September dreams

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US Federal Reserve officials held interest rates steady but signaled they are moving closer to lowering borrowing costs amid easing inflation and a cooling labor market. The Federal Open Market Committee voted unanimously to leave the benchmark federal funds rate in a range of 5.25% to 5.5%, a level they have maintained since last July. Officials also tempered their assessment of the labor market, noting job gains had moderated and the unemployment rate has moved up, but is still low. They said inflation has eased over the past year but remains “somewhat elevated.” With September cuts now conventional wisdom and a soft landing potentially on the horizon, markets reacted gleefully. —David E. Rovella

Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, added a record $329 billion in value—obliterating the single-day record it repeatedly set over the past few months. But the 13% rally comes a day after a 7% rout wiped out more than $193 billion from the now $2.9 trillion company, continuing a run of volatility that makes Bitcoin look stable. In July alone, Nvidia shares endured routs that account for four of the eight biggest market cap wipe-outs.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Ukraine and Gaza as world leaders seek to avert wider wars. But there is another war, on a scale perhaps unimaginable to many, they should rush to prevent as well, Justice Malala writes in Bloomberg Opinion. It’s a repeat of a war that raged between the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda between 1998 and 2003. By the time it ended, nine African countries and 20 rebel groups were involved—and at least 5.4 million people died through fighting, disease and malnutrition. Some seven million were displaced. Africa’s World War, or the Great War of Africa as it came to be known, was the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II. Now, Malala writes, another one may be on the way.

The yen surged to the strongest since March versus the dollar after the Bank of Japan raised interest rates and announced plans to cut bond purchases, reigniting an aggressive rally. The currency climbed as much as 2.1% against the greenback, punching through the key 150-per-dollar level—and adding to a rapid advance that began earlier this month in anticipation of a hawkish decision by the central bank. Japanese government bonds tumbled in the wake of the announcement, with the yield on two-year notes climbing to the highest in 15 years.

If your measure of a Federal Trade Commission chair is how much she angers the one percent, then it looks like Lina Khan is doing a great job. Khan has never been popular with billionaires, but now two prominent business titans are trying to get US Vice President Kamala Harris to ditch Khan if she’s elected president. In televised interviews last week, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and media mogul Barry Diller called on Harris to fire Khan, saying her aggressive enforcement agenda is bad for business. Both men, as it turns out, are also affiliated with companies facing FTC scrutiny. Khan, who at 35 is the youngest person to run the FTC, has ramped up antitrust and consumer protection enforcement, a cornerstone of President Joe Biden’s economic policy.

A high-stakes race is taking shape between major money managers to combine Wall Street’s most trendy investment vehicle with its fastest-growing asset class. Big firms like BlackRock are signaling they want to offer access to private markets via exchange-traded funds, potentially opening up a closed-off world to investors of all stripes. It could also channel fresh cash into an asset class struggling to keep the boom alive. What’s the catch? Even investing behemoths will need to overcome technical and regulatory hurdles before they can squeeze real estate and pre-public companies into a tasty ETF wrapper. But with private markets now worth more than $13 trillion and billions of dollars pouring into ETFs every month at the expense of old-fashioned mutual funds, the motivation to figure it out is strong.

In his first comments as Boeing’s next chief executive, Kelly Ortberg said “there is much work to be done.” The company was swift to reinforce that point. Just hours after the embattled planemaker announced Ortberg as its new leader, the enormity of the task came into sharper focus. Boeing will continue to burn cash in the third quarter, after consuming more than $1 billion each month in the first half, Chief Financial Officer Brian West cautioned. Just how big the drain would turn out to be for the full year, he didn’t say.

Billionaire Bill Ackman has now fully retreated from a planned initial public offering for a US closed-end fund. Pershing Square USA Ltd. will reevaluate its structure based on investor feedback, Ackman said Wednesday. The withdrawal comes after the anticipated size was slashed twice over just two weeks. The hedge fund manager had floated a $25 billion number during the marketing of the offering, but it was scaled back to a range of $2.5 billion to $4 billion in a July 24 letter—and finally only $2 billion.

Italy has been at the forefront of European nations that have seen a surge in immigration from the Middle East and Africa. As more people arrive fleeing war and poverty, a climate of fear has been stoked by the Italian far-right, now ascendant in the form of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. In Italy’s Hunt for a Mysterious Nigerian Mafia, Bloomberg Investigates reveals how her government has been targeting African immigrants with charges of organized criminal conduct, and relying on a dubious piece of evidence called the “Green Bible” to make them stick.

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