Fed Anxiety Hangs Over Equities With Rate Cut in Doubt | Bloomberg Businessweek Daily 11/14/2025

On today’s episode of Bloomberg Businessweek Daily, Scarlet Fu and Norah Mulinda discuss Fed anxieties hanging over equities with a December rate cut suddenly in doubt. Bloomberg’s Emily Graffeo joins the show to break it down. Also on today’s show, Bloomberg News Senior White House Correspondent Josh Wingrove provides updates on the administration’s plans to unveil tariff exclusions as voter frustration continues over food costs, and Bloomberg US Banking Reporter Todd Gillespie discusses Howard Lutnick’s sons seeing a record year as financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald denies any Trump-related conflicts. Plus Gen CEO Vincent Pilette discusses an evolving digital threat landscape and the company’s latest earnings.

Chapters:
00:00:00 – Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Starts
00:04:37 – Emily Graffeo on FED Anxiety Hanging Over Equities as Rate Cut in Doubt, Pivotal Nvidia Earnings Report Next Week
00:10:55 – Josh Wingrove Talks US Unveiling Tariff Exclusions as Voters Rage Over Food Costs
00:21:23 – Todd Gillespie Breaks Down Howard Lutnick’s Sons Seeing Record Year as Cantor Denies Trump Conflicts
00:35:00 – Gen CEO Vincent Pilette Discusses Revenue Increases, Evolving Digital Threat Landscape
00:44:08 – Kristine Aquino with Stocks on the Move
——–
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This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily,
reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight
on the people, companies and trends shaping today’s complex economy.
Plus, global business, finance and tech news as it happens, Bloomberg
Businessweek Daily with Carol Massar and Tim Stent event live on Bloomberg Radio,
Television, YouTube and Bloomberg Originals.
Well, happy Friday and welcome to Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Radio.
This is normal. And here with Scarlet Fu we’re in for
Tim and Carol Massar, of course, as we are really wrapping up the week still,
of course, about 2 hours left in the trading day about as we’re really
wrapping up the week here. But we did see a reversal.
Of course, we did know yesterday we saw the Nasdaq 100 falling more than 2%.
S&P 500 also pressured here. But we are seeing a bit of a reversal
today. What was once a risk on or off rally we
are now seeing to becoming a risk on here Scarlette.
Lots to really dig into, especially as we’re still experiencing this time
period where people are really looking for any sort of economic data to really
get an indication of where the Fed may be headed forward.
Yeah, this week has been this week has been really all over the place.
We started with this idea that the government shutdown was ending, so there
was relief and then that gave way to all these fears about the valuation bubble
and the idea that the Federal Reserve interest rate cut in December is no
longer a sure thing. In fact, it’s a bit of a toss up right
now. And it did look like the S&P 500 was on
course for its second weekly decline. But that has turned around, as you
mentioned, Norah, and the benchmark index is now up a third of 1% as we head
into the final 2 hours of trading. Talk about a seesaw.
This is a lot of waffling back and forth that we’re seeing right now.
But let’s talk about what’s going on a bit deeper here.
Let’s move over to Evie Morris with the business class.
Thank you, Nora and Scarlett. You guys are absolutely right.
We’ve been a little bit all over the place.
Wall Street erasing early losses with a tech share resurgence that was led by
Tesla. It jumped about 2%, but those gains now
starting to sputter. Traders are waiting for a deluge of
economic data and they want to see if what the Fed decides at next month’s
meeting and how that data might impact that decision.
We’re going to check all of this. But first, the markets all day long.
We’ll bring them to you here at Bloomberg.
The S&P 500 now up about 2/10 of a percent.
NASDAQ up about 4/10 of a percent. The Dow is down about 4/10 of a percent.
The ten year Treasury yield at 4.14%, the two year yield at 3.6%.
Kansas City Fed President Jeff Schmidt says more rate cuts could actually drive
inflation pressures. He said during an event in Denver that
more cuts could have longer lasting impacts on inflation and not do very
much to help shore up the labor market. And that is what has traders betting
that the odds of a rate cut in December are now about 5050.
And that’s what’s leaving the market kind of lukewarm.
Bitcoin also continuing to slide now down more than oh, wow, almost now 3.9%
hovering around 94,900. It wasn’t that long ago when Bitcoin was
at 100,000 sadara it shares are 106% higher, 106%.
Merck agreeing to acquire the therapeutics company for about $9.2
billion. Merck is looking to expand its portfolio
of treatments because the patients are are the patents rather the patents are
expiring for a lot of the drugs in the next few years.
The U.S. and Switzerland landed a preliminary
trade agreement lowering tariffs on many Swiss goods, including watches from 39
to 15%. In exchange for this, Switzerland is
committed to investing in the U.S., including $200 billion during Trump’s
term. And trade Representative Jamison Greer
says the White House is unveiling fresh tariff exemptions to address high food
prices, including reciprocal tariffs from agricultural products that are not
grown or produced in the U.S. For on Demand news 24 hours a day.
Subscribe to Bloomberg News now wherever you get your podcasts.
I’m Amy Morris. That’s the Bloomberg business splash.
Let’s go back to Bloomberg Businessweek Daily with normal Linda and Scarlet Fu.
Thanks for that business class. Abby I’m Norman, Linda here with Scarlet
Fu. We are here in place of Tim Stone,
Novick and Carol Massar, but they will be leading the show 3 p.m.
onward on radio and YouTube. But let’s take a look at where markets
stand right now. Scarlett I’m seeing a lot of uncertainty
in the market. I mean, it seems as though traders are
pretty cautious right now. Of course, the thoughts really remain on
the Fed, of course, government data that we’re looking to calm, tariff concerns
still in focus. There’s so many other things moving in
the market here. But we are joined by somebody who will
help us break a lot of this down and focuses on this very closely.
