Martin Gamble

Once known as Facebook on the stock market Meta's change of name encompasses its evolution from a social media company into an advertising and artificial intelligence infrastructure giant.

UK 10-year bond yields have reached their highest levels since 2007, while longer-term yields rose to their highest since 1998. When government bonds offer investors more than 5% the stock market has a potential problem.

Stock markets often grab all the headlines, but savvy investors know the bond market should not be ignored as it can provide early warnings of investor anxiety.

US markets touched new highs this week before retracing slightly as oil prices and bond yields remained elevated.

The US stock market now accounts for almost three quarters of global indices, representing an unprecedented level of dominance.

One of the advantages of investing in shares is that they can pay dividends , which can add up and potentially pay for your original investment.

US markets retreated this week driven by a sharp sell-off in technology stocks reflecting concerns about debt-funded data centre spending and slowing revenue growth at AI companies.

The S&P 500 index is trading within a few percentage points of all-time highs, but most of the gains have been driven by just a handful of technology, semiconductor and data centre infrastructure stocks riding the AI boom.

The AI theme continues to grab the headlines driven by a handful of big US technology companies and semiconductor stocks, which are increasingly influencing the performance of benchmark indices like the S&P 500.

Worries about the sustainability of AI spending saw the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite endure a very difficult week.