US equity markets climbed to fresh record highs for a second consecutive session running on optimism that the U.S. and China will strike a trade deal when US President Trump meets Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday (30 October) at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea - Dow rose +337-points or +0.71% to a record closing high of 47,544.19. Apple Inc (up +2.28% to US$268.81) and Microsoft Corp (+1.51% to US$531.52) are close to joining Nvidia in the US$4 trillion market capitalisation club, needing to close at US$269.54 and US$538.13 respectively to achieve the mark. Amazon.com Inc rose +1.23% after Reuters reported that the technology giant is planning to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs beginning on Tuesday (28 October) as the company works to pare expenses and compensate for over-hiring during the peak demand of the pandemic, according to three people familiar with the matter. The figure represents a small percentage of Amazon’s 1.55M total employees, but nearly 10% of the company’s ~350K corporate employees.