We’re joined by Emily Griffith and of course, she’s across asset reporter here
for Bloomberg news. Emily, what are you looking at right
now? What’s driving this equity market sell
off uncertainty that we’re seeing? Of course, we’re up a little bit right
now, but it really has been a cautious sentiment here.
Yeah, we had a pretty rough day for anyone who was long equity markets
yesterday and even this morning. The S&P opened a lot lower.
And so we’ve been able to climb back up. But I think overall, when you look at
how the macro is driving the equity market, it’s clear that right now this
idea that we’re maybe not going to get as many rate cuts as we thought
previously is kind of percolating through this feeling of, okay, maybe
we’re a little bit more risk on today, but we’re still, you know, only up about
2/10 of 1% on the S&P 500. If you look at Bloomberg Economics has
an index of Fed speak and it measures just how hawkish and how dovish the
recent Fed speech has been. And we had a lot of Fed speakers
yesterday. Kashkari was one of them saying, you
know, we have inflation that’s still too high, running at 3%.
The index of Fed speak that Bloomberg tracks rose to its most hawkish level in
a month yesterday. And then when you look at where the bond
market is pricing, the odds of a rate cut at the next Fed meeting earlier this
week, the odds were at like 60% and now it’s dropped to actually less than 50.
And about a month ago is almost like a near certainty.
It was like 100% certainty. So I think people are starting to
question, you know, even though the government has reopened, we’re still in
this data glut and we still have a chance that maybe we won’t get a rate
cut. The amazing thing about this is this is
happening even before we get all the data that’s supposed to be released at
some point next week. You know, there there’s countless jobs
reports or jobless claims report. So we also have retail sales.
We have inflation on the consumer level and on the wholesale level.
And on top of that, Emily, we’re not totally done with earnings season just
yet. I mean, we have the biggest one of them
all coming out. Yeah, that’s right.
So certainly if you’re looking for kind of signals about the economy, you might
not even need the economic data to get it because we are going to get a big
read on the consumer next week for earnings.
We have Home Depot, Lowe’s, Target, Wal-Mart.
We also have in video, which we’ll get to in in just a second.
But yeah. Behemoth.
Yeah. I mean, whether or not we get the
September jobs report, I saw a couple notes in my inbox.
Someone said, like, perhaps we’ll get it released next week.
There’s a question mark, like, maybe we’ll get it and maybe it’s not even
complete to maybe it’s not complete. Like, maybe we won’t will get the
payrolls number, but we won’t get the unemployment rate at this point.
I mean, the equity markets, the rates market, I mean, everything’s still
trading without the government data. But you do hear more and more people
saying like we just can’t get a good grasp on the economy because even though
we’ve reopened, the data is not all of a sudden coming in all at once.
And a lot of people before relying on a lot of those private data resources,
especially as we’re thinking about this vacancy or the fact that we haven’t
really seen much data here from the government.
But of course, that should be coming up soon as we’ve really been flipping out
here. But let’s move on to Nvidia, because you
did bring that up in conversation. We do know that NVIDIA is going to be
reporting on Wednesday, next Wednesday after market close.
And of course, we know this is basically the market Super Bowl, right.
But how are sources that you’re speaking with thinking about NVIDIA as we’re
heading into that earnings report? But then also just this idea of a
potential air bubble in the market? Yeah, I mean, the concerns about there
being an air bubble have certainly been something that people have been talking
about for a long time. Oh, valuations are getting too high.
It’s interesting now to watch how it’s even spreading into different.
It’s not just equities now, even in the investment grade, corporate bond market
companies are getting like that area of the market is now getting exposed to
this air trade as we see these big tech companies, meta alphabet tap into the
market and get billions of dollars to kind of build out data centers that will
fund A.I. for NVIDIA specifically.
So I track ETFs, as Scarlet is familiar with, she tracks ETFs as well.
There’s an ETF that goes to X long end video people have been piling in this
week, so it’s had four straight days of inflows of people bidding up this
company, this stock. I mean, maybe they haven’t they didn’t
do well yesterday, but there is certainly still buyers out there for
this company heading into the earnings. A lot of anticipation.
And of course, this time we won’t have the messiness of whether it includes the
China estimates or not, because it’s very clear that NVIDIA can’t sell its
highest grade chips to China. You mentioned the credit markets.
There is some fear returning to the credit markets, especially on the high
yield side. There was a company that managed to sell
debt yesterday, but it had to do so at a pretty deep discount.
And then of course, you had another tech company that had to withdraw its
investment grade offering. So all of this kind of adds up to credit
investors being a little bit more cautious, even as we see the equity
market recover. How do you read that and what do you
think is a read through for equities? I have been trying to ask a lot of
portfolio managers on the credit side, specifically in high yield, that exact
question of, you know, what what does this mean?
How does this all end? It feels like everyone, both in the bond
market and also on on the equity markets side is
they have this sentiment of like we don’t know what’s going to be the
catalyst that tips this over. And there we might not need all of these
data centers that billions of, you know, funding is now going into.
But we don’t want to be on the wrong side of the bet if this is an emerging
technology that changes the world, we want to be in on it.
So we can’t ignore and particularly for the I mean, less on the high yield side,
but for the investment grade side, a lot of these companies that are lending to
meta alphabet, they point out that these companies have so much cash, Right.
So watch the cash. If you’re an equity investor, you know,
look out in earnings. How much cash flow do these companies
have if they’re still generating more cash to pay off the debt?
