Cooler heads prevail

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Cooler heads prevailed on Tuesday following Monday’s market bloodbath and subsequent fevered calls for quicker and bigger rate cuts by the Federal Reserve. By yesterday afternoon, old hands on Wall Street were already warning that the steep selloff was more about panic than reason, and that sudden fears of a US downturn were misplaced. At the close of trading in New York today, all major groups in the S&P 500 rose, with the gauge finishing 1% higher. As for all that wishful Wall Street thinking about an emergency rate cut, none other than Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer David Solomon advised everyone to cool their jets: No, the Fed won’t do it, and no, there probably won’t be a recession, Solomon said. “The Fed worries about systemic risk in financial markets, not disappointed investors,” explained David Donabedian at CIBC Private Wealth US. “Thus, the Fed is unlikely to change its course of action due to a stock market correction.” —David E. Rovella

US Vice President Kamala Harris’ choice for her running mate came down to two governors—one who offered to deliver the most populous 2024 battleground but threatened to alienate important party factions, and a progressive contender from a reliably blue state. In the end, Harris bypassed Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro for Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who has already cut a folksy figure with his mocking of Donald Trump and and his running mate, James David (J.D.) Vance, as “weird.” It’s become a rallying cry for Democrats. Here’s what to know about Walz, who at 60 is just one year older than Harris.

Monday’s market wipeout swept through equities, bonds and currencies, leaving only a few resilient pockets relatively unscathed. The fallout reveals how some investors are reconsidering what might be the best havens to run to, as traders rapidly pull out of popular assets once considered good bets. Here are some examples of what investors bought—or dumped—that might surprise you.

The recent unwinding in carry trades has more room to run as the yen remains one of the most undervalued currencies, according to JPMorgan. Yen carry trades—borrowing at low rates in Japan to fund purchases of higher-yielding assets elsewhere—have long been popular among investors as volatility remained low and traders bet Japanese interest rates would remain at rock bottom. But an 11% appreciation in the yen against the dollar over the past month has turned many of those trades into money-losers. And the trade was further pummeled as yen volatility jumped amid panicky traders looking at slowing US employment and the Bank of Japan’s rate hike.

Crypto traders are piling back into optimistic bets in the options market almost immediately after one of the worst liquidations of bullish positions this year. Traders from both offshore exchanges and US over-the-counter desks are buying calls that give them the option to buy Bitcoin at $90,000 and more later this year. About $1.1 billion was liquidated in crypto bets on Aug. 4, one of the largest selloffs this year. In the rout that began during Asian trading hours, Bitcoin tumbled as much 17% and Ether lost more than a fifth of its value at one point.

Following the assassination in Tehran of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, a central player in Gaza cease-fire talks, Hamas has selected as its political leader Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind behind the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 people. It’s the latest blow to multilateral efforts to reach a cease-fire agreement (Hamas has blamed Israel for Haniyeh’s killing). The selection of Sinwar was a message to Israel, said Mkhaimar Abusada, political science professor at Gaza’s Al-Azhar University: “Hamas is saying ‘if you killed the somewhat moderate Haniyeh, here is more of a hardliner and extremist on top of the group.’”

What do you do when markets crash? If you have a 401(k), the old saw is just don’t look at it—eventually it will come back. On days like Monday’s dramatic selloff, which capped a three-week loss of $6.4 trillion in global wealth, personal finance experts usually have similar advice for wary retail investors: Take a breath. Don’t overreact. Take a moment to assess your portfolio. And depending on your situation, perhaps it’s time to put some new money in.

Johannesburg, billed as Africa’s richest city because of its concentration of businesses and millionaires, needs 221 billion rand ($12 billion) to catch up on maintenance and overdue upgrades across its collapsing road, power and water networks. Officials leave potholes unattended for months and parts of the city had no water for as long as 11 days in March. The city council discussed the shortfall late last month and detailed it in documents seen by Bloomberg. It comes at a time when regular power outages—the result of distribution-network breakdowns—have hit large swathes of the city.

Alphabet’s Google lost the biggest antitrust challenge it has faced when a US judge found Aug. 5 that it illegally monopolized the search market. It was a major win for the US Justice Department and state attorneys general and could result in the breakup of the 25-year-old company. Judge Amit Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that $26 billion in payments that Google made to other companies to make its search engine the default option on smartphones and web browsers effectively blocked any other competitor from succeeding in the market. But what happens now?

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