Good morning and so long, Woj Bombs.

Adrian Wojnarowski, the tireless ESPN journalist famous for breaking NBA news before the players involved even knew what was going on, announced his retirement from the profession Wednesday. While nobody was looking, by the way, moneyball somehow took over sports journalism. In 2022, the New York Post reported that Woj, as fans call him, was making $7 million a year — not bad for a line of work where the average pay is less than $30 an hour. Meanwhile, his protégé-turned-rival-scoopster Shams Charania, currently of The Athletic, is reportedly on the verge of free agency. He makes $2 million a year, the Washington Post has reported.

The New York Times, which owns The Athletic, isn’t known for throwing millions at its reporters. It’s a brewing business story that’d ordinarily be ripe for a Woj Bomb. Alas, retirement awaits.

Economics

The Fed Finally Delivers on Promise to Slash Interest Rates

Photo of the Federal Reserve building — Photo by Pabradyphoto via iStock

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve finally, finally, finally, finally, finally slashed interest rates, delivering a half-point cut — the high end of consensus expectations.

The bold maneuver marks the beginning of the end of the “higher-for-longer” era as the Fed moves to buttress the labor market and soft-land the economy.

Half-Point Measures

A rate cut was all but certain, with only one question remaining before the Wednesday meeting: How big, a quarter-point or a half-point? Most analysts predicted the former, in line with the steady and cautious approach the central bank has taken thus far; in July, the Fed opted to hold rates constant, in contrast to more aggressive central banks the world over, and despite much public backlash and a labor market that was just starting to show some cracks. By choosing the half-point cut, Jerome Powell and friends can now have it both ways. In remarks after the Fed meeting, Powell said prior patience “has really paid dividends” in proving that the 2% inflation target was both achievable and sustainable, and urged critics to take the bigger cut “as a sign of our commitment not to get behind.”

Wall Street, it seems, took it as a sign of optimism that a recession will be avoided. After an initial sugar rush, markets mostly settled:

The S&P 500 jumped as much as 1% on the news, and even briefly surpassed its intraday all-time high; the index finished down 0.29%. Smaller-cap companies benefited the most, continuing the trend of a rotation out of Big Tech — a sign of broader market optimism — with the Russell 2000 Index spiking more than 2% before finishing up nearly 0.04% at close.
Treasury yields, meanwhile, continued to climb ever so slightly after rising a smidge ahead of the announcement: The two-year treasury yield rose two basis points to 3.6%.

What’s Next? Unsurprisingly, inflation hawks are not too happy. “Clearly they have taken their eye off [the inflation] ball and although inflation is much lower now than the peak we saw in 2022, igniting a stock market rally and goosing a growing economy with lower rates risks letting inflation come roaring back before this bull market ends,” Chris Zaccarelli of Independent Advisor Alliance told Bloomberg in a roundtable. What comes next? The Fed provided plenty of clues: Updated policymaker projections showed a median estimate anticipating a total of 50 basis points of cuts by year-end, most likely split between November and December meetings, and another 100 basis points of cuts next year, though the ever-measured Powell emphasized these were mere forecasts. “We’re always going to try to do what we think is the right thing for the economy at that time. That’s what we’ll do, and that’s what we did today,” the Fed chairman said.

Written by Brian Boyle

Together with Miso Robotics

What Do Nvidia and Amazon Have in Common?

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Healthcare

Making Weight-Loss Drugs Takes a Whole Lot of Muscle

In the obesity drug industry, two players have really been throwing their weight around. There isn’t a third in sight.

On Wednesday the CEO of Novartis, a Swiss pharmaceutical company with a $253 billion market capitalization, told CNBC that the company won’t be joining the feeding frenzy for oh-so-trendy weight loss drugs. The reason? That pond has two very big fish.

Picking Up Crumbs

The two big players in weight-loss land are Novo Nordisk, the company behind Ozempic and Wegovy, and Eli Lilly, which produces Zepbound and Mounjaro. Their respective market caps weigh in at $448 billion and $863 billion — granted, Novo Nordisk’s has been super-fueled by its pole position in the rapidly growing weight-loss drug market.

A few other Big Pharma companies have tried to catch the weight-loss train, including Pfizer and Roche, and a handful of startups have thrown their hat in the ring as well, but Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan said that for relatively mid-sized pharma companies, he thinks new secondary markets are the way forward:

“With obesity right now, we have two very entrenched large players, and I think for future entrants you have to find something new, some sort of new angle that either reduces the nausea and the vomiting or gives patients the ability to lose their weight and retain their muscle,” said Narasimhan.
The after-care associated with weight-loss drugs is a whole sector in its own right, and has hit some big stumbling blocks as the number of qualified obesity doctors has not kept up with the skyrocketing demand for prescriptions.

Fauxzempic: Products that promise wondrous health benefits with zero side effects are nothing new, but according to a New York Times report, “Ozempic dupes” — i.e., non-pharmaceutical products that promise the same effects — have bloomed since the drug took off. One knock-off has been released by Kourtney Kardashian’s supplement company.

Written by Isobel Asher Hamilton

Markets

Stock Prices in Half-Pennies Are in Your Future

If you cut a penny in half, you could be charged under 18 US Code Section 331 for the mutilation of a US coin. But half-pennies might make life cheaper for investors if they’re used to price stocks.

That’s the logic of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which voted unanimously Wednesday to change market rules so that roughly 1,700 securities can be quoted in increments of $0.005 beginning in November 2025.

Copper Chopper

“The one-penny minimum has become outdated,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler said during the regulatory agency’s meeting Wednesday. It was an acknowledgment of longstanding complaints by market stakeholders that exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, which were required to quote stocks in increments of at least 1 cent, were hamstrung against wholesaler competition that’s allowed to quote in finer increments.

Investors were getting shortchanged, too, the SEC said:

Officials noted the rule change will lower costs by shrinking the so-called bid-ask spread, or the difference between the buy and sell side price of a stock. If the spreads are closer, investors can save money when buying and selling.
Some stocks will keep 1-cent ticks under a two-tiered system with two “tick sizes.” If the bid-ask spread hovers around 1 cent, the stock will be allowed to reduce increments to half-cents. The SEC didn’t provide a list of securities that would be eligible, but said there were about 1,700 based on trading in the past year.

Unlucky Number Eight: For over 200 years, the tick size was an eighth of a dollar, or 12.5 cents (yes, brokerages made a lot of money). But that changed dramatically in 1997 when exchanges cut them in half to 1/16. Tick size was reduced to 1 cent in the year 2000 — since Y2K didn’t crash the world and electronic trading started taking over, it made sense, or cents.

Written by Sean Craig

Extra Upside

Fade to Black: Boeing said Wednesday it will start to furlough white-collar staff to preserve cash amid an ongoing strike by manufacturing workers.
Dystopia: Millions could fall prey to scams that use AI to clone their voices, UK digital bank Starling warned, noting hundreds already have.
Fast Food’s Future = Automation: That’s why brands like White Castle use Miso Robotics, whose newest robot just sold out its first run in seven days. Invest in Miso before the opportunity ends October 18.*

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Just For Fun

Disclaimer

*This is a paid advertisement for Miso Robotics Regulation A offering. Please read the offering circular at invest.misorobotics.com.

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