You know, it’s not really a risk for the bond investors and it could be good for
the equity investors. Something to definitely watch watching
because nervousness there might portend nervousness in equities, too.
Emily, thank you so much. Emily garfield is our Bloomberg news
cross asset reporter. All right.
We want to take a look at the big picture now when it comes to policy out
of washington and bring in josh wingrove.
He is our senior White House correspondent and he joins us now from
the white House. And Josh, there’s any number of
directions we can go in here, particularly when it comes to the latest
on the Jeffrey Epstein drama and the story there.
But I want to start on tariffs and specifically how the US government is
now carving out some tariff exclusions because they need to address this
affordability crisis that became very acute after the election results came
out. Josh, what are you seeing?
Yeah, we’re told the president will sign an order today eliminating tariffs or
reducing them. At least it’s a little unclear on food
products in particular that the US either does not make at all or doesn’t
make enough of beef, coffee, bananas. Tomatoes are among that list, we’re
told. My colleague Adriana and I just have a
story of the terminology shortly about this.
Speaking of all the things we can talk about today, forgive me if you hear a
lot of sound behind me. The president is currently blaring a
playlist on the Rose Garden. And you could hear it all the the song
coming out of Virginia. That’s a good question.
But we just got off Phantom before this. So, you know, he’s he’s he’s he’s he’s
he’s, you know, he’s like it takes a lot of sleep.
Yes, exactly. So this is obviously look, the president
the administration is going to say that this is always part of the plan.
There have always been exclusions. Jamison Greer, the US trade
representative, told us that earlier today here at the White House.
It is also, of course, an acknowledgement that tariffs have an
impact on the price of things which Trump has downplayed throughout his
tariff campaign. And so it is in some ways at least a
tacit sort of retreat or withdrawal. What is, I think, important and clear or
will become clear and we just don’t know right now is how many of these
exclusions apply to countries that have deals and how many or just two countries
that don’t. And if it don’t, then that I think, is
more of a step back on the part of the administration.
Whereas if they’re just confining it to countries that have reached agreements,
for instance, they announced for just last night, then that is maybe a bit
more of a narrow action. So we just don’t know the scope.
We don’t know what number of foods, we don’t know whether the tariffs are
simply being eliminated on them. You know, we just don’t know what
countries a lot up in the air. But what we’re told is the president is
signing it today. We expect some details here pretty
shortly. Josh, keeping with this tariff theme, of
course, we do know news came out that the U.S.
and Switzerland did reach a preliminary trade agreement to lower tariffs on many
Swiss goods, including watches from 39% to 15.
That sounds like a big drop to me here. Talk to us about the developments here
between the U.S. and Switzerland.
Yeah, and Lichtenstein, Let’s not leave them out of the party.
Big deal with both of them. This has been in the works for quite
some time. The Swiss were hit with a pretty high
rate and argued that that was because of some weird distortions in the data in
how trade is recorded, including flow of gold.
And so they’ve been sort of clamoring to be treated the same as the EU.
That’s what this deal essentially give or take, does treat them the same as the
EU with a 15% rate. The flipside is the Swiss are agreeing
to a $200 billion investment pledge over five years, 67 billion of it or one
third in the next year here in the U.S. That follows models in a similar to what
we saw, for instance, with the Japanese and Korean.
So they get a deal that they’ve been waiting for for a long time.
Trump gets to, you know, boast about his pledge to increase Swiss investments.
But that really that was sort of one of the sore thumb trade deals that came out
with with the early math. On how Trump calculated his tariffs.
And I think it’s a signal in how a lot of this is really sort of still
evolving, really. But between that and the deals announced
last night, including with Argentina, but also some other Central American and
South American countries, that they’re sort of starting to check off a lot of
the list and it will raise, you know, attention on the other countries, which
is starting to be kind of a dwindling number for which Trump has not made a
deal. India, for sure, is one of them.
Canada and Mexico is sort of in a different bucket, but we’re watching
those as well. So he’s trying to sort of, you know, not
be off. But the Swiss one is a big one.
Yeah. I’m so glad you mentioned the countries
that we don’t have deals with, because I think about Canada and Mexico, there are
biggest trading partners and we still haven’t hammered out final details with
them. Are there are talks that Canadian family
do not let me forget it. Yeah, I’m sure every weekend.
Yeah. Yeah.
It’s a lot right now for Canada. Yeah, I think with Canada, Mexico,
they’re in a different bucket because they have a USMCA carve out.
Trump doesn’t like the word exclusion, but that’s what it is.
And so I think there’s genuine conversation going on in both countries
about how loud to complain, you know, because they have one of the lowest
total, average effective tariff rates in the world by merit of the fact that so
much of the trade is simply not paying a tariff at all.
So those two are in their own bucket and we’ll see where they go.
Right now, there’s really not a lot of momentum at all in either country for
negotiations. This might just get rolled up in the
USMCA conversation in the in the months and years to come.
On the other countries, India, that has been a tough one to track.
It was the first country that they announced trade progress with, and they
just simply haven’t gotten there. So I think it’s anyone’s guess where
it’ll go. The Swiss thing I should give a shout
out to our colleagues at Bloomberg in Switzerland.
We scooped this story a few days ago that they were nearing the deal.
We asked the president about it and he dunked on me for asking all kinds of
Swiss questions. But there was a reason, Mr.
President. That’s why we were here on the cusp of a
deal for it. He asked whether I was buying Rolexes,
and I cannot afford a Rolex. I don’t know about everyone else, but I
wish. I wish you well.
