They have much to soy-lebrate: China promised last week to restore the soybean import licenses of three firms that play a major role in American agriculture, effective today.

The move signals a thawing in the on-again, off-again trade fisticuffs between the two nations that have captured more headlines this year than Pope Leo XIV’s baseball loyalties. But farmers who actually grow soybeans might want to hold off on popping their edamame just yet.

Soybean Counter

China stopped buying US soybeans altogether in May, two months after suspending the import licenses of US-based CHS Inc. and EGT and the Netherlands-based Louis Dreyfus, which does a big chunk of its business stateside. A key part of Beijing’s response to US tariffs, the move effectively locked American soybean farmers out of their largest export market, which purchased $13 billion worth of their product the previous year.

For an already challenged industry, the impact has been devastating. The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis wrote in September that bankruptcies among Midwest farms are ticking up, albeit from historically low levels, and “there are reasons to expect a continued increase.” Since about 2014, farms have regularly had revenues squeezed by low crop prices, which the Minneapolis Fed noted has led them to borrow money against their land. That’s reflected in Department of Agriculture data, which shows farms’ cash reserves have fallen from $227 billion in 2012 to $168 billion this year, while their debt has climbed from $410 billion to $591 billion.

Then, as US and Chinese officials hammered out the details of an economic agreement last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said China pledged to purchase 12 million metric tons of US soybeans by the end of this year and 25 million for the next three years. CHS, EGT and Louis Dreyfus, meanwhile, will have their licenses reinstated today. While not nothing, of course, the import pledge comes in under the 10-year average of 29 million metric tons per year. Whether it stimulates enough demand remains to be seen:

• The news that China would again become a US buyer pushed soybean futures up slightly on Friday. Notably, word of the agreement sent the benchmark per-bushel price at North Dakota’s Walsh Grain Terminal over $11 last week, the highest in more than a year.
• The issue is that $11 is still merely the break-even point for soybean farmers this year, according to research from the University of Illinois’ Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, meaning it’ll take much more to relieve the financial pressures they’re facing.

Ballots to Bailouts: Almost 78% of US farmers voted for President Donald Trump, making them a very important political constituency for the White House. To that end, the president has said in recent weeks that he’s considering a $10 billion bailout package for farmers affected by China’s trade maneuvers. During his first trade war with Beijing, Trump gave farmers over $22 billion in aid payments.

Why buy when you can just lease?

That’s been Apple’s philosophy in the great AI buildup. Case in point: The iPhone-maker is nearing a deal to pay roughly $1 billion per year to use Google’s Gemini AI model to power an upgrade of Siri, due to launch sometime next spring, according to a Bloomberg report last week. It’s just the latest example of Apple largely (and perhaps wisely) sitting out the great AI CapEx boom that has defined its Big Tech brethren so far this year.

Typical Gemini

The Cupertino, California-based tech giant seems to be enjoying life on the periphery of what increasingly looks like a bubble. For example, at The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live event last week, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said the company could rely on the federal government to “backstop” its trillion-dollar infrastructure expansion, a comment that triggered a steep selloff in AI-focused megacap tech companies. OpenAI quickly retracted it.

Shares of AI chipmaker Nvidia plummeted nearly 10% from Monday through Friday, and shares of Meta fell over 5%, while Apple dropped less than 1%. It might be a sign that the company’s comparatively ultra-low AI investments have made it a little less exposed to unfortunate extemporaneous statements of industry executives:

• In its fourth-quarter earnings report in October, Apple reported about $12.7 billion in capital expenditures through the entire 2025 fiscal year, up about 35% from the year earlier. Analysts expect that could increase to $14.3 billion in fiscal 2026, according to FactSet data.
• Meta last month said its capex reached $9.2 billion in the third quarter alone and projected full-year capex of around $70 billion. Google expects capital expenditures of around $90 billion this year, while analysts expect Microsoft’s fiscal 2026 capex to reach $100 billion.

Just Go With The Free Flow: In lieu of massive data center investments, Apple is experiencing strong free cash flow, which is manifesting in strong share buybacks. In its last quarter, the company repurchased $20 billion worth of stock, and $91 billion overall in fiscal 2025, roughly on par with the year before. Meta, by comparison, completed just $3 billion in its most recent quarter, down from $8 billion in the same quarter a year ago.

Bitcoin just had one of its worst weeks since spring, which feels appropriately grim, given we’re back to 5 p.m. sunsets.

The No. 1 cryptocurrency by market cap lost about $300 billion in value as of Friday afternoon after earlier that week dropping below $100,000 for the first time since June. Only a month ago, bitcoin was sitting pretty at an all-time high of more than $126,000.

Other cryptocurrencies retreated in turn, with ether falling to about $3,100 and solana plummeting to $150. Crypto-related stocks including Coinbase and Robinhood also dropped during the week.

Red October, Yellow November

Investors dubbed last month “Red October” after crypto prices crashed, erasing much of their year-to-date gains. On October 6, CoinGecko found all cryptos combined were worth nearly $4.4 trillion, a record high. The red part came days later, when investors exited $19 billion worth of leveraged positions. Since then, crypto has struggled to regain investors’ confidence, and as of Friday afternoon, the asset class was down 20% from its peak. That trimmed its year-to-date gains to about 2.5%.

The same pressures that hamper the broader economy (like the ongoing government shutdown) weigh on crypto, but what causes tremors for other sectors can mean an earthquake in crypto:

• Digital assets can’t escape their riskier reputation, so while investors have, for the most part, bought the dip for tech stocks when they’ve slid, they seem more reluctant to pick up the slack in crypto. Open interest in bitcoin futures, or the number of outstanding bitcoin futures contracts, fell $25 billion from its October high last week, according to Coinglass data. Investing firm Galaxy Digital, meanwhile, cut its expectations for bitcoin’s closing price this year from $185,000 to $120,000.
• At the same time, traders have put up resistance to letting cryptos lose their grip on major pricing footholds, like $100,000 for bitcoin and $3,000 for ether.

Feeling Frosty: While digital assets are feeling the chill, it’s too early to say it’s the start of a full-blown crypto winter. Bitwise’s CIO said that while retail investors cool on crypto, institutional investors could keep the market warm. In a sign of institutional interest, Ripple (the company behind XRP, a token that has at times beaten ether to be the second-largest crypto by market cap) said Wednesday it raised $500 million in a funding round led by Fortress Investment Group and Citadel Securities. Plus, JPMorgan analysts said Friday that the worst of the deleveraging crisis is behind crypto, and bitcoin could hit $170,000 within a year.