Alibaba on Thursday released more than 100 open-source artificial intelligence models and boosted the capabilities of its proprietary technology as it looks to ramp up competition with rivals.

The newly-released models, known as Qwen 2.5, are designed for use in applications and sectors ranging from automobiles to gaming and science research, Alibaba said. They have more advanced capabilities in math and coding, it added.

The Hangzhou-headquartered firm is looking to increase competition with domestic rivals such as Baidu and Huawei, as well as U.S. titans like Microsoft and OpenAI.

AI models are trained on huge amounts of data. Alibaba says its models have the abiltiy to understand prompts and generate texts and images.

Open-source means that anyone — including researchers, academics and companies — around the world can use the models to create their own generative AI apps without needing to train their own systems, saving time and expense. By open sourcing the models, Alibaba hopes more users will use its AI.

The Chinese e-commerce giant first launched its Tongyi Qianwen, or Qwen, model last year. Since then, it has released improved versions and says that, to date, its open source models have been downloaded 40 million times.

The company also said that it upgraded its proprietary flagship model called Qwen-Max, which is not open-source. Instead, Alibaba sells its capabilites through its cloud computing products to businesses. Alibaba said that Qwen Max 2.5-Max surpassed rivals such as Meta‘s Llama and OpenAI’s GPT4 in several areas inclduing reasoning and language comprehension.

Alibaba also launched a new text-to-video tool based on its AI models. This allows users to input a prompt and the AI will create a video based on it. This is similar to OpenAI’s Sora.

“Alibaba Cloud is investing, with unprecedented intensity, in the research and development of AI technology and the building of its global infrastructure,” Eddie Wu, CEO of Alibaba, said in a statement.

Wu, who took over the role of CEO at Alibaba last year amid a historic reshuffle, has been trying to reinvigorate growth at the tech giant, as it faces headwinds including rising competition and a sluggish Chinese consumer.

Alibaba is one of the biggest cloud computing players in China, but internationally, it trails the likes of Amazon and Microsoft. The company is hoping that its latest AI offerings may tempt customers inside and outside of China to sign up to its cloud services, boosting a division which has been sluggish but showed early sign of an acceleration in the June quarter.

At 2:49 a.m. ET, the yield on the 10-year Treasury was up by over one basis point to 3.7018%. The 2-year Treasury yield was last less than one basis point higher to 3.6127%.

Yields and prices have an inverted relationship. One basis point equals 0.01%.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday delivered a 50 basis point interest rate reduction, bringing the federal funds rate to 4.75%-5%. The size of the cut was in line with market expectations, which had shifted from expecting a 25 basis point cut to a bigger 50 basis point one in recent days.

It’s the first rate cut from the Fed since it began hiking rates in March 2022, marking a shift in its monetary policy approach since then.

“The Committee has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent, and judges that the risks to achieving its employment and inflation goals are roughly in balance,” the Fed’s post-meeting statement said.

The central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee also indicated through its “dot plot” that it is anticipating another 50 basis points worth of cuts by the end of 2024. It also suggested another full percentage point in cuts by the end of 2025, and a half point in 2026.

Elsewhere, the Bank of England is set to announce its latest interest rate decision. It is widely expected to hold rates steady after cutting rates for the first time in over four years in August.

Back in the U.S., investors will also be looking out for August’s existing home sales data and the latest weekly initial jobless claims figures.

What you need to know today

A jumbo-sized 50-point cut 
The U.S. Federal Reserve slashed rates by half a percentage point, bringing the federal funds rate to 4.75%–5%. Federal Open Market Committee members see the rate falling to 4.25%–4.5% by the end of this year, meaning another half-point cut before 2025. Members also raised their estimation of the unemployment rate this year to 4.4% from the 4% projected in June. 

Rate cut didn’t boost markets 
U.S. markets popped on the Fed’s 50-point cut but couldn’t maintain their gains. On Wednesday, the S&P lost 0.29%, the Dow fell 0.25% and the Nasdaq dipped 0.31%. Asia-Pacific markets, however, traded higher Thursday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index climbed around 1.8% as the city lowered its interest rate by

Presidential prediction 
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is more likely to win the presidential election than former President Donald Trump, according to a CNBC survey. Out of the 27 respondents, who comprise investment strategists, economists and fund managers, 48% think Harris has a greater chance of winning, 41% think it’s Trump, while 11% are unsure. 

Treading the middle path 
Bridgewater Associates Founder Ray Dalio told CNBC the upcoming U.S. presidential election would be “the most consequential election of [his] lifetime,” and “neither [candidate] is what the country needs.” Separately, Dalio said the economy “is in relative equilibrium,” but the Fed must do a “balancing act” of keeping interest rates neither too high nor low. 

[PRO] Best-performing stocks after a cut 
The Fed’s half-point cut is likely to lower yields on Treasurys, which would prompt investors chasing returns to rotate into riskier assets like equities. But some stocks are more rate-sensitive than others. CNBC Pro screened stocks to find the top-10 names set to gain the most following a rate cut. 

The bottom line

The futures market was right.  

Just before the Fed meeting, it was pricing in a 64% chance of a 50-basis-points cut, according to the CME FedWatch tool. By contrast, the prevailing sentiment among experts was that a 25-point cut was more likely, according to a CNBC survey. 

Such predictions can be seen as a wholly disinterested affair. That is, the forecast is based on an objective consideration of the state of the economy, balanced against the risk of inflation. 

Those predictions can also express hope, which can embody a desire without having evidence to back it up.  

And when that hope is fulfilled, markets can have a moment of panic. 

After touching record highs as the Fed’s jumbo-sized cut was announced, the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day in the red. So did the Nasdaq Composite.  

It’s difficult to understand what happened there, since markets are so driven by sentiment that sometimes defy explanation or evidence. 

That might have been at the back of Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s head. And he was likely aware that a bigger-than-usual cut might connote that the Fed’s worried about the economy.  

So, Powell spent a big portion of the post-meeting press conference massaging sentiment. 

“I don’t see anything in the economy right now that suggests that the likelihood of a recession, sorry, of a downturn, is elevated,” Powell said.  

Why, then, did the Fed decide not to leave cuts at 25 basis points? 

As if anticipating worries, Powell said in his opening statement that the decision marked a “recalibration” of policy. In other words, the Fed’s jumbo cut is a sign the central bank is taking the lead in charting monetary policy, and not reacting belatedly to economic conditions. 

Investors will take some time to digest Powell’s assurances. Markets, after all, are largely irrational creatures, and will react instinctively at first instance of any big news.  

– CNBC’s Jeff Cox, Yun Li, Hakyung Kim and Samantha Subin contributed to this story. 

The pan-European Stoxx 600 index was up 0.89% by 9:30 a.m. London time, with all major bourses and virtually all sectors in the green. Mining stocks added 2.8% while utilities were a rare outlier, down 0.84%.

Retail stocks climbed 1.7%, led by gains for British retailer Next. The company jumped as much as 5.8% before paring gains slightly, after saying it was on track to make almost £1 billion ($1.32 billion) in annual profits following an uptick in first-half sales.

Shares of Commerzbank traded 1.5% lower in morning deals as further developments emerged after UniCredit obtained a 9% stake in the German lender last week. UniCredit CEO Andrea Orcel said the Italian bank was able to buy 4.5% of the state’s stake in Commerzbank because the government trusts it, Reuters reported Thursday citing local media. UniCredit shares were mostly unchanged.

U.S. stocks initially jumped after the Fed announced a jumbo 50 basis point cut to interest rates, bringing its target range to 4.75% to 5.00%. However, markets ultimately closed lower amid concerns of a potential economic downturn. U.S. futures were seen lower overnight.

Trading in Asia-Pacific Thursday was choppy following the announcement, but stocks ultimately rose during Thursday’s session.

Back in Europe, investor attention is now turning to the Bank of England, with the central bank largely expected to hold rates steady at 5%. The Fed’s jumbo rate cut is unlikely to impact the Bank of England, according to economists, as the central bank ratified its decision around lunchtime Wednesday, hours before the U.S. announcement.

“The U.K. is looking very much at its own economy. The fact that the U.S. has now moved ahead with a 50 basis points rate cut, with more cuts to come, I don’t think is really going to impact the Bank of England’s point of view,” Tiina Lee, CEO at Citi UK, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday.

Additionally, inflation in the U.K.’s closely watched services sector remains stubbornly higher, fresh data showed Wednesday, likely prompting caution from policymakers.

Also on Thursday, Norway’s central bank kept interest rates on hold at a 16-year high of 4.5% and said it plans to start cutting borrowing costs from the start of next year.

Corporate leaders can’t “bulls—” their employees about the impact of artificial intelligence on the workforce and the ways in which the technology will affect jobs more broadly, according to one tech billionaire.

Jim Kavanaugh, the CEO of World Wide Technology (WWT), told CNBC that people are “too smart” to accept that AI won’t change the way that they manage their work and that no jobs will be eliminated due to the transformative nature of the technology.

WWT is an enterprise technology solutions provider that focuses on services such as cloud computing, IT security, data analytics, artificial intelligence, and consulting services.

“If you think you’re going to try to game this, and that you’re going to tell employees nothing’s going to change, and everything’s going to be fine, that’s just BS,” Kavanaugh said in an interview last week.

Kavanaugh noted that, though there is no playbook for how business leaders should communicate disruptive macroeconomic events, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on jobs, the job of a CEO is “to be as transparent as possible and always honest with their employees about where they stand.”

With AI, “there’s going to be all kinds of changes,” Kavanaugh added. “If I could give any advice, it’s that everybody should be a student of AI and tech and not be afraid of it.”

Even though it’s a given AI will impact the workforce, “none of us have it all completely figured out,” he said. “If anybody comes in and tells you, ‘I can tell you exactly how this is going to impact jobs and how it’s going to impact everything we’re doing,’ they’re lying. Because nobody knows.”

Kavanaugh stressed that, overall, he’s an optimist when it comes to AI’s positive impacts and its ability to improve productivity.

“Sitting there and saying, ‘I’m going to try to throw cold water on this fire, I’m going to try to put it out and ignore it,’ that’s a complete mistake.”

“I believe in embracing [AI] and learning and being realistic about it. Because there will be jobs that will be disrupted, there’s no question about that. But, for the most part, I truly believe it will be an enhancer and an accelerator of what we’re all doing,” Kavanaugh told CNBC.

Kavanaugh co-founded WWT in 1990 with fellow St. Louis, Missouri-based entrepreneur David Steward as a reseller of technology equipment. Today, WWT is a tech giant in its own right, generating revenues of $20 billion annually.

Kavanaugh currently has a net worth of $7 billion, according to real-time data from business news magazine Forbes. Prior to co-founding the company, Kavanaugh represented the U.S. national soccer team in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

Is AI a job destroyer, or job creator?

Fears about AI’s disruptive effects on jobs aren’t new. Some 300 million jobs could be automated away by generative artificial intelligence, according to a research paper published by Goldman Sachs last spring.

The paper further noted that, in the U.S. and Europe, “roughly two-thirds of current jobs are exposed to some degree of AI automation,” while generative AI “could substitute up to one-fourth of current work.”

Kavanaugh’s not the only one who sees positive effects stemming from the use of AI in the world of work. Clara Shih, Salesforce’s head of AI, told CNBC that there are jobs that will disappear due to the disruptive impact of the technology.

Whether new technology will replace jobs is “a question that’s been asked throughout time,” Shih said, referring to the creation of automation tools in factories, farming vehicles and machinery, and the internet as examples.

“There are a subset of jobs that are going to go away,” Shih said. “The internet destroyed a lot of jobs. But then it created brand new ones that we couldn’t have even imagined in 1999.”

Ultimately, AI will be a positive force in the world of work, leading to new jobs, according to Shih. However, what our job descriptions look like might change.

“I think what we’re seeing today with AI is that everyone needs a new job description,” Shih said. “Most jobs are not going to go away, but every job is going to require a new job description.”

Last week, as part of its annual Dreamforce event, Salesforce unveiled a new AI platform, called AgentForce. Companies can use the platform to build and customize their own AI “agents,” autonomous digital workers that can help with things like customer service and employee support.

Some companies have even been actively touting the benefits of AI in reducing their overall personnel needs. For example, Swedish fintech firm Klarna said last month that it was able to slash its workforce from 5,000 to 3,800 in a single year thanks to AI, and then pay its remaining workers more.

The “buy now, pay later” pioneer told the BBC it is looking to further reduce employee numbers next year, to 2,000 people, through the use of AI in areas like marketing and customer service.

Chinese companies are ramping up efforts to produce a viable alternative to Nvidia’s chips that power artificial intelligence as Beijing continues its efforts to wean itself off American technology.

U.S. sanctions slapped on China over the past few years, along with Nvidia‘s dominance in the space, have provided big challenges for Bejing’s efforts, at least in the short term, analysts told CNBC.

Nvidia’s well-documented boom has been driven by large cloud computing players buying its server products which contain its graphics processing units, or GPUs. These chips are enabling companies, such as ChatGPT maker OpenAI, to train their huge AI models on massive amounts of data.

These AI models are fundamental to applications like chatbots and other emerging AI applications.

The U.S. government has restricted the export of Nvidia’s most advanced chips to China since 2022, with restrictions tightening last year.

Such semiconductors are key to China’s ambitions to become a leading AI player.

CNBC spoke to analysts who identified some of China’s leading contenders that are looking to challenge Nvidia, including technology giants Huawei, Alibaba and Baidu and startups such as Biren Technology and Enflame.

The overarching view is that they are lagging behind Nvidia at this point.

“These companies have made notable progress in developing AI chips tailored to specific applications (ASICs),” Wei Sun, a senior analyst at Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.

“However, competing with Nvidia still presents substantial challenges in technological gaps, especially in general-purpose GPU. Matching Nvidia in short-term is unlikely.”

China’s key challenges

Chinese firms have a “lack of technology expertise”, according to Sun, highlighting one of the challenges.

However, it’s the U.S. sanctions and their knock-on effects that pose the biggest roadblocks to China’s ambitions.

Some of China’s leading Nvidia challengers have been placed on the U.S. Entity List, a blacklist which restricts their access to American technology. Meanwhile, a number of U.S. curbs have restricted key AI-related semiconductors and machinery from being exported to China.

China’s GPU players all design chips and rely on a manufacturing company to produce their chips. For a while, this would have been Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., or TSMC. But U.S. restrictions mean many of these firms cannot access the chips made by TSMC.

They therefore have to turn to SMIC, China’s biggest chipmaker, whose technology remains generations behind TSMC. Part of the reason why it’s lagging behind, is because Washington has restricted SMIC’s access to a key piece of machinery from Dutch firm ASML, which is required to manufacture the most advance chips.

Meanwhile, Huawei has been pushing development of more advanced chips for its smartphones and AI chips, which is taking up capacity at SMIC, according to Paul Triolo, a partner at consulting firm Albright Stonebridge.

“The key bottleneck will be domestic foundry leader SMIC, which will have a complex problem of dividing limited resources for its advanced node production between Huawei, which is taking up the lion’s share currently, the GPU startups, and many other Chinese design firms which have been or may be cutoff from using global foundry leader TSMC to manufacture their advanced designs,” Triolo told CNBC.

Nvidia is more than just GPUs

Nvidia has found success due to its advanced semiconductors, but also with its CUDA software platform that allows developers to create applications to run on the U.S. chipmaker’s hardware. This has led to the development of a so-called ecosystem around Nvidia’s products that others might find hard to replicate.

“This is the key, it is not just about the hardware, but about the overall ecosystem, tools for developers, and the ability to continue to evolve this ecosystem going forward as the technology advances,” Triolo said.

Huawei leading the pack

Triolo identified Huawei as one of the leaders in China with its Ascend series of data center processors.

The firm’s current generation of chip is called the Ascend 910B, and the company is gearing up to launch the Ascend 910C, which could be on par with Nvidia’s H100 product, according to a Wall Street Journal report in August.

In its annual report earlier this year, Nvidia explicitly identified Huawei, among other companies, as a competitor in areas such as chips, software for AI and networking products.

In the area of software and building a developer community, Huawei “holds lots of advantages,” Triolo said. But it faces similar challenges to the rest of the industry in trying to compete with Nvidia.

“The GPU software support ecosystem is much more entrenched around Nvidia and to a lesser degree AMD, and Huawei faces major challenges, both in producing sufficient quantities of advanced GPUs such as part of the Ascend 910C, and continuing to innovate and improve the performance of the hardware, given U.S. export controls that are limiting the ability of SMIC to produce advanced semiconductors,” Triolo said.

Chip IPOs ahead?

The challenges facing China’s Nvidia competitors have been evident over the past two years. In 2022, Biren Technology carried out a round of layoffs, followed by Moore Threads the year after, with both companies blaming U.S. sanctions.

But startups are still holding out hope, looking to raise money to fund their goals. Bloomberg reported last week that Enflame and Biren are both looking to go public to raise money.

“Biren and the other GPU startups are staffed with experienced industry personnel from Nvidia, AMD, and other leading western semiconductor companies, but they have the additional challenge of lacking the financial depth that Huawei has,” Triolo said.

“Hence both Biren and Enflame are seeking IPOs in Hong Kong, to raise funding for additional hiring and expansion.”