I wish you well. If people can, we should just mention
Abby Morris, who’s in our Washington bureau, points out that Don’t Stop
Believin is the song that is playing. That is.
I can hear that loud and clear. Well, there you go.
And to be clear, it’s quite a distance. So the volume, like I am about ten times
farther from the sound than Trump’s office is.
So if I can hear it. So hearing it clearly, he is he is
pumping right now for sure. So lots of headlines flying.
But what has also been dominating a lot of the news flow right now has been the
recent release of some of Jeffrey Epstein’s files.
Does this conversation surrounding President Donald Trump’s potential
involvement with Epstein at all detract from the administration’s agenda and
goals? How are Republicans doing this right
now, Josh? I mean, Trump clearly wants to change
the channel. No, he, you know, posted something this
morning directing Pam Bondi Bondi to start investigating certain Democrats,
including former President Bill Clinton and Larry Summers and their potential or
alleged ties to Epstein or the Epstein Files.
He’s trying to redirect the attention. I think you can tell that he thinks this
is not a good news story for him. And of course, there are open questions
right now, in particular from the release from Oversight Democrats of
these documents that, you know, raised fresh, fresh questions about how well
Donald Trump knew Jeffrey Epstein. And of course, the core question of to
what extent, if any, were the people around Epstein aware of what he was
ultimately accused of. It has come to light since then.
So right now, Trump is essentially trying to shift the channel, change the
channel, You know, don’t believe it still.
CRUZ And so we’ll see where it goes. But this has been consistent since the
administration that he just does not want to talk about the issue.
He downplays the issue when people ask about it.
He says that’s old news. Trump has a superhuman ability to change
the story and change the channel. But this has been a tough one for
obvious reasons for him to do so. So it seems to be dogging him.
All right. Well, Josh, as we wrap up this
conversation, what will you be watching for listening for from the White House
next week? We have a story, I believe, on the
terminal now. I hope so.
Not skipping anything but expectations for the visit by the Saudi crown prince
next week. That is a big one to watch.
An earlier story that we had is sort of teeing it up so that that was actually
kind of tense, planning it to the point that at one point people thought it
might not proceed. So there’s more tension despite what is
otherwise been kind of a love in between members, as he’s known and President
Trump. So we’ll watch that.
In particular, questions on chip export licenses at 35 sales and other questions
around whether the Saudis support normalization with Israel.
All right. Josh Wingrove, thank you so much.
Senior White House correspondent Josh Wingrove joining us from the lawn of the
White House as the president’s playlist blares.
And I think we all heard it loud and clear here, but definitely keeping a
look at markets right now. NASDAQ 100 up about 0.3 percent, S&P 500
almost about 20% higher. It’s 221 on Wall Street.
I’m Amy Morris. This just crossing the Bloomberg
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That’s a Bloomberg Business splash. Now back to Bloomberg Businessweek Daily
with normal Linda and Scarlet Fu. All right, Amy, Maurice, thank you so
much. Amy Morris in Washington with our
bloomberg business. Flash.
This is Bloomberg Businessweek Scarlet Fu a normal linda in for tim centric and
Carol Massar. They will be back in the next hour
reporting live from boston children’s hospital in boston, massachusetts.
You know, we talk a lot about cantor fitzgerald and we throw the name around
because obviously it’s one of the boutique investment bank firms here in
new York, but also because Howard Lutnick was the guy behind it and he is
now the commerce secretary in Washington serving the President Trump
administration. His two sons are now I guess they’ve
inherited the company. They’ve taken over the company.
I’m not totally clear on what their role is within the company, but I do know the
company is highly involved in a lot of the crypto deals that have taken place
this year. Todd Gillespie is a Bloomberg News
banking reporter and he’s been looking into this for, I want to say, weeks,
months. Well, I’ve been covering them for, gosh,
nearly two years now. Okay, here said yeah, yeah, yeah.
But we but yeah, we recently did we did an interview that came out today,
Skyler, that basically broke news on their financials this year They’re
having them basically their best year ever.
And then they’ve also obviously this year been facing various questions about
conflicts of interests. Okay, So here’s my question.
His sons are, I guess, running the show, but what does their position look like
on the org chart of Cantor Fitzgerald, the overall business?
Give us a tree. Sure.
So kind of Fitzgerald is a group that has basically three companies underneath
it. One is a private investment bank called
Cantor. Not to be confused necessarily with
Cantor Fitzgerald. And separately, it has two public
companies in which it holds controlling stakes.
Newmont Group, which is a property firm property broker, and BGC Group, which is
a which is a financial broker across London, New York as well.
But Cantor, which is kind of the core of the business, essentially the most
secretive, most private kind of Howard lot next, you know, realm for the past
two years before he went into the administration.
I mean, this is the hub of the group where they are investing in, you know,
that they’re building out teams that are dedicated to crypto.
They are building out a lot of investment banking trading, Bitcoin
related lending projects. They are really taking advantage of
everything that is coming. With the hype around Trump related
booms in this part is controlled by Brandon and Kyle Slotnick.
Well, Brandon and Kyle on their own, the entire group, they okay, they have
upwards of 80% share I think if not if not even more of the entire group.
But yeah, Brandon is the CEO of the entire group, CEO and chairman of the
entire group. Kyle, his older brother is the executive
vice chairman. Carlos quite involved with Newmark,
specifically the property group. But Brandon is in many ways the driver
for a lot of this crypto related business.
But they have three co-CEOs of the private investment bank Sage Kelley
Pascal, Vandalia and Christian Wall. And between those three, they kind of
drive a lot of the day to day operations.
