Today’s highlights: Global markets continue to recover

• US posts best day of summer: As political tensions between the US and North Korea wane, more confidence was seen on Wall Street. All three major indices showed gains, with the Nasdaq leading the way, gaining more than 1.3%.

• Asia seen higher: Markets in the East followed Wall Street’s lead, showing impressive gains this morning. The China50 index climbed more than 0.85% and the Nikkei leaped more than 1.3%.

• Bitcoin continues bull run: After crossing the $4,000, the world’s largest cryptocurrency continued to show gains, beating an overall negative trend seen in the crypto market. Bitcoin’s overall market cap is now higher than $70 billion, which marks a $15 billion gain in just one week.

• USD could be volatile today: Retail Sales data will be released in the US at 12:30 GMT, potentially impacting the greenback.

• Trump loses support of key CEOs: Unhappy with the president's reaction to the events in Charlottesville Virginia, three CEOs (Intel, Under Armour and Merck’s) resigned from Trump’s American Manufacturing Council.

• Europe opens higher: The FTSE was up 25 points, the DAX opened 61 point higher and the CAC was up 26 points.

Investment firms go big on Alibaba

• With the Chinese retails giant’s earnings report coming this Thursday, recent releases of SEC 13-F filings reveal that several major financial institutions have bought Alibaba shares. Among the investors are names such as David Tepper, Dan Loeb and Stanley Druckenmiller. Alibaba’s share price is already up more than 70% this year.