UniCredit‘s move to take a stake in German lender Commerzbank is raising questions on whether a long awaited cross-border merger could spur more acquisitions and shake up the European banking sector.

Last week, UniCredit announced it had taken a 9% stake in Commerzbank, confirming that half of this shareholding was acquired from the government. Berlin has been a major shareholder of Commerzbank since it injected 18.2 billion euros ($20.2 billion) to rescue the lender during the 2008 financial crisis.

UniCredit also expressed an interest in a merger of the two, with the Italian bank’s CEO Andrea Orcel telling Bloomberg TV that “all options are on the table,” citing the possibility that it either takes no further action or buys in the open market. Commerzbank has given a more lukewarm response to the merger proposals.

Orcel said the Italian bank was able to buy 4.5% of the state’s stake in Commerzbank because the government trusts UniCredit, Reuters reported Thursday citing local media. When asked if UniCredit would launch an unsolicited tender offer to buy out other investors in Commerzbank, the CEO told the Italian paper: “No, it would be an aggressive move.”

But analysts have welcomed the move by UniCredit, particularly because a tie-up might spur similar activity in Europe’s banking sector — which is often seen as more fragmented than in the U.S., with regulatory hurdles and legacy issues providing obstacles to mega deals.

Right fit for UniCredit?

So far, the market has responded positively to UniCredit’s move. Commerzbank shares jumped 20% on the day UniCredit’s stake was announced. Shares of the German lender are up around 48% so far this year and added another 3% on Wednesday.

Investors appreciate the geographical overlap between the two banks, the consistency in financials and an assumption that the transaction is “collaborative” in nature, UBS analysts, led by Ignacio Cerezo, said in a research note last week. According to UBS, the ball is now in Commerzbank’s court.

Analysts at Berenberg said in a note last week that a potential merger deal, “should, in theory, have a limited effect on UniCredit’s capital distribution plans.” They said that while there is “strategic merit” in a deal, the immediate financial benefits might be modest for UniCredit, with potential risks from the cross-border deal diminishing some of the benefit.

David Benamou, chief investment officer at Axiom Alternative Investments, hailed Orcel’s decision to take a stake in Commerzbank as a “fantastic move” that makes sense because of the increase in German market share it would grant UniCredit.

As Commerzbank “missed on costs in Q2 [the second quarter], currently it’s at a very low valuation, so the moment [Orcel] stepped in, is probably one of the best moments he could have,” Benamou told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” last week.

When asked how imminent a takeover was in the short term, Benamou suggested it was possible, saying, “they will probably come to it.”

According to Arnaud Journois, senior vice president of European Financial Institution Ratings at Morningstar DBRS, UniCredit is already on its way to becoming a leading bank in Europe.

He told CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe” Wednesday that there was a “double logic” behind UniCredit’s move as it enables the Italian lender to access both the German and Polish markets where Commerzbank currently operates.

“UniCredit has been very active in the past two years, doing a few targeted acquisitions … So this is the next logical step,” Journois said.

UniCredit continues to surprise markets with some stellar quarterly profit beats. It earned 8.6 billion euros last year (up 54% year-on-year), also pleasing investors via share buybacks and dividends.

What does it mean for the sector?

Analysts are hoping that a move by UniCredit will encourage more cross-border consolidation. European officials have been making more and more comments about the need for bigger banks. French President Emmanuel Macron, for example, said in May in an interview with Bloomberg that Europe’s banking sector needs greater consolidation.

“European countries might be partners, but they are still competing sometimes. So, I know that from an EU standpoint — policymaker standpoint — there is appetite for more consolidation to happen. However, we think that there are a few hurdles that make that difficult, especially on the regulatory side,” Journois told CNBC.

A cross-border styled merger between UniCredit and Commerzbank would be more preferential than a domestic merger between Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, according to Reint Gropp, president of the Hall Institute for Economic Research.

“The German banking structure is long overdue for a consolidation process. Essentially, Germany still has almost half of all banks in the euro zone, that’s significantly more than its share in GDP. So any consolidation process would be welcome now,” Gropp told CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe” on Wednesday.

He noted that Commerzbank has always been a “big candidate for a takeover” in the German banking sector because most of the other banks in the country are savings banks which cannot be taken over by private institutions, or cooperative banks which are also difficult takeover targets.

Will Deutsche Bank swoop?

Deutsche Bank, which was still seen as the prime contender to take over Commerzbank following an abrupt collapse of initial talks in 2019, is said to be mounting its own defense strategy in the wake of UniCredit’s stake.

Filippo Alloatti, head of financials at Federated Hermes, said Deutsche Bank is unlikely to present a strong rival offer for Commerzbank.

With a CET1 ratio of 13.5% compared to its target of 13%, Deutsche Bank is rather “limited.” CET ratios are used to gauge the financial strength of a lender. The German bank also has less excess capital than UniCredit and therefore “cannot really afford” a takeover, Alloatti said.

However, Deutsche Bank could put on a “brave face,” Alloatti suggested, and consider another target such as ABN Amro. The Dutch bank, which was also bailed out during the 2008 financial crisis by the state, has been the subject of acquisition speculation.

“We’ve been waiting for this,” Alloatti said, speaking about the potential for further consolidation in the sector. “If they [UniCredit] are successful, then of course, other management teams will study this case,” he said, noting that there was also scope in Italy for domestic consolidation.

Gropp acknowledged that UniCredit’s CEO had made a “very bold move” that caught both the German government and Commerzbank by surprise.

“But maybe we need a bold move to effect any changes at all in the European banking system, which is long overdue,” he said.

What’s next?

In comments reported by Reuters, Commerzbank’s Chief Executive Manfred Knof told reporters on Monday that he would look at any proposals from UniCredit in line with the bank’s obligations to its stakeholders.

Knof informed the bank’s supervisory board last week that he would not seek an extension of his contract which runs until the end of 2025. German newspaper Handelsblatt reported that the board might be considering an earlier change of leadership.

The supervisory board at Commerzbank will meet next week to discuss UniCredit’s stake, people familiar with the matter who preferred to remain anonymous told CNBC. There are no plans to replace Knof as soon as that meeting, the sources added.

– CNBC’s Annette Weisbach, Silvia Amaro and Ruxandra Iordache contributed to this report.

Ray Dalio said the 2024 U.S. elections will likely be the most important of his lifetime and he thinks the country needs a “strong leader of the middle.”

Speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Thursday, the founder of Bridgewater Associates explained that the U.S. should aim to reach “broad-based prosperity” and the presidential election highlights challenges to society’s ability to function smoothly.

“As far as the election goes, it’s going to be the most consequential election of my lifetime because we now have irreconcilable differences between the two sides,” he said. “The first question we’ll ask is: will we have an orderly transition of power? We have the question- the fact that it is possible — that election results may not be accepted — that’s quite something.”

On Wednesday, Dalio had named the elections as a major force shaping the global economy, calling it an “issue of internal order and disorder.”

He told CNBC on Thursday that there’s a larger problem with a “win-at-all-cost mentality,” as it presents “challenges to being able to compromise and make decisions in a way that is conducive to our democracy working effectively.”

Republicans and Democrats are sharply divided on a number of issues, such as abortion access, immigration and climate change. Top concerns for voters across the spectrum, however, include inflation and the high cost of living, according to nationwide polls.

When asked about who he supported in the presidential race, Dalio said “neither is what the country needs.”

“What the country needs is the moderates coming together to be able to work together and make great reform,” he said. “What the country needs is broad-based prosperity.”

While Dalio expressed optimism about certain parts of American society, like the universities and culture for innovation, he said that those exceptional elements benefit only a small percentage of the population.

He explained that broad-based prosperity creates a society where there is both order and opportunity, pointing to Singapore as an example. The Southeast Asian nation is frequently lauded for its high level of education and availability of public housing.

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has seen a 40% increase this year in institutional and corporate investors joining the platform, CEO Richard Teng told CNBC’s Lin Lin in an interview Wednesday.

“Allocation into crypto by institutions is just at the tip of the iceberg. It’s just beginning, because a lot of them are still doing their due diligence,” Teng said on the sidelines of the Token2049 conference in Singapore. He became CEO in November 2023.

“So we on our own, we are seeing a huge uptick in terms of institutional and corporate investors. We have seen a 40% increase in onboarding in that category throughout the course of this year alone,” he said. Teng did not name specific firms or share how large they were.

The stated growth reflects how so-called big money is warming up to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and now willing to work with an exchange that was hit with a U.S. probe and $4.3 billion settlement.

Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire co-founder and former CEO of Binance, stepped down last year as part of the settlement. Zhao remains a major shareholder, Teng said.

Teng noted how Binance has pivoted from a founder-led company to one led by a board with seven directors — a structure he said that regulators are more used to.

Teng joined Binance in 2021 as CEO of the company’s Singapore operations. He was previously CEO of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority at Abu Dhabi Global Market and chief regulatory officer of the Singapore Exchange, among other roles.

Bitcoin launched in 2009, paving the way for many other cryptocurrencies based on similar blockchain technology. The tech eliminates the need for a third-party intermediary by quickly creating a permanent and secure record of transactions between two parties.

More institutions coming in

After years of regulatory uncertainty, the U.S. in January approved the the first exchange-traded funds for spot prices of bitcoin. In July, the U.S. allowed trading of similar funds for ether, another cryptocurrency.

Such regulatory clarity “will give certainty to mainstream users,” Teng said. He attributed bitcoin’s record high earlier this year — above $70,000 in March — to “the effect of institutions coming through.”

He noted how BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has turned from bitcoin skeptic to calling it “digital gold.”

The company and other traditional Wall Street investment firms such as Franklin Templeton have also issued ETFs for bitcoin and ether.

Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson told CNBC in May that bitcoin gains at the time were due to “the first wave of the early adopters.” She said she expects another wave of “much bigger institutions” to buy crypto funds.

Bitcoin was trading near $60,440 as of Wednesday afternoon Singapore time.

Teng declined to share a specific price forecast, but noted how cryptocurrency prices tend to “warm up” 160 days after bitcoin goes through a technical event known as “halving.” The last such event was in April.

As of Wednesday, Teng pointed out the market was “nine days away from that 160 days.”

— CNBC’s Ryan Browne, MacKenzie Sigalos and Jesse Pound contributed to this report.

As the U.S. Federal Reserve implemented its first interest rate cut since the early Covid pandemic, billionaire investor Ray Dalio flagged that the U.S. economy still faces an “enormous amount of debt.”

The central bank’s decision to cut the federal funds rate by 50 basis points to a range of 4.75% to 5%. The rate not only determines short-term borrowing costs for banks, but also impacts various consumer products like mortgages, auto loans and credit cards.

“The challenge of the Federal Reserve is to keep interest rates high enough that they’re good for the creditor, while keeping them not so high that they’re problematic for the debtor,” the founder of Bridgewater Associates told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Thursday, noting the difficulty of this “balancing act.”

The U.S. Treasury Department recently reported that the government has spent more than $1 trillion this year on interest payments for its $35.3 trillion national debt. This increase in debt service costs also coincided with a significant rise in the U.S. budget deficit in August, which is approaching $2 trillion for the year.

On Wednesday, Dalio listed debt, money and the economic cycle as one of the top five forces influencing the global economy. Expanding on his point Thursday, he said he was generally interested in “the enormous amount of debt that is being created by governments and monetized by central banks. Those magnitudes have never existed in my lifetime.”

Governments around the world took on record debt burdens during the pandemic to finance stimulus packages and other economic measures to prevent a collapse.

When asked about his outlook and whether he sees a looming credit event, Dalio responded he did not.

“I see a big depreciation in the value of that debt through a combination of artificial low real rates, so you won’t be compensated,” he said.

While the economy “is in relative equilibrium,” Dalio noted there’s an “enormous” amount of debt that needs to be rolled over and also sold, new debt created by the government.”

Dalio’s concern is that neither former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris will prioritize debt sustainability, meaning these pressures are unlikely to alleviate regardless of who wins the upcoming presidential election.

“I think as time goes on, the path will be increasingly toward monetizing that debt, following a path very similar to Japan,” Dalio posited, pointing to how the Asian nation has kept interest rates artificially low, which had depreciated the Japanese yen and lowered the value of Japanese bonds.

“The value of a Japanese bond has gone down by 90% so that there’s a tremendous tax through artificially giving you a lower yield each year,” he said.

For years, Japan’s central bank stuck to its negative rates regime as it embarked on one of the most aggressive monetary easing exercises in the world. The country’s central bank only recently lifted interest rates in March this year.

Additionally, when markets do not have enough buyers to take on the supply of debt, there could be a situation where interest rates have to go up or the Fed may have to step in and buy, which Dalio reckons they would.

“I would view [the] intervention of the Fed as a very significant bad event,” the billionaire said. Debt oversupply also raises questions of how it gets paid.

“If we were in hard money terms, then you would have a credit event. But in fiat monetary terms, you have the purchases of that debt by the central banks, monetizing the debt,” he said.

In that scenario, Dalio expects that the markets would also see all currencies go down as they’re all relative.

“So I think you’d see an environment very similar to the 1970’s environment, or the 1930 to ’45 type of period,” he said.

For his own portfolio, Dalio asserts that he does not like debt assets: “so if I’m going to take a tilt, it would be underweight in debt assets such as bonds,” he said. 

What you need to know today

A jumbo-sized 50-point cut 
The U.S. Federal Reserve slashed rates by half a percentage point, bringing the federal funds rate to 4.75%–5%. Federal Open Market Committee members see the rate falling to 4.25%–4.5% by the end of this year, meaning another half-point cut before 2025. Members also raised their estimation of the unemployment rate this year to 4.4% from the 4% projected in June. 

Rate cut didn’t boost markets 
U.S. markets popped on the Fed’s 50-point cut but couldn’t maintain their gains. On Wednesday, the S&P lost 0.29%, the Dow fell 0.25% and the Nasdaq dipped 0.31%. Europe’s regional Stoxx 600 index lost 0.5%. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 dropped 0.68% as data showed the country’s headline CPI for August remaining at 2.2%, the same as July’s figure. 

Global repercussions of cut 
The Fed’s loosening of U.S. monetary policy doesn’t just affect the country’s borrowing rate. It affects the decision of central banks all around the world and will move assets, ranging from currencies to bonds to commodities. CNBC’s Jenni Reid looks at how Wednesday’s rate cut will cause tectonic shifts in assets globally. 

Presidential prediction 
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is more likely to win the presidential election than former President Donald Trump, according to a CNBC survey. Out of the 27 respondents, who comprise investment strategists, economists and fund managers, 48% think Harris has a greater chance of winning, 41% think it’s Trump, while 11% are unsure. 

[PRO] Options on gold 
We’ve been talking a lot about how stocks could be affected by the Fed’s interest rate cut. But don’t neglect gold, which tends to rise as rates fall because it becomes more attractive to investors. Don’t let its expensive price per ounce deter you, either. Here’s how to use options on gold to play the Fed decision. 

The bottom line

The futures market was right.  

Just before the Fed meeting, it was pricing in a 64% chance of a 50-basis-points cut, according to the CME FedWatch tool. By contrast, the prevailing sentiment among experts was that a 25-point cut was more likely, according to a CNBC survey. 

Such predictions can be seen as a wholly disinterested affair. That is, the forecast is based on an objective consideration of the state of the economy, balanced against the risk of inflation. 

Those predictions can also express hope, which can embody a desire without having evidence to back it up.  

And when that hope is fulfilled, markets can have a moment of panic. 

After touching record highs as the Fed’s jumbo-sized cut was announced, the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day in the red. So did the Nasdaq Composite.  

It’s difficult to understand what happened there, since markets are so driven by sentiment that sometimes defy explanation or evidence. 

That might have been at the back of Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s head. And he was likely aware that a bigger-than-usual cut might connote that the Fed’s worried about the economy.  

So, Powell spent a big portion of the post-meeting press conference massaging sentiment. 

“I don’t see anything in the economy right now that suggests that the likelihood of a recession, sorry, of a downturn, is elevated,” Powell said.  

Why, then, did the Fed decide not to leave cuts at 25 basis points? 

As if anticipating worries, Powell said in his opening statement that the decision marked a “recalibration” of policy. In other words, the Fed’s jumbo cut is a sign the central bank is taking the lead in charting monetary policy, and not reacting belatedly to economic conditions. 

Investors will take some time to digest Powell’s assurances. Markets, after all, are largely irrational creatures. 

– CNBC’s Jeff Cox, Yun Li, Hakyung Kim and Samantha Subin contributed to this story. 

Here’s what CNBC TV’s producers were watching as the Federal Reserve slashed rates by a half point on Wednesday and what’s on the radar for the next session.

Existing home sales due Thursday at 10 a.m. ET

• CNBC TV’s Diana Olick will have the numbers and the reaction.
• The SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF (XHB) hit a new high today before backing down a bit. It is up more than 10% in a month.
• Beazer Homes is up 17.5% in a month.
• Hovanian is up about 16% in a month.
• Toll Brothers is up 16% in a month.
• Taylor Morrison is up 13% in a month.
• Lennar is up roughly 10% in a month.
• D.R. Horton is up 9% in a month.

Morning restaurant reports

• Cracker Barrel and Darden Restaurants will release earnings before the bell.
• Cracker Barrel is down more than 3% from three months ago. The stock is up about 6% week to date, but it’s 49% from the late December high.
• Darden Restaurants is up roughly 5% in the past three months. Darden runs restaurant brands like Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse, Ruth’s Chris and Bahama Breeze. The stock is 9.5% from the March high. 

