Trump, TikTok, Immigration Visas Are a Distraction for Markets. What Really Matters for Stocks.

President Donald Trump, accompanied by U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (L), speaks after signing an executive order in the Oval Office. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Trying to play tech policy during the Trump administration risks missing the forest for the trees.

Investors have faced two major developments since Friday. President Donald Trump’s call with China’s leader Xi Jinping advanced expectations of a TikTok sale. Thawing trade relations between the world’s biggest economies would also have a positive outcome for the key chips sector.

One shock over the weekend came packaged in immigration policy— a hefty $100,000 fee announced for skilled workers applying for H-1B visas, of whom there are many working for tech giants such as Alphabet and Amazon .

Indian tech stocks look like an early casualty of the immigration news, and moves in U.S. names could follow. But these are just rustling leaves.

Stock indexes remain at record highs. Tech companies have driven much of the gains, boosted by optimism over artificial intelligence that is increasingly borne out in earnings. A Federal Reserve that just cut interest rates, and is likely to keep going, is also helping.

Tuesday will bring a hotly anticipated quarterly report from chip maker Micron . The stock has been on a hot streak, and earnings that offer the latest window into AI demand will be meaningful for the whole sector.

Then there’s the Fed. Last week’s rate cut was complicated by a disparate dot plot —the collection of rate forecasts from central bank officials.

Five Fed speakers on Monday could provide more clarity on rate expectations, let alone a speech due Tuesday from Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

Earnings from retailer Costco on Thursday should add color to the inflation picture, but the PCE report on Friday could be the real market mover. It’s the Fed’s preferred measure of price growth and is key to the central bank’s next move.

Visa chaos and China speculation are the wrong trail markers. AI and the Fed remain the roots of the stock market’s growth.

—Jack Denton

***Join Barron’s senior managing editors Lauren Rublin and Ben Levisohn today at noon when they speak with Blake Gwinn, head of U.S. Rates Strategy at RBC Capital Markets, about the future path of interest rates, the economic outlook, the challenges facing the central bank, and the implications for investors as the labor market weakens and the Fed’s dramatis personae shift. Sign up here.

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Trump’s Unexpected Visa Changes Spur Tech Companies to Comply

The tech industry was in an upheaval after the Trump administration’s sudden changes to the H-1B visa program, including a new $100,000 fee for visa applicants starting Sunday. The White House clarified Saturday it isn’t an annual fee, doesn’t apply to renewals, and doesn’t apply to current visa holders.

• Amazon, Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft, and other companies warned their workers holding H-1B visas not to leave the U.S. and urged overseas employees to return home on Saturday, The Wall Street Journal reported. But the White House said H-1B holders can leave and re-enter the U.S. as normal and won’t be charged to re-enter.
• Those tech giants and Apple, Meta Platforms, and Nvidia together used 35,000 of the 85,000 available H-1B visas in the 2025 fiscal year. Amazon used more than 14,000. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem can waive the new fees for companies, entirely at her discretion.
• Part of the confusion over the fee may be because Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Friday that companies must decide whether employees are “valuable enough to have a $100,000-a-year payment.” The fee applies to the next lottery cycle, the White House said.
• There is also the question of whether the executive branch can make this change under the laws cited by the announcement. The president has broad power to exclude classes of visa applicants, but this prerogative has never been based on a fee before.

What’s Next: Though not naming them, Friday’s announcement seemed to call out Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, and Intel for using the visa program while doing layoffs this year. Salesforce didn’t respond to a request for comment, and Intel didn’t comment. The federal government owns 275 million shares of Intel.

— Janet H. Cho and Adam Levine

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After Fed Rate Cut, Investors Are Wondering What’s Next

After the Federal Reserve delivered the first interest-rate cut of the year and projected two more by the end of 2025, investors are wondering what’s next. Despite labor market softening, the economy and business appear to be on solid footing, perhaps enough to keep the stock market rallying.

