cent in early London trading on Tuesday following the trading update.

However at just short of 550 pence, its stock price remained hugely down on its pre-pandemic level of around 1,500 pence.

EasyJet, whose entire fleet was grounded on March 30 owing to the pandemic, carried just 117,000 passengers in the final two weeks of June. 

That compared with more than 26 million passengers flown between April and June 2019.

"We have now completed more than one month of restart operations and are seeing encouraging performance across the network with a continued focus to undertake only profitable flying," the airline said Tuesday. 

"In July, EasyJet flew just over two million passengers."

In May, the group announced plans to axe up to 4,500 jobs, or almost one third of its staff, owing to the dramatic slump in demand that has caused airlines worldwide to take similar measures.

NEW YORK — General Motors reported a smaller-than-expected loss on Wednesday as strong pricing for some newer auto models partially mitigated the hit from much lower sales amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The big US automaker lost $758 million in the second quarter, compared with a $2.4 billion profit in the year-ago period. 

The company described the results as "solid" amid the pandemic, and said steps it had taken to cut costs meant the automaker was well-positioned to weather the storm.

GM said some of the austerity measures, which included worker furloughs, would become permanent.

"We have a track record of making swift and strategic decisions to ensure our long-term success for the benefit of all our stakeholders," GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra said in a statement.

"We will continue to drive the necessary change throughout the company to enable growth as we prepare to deliver a world with zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion."

Strong truck and SUV sales continued to support US results, GM said, but US sales were down 34 per cent due to the COVID-19-imposed production shutdowns.

Sales in China were down just 5.3 per cent while global sales fell 24 per cent, the company said.

Revenues were below expectations at $16.8 billion but the results translated into a loss of just 50 cents per share, far better than the expected hit of $1.77 a share. 

Shares of the auto giant rose nearly four per cent in pre-market trading.

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook on Monday said it is asking European Union (EU) courts to review "exceptionally broad" requests by antitrust regulators there that would scoop up employees' personal information.

The US-based internet colossus maintained it has been cooperating with a European Commission antitrust investigation and will continue to do so, but that the wording of commission requests casts a net so wide it will haul in Facebook employees' private messages and more.

The leading social network expects to give the commission hundreds of thousands of documents, according to Facebook associate general counsel for competition Tim Lamb.

"The exceptionally broad nature of the commission's requests means we would be required to turn over predominantly irrelevant documents that have nothing to do with the commission's investigations," Lamb said in response to an AFP inquiry.

Those documents include "highly sensitive personal information such as employees' medical information; personal financial documents, and private information about family members of employees".

Facebook thinks such requests should be reviewed by EU courts, according to Lamb, and is asking the court to weigh in on broad search terms such as "applause" or "for free" that could easily be found in personal email messages or other exchanges way beyond the scope of antitrust matters.

Regulatory probes can involve requests for messages or documents bearing certain words or phrases, with those seeking information inclined to craft wide nets and those being queried wanting them narrowly targeted.

A highly anticipated US antitrust hearing, including top executives of four Big Tech firms, was originally set for Monday but has been postponed.

A notice filed by the House Judiciary Committee set no new date for the hearing titled "Examining the Dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google". The antitrust hearing was called amid rising concerns over Big Tech dominance, which has become even more pronounced during the coronavirus pandemic and coincides with investigations at the federal and state levels into the online giants. 

Chief executives Tim Cook of Apple, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Sundar Pichai of Google and its parent firm Alphabet had agreed to participate in the session.

RAFAH, Palestinian Territories — With a practiced hand, a courier balances a tray of steaming cups and with the other grips his bicycle handlebars as he weaves between cars in the crowded Gaza Strip.

Shaaban Hamuda's modest coffee on wheels business is giving the coastal Palestinian territory its first taste of a delivery service inspired by the likes of Uber Eats or Deliveroo.