Afternoon reports

• FedEx reports after the bell. The stock is up 20% in the past three months. It stands 5% from the July 16 high.
• Lennar also reports after the bell. The stock is up 26% from three months ago. It hit a new 52-week high Wednesday. It is up more than 5% in a week.

Rate cuts and banks

• CNBC TV’s Leslie Picker will report on the banking sector’s reaction to the Federal Reserve’s half-point interest rate cut.
• All the big banks are down in September: JPMorgan is off by more than 7%. The stock is 7.5% from the August 30 high.
• Goldman Sachs is down about 5% in September. The stock 6% from the July 31 high.
• Wells Fargo is down 7% in September. The stock is down 12.6% since mid-May.
• Citigroup and Morgan Stanley are down about 4% in September. Citigroup is 11% from the July 17 high, and Morgan Stanley is 8.5% from the July 16 high.
• Bank of America is down 2% in September. The stock is 10% from the July 17 high. 

Rates and the Fed

• Yields on the 10-year and two-year Treasury notes rose a bit Wednesday after the Fed’s cut.
• Yields on the one-year, six-month, three-month and one-month Treasury bills all fell.
• The 10-year is now at 3.7%.
• The two-year is 3.62%.
• The one-year is 4.02%.
• The six-month is 4.58%.
• The three-month is 4.78%.
• The one-month is 4.79%. 

Gold

• On Wednesday, the commodity hit a new high.
• Jeffrey Gundlach of DoubleLine Capital, who correctly predicted a 50 basis point cut, told CNBC TV’s Scott Wapner on Wednesday that “gold is symptomatic of a market in accumulation mode.”  He also sees political risk and thinks that is likely to help gold keep moving higher.
• The VanEck Gold Miners ETF (GDX) is up roughly 5% in a week.

In a Wednesday interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said his company was seeing more sales of the iPhone 16 than last year’s series of the smartphones.

“The first week was better than last year,” Sievert said. “Not only good, but better than last year, and people are buying Pros, they’re buying Maxs, so they’re buying up the food chain, and they’re buying at a greater rate than last year.”

Apple is set to release the iPhone16 in stores on Friday, widely touted for its new artificial intelligence capabilities. However, the AI features won’t be present for the phones’ first launch, with a beta version of the program set to come out next month. Some analysts predicted that there’s less demand for the product than expected — perhaps somewhat due to the AI feature delay — which caused Apple shares to slide.

But according to Sievert, the iPhone16 is in demand, although the delay may lengthen the buying cycle. He said it may take longer for customers to share their experience with the new product “by word of mouth” because of the features’ postponement.

Sievert also reviewed announcements the company made at a conference it held on Wednesday. T-Mobile increased its customer target to 12 million over the next several years, and Sievert said it figured out how to get “even more capacity” out of its 5G network. Siebert also said T-Mobile “put a stake in the ground” on the AI front, as the company shared it would partner with Nvidia, Nokia and Ericcson to “design and drive the future of mobile networks with AI at the center.”

“It’s going to take a few years,” Sievert said. “We’re only half way in to this 5G revolution, it’s been around five or six years, but we’re now turning the page and starting to architect with our partners what future networks will look like to make sure everybody has a better signal in the future.”

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Asia-Pacific markets rose in choppy trading Thursday, as investors assessed the Federal Reserve’s decision to cut interest rates by a half-percentage point.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 2.13% to end at 37,155.33, while the broad-based Topix climbed 2.01% to finish at 2,616.87.

The Fed lowered its benchmark borrowing rate by a half percentage point, bringing its target range to 4.75% to 5%.

In lockstep with the Fed, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority cut its interest rate by 50 basis points to 5.25%, as the city’s currency is pegged to the greenback.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 2.17% in the final hour of trade.

The Bank of Japan has kicked off a two-day meeting ending Friday, where the central bankers will make a key rate decision, after the central bank ended its decades-long ultra-low interest rates regime earlier this year.

The Japanese yen strengthened slightly to 142.18 against the U.S. dollar in afternoon trading.

Mainland China’s CSI 300 was 0.8% higher settling at 3,196.36, led by real estate stocks which were up more than 3%.

South Korea’s blue-chip Kospi ended 0.21% higher at 2,580.8, while the small-cap Kosdaq climbed 0.86% to 739.15.

Australia’s national seasonally adjusted unemployment rate remained steady in August at 4.2%, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics, in line with Reuters-polled analysts’ expectation, while employment additions at 47,500 surpassed estimates of 25,000 additions.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 surged 0.61% to close at 8,191.9, hitting a fresh record high.

New Zealand’s GDP for the second quarter contracted by 0.2% from the previous quarter, according to the official data released Thursday morning, less than Reuters poll estimates of a 0.4% decline.

Taiwan’s central bank is set to make a key rate decision Thursday, and release its revised economic growth and inflation forecasts for this year.

The Taiwan Weighted Index rose 1.68% to finish at 22,042.69.

Overnight in the U.S., all three major indexes fell, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 0.25% to 41,503.1, while the S&P 500 fell 0.29% to end at 5,618.26. The Nasdaq Composite fell 0.31% to 17,573.3.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 surged to fresh highs during intraday trading before reversing course to close lower.

—CNBC’s Hakyung Kim and Samantha Subin contributed to this report.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Wednesday discussed the repercussions of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cuts on the technology sector, saying he thinks they hinder tech stocks because the companies don’t necessarily stand to benefit from lower rates.

“With a double-sized rate cut that everybody already expected, you aren’t gonna see a huge run in tech. It doesn’t have the edge when we get the big cuts,” he said. “Right now, the Fed’s helping companies that need a healthy consumer.”

The Fed started of its cutting cycle strong, lowering rates by half a point and indicating it would cut by 50 more basis points by the end of the year. The move marks the first rate cut since the pandemic, and the Fed said in a statement that its decision came “in light of progress on inflation and the balance of risks.”

Cramer reflected on the time he’s spent in San Francisco at enterprise software outfit Salesforce‘s annual conference, saying the tech companies at the event — many of which are pushing artificial intelligence initiatives — don’t care about the Fed’s cuts. Unlike companies in the retail or housing sector, large tech companies are largely divorced from the consumer and the labor market, and cater to the enterprise, he added. Big Tech and its peers are focused on AI automation that will boost companies’ earnings and allow them to perform more work with fewer workers, he said.

Consumer-oriented companies may be the ones to own during this cutting cycle, Cramer suggested, even though tech stocks can still be winners with rates coming down. According to Cramer, Wall Street abandons these secular stocks for ones that rely on lower rates, and there’s only “so much cash to go around.” He added that investors make a distinction between companies that do well most of the time and ones that can perform extremely well during certain points in the business cycle.

“On days like today, we want the companies that desperately needed a rate cut, because they just got what they wished for,” Cramer said. “But tech? It got out of the wish game a very long time ago.”

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Iron Mountain: “It’s had too big a move up…let’s move on.”

Wells Fargo: “Wells Fargo’s a winner, though…I think it’s going to go higher.”

Palantir: “Palantir is a, is a cold stock. It is a meme stock.”

PG&E: “That stock is a good one, rate increase or no. Buy PG&E.”

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When CNBC’s Jim Cramer asked AMD CEO Lisa Su about competition with artificial intelligence powerhouse Nvidia, she said there was room for more than one major player in the red-hot semiconductor industry.

“The way to think about it is, there’s no one size fits all in computing,” she said. “There’s no, you know, only one architecture. Actually, you’re going to need the right compute for each application.”

Both AMD and Nvidia design semiconductor chips essential for the new generative AI technology everyone in the enterprise is clamoring for. While the latter currently dominates the market, competition is stiff, with rivals like AMD and Intel vying for Big Tech customer with the deepest pockets.

To Su, the “technology ecosystem” works well when there’s competition and partnership, saying there should be areas where rivals work together and where they compete. But she said that, for the most part, customers want to be able to choose from different good options.

Su also discussed the future of AI, saying the world is just beginning to recognize what AI can do. In a decade, she said, people won’t be asking about what the ROI for AI is. Instead, she said, it will be a major part of life, from the business sector to education to healthcare. She also said she expects the computing market for AI accelerators — technology that speeds up AI and machine learnings programs — to reach $400 billion by 2027.

“I really believe that AI will impact everyone’s lives. It’s just starting today,” Su said. “So, you know, let’s not be impatient, right. Tech trends are meant to play out over years, not over months.”

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Dow Jones Industrial Average futures rose 259 points, or 0.6%. Futures tied to the S&P 500 climbed about 1%, while Nasdaq 100 futures added 1.4%.

The U.S. central bank slashed its overnight lending rate to a range of 4.75% to 5.00% from 5.25% to 5.5% on Wednesday, which came as a surprise to some investors who criticized the size of this initial cut. This is the first rate reduction delivered by the Fed in four years.

After seesawing for most of the afternoon, stocks ultimately closed Wednesday’s session lower. Both the S&P 500 and 30-stock Dow initially rallied to new record highs right after the Fed announced its interest rate cut decision.

Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist at PGIM Fixed Income, attributed the market’s Wednesday move lower to Powell’s emphasis that an initial 50 basis point rate cut does not set the precedence for further drastic rate reductions to follow.

“The market was thinking to itself, ‘If you go 50, another 50 has a high likelihood.’ But I think he really dashed that idea to some extent. It’s not that he thinks that’s not going to happen, it’s that he’s not pre-committing to that to happen. That is the right call,” Porcelli said.

Darden Restaurants, shipping giant FedEx and homebuilder Lennar will report their earnings Thursday. Traders will also watch out for August’s existing home sales and the latest weekly jobless claims.

European markets open higher ahead of Bank of England decision

European markets opened higher Thursday as investors digested the U.S. Federal Reserve’s first interest rate cut in four years and looked ahead to the Bank of England’s rate decision later in the session.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 index was up 1% in opening trade, with all major bourses and virtually all sectors in the green. Mining stocks added 2.02% while telecoms were the sole outlier, down 0.29%.

— Karen Gilchrist

DoubleLine’s Gundlach says he expects more weak data, rate cuts to benefit small caps

DoubleLine Capital CEO Jeffrey Gundlach, who correctly called Wednesday’s super-sized rate cut, said he believes the incoming economic data will show more signs of weakness in the U.S.

“I expect to see weaker economic data in coming reports, I still think there’s a good shot that the history books will say September 2024 was the start of a recession,” Gundlach said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.”

As for the market impact from rate cuts, Gundlach believes the easing cycle could provide a bigger boost to small-cap stocks than their large-cap counterparts. That’s because much of the S&P 500 companies have fixed-rate debt, while Gundlach estimated that 45% of the Russell 2000 companies, excluding financials, have floating-rate debt.

“I’m pretty sure that this fed cycle will create a much bigger tailwind for the Russell 2000 than the S&P 500,” he said.

— Yun Li

Steelcase stock dips 10% on missed revenue expectations

Shares of Steelcase were last trading 10% lower Wednesday night after the furniture manufacturer missed analysts’ second-quarter revenue expectations.

Steelcase reported revenue of $855.8 million in its latest quarter while Wall Street analysts had anticipated sales of $864.2 million, FactSet showed. The company also forecast third-quarter revenue in the range of $785 million and $810 million. Analysts had previously expected $812.1 million.

However, Steelcase’s second-quarter adjusted earnings of 39 cents per share beat consensus estimates of 37 cents per share.

— Lisa Kailai Han

Stock futures open higher

Stock futures traded higher Wednesday night.

Dow futures rose 85 points, or 0.2%, shortly after 6 p.m. ET. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures added 0.2% and 0.3%, respectively.

— Lisa Kailai Han

Shares of Trump Media closed Wednesday at a new postmerger low on the eve of the expiration of “lockup” restrictions that have barred Truth Social owners’ insiders, such as majority shareholder Donald Trump, from selling their stakes.

Trump Media stock fell 3.22% on relatively light trading, to close at $15.62 a share. At Wednesday’s closing stock price, the company had a market capitalization of $3.126 billion.

Trump Media made its market debut on the Nasdaq in late March after a merger with a special purpose acquisition company.

Trump and others who received stock in the company before it went public were not allowed to sell any of these shares for approximately 180 days, under the common initial public offering provision called a lockup agreement.

For Trump Media, the lockup period expires Thursday.

Last week, shares shot up as much as 25% after the Republican presidential nominee said he had “absolutely no intention of selling” any of his nearly 57% stake in Trump Media.

The stock ultimately closed up 11% on Friday. But since then, it has been on a steady decline.

At Wednesday’s closing stock price, Trump’s stake in the company was worth roughly $1.8 billion. On paper, this amounted to nearly half of Trump’s personal net worth of $3.9 billion, as tallied by Forbes.

Shares of Trump Media closed down more than 6% on Tuesday, the day after a Delaware judge ruled that Trump Media has breached a contract with an early investor that helped the company go public.

The judge ruled that Trump Media must grant the investor, ARC Global, with a larger share of its stock than it had previously intended. ARC Global currently holds a 4.77% stake in Trump Media, which it would likely be free to sell once the lockup expires Thursday.

Shares fell Monday as well, closing the day nearly 4% down, one day after Trump was the target of an apparent second assassination attempt.

The downward move Monday contrasted with the stock’s jump on July 15, the first trading day after Trump survived an assassination attempt. Trump Media shares shot up more than 30% that Monday.

Shares are now down more than 61.66% since the July assassination attempt, which was also their most-recent high. The stock is down 76.5% overall since the merger in March.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell suggested that Wednesday’s larger-than-expected interest rate cut may have a limited effect on the presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, because the decision’s impacts will ripple into the economy slowly.

“The things that we do really affect economic conditions for the most part with a lag,” Powell said at his press conference, responding to a reporter’s question about timing of the long-awaited rate cut, just 48 days before the Nov. 5 election.

The Fed on Wednesday announced its decision to cut interest rates by an aggressive 50 basis points, or half a percentage point, its first cut since March 2020, marking a milestone in the U.S. economy‘s post-pandemic recovery.

Though the cut comes in the final sprint of the Trump-Harris race, Powell said the Fed made its decision with a focus on consumer interests and without “any other filters.”

“This is my fourth presidential election at the Fed, and it’s always the same,” Powell said. “We’re always going into this meeting in particular and asking what’s the right thing to do for the people we serve.”

Despite the Fed’s effort to separate its highly anticipated decision from the political backdrop, the rate cut turned into a political football soon after the announcement.

The Biden administration took the rate cut announcement as a victory lap for the president’s economic agenda.

“We just reached an important moment: Inflation and interest rates are falling while the economy remains strong,” President Joe Biden wrote in an X post following the announcement. “The critics said it couldn’t happen — but our policies are lowering costs and creating jobs.”

The Harris campaign used the rate cut as an opportunity to double down on the Democratic presidential nominee’s economic platform.

“While this announcement is welcome news for Americans who have borne the brunt of high prices, my focus is on the work ahead to keep bringing prices down,” Harris wrote in a statement Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Trump turned the rate cut into a line of attack against the Biden-Harris administration’s economic record. He also suggested that the Fed could have been politically motivated.

“I guess it shows you the economy is very bad to cut it by that much, assuming they’re not just playing politics,” Trump said at a surprise visit to a bitcoin-themed bar in New York. “It was a big cut.”

During his first term, Trump routinely criticized Powell, bucking a tradition of the White House abstaining from commenting on Fed actions to help the institution maintain its political independence. As he campaigns for a second term, Trump has said he believes the president should get official input in Fed decision-making.

Harris and Trump are both working to pitch themselves as the best candidate for the health of the U.S. economy, as voters repeatedly rank the high cost of living as their top issue in national polls.

In the wake of the pandemic, inflation shot up to a 40-year high, making grocery bills, housing, gas and other day-to-day living costs more expensive for American consumers. To cool down the economy, the Fed began hiking interest rates in March 2022, further squeezing consumer budgets.

That economic pain turned high prices into a top voter priority this election cycle and as a result, a major focus for both the Democratic and Republican campaigns.

YouTube on Wednesday announced artificial intelligence features for creators on its Shorts platform that tap into Google‘s DeepMind video-generation model.

The features, known as Veo, will allow creators to add AI-generated backgrounds to their videos as well as use written prompts to generate stand-alone, six-second video clips. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said he hopes Veo will enable creators to produce more Shorts videos with the help of AI.

“Everything that we showed with AI was meant to really enhance the work that you do, make it faster, more efficient, to bring your creative ideas to life faster,” said Mohan, speaking at the Made on YouTube event in New York.

The Veo AI backgrounds are an upgrade over a similar AI-generation feature announced by YouTube in 2023 called Dream Screen. The company said its Veo AI background feature will roll out later this year, while the six-second AI clips will become available in 2025.

Other announcements at the event included new features in the YouTube Studio app that will allow creators to use AI to generate titles, thumbnails and video ideas. Those features will roll out in late 2024, YouTube said.

Creators have been exploring various ways to leverage generative AI technology. Creators have used the new technology to insert clips in their videos or produce entirely AI-generated videos.

However, some creators expressed concerns that their videos on YouTube are used to train the AI models that built Veo.

“I don’t know how I feel about all this AI stuff,” said Thomas Simons, a comedian with more than 15 million subscribers on YouTube. “It doesn’t fill me with confidence and love.”