They build out the investment bank. They have been essentially, Howard, like
next deputies for the better part of a decade before he went to DC.
And they in many ways are sort of the driving force behind the company still
in that, you know, very much in partnership with with the late Nick
Sons. So taking a step back, just remind us of
the relevance. How has Cantor really fit into this
broader financial ecosystem and what has that shift in power look like?
Yeah, well, I mean, that’s a good question because, I mean, five years
ago, Cantor Fitzgerald was a minnow on Wall Street.
But some might say it’s still a minnow on Wall Street.
Let’s be clear. I mean, that their revenue is about 2.5
billion. That’s, you know, roughly like a third
of Jeffrey’s, you know, and it’s a similar model to Jeffrey’s.
It has a it has a trading and sort of broker dealer vibe is going to
investment bank M&A. But it also does brokerage has a big
equities platform as well. But for years it was fairly small and
how it took it over in the nineties from Bernie, from Bernie Cantor and Buddy
Cantor’s wife, that was a big legal spat over this four years.
It was you know, it’s been a relatively small scale Wall Street bank.
Obviously now it’s been launched into the limelight because of Nick’s
involvement with Trump. He fundraise for Trump.
Last year, he became the chair of his transition team.
So he was responsible for drawing up the list of candidates to basically go into
the Trump administration, into the Cabinet, and then himself ended up in
the cabinet as well, which then forced this big transition to to Brandon, to
Kyle. And that was a transition that I think
these sons expected at some point that that father would step back.
The fact that it was done for political reasons and the fact that it was done
maybe quite early. Bear in mind, Brandon is only 27.
Kyle Nick is 29. For context, I’m 28.
So and I mean, these guys, I’m like, you could be, you know, yeah, you can be in
my class at school. But, you know, in many ways they’ve sort
of, you know, they’ve, they’ve embraced the challenge.
You know, Brandon Luck, Nick has been standing.
You know, he basically led this conference that was happening this week
in Miami where I was. You know, he and he interviewed some big
names. So we had Ted Cruz there, who, by the
way, is also the chair of the committee that scrutinises Howard like next
Commerce Department in the Senate. So, you know, there are all sorts of
blather, as you would as you would expect in the you know, in the Trump
world where business and politics probably interact more than in any other
administration we’ve had. But, you know, fundamentally, this
business is now saying, you know, they have been preparing for years for this
moment, essentially for the crypto boom, for a lot of AI and data center work
that they’re doing. They’ve been hiring bankers as well who
are trying to take advantage of the regional bank mergers in the U.S..
There’s a lot of different aspects to this.
And I think being a leaner bank, they would say not as clunky and slow moving
as some of the bigger Wall Street institutions has allowed them to take
advantage of these opportunities as well.
But have they been preparing for the advent of crypto being embraced by the
government, given that this happened all rather suddenly when President Trump
became, you know, was was inaugurated? I mean, they have started to be.
I mean, they they hide that first crypto banker in 2020.
I mean, years ago that they’ve been tether’s main banker for for I think
even longer than that. Essentially, Howard Lutnick
created that relationship, built that relationship with Tether when it was
essentially a pariah. Bear in mind, Tether is a company that
is now in fundraising, trying to fundraise at a valuation of up to $500
billion, which would put it, you know, joint most valuable private company in
the world, incredibly profitable crypto company.
But now, you know, obviously, you know, we’re talking years later, the
Department of Justice just last year was reported to be investigating tether.
This week, the tether CEO stands on stage with the chair of the SEC and the
chair of the CFTC embracing them, holding hands, holding hands, but
smiling, I should say, next to them. And it kind of gives you a sense of how
times have changed. So how have they leveraged their
connections at all in Washington? Have we been seeing that playing out at
all? Well, they would say that they you know,
any in any Washington I mean, in their defense, they would say that any any
Washington interaction they would have is just the same as, you know, any other
fund would have. Right.
I mean, but Brandon Lutnick was invited to the White House to have dinner with
Trump and other big Wall Street head honchos like David Solomon.
Jamie Dimon can no, this was there as well this week.
Just I think that was Wednesday night. I actually think I saw Brandon leave the
conference event in Miami to head off to the plane, not quite realizing where he
was going at the time. But, you know, he’s been invited and
brought into this room. Obviously, his father, Howard, was also
at this dinner. So make of that what you will.
You know, there’s also a case here of kind of correlation versus causation or
these kinds of sentences, Right. Like if you are administration that
wants to embrace crypto, you know, who are the kinds of banks whose conferences
you’re going to speak at? Who are that, you know, who are there?
You know, where are the sort of partnerships, Right.
Who are their industry leaders that are going to be consulting?
You know, maybe they might be the clients of the biggest crypto bank that
everybody’s talking, which would make sense, which would make sense.
But at the same time, there are very understandable questions that are being
raised over conflicts here. Yeah.
And, you know, I think it’s important for people to keep an eye on that.
So we are speaking with Todd Gillespie. He’s a Bloomberg News banking reporter.
He’s written a story. Luck next.
Suns score record year as Cantor denies any conflict of interest from the
association with President Trump. This is the third most read story on the
Bloomberg terminal over the past 8 hours.
You mentioned that there’s a lot of people wondering about these conflicts
of interest, including some Democratic senators Ron Wyden and Elizabeth Warren.
What have they done in terms of asking for more information?
Asking for clarification? Yeah.
So so in August, I think actually back in July, even earlier, there was a
report by Wired that Cantor was essentially trying to broker tariff
refund deals, which there’s also a good story on the telephone today about this
as well. And we wrote another story, I think just
last week over the kinds of companies that were brokering these deals.