• More data are expected this week. On Tuesday, S&P Global will release both its Manufacturing and Services Purchasing Managers’ Indexes for September. Consensus estimates are for a 52 reading for the Manufacturing PMI and a 53.9 for the Services PMI, both down from August.
• Later this week, the government releases its third and final estimate of second-quarter gross-domestic-product growth. It’s expected to rise 3.3% annually, the same as the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ previous estimate.
• This week’s most anticipated report is the BEA’s personal consumption expenditures price index for August. Economists expect a gain of 2.7% from a year ago, which is a tick up from July. Core prices excluding food and energy are expected to rise 2.9%, matching the July figure.
• Earnings expectations for this year and 2026 have been rising, MarketWatch reports, and analysts have continued to raise their expectations for the third quarter. FactSet senior earnings analyst John Butters calls this unusual. Analysts usually trim forecasts into the current quarter.

What’s Next: Third-quarter earnings for the S&P 500 are expected to hit $67.77 a share for an annual growth rate of 7.7%. While it’s the slowest quarterly rate since the first quarter 2024, FactSet says, it would be the ninth straight quarter of earnings growth.

—Dan Lam and Liz Moyer

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Trump Names Murdochs Alongside Tech Billionaires In TikTok Deal

President Trump said Sunday that Fox chairman and CEO Lachlan Murdoch and his father, Rupert, plus tech billionaires Larry Ellison and Michael Dell, are “probably” among the investors in TikTok’s U.S. version, without providing details. A person familiar with the matter said participation would be “on the Fox side.”

• The contours of a deal emerged last week, including big private-equity firms Andreessen Horowitz and Silver Lake, and Ellison’s Oracle providing cloud services. Lachlan Murdoch is executive chairman of News Corp, owner of Barron’s. Trump made the comments during a Fox interview.
• Trump again extended the deadline for TikTok’s owner, Beijing-based ByteDance, to find a buyer for the U.S. TikTok platform or face a ban by U.S. app stores. The White House said Americans would have six of the seven board seats, and its algorithm will be U.S.-controlled.
• White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration was “100% confident” the deal is done and would be signed in “the coming days.” ByteDance, China’s Commerce Ministry, and the Chinese embassy in the U.S. didn’t respond to a request for comment.
• The TikTok deal is being negotiated amid rising tensions over Beijing’s reported move to ban domestic technology companies from buying Nvidia’s artificial-intelligence chips. Oracle getting some of TikTok’s ad revenue could harness “a whole new growth engine,” Maribel Lopez, tech analyst and founder of Lopez Research, told MarketWatch.

What’s Next: The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s statement after Trump spoke with China’s President Xi Jinping on Friday didn’t mention a completed TikTok deal, saying it wanted to see “productive commercial negotiations” and a solution that “complies with China’s laws and regulations” and reflects both sides’ interests.

— Liz Moyer, Adam Levine, and Janet H. Cho

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The IPO Wave Is Building. Volatility Is a Feature Not a Bug.

A wave of initial public offerings is building as companies involved in everything from crypto to artificial intelligence—and even a trio of companies making new kinds of small nuclear reactors—make plans to brave the public markets. Renaissance Capital estimates 40 to 60 additional IPOs by the end of the year.

• In 2025 more than 150 companies have made their debuts through traditional IPOs, up from 99 at this time last year and 76 in 2023, Renaissance said, raising $28.5 billion in capital this year. First-day gains average 26%, the best since 2020, Trivariate Research said.
• Sizzling IPOs this year have included Circle Internet Group, Figma, Newsmax, AIRO Group Holdings, Bullish, and Voyager Technologies— closing up 82% to 735% on their first trading days from their IPO prices. Buy-now, pay-later company Klarna Group gained more than 30%.
• But for every big winner, there’s a list of flops. StubHub was a disappointment. Gemini Space Station, the crypto money manager led by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, is now trading below its IPO price. Firefly Aerospace nearly doubled on its first day but recently traded at its offering price of $45.
• One hurdle for retail investors is the opaque art of IPO pricing, run by investment bankers, insiders, and institutional investors. And volatility isn’t an IPO bug; it’s a feature. IPO firms usually issue a small portion of their equity—about 15% to 20%, and insiders can’t sell immediately.

What’s Next: Upcoming IPOs include software company Solera, robo-advisor Wealthfront, and crypto firm Grayscale Investments. Some anticipated 2026 debuts include so-called $1 billion unicorns such as AI analytics leader Databricks, fintechs Stripe and Revolut, and sports apparel and betting company Fanatics.

—Paul R. La Monica

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—Newsletter edited by Liz Moyer, Patrick O’Donnell, Rupert Steiner