There has been criticism that other services such as Facebook have become overrun by spammy, AI-generated content. There are also concerns that AI-generated content could violate intellectual property protections.

YouTube’s AI-generated content will be watermarked and will have a label indicating it was created by AI, the company said.

Generative AI places a new perspective on the creator economy, giving creators free access to tools utilized by large language models.

We “really sit at the nexus of that technology and creativity,” Mohan said. “Putting those two things together gives us this unique lens that everything we build is really about enhancing that human creativity.”

WATCH: How YouTube beat Netflix and Disney in the streaming wars

While top executives from Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft headed to Capitol Hill on Wednesday for a hearing on election threats, Elon Musk’s X did not participate, according the office of the Senate Intelligence Committee chair.

A representative for Sen. Mark R. Warner, the Democratic chair, said in an emailed statement that X “declined to send an appropriate witness.” No further details were provided.

A spokesperson for X told CNBC that the company’s invited witness was Nick Pickles, who had been the head of global affairs but “resigned on September 6.” Warner’s office said X declined to send a replacement after Pickles’ departure.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is being represented by Kent Walker, the president and chief legal officer, while Meta’s head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, represents the social networking company. Microsoft President Brad Smith is representing the software giant.

The hearing, which is being led by Warner, of Virginia, and committee Vice Chairman Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is centered around lawmakers’ concerns over foreign entities that are attempting to influence the outcome of the presidential elections in November using the biggest tech platforms.

Alphabet and Microsoft recently published research into the efforts by Iranian and Russian hacking groups to influence or attack officials linked to President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. The hackers have used various tactics including spear phishing.

The Biden administration said on Sept. 4 that it’s targeting Russian government-sponsored attempts to affect U.S. public opinion.

“We will be relentlessly aggressive in countering and disrupting attempts by Russia, Iran, as well as China or any other foreign malign actor” attempting to “interfere in elections and undermine our members,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement at the time.

X’s absence from the Wednesday hearing follows a streak of divisive posts by Musk, the world’s richest person, on the app, formerly known as Twitter, which he acquired in 2022. Musk has nearly 200 million listed followers.

After a second apparent assassination attempt against Republican former Trump on Sunday, Musk shared and then deleted a post in which he wondered why “no one” was making assassination threats against Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee. Biden and Harris have both received assassination threats while in office.

European news agencies reported this week that Musk has previously shared content on X that had been created by the Social Design Agency, which led a propaganda campaign at the Kremlin’s direction, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

On Wednesday, Musk shared a false story on X that claimed explosives were found in a car near a planned Trump rally in Long Island, New York. According to a statement from Nassau County police, a civilian near the site of the rally had falsely reported explosives being found.

In the early stages of the meeting Wednesday afternoon, Warner said “it’s a shame” that no one from X appeared. He said that, prior to Musk’s takeover, the company was a “collaborator.”

“Under X, they are absent and some of the most egregious activity has taken place” on the platform, Warner said.

WATCH: SpaceX will be filing suit against the FAA for regulatory overreach

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters on Wednesday announced it will not formally endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election, ending months of speculation about whether the labor union would back Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Kamala Harris.

The union’s general executive board said in a statement that its member polling showed no majority support for Harris, and no universal support for Trump.

“The Teamsters thank all candidates for meeting with members face-to-face during our unprecedented roundtables. Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business,” Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said in the statement.

“We sought commitments from both Trump and Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries — and to honor our members’ right to strike — but were unable to secure those pledges,” said O’Brien.

With 1.3 million members, the Teamsters union is one of the largest labor groups in the country. The non-endorsement is a break from the union’s decadeslong tradition of backing Democratic candidates. But it’s not a complete surprise.

O’Brien had signaled in July that the union was open to endorsing Trump when he delivered a speech on the first night of the Republican National Convention.

“As the strongest and most democratic labor union in America, it was vital for our members to drive this endorsement process. Democrats, Republicans, and Independents proudly call our union home, and we have a duty to represent and respect every one of them,” O’Brien wrote.

“We strongly encourage all our members to vote in the upcoming election, and to remain engaged in the political process. But this year, no candidate for President has earned the endorsement of the Teamsters’ International Union,” he wrote.

In a national survey of Teamsters members conducted after the Sept. 10 presidential debate, union members overwhelmingly backed Trump over Harris, 58% to 31%, according to results published by the union ahead of its formal endorsement.

The most recent results are very different from those of surveys conducted when President Joe Biden was still the Democratic nominee. Before Biden dropped out of the race July 21, the union’s rank-and-file members backed Biden over Trump, 44.3% to 36.3%.

The union on Wednesday said neither Harris nor Trump would promise not to intervene to force contracts like those allowed under the Railway Labor Act. Such intervention would undermine workers’ bargaining leverage, the statement said.

The union praised Harris for pledging to sign the PRO Act, which would strengthen union protections, and criticized Trump, who refused to commit to veto national “right to work” legislation, the union said.

“‘Right to work’ laws only exist to try to kill labor unions,” Teamsters General Secretary-Treasurer Fred Zuckerman said in the statement. “It is a red line for the Teamsters.”

The announcement came just days after union members and leadership met with Harris, who has received endorsements from several other labor unions.

Union leaders also featured prominently at the Democratic National Convention in August, but the Teamsters — and O’Brien — were conspicuously absent. After O’Brien appeared at the RNC, a spokesperson for the union confirmed to CNBC that O’Brien had not received an invitation to speak at the Democratic convention.

“The Teamsters carry a lot of weight,” Trump said at a campaign stop in New York City Wednesday afternoon. “It was always automatic that Democrats get the Teamsters, and they said we won’t endorse the Democrats this year. So that was an honor for me.”

Harris campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt, in response to the union’s decision, said, “The Vice President’s strong union record is why Teamsters locals across the country have already endorsed her — alongside the overwhelming majority of organized labor.”

If Harris is elected president, “she will look out for the Teamsters rank-and-file no matter what — because they always have been and always will be the people she fights for,” said Hitt.

“The U.S. economy’s stature is one of the key drivers of the importance of the Fed,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon. “The [U.S.] economy remains one of the largest economies in the world, and certainly of late, one of the ones that’s been fastest growing.”

At its September meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee, decided to reduce the target range of its widely impactful federal funds rate. Changes to the Fed’s interest rate can influence the cost of loan products such as mortgages and the value of cash, bonds and stocks.

The Fed’s decision to unwind its most recent economic tightening cycle is expected to be felt around the world. By August 2024, annual inflation was 5.9% globally, according to the International Monetary Fund. The group also reported that inflation was closer to 2.6% on average across advanced economies like the United States.

The Federal Reserve’s decision to cut interest rate comes after months of shaky labor market data in the U.S. The unemployment rate stood at 4.2% in August 2024 with 7.1 million Americans without work, little changed from recent months. But the jobs picture had darkened notably from a year ago, when unemployment was 3.8%, with 6.3 million Americans looking for work.

The central banks of advanced economies around the world hiked interest rates to ward off a global bout of inflation. Economists have noted that the simultaneous tightening of conditions across borders could amplify their effects. The European Central Bank also has reduced its policy rate twice in 2024. Global GDP growth is expected to be 3.2% in 2024 and 3.3% in 2025 according to the IMF.  

“The actions of the Federal Reserve Board they’re not just limited to the U.S. They have an implication, a spillover effect in other parts of the world also,” said Reena Aggarwal, director of Georgetown University’s Psaros Center for financial markets and policy. 

Fed decisions can also impact foreign exchange markets given their effect on the value of U.S. dollars, the global reserve currency.

“Emerging markets are impacted because a lot of their borrowing is in dollars. And so they’ve got to repay the interest and the principal in dollars. And if interest rates are changing in the U.S., all the cost of borrowing is changing,” said Aggarwal in an interview with CNBC.

Other countries have attempted to increase the profile of their currencies with mixed results. Most notably, the People’s Bank of China has established its own international monetary system based on China’s yuan, or renminbi. Economists at the Fed write that China’s central bank has managed the value of the yuan to help the country achieve its goals on trade. China has also established its own network of swap lines to rival the systems offered by central banks like the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank.

“A lot of the [electric vehicles] that we see coming out of China is a direct result of the fact that China has become debt saturated and can’t use its previous growth model to just increase investment,” said Freya Beamish, chief economist at TS Lombard. “If they’re following this growth model, then they have to rely more on exports. At the same time, they want to internationalize the renminbi,” Beamish told CNBC.

The yuan accounted for 4.3% of payments made globally in 2023, according to the Federal Reserve. The U.S. central bank notes that while that share is rising, it’s far behind the use of dollars (47%) or euros (23%).

Watch the video above to learn more about how the Fed’s decisions impact the global economy

The so-called dot plot indicated that 19 FOMC members, both voters and nonvoters, see the benchmark fed funds rate at 4.4% by the end of this year, equivalent to a target range of 4.25% to 4.5%. The Fed’s two remaining meetings for the year are scheduled for Nov. 6-7 and Dec.17-18.

Through 2025, the central bank forecasts interest rates landing at 3.4%, indicating another full percentage point in cuts. Through 2026, rates are expected to fall to 2.9% with another half-point reduction.

“There’s nothing in the SEP (Summary of Economic Projections) that suggests the committee is in a rush to get this done,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in a news conference. “This process evolves over time.”

The central bank lowered the federal funds rate to a range between 4.75%-5% on Wednesday, its first rate cut since the early days of the Covid pandemic.

Here are the Fed’s latest targets:

“The Committee has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent, and judges that the risks to achieving its employment and inflation goals are roughly in balance,” the post-meeting statement said.

The Fed officials hiked their expected unemployment rate this year to 4.4%, from the 4% projection at the last update in June.

Meanwhile, they lowered the inflation outlook to 2.3% from 2.6% previously. On core inflation, the committee took down its projection to 2.6%, a 0.2 percentage point reduction from June.

— CNBC’s Jeff Cox contributed reporting.

The central bank’s federal funds rate is now in a range of 4.75% to 5%, which will give Americans a break on their monthly credit card, personal loan, auto financing and mortgage costs.

Prior to Wednesday’s cut, the Fed had implemented 11 consecutive rate hikes over the past two years in an effort to tame inflation, which peaked at a year-over-year rate of 9.1% in June 2022.

While the current inflation rate of 2.5% is still below the Fed’s 2% target, the central bank is confident that price growth is on a sustained downward path.

The decision was also made in part because of the slowing job market. Since high borrowing costs discourage business investment, it can lead to decreased hiring. The Fed’s dual mandate is to both keep inflation low and maximize sustainable employment.

“The upside risks to inflation have diminished,” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said in a speech on Aug. 23. “And the downside risks to employment have increased.”

How much cheaper borrowing costs could be

The Fed’s key interest rate — known as the federal funds rate — is used by lenders to determine rates on credit cards and loans. 

While a rate cut of half a percentage point will reduce borrowing costs, don’t expect more than a few bucks off most loan payments each month. That said, those small savings can really add up if you’ve got multiple debts, which is true for many Americans.

Plus, this rate cut is likely the first of several, with 76% of traders expecting the federal funds rate to fall to a range of 4% to 4.75% by late December, according to data from the CME FedWatch Tool.

Here’s a look at how the 50 basis point interest rate cut will affect your payments, based on loan or credit type, according to Bankrate:

• Credit cards: Interest rates will drop by about 50 basis points within a couple of billing cycles, bringing the current average rate of 20.78% down slightly. For a balance of $5,000, it will amount to a few bucks off monthly interest payments.
• Auto loans: Payments for a new loan worth $35,000 spread over five years would drop by $8 per month based on a rate cut of half a percentage point.
• Home equity lines of credit: Payments on a $50,000 HELOC would decrease by $20.84 per month.
• Adjustable rate mortgages: Payments will drop slightly. Mortgages are less directly tied to the Fed’s benchmark rate, so the amount of savings will vary based on the terms of the loan. 

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Text removed from the July statement is in red with a horizontal line through the middle.

Text appearing for the first time in the new statement is in red and underlined.

Black text appears in both statements.

Follow along with continuing Fed coverage and Chair Jerome Powell’s news conference here.

The Federal Reserve announced Wednesday it will lower its benchmark rate by a half percentage point, or 50 basis points, paving the way for relief from the high borrowing costs that have hit consumers particularly hard. 

The federal funds rate, which is set by the U.S. central bank, is the interest rate at which banks borrow and lend to one another overnight. Although that’s not the rate consumers pay, the Fed’s moves still affect the borrowing and savings rates they see every day.

Wednesday’s cut sets the federal funds rate at a range of 4.75%-5%.

A series of interest rate hikes starting in March 2022 took the central bank’s benchmark to its highest in more than 22 years, which caused most consumer borrowing costs to skyrocket — and put many households under pressure.

Now, with inflation backing down, “there are reasons to be optimistic,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com.

However, “one rate cut isn’t a panacea for borrowers grappling with high financing costs and has a minimal impact on the overall household budget,” he said. “What will be more significant is the cumulative effect of a series of interest rate cuts over time.”

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“There are always winners and losers when there is a change in interest rates,” said Stephen Foerster, professor of finance at Ivey Business School in London, Ontario. “In general, lower rates favor borrowers and hurt lenders and savers.”

“It really depends on whether you are a borrower or saver or whether you currently have locked-in borrowing or savings rates,” he said.

From credit cards and mortgage rates to auto loans and savings accounts, here’s a look at how a Fed rate cut could affect your finances in the months ahead.

Credit cards

Since most credit cards have a variable rate, there’s a direct connection to the Fed’s benchmark. Because of the central bank’s rate hike cycle, the average credit card rate rose from 16.34% in March 2022 to more than 20% today — near an all-time high.

Going forward, annual percentage rates will start to come down, but even then, they will only ease off extremely high levels. With only a few cuts on deck for 2024, APRs would still be around 19% in the months ahead, according to McBride.

“Interest rates took the elevator going up, but they’ll be taking the stairs coming down,” he said.

That makes paying down high-cost credit card debt a top priority since “interest rates won’t fall fast enough to bail you out of a tight situation,” McBride said. “Zero percent balance transfer offers remain a great way to turbocharge your credit card debt repayment efforts.”

Mortgage rates

Although 15- and 30-year mortgage rates are fixed, and tied to Treasury yields and the economy, anyone shopping for a new home has lost considerable purchasing power in the last two years, partly because of inflation and the Fed’s policy moves.

But rates are already significantly lower than where they were just a few months ago. Now, the average rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage is around 6.3%, according to Bankrate.

Jacob Channel, senior economist at LendingTree, expects mortgage rates will stay somewhere in the 6% to 6.5% range over the coming weeks, with a chance that they’ll even dip below 6%. But it’s unlikely they will return to their pandemic-era lows, he said.

“Though they are falling, mortgage rates nonetheless remain relatively high compared to where they stood through most of the last decade,” he said. “What’s more, home prices remain at or near record highs in many areas.” Despite the Fed’s move, “there are a lot of people who won’t be able to buy until the market becomes cheaper,” Channel said.

Auto loans

Even though auto loans are fixed, higher vehicle prices and high borrowing costs have stretched car buyers “to their financial limits,” according to Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds’ head of insights.

The average rate on a five-year new car loan is now more than 7%, up from 4% when the Fed started raising rates, according to Edmunds. However, rate cuts from the Fed will take some of the edge off the rising cost of financing a car — likely bringing rates below 7% — helped in part by competition between lenders and more incentives in the market.

“Many Americans have been holding off on making vehicle purchases in the hopes that prices and interest rates would come down, or that incentives would make a return,” Caldwell said. “A Fed rate cut wouldn’t necessarily drive all those consumers back into showrooms right away, but it would certainly help nudge holdout car buyers back into more of a spending mood.”

Student loans

Federal student loan rates are also fixed, so most borrowers won’t be immediately affected by a rate cut. However, if you have a private loan, those loans may be fixed or have a variable rate tied to the Treasury bill or other rates, which means once the Fed starts cutting interest rates, the rates on those private student loans will come down over a one- or three-month period, depending on the benchmark, according to higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz. 

Eventually, borrowers with existing variable-rate private student loans may be able to refinance into a less expensive fixed-rate loan, he said. But refinancing a federal loan into a private student loan will forgo the safety nets that come with federal loans, such as deferments, forbearances, income-driven repayment and loan forgiveness and discharge options.

Additionally, extending the term of the loan means you ultimately will pay more interest on the balance.

Savings rates

While the central bank has no direct influence on deposit rates, the yields tend to be correlated to changes in the target federal funds rate.

As a result of Fed rate hikes, top-yielding online savings account rates have made significant moves and are now paying more than 5% — the most savers have been able to earn in nearly two decades — up from around 1% in 2022, according to Bankrate.

If you haven’t opened a high-yield savings account or locked in a certificate of deposit yet, you’ve likely already missed the rate peak, according to Matt Schulz, LendingTree’s credit analyst. However, “yields aren’t going to fall off a cliff immediately after the Fed cuts rates,” he said.

Although those rates have likely maxed out, it is still worth your time to make either of those moves now before rates fall even further, he advised.

One-year CDs are now averaging 1.78% but top-yielding CD rates pay more than 5%, according to Bankrate, as good as or better than a high-yield savings account.