But essentially what they do is match hedge funds with corporates that are
paying tariffs and, you know, hedge funds offering to buy the right to any
tariff refunds that these corporates may get if the Supreme Court strikes down
Trump’s tariff agenda. Total hypothetical.
Total hypothetical. Quite a risky deal you’re going to use
for $0.20 on the dollar. But essentially there are various banks,
you know, who have special assets, team distressed type teams who are breaking
these deals on Wall Street. We know Jeffrey’s Oppenheimer are as
well. For instance, we’ve reported that.
But Cantor Fitzgerald canceled. The investment bank was considering
doing this earlier in the summer and this was reported.
This provoked various questions and provoked a letter from Elizabeth Warren
and Ron Wyden and essentially just sort of saying, hey, you know, this is the
commerce secretary, his son running an investment bank.
The commerce secretary himself is responsible for the tariff agenda.
You know, maybe there are some questions that are that are being asked there
validly. But also the bank, in its defense would
say that, hey, you know, everyone else in Wall Street is doing this just
because we have this connection. Why can’t we?
And and also in this trade, bear in mind, you’re not necessarily taking a
position. You’re just taking a fee.
Right on on what’s happening. So there are various things like that
that have cropped up this year. So you mentioned some of the pushback
that we’re seeing in Washington, but are we seeing any pushback from competitors
or any is anyone talking about this and maybe even in the crypto space?
Yeah, I mean, we have seen various tweets from particularly from big name
people in the crypto world who bear in mind there are a lot of factions within
the crypto world. It’s certainly not one monolith.
As I’ve had to learn over the past year or two.
But yeah, there are certain crypto people who for instance don’t like
tether, they don’t like cancel, they don’t like the Trump administration’s
take on for whatever reason and people who have accused them fairly
unsubstantiated of conflicts of interest.
For instance, that was an unsubstantiated tweet that Howard
Lutnick was trying to help tether with this big fundraise that Cantor is
advising on. And there was no evidence for that,
provided that was, you know, no one reputable ended up affirming that or
reporting that. So there are these sorts of speculation.
The same thing with this tariff trade that were rumors that circulated around
Washington after that story came out that, you know, people you know, there
were Chinese whispers, as you can always imagine, and things sort of get twisted.
But they’re also obviously very fair questions as well.
And I can tell you, there’s a lot of chatter on Wall Street about, you know,
what happens when big things come out with the administration related to
tariffs and who would bring profits, who advantages, who takes advantage.
You can hear it first, that kind of thing.
But those are largely in the fun space. So.
Yeah. All right, Todd, fantastic to get your
take on everything you learned about Cantor Fitzgerald, Cantor and BGC and
all the various entities of this empire that Howard Lutnick has passed on to his
two sons. Todd Gillespie, Bloomberg News banking
reporter on his story. The next one’s score, a record year as
Cantor denies any conflicts of interests with the Trump administration.
Yeah, I mean, let’s just take a look at markets.
I mean, that was a lot to digest, but I do want to look at what’s going on right
now. S&P 500 up just about 3/10 of a percent.
Here’s Violet. This is Bloomberg. It’s 240 on Wall Street.
I’m Amy Morris. Judge says he will approve a $7 billion
opioid settlement with the sacklers Purdue Pharma, including money for
victims. This new agreement replaces one from the
Supreme Court that was rejected last year, finding it would have improperly
protected members of the family against future lawsuits.
The judge says he will explain his decision on Tuesday during a hearing.
Several Wall Street heavyweights have struck deals with companies that could
be eligible for reimbursement if the Supreme Court strikes down President
Trump’s tariffs. Even if the court decides Trump did not
have the authority to impose the tariffs.
There’s still a chance that importers might not get their refunds.
And Trade Representative Jamison Greer says the White House is ready to unveil
fresh tariff exemptions to address high food prices.
These exemptions are designed to remove reciprocal tariffs from agricultural
products not grown or produced in the U.S.
Markets are paring back their losses thanks to a tech surge being led by
Tesla. We checked the markets for you all day
long here at Bloomberg. S&P 500 up 3/10 of a percent.
Nasdaq now up a half percent and the Dow is down 4/10 of 1%.
The ten year Treasury yield at 4.14% and the two year yield at 3.6%.
SADARA shares jumped 106% after Merck agreed to acquire the therapeutics
company for more than $9 billion. Merck needs to expand its portfolio of
treatments because a lot of the patents for its drugs are expiring, including
the patent for KEYTRUDA. For on demand news 24 hours a day.
Subscribe to Bloomberg News now, wherever you get your podcasts.
I’m Amy Morris. That’s a Bloomberg Business clash.
Let’s go back to Bloomberg Businessweek Daily with Norah, Melinda and Scarlet
Fu. Thanks for that, amy nor melinda here.
What Scarlet Fu. We’re in for tim stanwick and Carol
Massar. But there’s so much to talk about right
now on this friday, whether it’s in the markets or just broader company news
right now. But one thing I did want to talk about
is cybersecurity is scarlet. I mean, cybersecurity is becoming
increasingly more important, especially as we see a lot of online threats
ramping up and honestly getting more and more creative.
Yeah. Not a day goes by that you don’t hear
about a country or a company getting hacked by someone or some band of
people. And, you know, at a consumer level,
obviously it’s very concerning when you’ve got everything in your email or
in your phone. Absolutely.
With us to talk about this and more is Vincent Palat.
He’s CEO of Gen Digital, which trades on the Nasdaq undertaker, G.E.
and you may be familiar with one of its brands.
NORTON But we are joined by Vincent from Belgium, actually.
