News

The STOXX 50 Index in the Eurozone provisionally closed up by 0.45%, at 6,285.79 points. The FTSEurofirst 300 Index provisionally closed up by 0.35%, at 2,552.28 points.

Golden Ten Data reported on June 17 that Oxford Economics expects Canada's core inflation rate to remain below 2% for the rest of 2026. Economist Michael Davenport stated that this forecast reflects the existence of excess idle capacity in the country's economy, a slowdown in population growth, as well as uncertainty for businesses and households related to U.S. trade policy, Middle East conflicts, and AI deployment. If the Bank of Canada is to raise interest rates this year, it would need to see “clear signs of inflation broadening” in the CPI basket, as well as a rise in long-term inflation expectations. The institution's preliminary estimate is that the Bank of Canada will raise its policy rate by 0.5 percentage points in the first half of 2027, but Davenport noted this depends on the success of trade negotiations between the U.S. and Canada.

BlockBeats News, June 17th, Global photonics technology company Coherent (COHR) announced that it has signed a letter of intent with the U.S. Department of Commerce to receive up to $50 million in direct funding under the CHIPS Act to expand its 6-inch Indium Phosphide (InP) semiconductor manufacturing facility in Sherman, Texas, USA. Coherent stated that this investment will support the growing demand for optical networking technology in AI data centers and further strengthen its long-standing and recently expanded partnership with NVIDIA. Upon project completion, the Sherman facility is expected to create over 1,000 jobs, including more than 550 advanced manufacturing, engineering, and technical positions. The expansion will double the manufacturing production space and quadruple wafer capacity. This capacity expansion will enhance the U.S. domestic photonics chip supply chain capabilities and support the high-speed data transmission needs of AI computing infrastructure, alleviating the communication bottlenecks brought by large-scale AI computation. It will also collaborate with NVIDIA to drive the upgrade of optical networking and interconnect technologies for AI-centric "Data Center Factories." Previously, NVIDIA announced a $2 billion investment in Coherent.