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WASHINGTON – The Federal Reserve on Wednesday enacted its first interest rate cut since the early days of the Covid pandemic, slicing half a percentage point off benchmark rates in an effort to head off a slowdown in the labor market.

With both the jobs picture and inflation softening, the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee chose to lower its key overnight borrowing rate by a half percentage point, or 50 basis points, affirming market expectations that had recently shifted from an outlook for a cut half that size.

Outside of the emergency rate reductions during Covid, the last time the FOMC cut by half a point was in 2008 during the global financial crisis.

The decision lowers the federal funds rate to a range between 4.75%-5%. While the rate sets short-term borrowing costs for banks, it spills over into multiple consumer products such as mortgages, auto loans and credit cards.

In addition to this reduction, the committee indicated through its “dot plot” the equivalent of 50 more basis points of cuts by the end of the year, close to market pricing. The matrix of individual officials’ expectations pointed to another full percentage point in cuts by the end of 2025 and a half point in 2026. In all, the dot plot shows the benchmark rate coming down about 2 percentage points beyond Wednesday’s move.

“The Committee has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent, and judges that the risks to achieving its employment and inflation goals are roughly in balance,” the post-meeting statement said.

The decision to ease came “in light of progress on inflation and the balance of risks.” Notably, the FOMC vote was 11-1, with Governor Michelle Bowman preferring a quarter-point move. Bowman’s dissent was the first by a Fed governor since 2005, though a number of regional presidents have cast “no” votes during the period.

“We’re trying to achieve a situation where we restore price stability without the kind of painful increase in unemployment that has come sometimes with this inflation. That’s what we’re trying to do, and I think you could take today’s action as a sign of our strong commitment to achieve that goal,” Chair Jerome Powell said at a news conference following the decision.

Trading was volatile after the decision with the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumping as much as 375 points after it was released, before easing somewhat as investors digested the news and considered what it suggests about the state of the economy.

Stocks ended slightly lower on the day while Treasury yields bounced higher.

“This is not the beginning of a series of 50 basis point cuts. The market was thinking to itself, if you go 50, another 50 has a high likelihood. But I think [Powell] really dashed that idea to some extent,” said Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist at PGIM Fixed Income. “It’s not that he thinks that’s not going to happen, it’s that he’s not he’s not pre-committing to that to happen. That is the right call.”

The committee noted that “job gains have slowed and the unemployment rate has moved up but remains low.” FOMC officials raised their expected unemployment rate this year to 4.4%, from the 4% projection at the last update in June, and lowered the inflation outlook to 2.3% from 2.6% previous. On core inflation, the committee took down its projection to 2.6%, a 0.2 percentage point reduction from June.

The committee expects the long-run neutral rate to be around 2.9%, a level that has drifted higher as the Fed has struggled to get inflation down to 2%.

The decision comes despite most economic indicators looking fairly solid.

Gross domestic product has been rising steadily, and the Atlanta Fed is tracking 3% growth in the third quarter based on continuing strength in consumer spending. Moreover, the Fed chose to cut even though most gauges indicate inflation well ahead of the central bank’s 2% target. The Fed’s preferred measure shows inflation running around 2.5%, well below its peak but still higher than policymakers would like.

However, Powell and other policymakers in recent days have expressed concern about the labor market. While layoffs have shown little sign of rebounding, hiring has slowed significantly. In fact, the last time the monthly hiring rate was this low – 3.5% as a share of the labor force – the unemployment rate was above 6%.

At his news conference following the July meeting, Powell remarked that a 50 basis point cut was “not something we’re thinking about right now.”

For the moment, at least, the move helps settle a contentious debate over how forceful the Fed should have been with the initial move.

However, it sets the stage for future questions over how far the central bank should go before it stops cutting. There was a wide dispersion among members for where they see rates heading in future years.

Investors’ conviction on the move vacillated in the days leading up to the meeting. Over the past week, the odds had shifted to a half-point cut, with the probability for 50 basis points at 63% just before the decision coming down, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch gauge.

The Fed last reduced rates on March 16, 2020, part of an emergency response to an economic shutdown brought about by the spread of Covid-19. It began hiking in March 2022 as inflation was climbing to its highest level in more than 40 years, and last raised rates in July 2023. During the tightening campaign, the Fed raised rates 75 basis points four consecutive times.

The current jobless level is 4.2%, drifting higher over the past year though still at a level that would be considered full employment.

“This was an atypical big cut,” Porceli said. “We’re not knocking on recessions’ door. This easing and this bit cut is about recalibrating policy for the fact that inflation has slowed so much.”

With the Fed at the center of the global financial universe, Wednesday’s decision likely will reverberate among other central banks, several of whom already have started cutting. The factors that drove global inflation higher were related mainly to the pandemic – crippled international supply chains, outsized demand for goods over services, and an unprecedented influx of monetary and fiscal stimulus.

The Bank of England, European Central Bank and Canada’s central bank all have cut rates recently, though others awaited the Fed’s cue.

While the Fed approved the rate cut, it left in place a program in which it is slowly reducing the size of its bond holdings. The process, nicknamed “quantitative tightening,” has brought the Fed’s balance sheet down to $7.2 trillion, a reduction of about $1.7 trillion from its peak. The Fed is allowing up to $50 billion a month in maturing Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities to roll off each month, down from the initial $95 billion when QT started.

But the simple act can actually help you garner influence and even get the people around to you change their minds, says communication expert Matt Abrahams — if you know the right questions to ask.

“Asking a question puts you in a position of power,” Abrahams, a Stanford University lecturer, tells CNBC Make It. “I can actually raise my status and lower your status when I ask a challenging question.”

Asking good questions “demonstrates you care, it demonstrates empathy, it demonstrates you’re willing to learn and, in some cases, admit you don’t know everything,” he adds. “Those are all valuable tools and assets to have when you’re trying to grow your career or deepen relationships.”

Effective leaders often balance their credibility with humility, a willingness to learn and connect well with their colleagues, experts say. But not every question will help you get ahead. You need to know how, when and why you’re asking the question for it to help make you more influential, says Abrahams.

Here’s how to ask the right questions, at work, home and in your social life, to get ahead and strengthen relationships, he says.

The recipe for a good question

Good questions contain three elements, says Abrahams:

• They’re concise, so the listener doesn’t get distracted
• They build on what the other person has said — furthering the conversation, rather than paraphrasing or summarizing
• They revolve around a focused idea, or the conversation topic’s “bottom line”

“It can have multiple purposes,” but it should be quick, clear and focused enough so people understand the point of I’m trying to make,” Abrahams says.

You should consider your intention or goal before asking any question, he adds. Do you want show you’re listening and understanding, or that you’re very interested in the subject at hand? Maybe you want to subtly help the other person understand another perspective, or simply move the conversation along.

One of the worst intentions, Abrahams notes: trying to get participation points in workplace meetings. Your questions always need to be thoughtful, he says — if you aren’t helping clarify a point or furthering a conversation, your colleagues may just roll their eyes at you.

How to practice asking questions

Asking good questions, especially to persuade, influence or change someone’s mind, takes practice. Start small, and try approaching .. your casual interactions like interviews, where you’re trying to learn more about the other person or conversational subject, recommends Abrahams.

If your questions often ramble, and you want to become more concise, he suggests turning to artificial intelligence: Ask a chatbot like ChatGPT for shorter ways to phrase specific questions, then analyze the results. You can also ask real people for feedback — after a big meeting or serious work conversation, find a trusted colleague and ask them what they thought of the questions you posed.

Above all else, always listen to other people before asking them anything, Abrahams says.

“Anytime you are listening, you’re doing yourself a service. You are showing the other person you’re here,” Abrahams says. Then, your question is more likely to feel like you’re “inviting the other person to collaborate, and solving the problem [together] helps you foster that relationship in the long-term.”

Want to master your money this fall? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course. We’ll teach you practical strategies to hack your budget, reduce your debt, and grow your wealth. Start today to feel more confident and successful. Use code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off, now extended through September 30, 2024, for the back-to-school season.

Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It’s newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.

Boeing will temporarily furlough thousands of U.S. executives, managers and other staff, citing the ongoing machinist strike as the company races to preserve cash, CEO Kelly Ortberg told employees Wednesday.

The furloughs will affect tens of thousands of Boeing employees, a company spokesperson said.

The plan came less than a week after Boeing’s more than 30,000 machinists in the Seattle area and Oregon overwhelmingly voted down a new labor contract and 96% voted to strike, walking off the job just after midnight on Friday.

Negotiations between the two sides continued this week with a mediator. Boeing had offered a 25% raise and the union endorsed the tentative contract. But some workers told CNBC that the contract offer was rejected because the raises weren’t sufficient enough to match the increase in the cost of living in the Seattle area and it didn’t restore their pensions.

“We will not mince words – after a full day of mediation, we are frustrated,” the union said in a statement Tuesday.

Ortberg, who has been in the job for just under six weeks, said in a staff memo that affected employees would take one week of furlough every four weeks for the strike’s duration and he and his team would take “commensurate” pay cuts during the strike.

“While this is a tough decision that impacts everybody, it is in an effort to preserve our long-term future and help us navigate through this very difficult time. We will continue to transparently communicate as this dynamic situation evolves and do all we can to limit this hardship,” Ortberg said in his message.

Boeing’s CFO, Brian West, earlier this week said the company would freeze hiring and raises to cut costs, and would let “non-essential contractors” go temporarily.

The financial impact of the strike will depend how long it lasts, West said, but it adds to pressure on Boeing’s leaders, who are trying to move the company past safety and quality crises, including the fallout from a near-catastrophic door plug blowout in January, and $60 billion in debt.

Ortberg said that “activities critical to our safety, quality, customer support and key certification programs will be prioritized and continue” including production of its 787 Dreamliners, which are made in a nonunion facility in South Carolina.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday said former President Donald Trump could pay for his presidential campaign’s proposed economic policies by rolling back corporate regulation and expanding tax cuts to stimulate growth.

“You have to bring about a pro-growth economy, and you do that with a combination of aggressive use of the tax code and reduction in government regulation,” the Louisiana lawmaker said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

“If you get Republican leadership in the White House, the Senate and the House, unified government, we will put this thing on turbo. You will see massive regulatory reform,” he said.

Trump has proposed making his 2017 tax cuts permanent and further lowering the corporate tax rate, as well as wholly eliminating federal income taxes on worker tips, overtime pay and Social Security benefits.

An August study from the nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model found that Trump’s proposed policies could add an estimated $5.8 trillion to the federal deficit over the next 10 years.

That figure did not include Trump’s Sept. 12 proposal to exempt overtime pay from federal income taxes.

If applied only to pay that is currently designated as overtime, the proposal would add an estimated $866 billion to the total cost of Trump’s proposals over the next decade, according to an analysis from the Yale Budget Lab. A tax exemption for all hours worked over 40 hours per week would cost an estimated $1.3 trillion over 10 years.

On Tuesday, the Republican presidential nominee also floated reestablishing the state and local tax, or SALT, deduction, which he capped during his first term.

Johnson on Wednesday said he agreed with all of Trump’s proposals. Paying for them, he said, would come down to a combination of corporate tax cuts, deregulation and energy policy to get “the economy humming.”

Trump, however, has repeatedly said he wants to pay for his plans with the proceeds from hard-line tariffs on all imports, with an especially high rate for Chinese imports.

During his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris last Tuesday, Trump touted the “billions and billions of dollars” in revenue generated by his first-term tariffs, which nearly triggered a trade war with China.

Johnson made no mention of tariffs as a potential revenue source Wednesday. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment about Johnson’s suggestions for how to pay for Trump’s proposed tax cuts.

As of March 2024, Trump’s first-term tariffs, many of which President Joe Biden left in place and built upon, brought in a total of over $233 billion in higher taxes collected for the U.S. government, paid for by American consumers because suppliers passed the costs on, according to the Tax Foundation.

$89 billion of that was generated during the Trump administration, while the remaining $144 billion came in under Biden.

The gap between the billions of dollars in tariffs collected and the estimated trillions of dollars Trump’s tax giveaways would cost is one that is not lost on economists, who warn of exploding annual deficits and national debt if the plans are enacted as proposed.

Experts have also criticized Trump’s across-the-board tariff proposal directly, arguing it could raise consumer prices just as they have begun to cool from the 40-year inflation high of 2022.

Johnson’s comments Wednesday came hours before he faced a House vote for his six-month stopgap government funding bill, which is expected to fail due to lingering opposition within the GOP caucus. If Congress does not pass a funding resolution by Sept. 30, the government will go into partial shutdown at 12:01 a.m. E.T. on Oct. 1.

The Federal Reserve surprised Wall Street with a half-point rate cut on Wednesday, bringing its target range to 4.75% to 5.00%. The decision was not unanimous, as Fed Governor Michelle Bowman called for a quarter-point cut instead. At his press conference, Chair Jerome Powell called the rate reduction a “recalibration” of central bank policy, noting that the Fed will continue to make decisions meeting by meeting.

Risk of downturn not heightened following rate decision, Powell says

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell does not see the risk of an economic downturn being “elevated” following the super-sized cut.

“I don’t see anything in the economy right now that suggests that the likelihood of a recession, sorry, of a downturn, is elevated,” he said.

“I don’t see that,” he continued. “You see growth at a solid rate. You see inflation coming down. You see a labor market that’s still at very solid levels. So, I don’t really see that now.”

— Sean Conlon

‘We are not going back’ to world of ultra-low interest rates

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell does not expect the era of cheap money to return.

“Intuitively, most — many, many people anyway — would say we are probably not going back to that era where there were trillions of dollars of sovereign bonds trading at negative rates, long-term bonds trading at negative rates,” he said.

“My own sense is that we are not going back to that,” Powell added.

He feels the neutral rate is likely significantly higher than it was back then, although he does not know yet how high it is.

— Michelle Fox

Powell says Fed’s goal is to restore price stability while keeping unemployment rate in check

The Fed’s goal now is to keep inflation stable while simultaneously ensuring jobless rates don’t tick higher, according to Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

“We’re trying to achieve a situation where we restore price stability without the kind of painful increase in unemployment that has come sometimes with disinflation,” he said in the post-meeting press conference.

Powell added that investors should take the Fed’s 50 basis-point rate cut as a sign of its “strong commitment” toward achieving that goal.

— Lisa Kailai Han

Powell notes ‘broad support’ for rate cut decision

Despite one dissenting vote on the Federal Reserve’s decision to cut interest rates by 50 basis points on Wednesday, the central bank was largely on the same page about the decision, according to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

“There was a lot of discussion back and forth, there was also broad support for the decision that the committee voted on,” Powell said.

“There is a dissent, and there’s a range of views, but there’s actually a lot of common ground as well,” he added.

— Brian Evans

Powell says economy is in ‘good shape’

The labor market is in solid condition and it is the Federal Reserve’s intention to keep it that way with Wednesday’s rate cut, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said.

“The U.S. economy is in good shape. It is growing at a solid pace. Inflation is coming down,” he said.

— Michelle Fox

Powell says the Fed is in no rush to get this done

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank is not in a hurry to ease policy, according to its projections.

“There’s nothing in the SEP (Summary of Economic Projections) that suggests the committee is in a rush to get this done,” Powell said in a press conference. “This process evolves over time.”

The so-called “dot plot” indicated that 19 FOMC members, both voters and nonvoters, see the benchmark fed funds rate at 4.4% by the end of this year, equivalent to a target range of 4.25% to 4.50%. The Fed’s two remaining meetings for the year are scheduled on Nov. 6-7 and Dec.17-18.

Through 2025, the central bank forecasts interest rates landing at 3.4%, indicating another full percentage point in cuts. Through 2026, rates are expected to fall to 2.9% with another half-point reduction.

— Yun Li

Fed Chair Powell: Don’t assume ‘this is the new pace’

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a half-percentage point on Wednesday, but investors should not assume it will continue at that pace going forward.

“We’ve waited. And I think that patience has really paid dividends in the form of our confidence that inflation is moving sustainably under 2%, so I think that is what enables us to take this strong move today,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday. “I do not think that anyone should look at this and say, ‘Oh, this is the new pace.'”

“I think we’re going to go carefully meeting by meeting, and make our decisions as we go,” he said.

— Sarah Min

Job growth slowdown ‘bears watching,’ Powell says

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the U.S. labor market is currently “pretty close” to maximum employment but reiterated that the central bank was aware of signs that job growth has cooled.

“Clearly payroll job creation has moved down over the last few months, and this bears watching,” he said.

— Jesse Pound

50 basis point rate cuts are rare in recent history except for emergency cuts during crisis events, investor says

The Federal Reserve kicked off its rate-cutting campaign Wednesday afternoon with a half-percentage-point reduction. But some investors believe the U.S. central bank jumped the gun with a rate cut that was too big, too soon for the current backdrop.

“Recent economic data suggests the economy is still relatively strong compared to other easing periods with unemployment at 4.2%, higher year over year but at a level that signals full employment, and GDP expanding at a 3.0% annual rate as of Q2 2024,” said Philip Straehl, chief investment officer of the Americas at Morningstar Wealth. He noted that half-point cuts “have been rare in recent decades,” adding that they were used during emergencies, such as the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 and in 2008 during the global financial crisis.

Straehl added that this more aggressive reduction indicates that the Federal Reserve “has gotten comfortable that the downward trends in inflation are sustainable” and is now redirecting its focus to pulling off a soft landing.