Vincent, tell us a little bit about the current landscape right now as we think
about protection from cybersecurity threats.
Yeah. As you mentioned, the landscape is very
dynamic at the high level now, all enabled by A.I., which will increase the
complexity of the threat, the sophistication of this threat, the
threats, and becoming very difficult to detect.
And you mentioned that the enterprises are being attacked, but the enterprises
are protecting themselves more and more. So who is left vulnerable in the Middle
East, the consumer? And whether it’s a deepfake, a scam, the
phishing, leveraging you data that they’ve been breached somewhere else,
and then capturing that to create some damages.
The overall damages for the consumers in the US alone is over $15 billion and
growing double digit these days. Pretty incredible growth rate there.
What are the most common ways that people find their data, their personal
data compromised, and what are some of the more unusual ways in which it
happens? I would say that today 80% of the
threats facing consumers are scam or social engineering, and it’s about
connecting a vast amount of personal data you have in the digital world was a
you know, if you put them on your own social media websites or within those,
there have been breaches as part of you shopping online or shopping in two
different environment. And then the data is being captured
solely on the dark web. And now with eight tools, very
sophisticated, personalized emails or text are fooling consumers.
We’ve detected last quarter over 140,000 websites that mimic real brand website
driven by AI. But actually I just meant to capture and
create financial damages for consumers. How is gen digital leveraging AI and
just to push productivity forward at the company as we think about it in relation
to cybersecurity? As the topic of the day, of course.
Right. So not only the ISE is a threat from
being used by hackers, a threat for consumers, but we also are gen digital
using AI to protect our consumer. So we’re the first one to come with the
full model for anti scam and being able to detect real time scams as they hit
either your text, your voice or your emails.
And now we embedding that more into chip manufacturers to create deepfake
solutions and really making sure we can detect what’s the problem of the day.
What’s the reality? Is this message real or not?
Is this video real or not? Is this voice We are not and we heavily
investing into moving our our overall threat protection into an AI powered
threat, threat detection. So in terms of companies and consumer
spending on protection from these cybersecurity threats, what have you
observed so far in 2025? You know, we know that earnings season
has gone pretty well for most companies. You have just reported results as well.
Your second quarter adjusted EPS beat analysts, estimates by a penny and your
second quarter revenue coming in slightly higher than what was
anticipated. Are companies growing their spending on
cybersecurity at a stable rate or has that picked up?
Do you see them pulling back a little bit if the economy starts going south a
bit? No, definitely people are investing more
into making sure that the defense is becoming more and more sophisticated to
address the overall threat landscape. You’ve seen on our report, you mentioned
that we had another outstanding quarter, our beat and raise here in Q2 that
followed a not a beat and raise in Q1 as we developing not only the protection of
security, but enabled the consumer to be secure, to be private, to also managed
the identity in their reputations. We are expanding the pie, if you want,
and that has enabled us to post it another quarter at about 25% growth with
the help of our most recent acquisition, which is leading into the financial
wellness. As you protect your data, you want to
protect your financial position, you also want to help consumer manage and
grow that position. So we’re headed into the holiday season.
Do you all tend to see any sort of uptick in terms of cybersecurity threats
or maybe identity theft even? And if so, how can consumers protect
themselves? It’s definitely a higher risk season.
Obviously, everybody wants to go out and shop more, dine more, and that’s at
every point in time you’re exposing you personal data out.
So we we constantly educate our customers to make sure that these days
they are really controlling whether they put their credit card, which website
they go and shop from, and making sure they use our anti scam detection tools
and models to make sure we can detect where the risk is.
But definitely we advise everyone to be to be cautious.
These days hackers are on there and trying to collect your personal digital
footprint and do does people’s infatuation with armed with
cryptocurrency Bitcoin digital wallets, does that increase the likelihood that
they might be a target of cyber of cyber attacks?
I would say that the overall penetration of your digital footprint in life is
becoming more and more digital life, and the mantle of payments that you
mentioned is just another sign of moving more online, which then creates, of
course, also more risk to be to be too weak to be attacked.
So. So the overall trend is to move more
online in many different dimension, including the the method of payments.
What’s your strategy for rebuilding or maintaining trust at a time where
cybersecurity failures continue to make headlines?
And it’s not only cybersecurity failure, it’s already also a time where we see
AI, it’s difficult to detect what’s reality and what’s a fake.
So suggesting a reality we’re discussing and so differently, trying to making
sure we equip our consumers in our tools with deepfake detection and ability to
really see what is produced by a machine versus what is an actual
piece of content is is an important needs that we’re trying to address.
All right. Good stuff.
Really appreciate your joining us today with your recap of your results.
And to give us kind of the overview of what it looks like here in the
cybersecurity space. Vincent Paulette is chairman and CEO of
Gen Digital Trading again on the Nasdaq under the ticker.
JE And and of course, Vincent was joining us by Zoom from Belgium.
He’s usually based in Mountain View, California.
But traveling at the moment, Norah, I’m looking at a market that is remarkably
resilient given where we stood yesterday at the close, a big decline and this
morning at the open when it looks like it was very much risk off and the s&p
500 was on its way for a second straight weekly decline, the first time since
June. But that has dissipated and we’re now
higher for the week. Right?
I am seeing is higher for the week, up about half a percentage point.
If we look at the S&P 500 and where it is on trajectory to close for the week
on this Friday, it’s been a little bit of a rollercoaster ride this week,
Scarlet. Yeah, we’re not sure what’s going to
happen, obviously, when it comes to the economic data.
And there’s now a big question over whether the Federal Reserve will move
forward with interest rate cuts in December as well.