There are no vividly-coloured bulky backpacks as is customary in Europe and north America, just a tray and a few cups of hot Arabic coffee, covered with foil to avoid splashing and cooling.

Hamuda, 31, a business management graduate, launched his two-wheeled hot drink service in May, from his small stand near Rafah market, in the southern Gaza Strip.

A stove, a few saucepans and dozens of cardboard cups: Everything to prepare cafe au lait, Arabic coffee and mint tea.

Customers only need to contact him on WhatsApp for one of his employees to prepare the order.

Then, a delivery man gets on his cycle and rushes the steaming drink to the customer.

"People like what is new. I have received encouragement from many people," said Hamuda, who charges only for the beverage. Delivery is free.

"We use cycles to attract the attention of the public and it has proven to be effective," he told AFP.

It was through watching YouTube that the father-of-two came across the trend of home-delivery meals by bicycle, a service that has grown popular worldwide.

The young entrepreneur reports satisfactory revenues, but said sales have fallen since the outbreak of COVID-19.

The Gaza Strip, with an estimated population of two million, has been relatively spared by the pandemic, with just over 75 cases, one of whom has died.

But as elsewhere, the crisis has depressed economic activity in Gaza, where poverty and unemployment rates are both above 50 per cent.

The coastal enclave has been under an Israeli-enforced blockade since 2007, the year the Islamist movement Hamas took power.

The smell of coffee 

Ali Abu Jayab, one of the four deliverymen, could not afford university studies because he comes from a poor family.

"There is no hope for young people in the Gaza Strip," said the 25-year-old, who is delighted to have found work with Hamuda.

"Cycling is all about freedom of movement, it's sport, it's fun and free. It's a good idea and people love it," he said.

Sameh Juda, who owns a perfume shop, was seduced by the smell of Hamuda's coffee.

"I started by ordering a small weekly coffee and now it's one a day," he said with a grin.

"Shaaban's idea is good and innovative, and in addition it is very profitable since the bikes do not require fuel," he said, adding that he appreciates the speed of delivery and ordering via the messaging app.

Despite crippling poverty in Gaza, "young people have innovative ideas that can enable them to find sources of income," said Juda.

LONDON — Gold soared to a record high on Monday as investors rushed into the safe-haven commodity on concerns about heightened China-US tensions, spiking virus infections and a lack of progress on a new stimulus bill in Washington.

"Always a sign of trouble, gold continued its red hot streak on Monday, the safe haven commodity looking mighty attractive after another troubling weekend of COVID-19 and US-China headlines," said Spreadex analyst Connor Campbell.

Dollar weakness helped send gold flying, after vast monetary easing measures put in place by the US Federal Reserve (Fed) undermined confidence in the greenback.

The gold price hit an all-time high of $1,944.71 per ounce, well above its previous record of $1,921.18 in 2011. It later pulled back somewhat.

Relations between the world's two superpowers took another negative turn when a US mission in Chengdu was ordered to shut in retaliation for the forced shutdown of the Chinese consulate in Houston, Texas.

 'Worried what comes next' 

"Technically, the superpowers are all-square in this specific tete-a-tete — but investors are worried about what comes next," said Campbell.

After months of strong gains across equity markets — fuelled by trillions of dollars in government and central bank support — traders had already begun to step back, weighing the long-term economic impact of the coronavirus.

Eyes are on the Fed's policy meeting this week, with some predicting further measures to boost the economy — possibly negative interest rates — that could put more pressure on the dollar and send gold above $2,000.

There are also concerns that a worse-than-forecast reading on second-quarter US gross domestic product could spark another dollar sell-off.

The euro hit its highest dollar value since September 2018.

As gold rose, stock markets — a riskier investment — wobbled with investors fretting over the impact of the virus on the economy.

.In Europe, only Frankfurt held on in a sliver of positive territory after a key survey showed that German business confidence rose for the third month in a row in July. London and Paris were both lower.

On Wall Street, the Dow was also a touch weaker at the opening bell.