— Lisa Kailai Han

Powell calls the rate cut a ‘recalibration’ of Fed policy

Powell said in his opening statement that the cut was a “recalibration” for the central bank and did not commit to similar moves at each upcoming meeting.

“This recalibration of our policy stance will help maintain the strength of the economy and the labor market, and will continue to enable further progress on inflation as we begin the process of moving toward a more neutral stance. We are not on any preset course. We will continue to make our decisions meeting by meeting,” Powell said.

— Jesse Pound

Powell says key inflation measure will be at 2.2% in August

A key measure of the pace of price increases will show inflation fell to a 2.2% rate in August, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday.

The central bank leader said the personal consumption expenditures price index got closer to the Fed’s 2% goal, having been at 2.5% in July. The Bureau of Economic Analysis will not release the final PCE number for August until late September.

“Our patient approach over the past year has paid dividends. Inflation is now much closer to our objective, and we have gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2%,” Powell said in his postmeeting press conference.

— Jeff Cox

Fed cut may have been too aggressive, but should support risk-on assets, says Global X

While the Federal Reserve may want to start its rate-cutting cycle without creating an asset bubble, 50 basis points “might have been too aggressive,” said Scott Helfstein, head of investment strategy at exchange-traded fund firm Global X.

“There are not many indications that the economy is slowing in the most recent numbers,” he said. “A larger cut probably was not needed out of the gate, but that should support risk-on asset allocation.”

“This may be one of the most anticipated and telegraphed [starts] to a rate cut cycle in years,” he added.

— Michelle Fox

Investor Nancy Tengler thinks Fed may have acted too quickly

The Federal Reserve may have “jumped the gun” by dropping interest rates 50 basis points, said Nancy Tengler, CEO and chief investment officer of Laffer Tengler Investments.

The economy is slowing but still strong, she said.

“Unemployment may indeed rise but we are not seeing layoffs — JOLTs still a very large number, well above pre-pandemic levels,” Tengler said. “My criticism of the Fed has been a myopic focus on backward-looking data. This feels like that. A single weak employment report and here we are.”

— Michelle Fox

Fed Governor Michelle Bowman dissents, preferred smaller rate cut

The Federal Open Market Committee decision to lower its benchmark rate by 50 basis points did have one public dissent.

Fed Governor Michelle Bowman advocated for a 25 basis point rate cut, according to the policy statement.

Bowman joined the Board of Governors in 2018. She said as recently as July that an additional rate hike may be needed if progress on inflation stalled.

— Jesse Pound

Fed statement says job gains have ‘slowed’ but ‘greater confidence’ on inflation

The Federal Reserve’s updated policy statement said job gains have “slowed,” a change from previous wording that they had “moderated.” However, the statement did not include any additional language about economic growth concerns.

On inflation, the statement now says “the committee has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent.”

Check out the full changes to the statement here.

— Jesse Pound

S&P 500, Dow surge to fresh all-time highs after Fed’s big rate cut

The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average touched fresh records following the Federal Reserve’s move to cut rates by 50 basis points.

At its high, the Dow jumped to 41,981.97, up more than 375 points. The S&P 500 reached 5,689.75, jumping 0.98% for a new record.

The major averages took back some of their gains shortly after as the big cut raised concerns about the economy.

— Darla Mercado

The Federal Reserve cuts interest rates by 50 basis points

Central bank policymakers trimmed interest rates by 50 basis points, marking its first cut in four years.

The move brings the target fed funds rate to a range of 4.75% to 5.00%.

Read the details on the Fed’s market-moving rate cut from CNBC’s Jeff Cox here.

— Darla Mercado

BlackRock’s Rick Rieder says to take advantage of ‘golden age’ of fixed income

With Federal Reserve rate cuts likely imminent, investors should make the most of this “golden age of fixed income” now, according to Rick Rieder, BlackRock’s global chief investment officer of fixed income.

He believes there is a shift coming to the market, where equities will do no better than “OK” and tech stocks will no longer enjoy the “fever pitch” they have had. Instead, investors should buy yield “and just watch it do its thing,” he said.

“The idea of, ‘Gosh, I can lock in for three to five years — and you don’t have to go out to 30 years — I can lock in these yields for the next three to five years.’ I think it’s a pretty compelling proposition,” said Rieder, who manages the BlackRock Flexible Income ETF (BINC).

To find out where Rieder is investing right now, read the full story here.

— Michelle Fox

Where markets stand ahead of the Fed’s decision

The major averages flickered near the flatline as the Federal Reserve’s rate decision approached. As of 1:39 p.m. ET, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite were up nearly 0.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed about 28 points, or just shy of 0.1%.

Treasury yields inched up, with the rate on the 10-year note trading at about 3.67%, reflecting a nearly 4 basis point jump. The 2-year Treasury yield added about 5 basis points to trade at 3.64%.

— Darla Mercado

Rates are expected to drop. Revamp your fixed income holdings

The Federal Reserve’s high interest rate regime — with the current target range of 5.25% to 5.50% — rewarded investors who stashed cash into money market funds and high-yield certificates of deposit, but that party is about to end.

High yields on cash are set to come down once the Fed dials back rates, meaning investors should redeploy some of that money into bonds with greater duration.

Intermediate-term bonds allow investors to lock in today’s higher yields while mitigating exposure to dramatic price swings tied to interest rates.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read the full story here.

— Darla Mercado

CNBC Pro: What the stock market does historically after the first Fed rate cut

With the Federal Reserve expected to make its first interest rate cut in four years Wednesday, it is time to take a look at how the stock market performed at the start of prior easing cycles.

What the stock market did historically after the first Fed rate cut depended largely on the economy, historical data shows. In total, across all cycles, the S&P 500′s performance in the aftermath of the first cut was largely positive but with some big misses when the economy turned down.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read the full story here.

— Sarah Min

These are the most attractive dividend stocks to buy ahead of Fed’s rate-cutting cycle

There are a few high-dividend stocks — including several energy names such as Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips — with strong upside potential that investors can tap into as the Federal Reserve is expected to begin cutting interest rates.

Lower rates should make the yields for dividend stocks even more attractive, lifting the group. These stocks can also be used as a reliable hedge against any economic slowdown in case central bankers end up being behind the curve on rate cuts.

Using the CNBC Pro Stock Screener tool, we searched for stocks with a dividend yield above 3% and a low debt-to-equity ratio under 60%. They have big payouts and are low debt loads, meaning they should be able to keep paying that dividend. They are also poised to see 10% or more upside, per analysts.

Click here to view the results on CNBC Pro’s Stock Screener tool and to make your own screener. Read the full story in CNBC Pro.

— Pia Singh

Here are some stocks that do well when the Fed cuts rates with no recession

Many investors are betting that the Federal Reserve will be able to stave off a recession as it eases monetary policy from current levels.

Against this backdrop, CNBC Pro screened for stocks that have done well when the Fed cuts rates without a recession. Some of the names that made the cut are Nike, Amgen and UnitedHealth.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read the full list here.

— Fred Imbert

More than just a rate cut: What to expect from the Fed’s decision

Traders are eagerly awaiting the Federal Reserve’s rate decision — and the conclusion of the central bank’s two-day meeting promises to be riveting.

The Fed is expected to make its first rate cut since 2020, but markets are split on whether policymakers will trim by 25 basis points or 50 basis points. One basis point is equal to one one-hundredth of a percent. Currently, the Fed’s target range for rates sits at 5.25% to 5.50%.

Wall Street will also delve into the Fed’s “dot plot,” where policymakers share their expectations for rates over the next few years. At the conclusion of this meeting, the central bank officials will also issue their Summary of Economic Projections, which includes forecasts for gross domestic product and inflation.

Read more from CNBC’s Jeff Cox on what investors can expect from the Fed.

— Darla Mercado

Here’s where consumer rates stand as markets anticipate a cut from the Fed

The Federal Reserve is expected to make its first cut to interest rates on Wednesday after more than two years of tight monetary policy. The central bank’s target rate range currently sits at 5.25% to 5.50%.

Higher rates have been tough on borrowers, with the rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage rising to 6.12% as of the week of Sept. 13, according to Mortgage News Daily. That is up from 4.29% during the week of March 11, 2022, just prior to the Fed kicking off its first hike.

Home equity loans have also become more expensive, with rates rising to 8.49% as of last week, compared to 5.96% back in March 2022, according to Bankrate. Credit card interest rates have also jumped more than 400 basis points since the Fed started its rate increases, rising to 20.78% as of last week, Bankrate found. One basis point is equal to one one-hundredth of one percent.

The Fed’s tight policy has provided a silver lining to savers, however. The annual percentage yield on a five-year certificate of deposit has jumped to 2.87%, up from 0.5% in March 2022, according to Haver. Yields on money market funds have also jumped, sitting at 0.46% last week, versus the 0.08% paid just before the Fed began tightening policy in March 2022, Haver found.

— Darla Mercado, Nick Wells

Uncertainty around the possible size of Fed rate cut swirls ahead of the decision

In the hours leading to the Federal Reserve’s rate decision, investors remain split on the extent to which policymakers will cut rates.

Fed funds futures trading suggests a 55% likelihood that central bank officials will dial back rates by 50 basis points, according to the CME FedWatch Tool. They also imply a 45% probability of the Fed lowering rates by 25 basis points. Currently, the Fed’s target rate range is 5.25% to 5.50%. One basis point is equal to one one-hundredth of a percent.

Investors should watch what they wish for, according to Aditya Bhave, senior U.S. economist at Bank of America. The firm anticipates a 25 basis point cut on Wednesday, warning that a 50 basis point cut could ultimately be a worrisome sign.

“Risk assets might initially rally on the back of this dovish surprise,” Bhave wrote Wednesday. “But we’d caution investors that the act of cutting by 50bp means the Fed is less confident about a soft landing.”

 — Darla Mercado

ESPN‘s star NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski is retiring from the company, according to a post from his X account Wednesday morning.

The longtime sports reporter will take a job at St. Bonaventure, his alma mater, and become the general manager of its men’s basketball program, the university said.

Wojnarowski often broke big news in the NBA world, so frequently that his breaking news reports on player transactions became colloquially known as “Woj bombs.” He and The Athletic’s Shams Charania often competed for scoops on the latest news.

“I’ve known and admired Woj since we first worked together at Yahoo! in 2007. His work ethic is second to none,” ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro said in a statement. “He’s extraordinarily talented and fearless. He has led the industry at ESPN, and his dedication to the craft and to fans is legendary.”

The general manager position has grown in popularity in college athletics since the introduction of the Name, Image and Likeness era as athletic departments look for ways to help their programs and student-athletes navigate the new era where they can ink endorsement deals.

The feature, called Teen Accounts, is meant to address the harm social media can do to young peoples’ mental health.

Switching teens to private accounts means they can only be messaged or tagged in posts and comments by accounts they follow, and restrictive search will filter out harmful words and content. The platform also revamped its time reminder feature; teens will get a notification telling them to leave the app after 60 minutes each day.

This is a good first step, says Dr. Shannon Bennett, associate director of the center for youth mental health at NewYork-Presbyterian.

“The opportunity cost while using social media is sleep or in-person socialization,” she says. “I think it’s encouraging to see some effort being made.”

Experts agree the new features might net positive changes, but say its really too early to tell.

Social media might be a major factor in youth loneliness

In 2020, an explosive report revealed Facebook knew Instagram was harmful to youth mental health: 32% of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse, researchers said in a presentation posted to Facebook’s internal message board.

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy named social media as one of the main reasons young people feel more alone in his 2023 report “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation,” 

“Several examples of harms include technology that displaces in-person engagement, monopolizes our attention, reduces the quality of our interactions, and even diminishes our self-esteem,” Murthy wrote “This can lead to greater loneliness, fear of missing out, conflict, and reduced social connection.”

In his best-selling book “The Anxious Generation” NYU social psychologist Johnathan Haidt also cited social media and smartphones as a major cause of youth loneliness.

“Kids going through puberty online are likely to experience far more social comparison, self-consciousness, public shaming, and chronic anxiety than adolescents in previous generations, which could potentially set developing brains into a habitual state of defensiveness,” Haidt wrote for The Atlantic.

‘It’s encouraging to see some effort being made’

Upon Meta’s unveiling of Teen Accounts, experts expressed mixed feelings.

Haidt released a statement saying he is “cautiously optimistic” about the changes.

“Of course, this is just a first step in reforming an ecosystem that badly needs a simpler, more robust way to identify minors and install real age gating, especially for those under 13,” his statement read. “Most of the problems with social media will still plague teens on Instagram. But this is a good start, and I hope it is just the first of many steps from Meta.”

These features do address the major concerns parents and doctors have regarding social media use, Bennett says: “It is a matter both of how much teens are using Instagram and the content they are viewing.”

Teens are using the platform too much and digesting some “extreme or disturbing content,” she says. And, they are often doing so at the expense of face-to-face connection.

However, only time will reveal how effective the changes will be, especially since kids can easily lie about their age.

“On other platforms age restrictions were almost universally ignored,” Bennett says.

However, a growing body of research contradicts the finding that social media is the defining culprit responsible for young peoples’ unhappiness.

So, implementing restrictions might not really matter, says Jeffrey Hall, a communications professor at the University of Kansas who studies relationships and social interaction.

“As there is no strong, causal association between time spent using social media and mental health, it is unlikely that these changes will make a difference for teens across the board,” Hall says.

He also raises concerns about enforcing age restrictions: “With the ease of falsifying age, it is hard to know whether these changes will benefit those who are most at risk.”

While skeptical, Hall echoes Bennett’s sentiment that only time will tell if Teen Accounts will help in any way.

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The University of Tennessee is raising its season ticket prices by 10% across all its sports to prepare for athletes starting to get a cut of the school’s sports revenue, according to an email sent to football season ticket holders on Tuesday.

Tennessee is calling its hike a “talent fee,” and said it “will help fund the proposed revenue share for our student-athletes,” according to the email.

Athletic departments have been gearing up for revenue sharing after a proposed settlement involving three cases the NCAA is named in. A judge has yet to approve the settlement and expressed concerns this month over some of the terms, but Tennessee believes it could go into effect as soon as July 1, according to the email.

The proposed settlement would give $2.78 billion in backpay to student-athletes and would allow schools to pay players up to 22% of the Power Five schools’ average athletic revenue in a given year going forward, according to the NCAA release. It would also get rid of a cap on scholarships.

“As the collegiate model changes, we have to remain flexible,” Tennessee athletic director Danny White said in a video included in the email. “We have to continue leading the way. That connection between resource and competitiveness has never been tighter, only now we have the ability to share these resources with our student-athletes.”

The changes will go into effect beginning with the 2025 football season and will also include a 4.5% hike on single-game tickets.

Tennessee already has one of the biggest athletic departments in the country, coming in at eighth overall for total operating revenue in the 2022-23 season in Sportico’s database of public university athletic departments.

College athletes have been permitted to profit off their name, image and likeness since 2021, which has changed college sports dramatically. Star athletes have been able to sign big endorsement deals, but universities have not started direct revenue sharing, which would benefit more student-athletes.

Starting Jan. 2, corporate staffers will be expected to be in the office five days a week, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a memo to employees on Monday, unless they can cite “extenuating circumstances” or they have been granted an exception by their manager.

The decision marks a significant shift from Amazon’s earlier policy, which required employees to badge in three days a week.

In his memo, Jassy said Amazon has observed that it is easier for employees to “learn, model, practice and strengthen” the company’s culture, and brainstorm, when they work together in person. “If anything, the last 15 months we’ve been back in the office at least three days a week has strengthened our conviction about the benefits,” he said.

Following the announcement, anxious workers have flooded LinkedIn and X feeds with posts wondering if their companies would be next to get rid of flexible work arrangements.

Amazon’s peers may ‘move in lockstep’

Amazon’s move could prompt other companies to introduce stricter in-office requirements for employees by the end of 2024, says Dan Kaplan, a senior client partner at Korn Ferry.

“CEOs rarely take a bold stance on return-to-office without consulting their peers first,” he says. “Whenever there’s an announcement like this, there are usually plenty of other business leaders who are prepared to move in lockstep right behind them.”

Amazon joins several other companies including Citigroup, Walmart and UPS in tightening return-to-office requirements in recent months. 

Such mandates, however, haven’t encouraged more desk workers to resume their commutes. During the first week of September, offices across the U.S. were still only about half as full as they were before the pandemic, according to data from Kastle Systems. 

‘Employees at large tech companies will feel the ripple effects of this announcement the most’

Workplace experts agree that most organizations will stick with the post-pandemic norm of spending two to three days per week in the office.

Just one-third (33%) of U.S. companies require employees to come to the office five days a week, according to recent data from Flex Index, a platform that tracks companies’ flexible work policies. Under 10% of tech companies with more than 1,000 employees have such a requirement.

Brian Elliott, an executive advisor on workplace flexibility, has been saying the concept of spending five days a week in the office is “dead” for months even before Amazon’s announcement. His opinion hasn’t wavered.  

“We might see other smaller tech companies follow Amazon’s lead, but most will continue sticking to some kind of hybrid arrangement,” he says. “A top-down, one-size-fits-all office mandate can lead to a lot of resentment among workers.”