Previously, people had pretty much thought it was a slam dunk.
From New York, this is Bloomberg Businessweek.
This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily
with Carol Massar and Tim Stent event on Bloomberg Radio and Television.
This is Bloomberg Businessweek. We are live from the Bloomberg
Interactive Brokers Studio here in Midtown Manhattan.
Carol Mazur and Tim Stanek will be back at the top of the next hour.
We did get some headlines in the past few minutes from Laurie Logan.
She is the president of the Dallas Fed, talking about how she is not convinced
that she’s seeing signs of inflation moving back to the 2% target.
Of course, it’s not anywhere near that 2% target at the moment.
She also says that the modestly restrictive policy that we currently
have is still appropriate and she does not think the job market needs further
insurance rate cuts. Again, she is not a voting member of the
FOMC, but she will become one in 2026. Having said all that, Norah, we are
looking at equities, at least the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ in the green.
The Dow industrials underperforming lower by a third of 1% as we have come
back from early losses and declines yesterday.
Yeah, I mean, we did see a bit of risk off sentiment yesterday.
You did see that trickling into the market today.
But it does seem as though maybe we’re getting a bit more risk on energy.
We have information technology, the second best performing sector in the S&P
500. You’re really seeing everyone really
trying to make a bid here on a high in the pathway forward.
Well, speaking of all of that, we have some companies that will give us a big
read on what’s going to happen in AI. Let’s take a look at some stocks on the
move. I am Scarlet Fu with normal melinda.
And we’re joined now by bloomberg news managing editor for the Bloomberg
Markets live blog christine aquino. And the big daddy of ai is in video.
That’s right. It’s GA and it’s making quite a comeback
this morning or this afternoon. This morning it was definitely down.
So Nvidia ticker and VG A those shares are now up more than 2%.
And you know, we know that Nvidia when when it’s the tide that basically lifts
or sinks all boats and is currently lifting all the boats because along with
invidious rebound of course we see the S&P 500 also up is the biggest
contributor to the S&P 500 rally at the moment and makes a lot of sense given
just the size of this stock. Now, everyone, of course, is going to be
looking forward to the earnings next week.
That is going to be after the bell on Wednesday.
And of course, the big focus there is, again, whether they’re going to be able
to deliver beats for both their third quarter fiscal results as well as their
fourth quarter guidance. A lot of focus going to be on demand for
the JB 300 tip, a chip as well as how much they’re spending in CapEx,
particularly with HYPERSCALERS. We saw that rising $27 billion in the
second half and 90 billion for 2026 in terms of projections.
And so, yeah, a lot of focus on how much more funds they’re going to be deploying
to really develop the air capabilities. Yeah, I mean, I was just looking at a
story earlier on the Bloomberg terminal that was talking about just the
volatility being priced in right now in the options market heading into NVIDIA
earnings. As you mentioned, just a behemoth.
It is the Super Bowl for a market. So it’s definitely interesting to see
how the effects of the NVIDIA earnings will definitely play out and ricochet
into other sectors. You know that it’s part of the culture
and part of the zeitgeist. When people are holding watch parties
for NVIDIA earnings, which was happening a few years ago when, you know, in
videos, results shattered all expectations of know what it can do.
And people were saying, oh my gosh, like this is the new gold rush.
And you know, people organizing parties cheering when the numbers we know of any
are happening next week. I don’t know if anybody let us know.
Yeah, we’d love to pull over and report live from it.
What else are you watching? Also looking at Walmart intraday rise
and that’s been in the news because of a CEO change so Walmart ticker WMT those
shares though just a little bit today so down 2/10 of 1%.
So paring some of its earlier declines and probably just investors trying to
make sense of what the CEO handoff means.
Right. So Doug McMillon is going to be retiring
in February. He’s going to be replaced by John
Furner. They are very much cut from the same
cloth. Both of them have been longstanding
Walmart employees. They both started as hourly employees.
They’re both lifers. McMillon has been credited as somebody
who really transformed Walmart as a digital powerhouse, particularly when it
comes to e-commerce businesses. And so, you know, I think the question
really for investors is, is Furner going to be able to build on that success and
maybe even extend it, evolve it? Right.
And, you know, given that they have consistent performance, they have gained
in market share and are maintaining that for the most part, it’s really just the
question of what Furner can do to build on.
Yeah, I mean, I’m looking at what analysts are saying on Wall Street for
Walmart. We have 46 buys, so about 95% of the
street says buy the stock and only one saying hold and one saying sell.
So it seems as though there is some optimism here on this company.
Lastly, what else are you looking at? Looking at Nike, Norah, today?
So Nike shares ticker NKE. So those here’s extending declines.
They’re down more than 3% now. So they’re in the headlines for a number
of. Reasons today it is because they are
apparently ending an initiative that gave employees an extra week off each
year to promote mental health and wellness.
So is their annual wellness week, which started in 2021, has been held each
year, four in August. But now no more, no more weeks off for
wellness. But I have to say is quite generous.
A whole week off for what sounds amazing.
So wellness is back. I mean, people are not having mental
health issues anymore. I don’t know.
Maybe maybe they’re like, we know there’s a bit of.
Sure. But apart from that, I mean, Nike has
had a mixed week as well, right? So it got upgraded at Wells Fargo, too
overweight from equal weight. But then 13 filings also show that some
companies are cutting their positions on the stock set for its biggest rally
since late July. But it’s a multi year downtrend.
All right, Christine Aquino, thank you so much.
For more conversations like this, listen to our News Talk Movers podcast.
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Bloomberg Businessweek Deli continues live from Boston Children’s Hospital in
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