The only industries Kaplan expects to continue to push for a full return to the office are tech, financial services and retail. Leaders in those fields tend to spend more on commercial real estate and are “the most adamant” that remote work can pose security concerns, he says.

Workers in other industries worried about losing their job flexibility shouldn’t sweat Amazon’s announcement too much, Elliott says.

“Employees at large tech companies will feel the ripple effects of this announcement the most, but it won’t lead to a sudden rush of 5-day mandates,” he explains. “Instead, we’ll likely see big tech firms getting more hard-nosed on getting their workers to come in 2-3 days a week, either with badge-tracking or tying in-office attendance to performance and salary reviews.”

Flight risks and other dangers of RTO mandates

Amazon may encounter blowback from its employees. Some of its high-performers could quit, Elliott cautions. He points to one 2023 report from Gartner which found that high-performers, women and millennials are the “greatest flight risks” when organizations implement stricter RTO mandates.

Stricter office attendance policies could also hurt Amazon’s ability to a more diverse pool of candidates. Research has shown that women, people of color and those with disabilities are more likely to opt for remote work.

For now, most companies focus on “smaller, more realistic wins” when it comes to in-person work, says Kathy Kacher, a consultant who advises corporate executives on their RTO plans.

“Bosses are more accepting of the fact that we might not go back to how things were before the pandemic given how unsuccessful attempts to crack down on in-office attendance have been in the past,” she says. “Many leaders been fighting the RTO fight for years — and as long as their bottom lines and productivity remain strong, they’ve decided RTO isn’t the hill they want to die on.”

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The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a half percentage point, or 50 basis points, on Wednesday, its first interest rate cut since March 2020. But homeowners shouldn’t bet on the move as an opportunity to immediately refinance their mortgage.

That’s because “a lot of these rate cuts are already priced in,” Chen Zhao, the economic research lead at Redfin, an online real estate brokerage firm, recently told CNBC. 

While mortgage rates are partly influenced by the Fed’s policy, they are also tied to Treasury yields and the economy. Home loan rates have already started to come down in recent weeks, slightly induced in part by favorable economic data and indications the Fed could cut rates.

As of Thursday, the average 30-year fixed rate mortgage in the U.S. was 6.20%, according to Freddie Mac data via the Fed. That’s down from this year’s peak of 7.22% on May 2.

More from Personal Finance:
What homeowners and buyers need to know as first rate cut is on the horizon
Don’t expect ‘immediate relief’ from the Federal Reserve’s first rate cut
Mortgage rates are falling, improving home buying conditions

It can be very difficult to perfectly time a mortgage refinance by looking at mortgage rate activity alone, said Jeff Ostrowski, a housing expert at Bankrate.com.

“It’s almost impossible to figure out what mortgage rates are going to do from week to week or month to month,” Ostrowski said.

Yet there are ways homeowners can determine when a refinance makes the most sense to them, experts say, especially if more rate cuts are slated before the end of the year.

Here’s how to know when it’s time to refinance your mortgage, according to experts.

‘This is going to be a much smaller wave’

Refinance activity increased to 46.7% of total applications during the week ending Sept. 6, up from 46.4% the week before, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

While there has been an increase in refinances as mortgage rates come down, “compared to the massive refinance boom” in 2020 and 2021, “this is going to be a much smaller wave of refinances,” said Ostrowski.

Most homeowners have a mortgage rate below 5%, said Jacob Channel, senior economic analyst at LendingTree.

A refinance will mostly benefit a “small number of people” who bought homes “when rates were at 8%,” said Ostrowski.

Whether it’s smart for homeowners to refinance their mortgage will depend on factors such as their existing borrowing and repayment timeline, experts say.

How to know when it’s time to refinance

If you are thinking about refinancing, look carefully at what’s going on with rates in the market, reach out to lenders and see if doing so now or in the near future makes the most sense for you, Channel said.

“The only person who can decide whether or not refinancing is going to be worth it is you, based on what’s going on in your life,” he said.

Here are three criteria that can help you determine if a refinance makes the most sense to you:

1. You can cut your rate by 50 basis points or more

To know when it makes sense to refinance, homeowners need to see a notable drop in mortgage rates in order to benefit, experts say. The prevailing rate should be at least 50 basis points below your current rate, Zhao said.

But that’s not a “hard and fast rule,” Channel said.

Some experts set a higher bar: It “makes sense” to consider a refinance if rates have fallen one to two points since you took out the mortgage, Ostrowski said.

Even if your existing mortgage has a high rate, you might want to consider waiting until the central bank is further along in its cuts. The expectation is that rates are to steadily decline throughout the rest of 2024 and into 2025, according to Zhao.

2. You can afford refinance costs

There are two ways to pay for a refinance: with cash up front, or by rolling the expense into your new loan, boosting your monthly mortgage payment.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to refinancing a loan, Melissa Cohn, regional vice president of William Raveis Mortgage in New York, told CNBC in August.

Generally, a refinance is going to cost between 2% and 6% of the loan amount that you are refinancing, said Channel.

For example: If your current loan amount is $250,000 and you’re refinancing the total amount, expect to pay anywhere between 2% and 6% of $250,000, or roughly $5,000 to $15,000.

If you plan to refinance, make sure you can afford the associated costs, such as closing costs, an appraisal and title insurance. The total cost will depend on your area.

3. Your savings will outweigh the costs

You can also look into your “break-even point,” or the moment your savings eclipse the cost of the refinance, said Channel.

Here’s an example on doing that math: If you decide to refinance your mortgage and it costs $6,000 and you’re saving $200 a month, divide $6,000 by $200. The result is the number of months that you have before your refinance has “paid for itself.”

JPMorgan Chase has created a new global role overseeing all junior bankers in an effort to better manage their workload after the death of a Bank of America associate in May forced Wall Street to examine how it treats its youngest employees.

The firm named Ryland McClendon its global investment banking associate and analyst leader in a memo sent this month, CNBC has learned.

Associates and analysts are on the two lowest rungs in Wall Street’s hierarchy for investment banking and trading; recent college graduates flock to the roles for the high pay and opportunities they can provide.

The memo specifically stated that McClendon, a 14-year JPMorgan veteran and former banker who was previously head of talent and career development, would support the “well-being and success” of junior bankers.

The move shows how JPMorgan, the biggest American investment bank by revenue, is responding to the latest untimely death on Wall Street. In May, Bank of America’s Leo Lukenas III died after reportedly working 100-hour weeks on a bank merger. Later that month, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said his bank was examining what it could learn from the tragedy.

Then, starting in August, JPMorgan’s senior managers instructed their investment banking teams that junior bankers should typically work no more than 80 hours, part of a renewed focus to track their workload, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

Exceptions can be made for live deals, said the person, who declined to be identified speaking about the internal policy.

Dimon’s warning

Dimon railed against some of Wall Street’s ingrained practices at a financial conference held Tuesday at Georgetown University. Some of the hours worked by junior bankers are just a function of inefficiency or tradition, rather than need, he indicated.

“A lot of investment bankers, they’ve been traveling all week, they come home and they give you four assignments, and you’ve got to work all weekend,” Dimon said. “It’s just not right.”

Senior bankers would be held accountable if their analysts and associates routinely tripped over the policy, he said.

 “You’re violating it,” Dimon warned. “You’ve got to stop, and it will be in your bonus, so that people know we actually mean it.”

Amazon announced Wednesday it is raising wages for its hourly warehouse workers and adding a new employee perk that will give them a Prime subscription at no extra cost.

Beginning this month, Amazon’s average base pay for front-line employees in the U.S. will be bumped to an average of more than $22 an hour, up from roughly $20.50 an hour, the company said.

Amazon said it is also making its Prime subscription service a part of employees’ benefit package beginning “early next year.” The service, which costs $140 a year, gives members access to speedy shipping and video streaming, among other perks.

Last week, Amazon also hiked wages for its contracted delivery drivers to roughly $22 an hour as part of a $2.1 billion investment this year into its third-party logistics program.

The wage hikes come as Amazon is preparing to enter the peak holiday shopping season, a period when retailers typically see a flurry of online shopping. Amazon said Tuesday it plans to host a second Prime Day-like deal bonanza on Oct. 8-9, the third year it has held the discount event.

Taiwanese pager manufacturer Gold Apollo rejected reports that it produced the devices at the center of deadly attacks in Lebanon that killed at least 12 people and injured nearly 3,000 others.

Thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah members around Lebanon simultaneously exploded on Tuesday evening, sending local emergency services into overdrive as hospitals filled up with wounded patients. Lebanese security sources have been reported as saying that the devices contained explosives planted by Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service.

“The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it,” Hsu Ching-kuang, founder and president of Gold Apollo, told reporters in the Taiwanese city of New Taipei on Wednesday, according to Reuters. He then said that the devices — a model called the AR-924 — were made by a company called BAC Consulting, based in Budapest, Hungary.

Gold Apollo said in a statement cited by Reuters that it had authorized BAC “to use our brand trademark for product sales in specific regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are entirely handled by BAC.”

BAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.

Iran-backed Hezbollah, a militant and political organization that wields significant power in Lebanon, said it distributed the pagers to its members, many of whom had stopped using cell phones to evade Israeli surveillance.

Hezbollah called the act an “Israeli aggression”; Israel, meanwhile, has not commented on the blasts. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was among those injured, while a son of a Hezbollah member of parliament was killed in the attack.

The Lebanese group, which has near-daily exchanges of fire with Israel to its south, has vowed retaliation, raising fears of all-out war in a region already ravaged by conflict. Hezbollah has launched thousands of rockets into Israel in the nearly 12 months since the latter began its war against Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza on Oct. 7. Tens of thousands of people in both Lebanon and Israel have been evacuated from their homes.

Hezbollah’s leadership has previously said it does not seek a wider war, but would fight if provoked by Israel. Just hours before the mass pager detonation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared his government’s aim to return its citizens — those displaced by Hezbollah attacks — to their homes in Israel’s north.

More than 100 Republican former lawmakers and officials endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in a letter, while warning that their own party’s candidate, former President Donald Trump, is “unfit to serve again.”

In the letter, shared by the Harris campaign Wednesday, 111 former national security and foreign policy officials said that despite their disagreements with the vice president’s policies, “we believe that she possesses the essential qualities to serve as President and Donald Trump does not.”

They decried Trump for sowing “daily chaos in government” during his first term in office, arguing that he put his personal interests before the country’s and “violated his oath of office” by inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The group, which includes former Trump administration officials as well as officials who served under former Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, also warned of Trump’s “susceptibility to flattery” by foreign leaders.

“He is unfit to serve again as President, or indeed in any office of public trust,” they said in the letter, which The New York Times first reported earlier Wednesday.

The signatories include former CIA and FBI director William Webster, former director of national intelligence John Negroponte, and former U.S. trade representatives Carla Hills and Robert Zoellick.

They acknowledged many Republicans’ concerns about Harris and preference for Trump. “But any potential concerns pale in comparison to Donald Trump’s demonstrated chaotic and unethical behavior and disregard for our Republic’s time-tested principles of constitutional governance,” they argued.

“His unpredictable nature is not the negotiating virtue he extols. To the contrary, in matters of national security, his demeanor invites equally erratic behavior from our adversaries, which irresponsibly threatens reckless and dangerous global consequences.”

Eight former members of Congress also endorsed the Democratic ticket of Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in the letter.

Wednesday’s letter marks the latest addition of GOP support for Harris, who has sought to appeal to more moderate voters and conservatives who may be disillusioned with Trump.

Her campaign in August launched “Republicans for Harris,” touting endorsements from more than two dozen ex-Trump officials and other GOP members.

In early September, Harris won the support of nearly 90 corporate leaders, including former 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch, Snap Chairman Michael Lynton and Yelp co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman.

Dick Cheney, the vice president to George W. Bush, announced the same month that he would vote for Harris. His daughter, former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, is one of Trump’s loudest conservative critics.

Meanwhile, Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, reaffirmed Tuesday that he would not endorse any presidential candidate in the 2024 election.

Pence specifically referenced the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump pressured his then-vice president to reject the lawful Electoral College results showing President Joe Biden won the 2020 election. After Pence rebuffed Trump, a mob of the then-president’s supporters stormed the Capitol and derailed the election certification.

Wednesday’s letter included a quote from Pence: “Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States.”

For the second consecutive year, the fast food giant is discounting one of its most popular menu items on National Cheeseburger Day. On Sept. 18 only, customers will be able to buy the chain’s famous Double Cheeseburger for 50 cents.

The offer is available to customers who use the fast food chain’s smartphone app, and is limited to one burger per customer.

Users who open the app will be prompted to take advantage of the National Cheeseburger Day promotion, and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout.

McDonald’s announced the return of the deal at the same time that it revealed its $5 Meal Deal would be sticking around until December. The combo, which was released this summer amid slumping sales, features a choice of McDouble or McChicken sandwich, four-piece McNuggets, small fries and a soft drink.

The offering from the Golden Arches is competing with value combos from rival fast food chains like Taco Bell, Burger King, Wendy’s and Popeyes.

Diners looking to get the most value on National Cheeseburger Day will also be able to score a 1-cent Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger from Wendy’s with the purchase of another menu item if they buy it on the chain’s app or website.

Burger King, meanwhile, will give a free cheeseburger to any member of its Royal Perks rewards program who makes a purchase of $1 or more.

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Intuitive Machines‘ stock jumped in early trading Wednesday after NASA awarded the lunar-focused company a major contract to build moon data satellites.

“This contract marks an inflection point in Intuitive Machines’ leadership in space communications and navigation,” Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said in a statement.

NASA said the company was the sole awardee to build “lunar relay systems” for the agency’s Near Space Network, a system that communicates with government and commercial missions that are up to one million miles from Earth. The contract will see Intuitive Machines build and deploy a constellation of lunar satellites to provide communications and navigation services, especially for NASA’s Artemis program.

The five-year contract, which has a maximum total value of $4.82 billion, will incrementally issue awards as work progresses. Intuitive Machines’ initial NSN award is worth $150 million.

Intuitive Machines shares surged more than 40% in afternoon trading from its previous close at $5.40 a share.

Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Andres Sheppard, whose firm has a buy-equivalent rating and a $10 price target on the stock, called the NSN contract a boon for the company.

“We see the win today as a significant catalyst and validation towards LUNR’s outlook and the company’s ability to continue to win contracts,” Sheppard wrote in a note to clients.

The stock has more than doubled year to date as Intuitive Machines has steadily racked up NASA contracts.

Intuitive Machines made history in February as the first U.S. company to soft land a cargo mission on the moon’s surface. Since then, it became one of three companies awarded contracts under NASA’s $4.6 billion crew lunar rover contract and also added its fourth cargo delivery contract with a $117 million award last month.

Benchmark’s Josh Sullivan, who also has a buy rating and $10 price target, said he believes the latest award shows that NASA views Intuitive Machines’ experience “as elite.”

“LUNR’s path to becoming the preeminent lunar infrastructure player took a big step forward with NSN,” Sullivan wrote.

The company is preparing to launch its next cargo mission to the moon, IM-2, in the first quarter. Analysts expect the company’s first NSN lunar satellite will launch on the IM-3 mission that is scheduled for late 2025.

The WNBA is adding its 15th team in Portland, the third new franchise as part of its most recent expansion, the league announced Wednesday.

The Portland team, which was not named in a WNBA release, will begin play in 2026 and will be owned and run by RAJ Sports, an investment firm specifically focused on sports. Lisa Bhathal Merage will be the controlling owner and governor.

“As the WNBA builds on a season of unprecedented growth, bringing a team back to Portland is another important step forward,” said WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert in a release. “Portland has been an epicenter of the women’s sports movement and is home to a passionate community of basketball fans.”

The Portland team will play in the Moda Center, the same arena as the NBA’s Portland Trailblazers.

Team ownership will take feedback from the community to help in naming the franchise, Bhathal Merage said at the Wednesday evening press conference. They are also committed to building a practice facility for the Portland WNBA team and a training facility for the Portland Thorns, according to Alex Bhathal, who will be the WNBA team’s alternate governor.

RAJ Sports purchased the NWSL’s Portland Thorns in January, in addition to becoming co-owners of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings in 2013.

The WNBA is in growth mode as its popularity spikes. The Golden State Valkyries will begin play in 2025, followed by teams in Toronto and Portland in the 2026 season.

Portland has had a WNBA team before, but it shut down after a few years in 2002. The addition of the new Portland team underscores booming growth for both the WNBA and women’s sports in general. The National Women’s Soccer League is also in expansion mode and has added several teams since 2022.

The 2024 WNBA season has seen record numbers for both in-person attendance and viewership, according to data from the WNBA for the start of the season. The playoffs are set to start Sept. 22.

A combination of existing stars such as A’ja Wilson and an exciting rookie class headlined by Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have helped to propel the WNBA, leading to a huge jump in the value of the most recent NBA media rights deal.

In May, the WNBA also announced that teams would have leaguewide chartered flights for the first time ever, primarily via Delta Air Lines.

The 43-year-old singer, whose full name is Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, once put her career before anything else, she told GQ last week. For years, she subjected herself to the pop-star blueprint, she said: red carpets, award ceremonies, charting singles, stadium tours, rinse and repeat.

The work-first lifestyle caught up to her, resulting in insomnia, physical exhaustion, and poor mental health, she said. These days, she’s more intentional about work-life balance — and she’s more successful because of it, she added.

“There was a time when I was pushing myself to meet unrealistic deadlines, while not taking the time to enjoy the benefits of why I was working so hard,” said Beyoncé. “There aren’t many of us from the late ’90s who were taught to focus on mental health. Back then, I had little boundaries, and said yes to everything … And now I work smarter.”

Even when you’re already an established force in your industry, it’s hard to know when to set boundaries, move at your own pace or pursue a job you genuinely care about instead of one just for the money, Beyoncé said.

In her case, that meant spending five years creating a country-inspired album — “Cowboy Carter,” which came out in March — and launching two business lines this year. One is Cécred, a hair-care brand she’s said was inspired by her childhood helping out at her mother’s hair salon. The other, SirDavis, is a Moët Hennessy whiskey label named after her Prohibition-era moonshiner great-grandfather Davis Hogue.

“Cowboy Carter” sold 407,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, according to Billboard. Cécred’s moisture sealing lotion won one of Elle UK’s 2024 Future of Beauty Awards, and SirDavis won two platinum titles at last year’s SIP Awards before becoming available to the public.

“I don’t waste my time on something unless I’m deeply passionate about it. If I don’t wake up thinking about it and I’m not going to sleep dreaming about it, it’s not for me,” Beyoncé said, adding: “I build my work schedule around my family. I try to only tour when my kids are out of school … So, when you don’t see me on red carpets, and when I disappear until I have art to share, that’s why.”

Don’t make a habit of overworking yourself

It’s easy to forget about your mental and physical health when you’re loaded with responsibility at work. Take it from billionaire Bill Gates, who never took time off while building Microsoft, and now regrets it.

“I didn’t believe in vacations. I didn’t believe in weekends. I didn’t believe the people I worked with should either,” Gates said during a commencement speech at Northern Arizona University last year.

Yasmene Mumby, a Harvard University-trained leadership advisor, says she once got so stressed at work, she began to lose her vision. Out of necessity, she started cutting back on professional responsibilities, avoiding urgent deadlines and speaking up when overwhelmed. The process forced her to figure out how to do her job more efficiently and intentionally, inadvertently turning her into a higher achiever, she told Make It last year.

You don’t have to be the first person in the office and the last one out to be successful: The quality of your work is often more important than the number of hours you spend online, according to Stacie Haller, chief career advisor at ResumeBuilder.

“I think people are savvy these days enough to know that just because you sit in the office eight hours a day doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a productive employee,” Haller told Make It last month.

Your workplace connections can matter too. “Establish relationships, find a mentor, get to know a team,” said Haller. “Observe the successful people, see how they work and operate, and ask for advice.”

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“I see money as a thing that you work really hard for,” she says. 

In 2023, she earned over $161,000 as a senior economist at the U.S. Census Bureau and teaching as an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland. In 2024, she’ll earn $201,564 from those positions, plus income from three rental properties she bought in 2023.

She and her husband live comfortably in Bethesda, Maryland, with their 5-year-old son, Leo. Tello-Trillo says she’s starting to teach Leo little money lessons he can grasp, like giving him a $5 limit to get whatever he wants at a store. But she’s not currently putting aside any money to pay for him to go to college.

“I don’t expect to pay for my kid’s college,” she tells CNBC Make It. “I hope that he gets a scholarship, or he gets a loan so that he can pay for his own college.”

Her son has quite a bit of time before he’ll start thinking about whether or not he even wants to go to college, and Tello-Trillo says maybe she’ll change her mind. But here’s why she’s not eager to start saving for his higher education just yet.

‘I want him to fight for the things that he wants’

Though she was born in the U.S., Tello-Trillo grew up in Peru and came back to the States to earn her Ph.D. at Yale University — on a full scholarship. She used that degree to land her job at the Census Bureau, which has helped her become a part-time real estate investor. 

“My husband and I worked really hard for our money. And both [my husband’s and my] parents also did,” she says. “They show us that you have to work hard for money, so that’s what I want to show [Leo].” 

DON’T MISS: How to master your money and grow your wealth

It’s that reasoning that also makes Tello-Trillo hesitant to leave her son a hefty inheritance in the future. She doesn’t want him to slack off in life because he knows he has a fortune coming his way through an inheritance.

“I would not like my kid to feel that he has enough of a safety net so he doesn’t make an effort to succeed in the world,” she says. “I want him to fight for the things that he wants, and maybe I’ll save some money so he can get a decent inheritance, but not a lot.”

A handful of high-profile wealthy people, including Warren Buffett, Anderson Cooper and Guy Fieri, have similar outlooks.

Buffett is well-known for his massive wealth — his net worth is currently over $140 billion — but has earned a reputation for his commitment to philanthropy as well. While each of his children have their own foundation funded by Buffett, he says he won’t leave them the bulk of his money when he dies.

“Leave the children enough so that they can do anything, but not enough that they can do nothing,” he said in a 2021 note to shareholders.

Tello-Trillo first became interested in how money works while playing Monopoly as a child, she says. Though her son is too young to play now, she’s excited to show him when he’s older and hopes he’ll take those early money lessons to heart when he does.

“I expect him to get his own money, get his own savings, because that’s the way that life works,” she says.

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Oil prices closed slightly lower Wednesday, snapping a two-day winning streak even after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates for the first time in years.

The central bank slashed rates by a half point, a bigger move than many had expected. Though prices clawed back losses from earlier in the session, the response in the oil market was subdued.

“A 50 basis point cut is slightly supportive of the oil market since it translates into a weaker dollar and stronger prices for dollar denominated commodities,” said Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates.

Here are Wednesday’s closing energy prices:

• West Texas Intermediate October contract: $70.91 per barrel, down 28 cents, or 0.39%. Year to date, U.S. crude oil has fallen about 1%.
• Brent November contract: $73.65 per barrel, down 5 cents, or 0.07%. Year to date, the global benchmark has declined about 4%.
• RBOB Gasoline October contract: $2.01 per gallon, up 0.44%.Year to date, gasoline has shed more than 4%.
• Natural Gas October contract: $2.284 per thousand cubic feet, down nearly 1.72%. Year to date, gas has pulled back about 9%.

Matt Smith, lead oil analyst for the Americas at Kpler, said the oil rally in the previous sessions had largely already been priced into a rate cut. “Hence the response may be muted,” Smith said.

The oil market has been rattled this month by worries about a growing imbalance between supply and demand. U.S. crude and global benchmark Brent have fallen about 13% in the third quarter.

Consumption in China is slowing as electric vehicle sales surge in the world’s largest crude importer. At the same time, OPEC+ is expected to increase production in December as output in the U.S., Canada, Brazil and Guyana remains strong.

“We are not expecting fireworks in the sky following Fed rate cuts,” said Manish Raj, managing director of Velandera Energy Partners. 

“The Fed action is unlikely to suddenly spur demand, which has otherwise been soft,” Raj said. “Nobody is hitting the gas stations just because the Fed decides to cut the rates today.”

U.S. commercial crude stockpiles fell by 1.6 million barrels for the week that ended Sept. 13, according to the Energy Information Administration. Meanwhile, gasoline inventories rose by 100,000 barrels, according to the data.

Geopolitical tensions are also escalating in the Middle East again as fears grow that a major conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah is on the horizon. Hundreds of pagers exploded in Lebanon on Tuesday in an attack targeting Hezbollah militia members.

Apple’s iPhone 16 family of phones will hit shelves on Friday. Ahead of their launch, I’ve spent the past five days been testing the high-end iPhone 16 Pro Max.

It’s a great phone with cool updates like a dedicated camera button, and it charges faster over MagSafe than earlier Pro models. The screens are also slightly larger than prior versions.

But this review is tricky, because one of the banner features Apple has been hyping — on stage and in its new ads — is Apple Intelligence. It’s Apple’s suite of AI features for the iPhone, and it’s not coming until later this year.

There are reasons to be excited. A few of the new AI features, like changes to Siri, photo editing, and the option to have AI rewrite text for you, will launch in beta in October. More additions, such as as Apple’s image and emoji generator, more personal Siri responses and integration with ChatGPT, will come later.

I was able to test some of the beta features for this review. Others weren’t available. Those limitations make it difficult to provide a comprehensive assessment of the new device or to suggest whether the upgrade is worthwhile.

Apple shares slid earlier in the week after analysts suggested lighter demand for the iPhone 16 Pro models this year. TF Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said the problem is that Apple Intelligence isn’t out at launch. Barclays also feared it may be because the Chinese language version of Apple Intelligence won’t launch until 2025.

Here’s what you need to know about the new iPhone 16 Pro Max, as of now.

The changes to know about

The biggest change you’ll notice is the new camera button. I’m still getting used to it after a few days, but I’m already defaulting to just pulling the phone out of my pocket, tapping the button and taking a picture.

My wife rightly asked me why I don’t just hit the camera button on the lock screen like on earlier iPhones. I don’t have a good answer for that. It just feels more natural to push a camera button.

I enjoyed doing a half-press to get camera controls like the zoom during my son’s first soccer game, though I found it was easier to sometimes just pinch to zoom. The new 48-megapixel wide-angle lens offers sharper images in zoomed-out shots that can capture more scenery.

Videographers will likely enjoy the 4K 120fps recording offered on the iPhone 16 Pro Max. Still, I try to keep my clips in lower quality because I’m sharing them over text messages with family and friends.

The iPhone 16 Pro Max has the best battery life of any iPhone yet. Apple’s new A18 Pro processor paired with a larger battery offers up to 33 hours of video playback, up from 29 hours on last year’s iPhone 15 Pro Max. I was usually able to make it to about dinnertime before needing to charge the 15, and I can make it to bedtime — or beyond — with the new phone depending on how much I’m using it.

I love that Apple increased the speed of its MagSafe charging. I used MagSafe when it came out but ultimately switched back to regular cable charging because it was quicker. Now, MagSafe gives up to a 50% charge in 30 minutes if you’re using a 30-watt charger (not included.)

The screens are slightly larger on this year’s Pro models. The iPhone 16 Pro Max moved from 6.7 inches to 6.9 inches. I didn’t notice a difference and could only tell when I put the two phones next to each other. It’s still a fantastic screen with a high refresh rate, which means scrolling is smooth. It’s colorful and bright and I love the always-on display for seeing notifications without picking up my phone. It’s not new this year but still useful and limited to the Pro models.

Apple Intelligence

In the absence of Apple Intelligence at launch, I’m limited to testing a few beta features. They’re hit or miss, as to be expected in beta.

Apple Intelligence could help drive a new cycle of iPhone upgrades. Apple reported $39.3 billion in iPhone sales during the fiscal third quarter, about 46% of the company’s total revenue and down 1% from a year earlier. CEO Tim Cook said the segment grew on a constant currency basis.

I like email summaries provided by Apple Intelligence. They’re accurate and give you just a couple of lines that summarize what’s said or relayed in an email. This only works in Apple’s Mail app, though, so it won’t work if your company makes you use Outlook or if you prefer Gmail. Similarly, I found that Apple Intelligence accurately summarized long bits of text (including the introduction to this review) and returned an accurate snippet. 

In notifications, it’s just OK. Summaries of news alerts were correct. Summaries of text messages sometimes were unnecessary. In one text from my wife, for example, Apple Intelligence suggested I threw a dinosaur at my daughter and made her cry before I apologized. In reality, my son was the culprit. The original text would have been sufficient. 

In a daycare app notification that I use, Apple Intelligence did a good job summarizing that my daughter “took a nap, ate Cheerios, and is playing happily.” That would be a perfect amount of information to receive while driving.

Another Apple Intelligence feature can help you create movie memories, which are little snippets of photos and videos set to music. In a TV ad, Apple shows a young woman using it to create memories of a dead goldfish with the help of Siri.

I couldn’t use Siri to create movies like that. Instead, I opened the Photos app, tapped Memories and wrote in a prompt asking for a photo memory of my son “learning to fish at Skytop set to a fishing tune.” It correctly showed pictures of a family trip to the Poconos but didn’t include any pictures of my son fishing there. The music was called “Fishing Tune” by Jiang Jiaqiang but didn’t sound like fishing music to me. Another test, asking for a photo memory of my son “playing soccer,” worked better but also included a picture of him as a baby with a football in his hands.

There’s also the whole new Siri interface that glows along the edges of the screen. I like the look compared to the globe, and it’s easier to type to Siri by tapping the screen indicator at the bottom of the display. Siri doesn’t feel drastically changed to me right now, although I liked that I could ask iPhone-specific questions like “How do I use my iPhone to scan a document?” and “How do I take a screen recording?” Siri presents the answer in a simple step-by-step guide at the top of the screen.

You can speak to Siri with interruptions now, too. So, if you get stumped while you’re thinking and say “umm” or “hold on a second,” you can continue to ask questions in the same line of thought, like “How tall is the Eiffel Tower?” and then follow with, “And when was it built?” But it doesn’t always work. I tried “How far is Boston?” for example, followed by, “And what’s the weather there?” Siri gave me the weather for my current location. 

Apple Intelligence can be useful and I’m excited to see where it goes.

Apple iPhone 16

I focused this review on the iPhone 16 Pro Max. The iPhone 16 is slightly smaller and has a little less battery life but is otherwise identical. My colleague used the regular iPhone 16.

There are a few differences between the two. The iPhone 16 comes in more colors and is built out of aluminum instead of titanium like the higher-end Pro models. It also has the new camera button but lacks the higher refresh rate and the always-on features of the Pro model displays.

The iPhone 16 will support all of the Apple Intelligence features I’ve mentioned above, plus the ones that are still coming. Apple also upgraded the processor for faster performance and added a new macro camera mode for up-close pictures of objects, as well as support for capturing spatial images for the Apple Vision Pro headset. It offers up to 22 hours of video playback versus the 20 hours in last year’s iPhone 15.

Should you buy it?

The iPhone 16 Pro Max is a solid upgrade, but you’ll probably find the biggest changes if you’re coming from an iPhone 14 Pro Max or earlier. The biggest improvements over last year’s phone are the added camera button, a faster chip, new cameras and a slightly larger display. 

When it comes to Apple Intelligence, we’ll all have to wait for features like using Siri to ask about prior calendar events, questions that require personal context, using Siri to control your apps, or Apple’s integration with ChatGPT. So if you’re buying now, it’s for everything but the AI. 

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LONDON — With traders preparing for the double impact of monetary policy decisions by both the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, economists told CNBC that a “jumbo” rate cut by the former won’t deter the latter from a rate hold this week.

Markets suggest a more than 60% probability of the Fed opting for a 50 basis point cut — rather than a 25 basis point reduction — on Wednesday, from its current rate range of 5.25% to 5.50%. Either way, this would be Fed’s first rate cut in the current cycle.

Meanwhile, money market pricing for a BOE cut at Thursday’s September meeting dipped from 35% late Tuesday to 26% Wednesday morning, still slightly higher than it was last week. The move came after U.K. inflation came in at 2.2% for August, steady on July and in-line with expectations — thus backing the need for a little more caution in Threadneedle Street.

While Britain’s headline rate has spent five months at or near the central bank’s 2% target, inflation in the services sector — which accounts for a huge 81% of the U.K. economy — has remained stubbornly high, rising to 5.6% in August from 5.2% in July.

Reduced energy prices have also contributed to the decline in the headline figure, with core inflation — which excludes energy, food, alcohol and tobacco — declining at a slower pace.

Sanjay Raja, chief economist at Deutsche Bank, told CNBC a more “forceful” rate cut from the Fed would not necessarily move the dial for the BOE this week, not least because the Monetary Policy Committee generally ratifies its decision around lunchtime on Wednesday ahead of its Thursday announcement. The Fed’s announcement is not due until 7 p.m. London time (2 p.m. ET).

“However, where it could have an impact is in the MPC’s risk management considerations, including opening the door for a discussion on two-sided inflation/growth risks to the economy, and perhaps even emboldening some on the MPC to talk up a more rapid dial down of restrictive policy, given the green light from the Fed,” Raja said.

George Lagarias, chief economist at Forvis Mazars, told CNBC on Wednesday that in developed economies, “services inflation is going up and they are relying on an externality to bring the headline rate down,” he said.

“Headline inflation is coming down because China is losing economic steam faster than it cares to admit and they’re inadvertently deflating the world, which is great for central banks,” he added.

Lagarias explained that this externality “means it would be premature to cut rates aggressively,” both in the U.K. and the U.S. Because of that, he sees neither the Fed cutting by 50 basis points on Wednesday, nor the BOE following up with a Thursday cut this week, even in a bid to boost lackluster economic growth.

Additionally, to cut too fast and too far could require central banks to hike rates next year, damaging their credibility and the setting of inflation expectations, he noted. Lagarias believes the expectation for a 50 basis point cut was based on bond market positioning and did not reflect the view of a majority of strategists.

“The Fed may be late to the party [in cutting rates], but it will set the tone going forward,” he said.

The BOE kicked off monetary easing with a 25 basis point rate cut in August, but the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) left market participants questioning whether they would go through with it until the last minute.

The voting members were split five to four in favor of the reduction, with those on the cautious side citing the labor market and services as key causes for concern.

Consultancy Capital Economics said Wednesday’s consumer price index cemented a rate hold in September, pointing instead to a 25 basis point cut at the next meeting in November. Downward pressure from food and fuel prices were offset by rises in household equipment, recreation, culture and airfares, it added.