Finance

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed that the list of candidates to replace Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has been winnowed down to five.
President Donald Trump told reporters that he anticipates naming a replacement by the end of the year. Powell’s term doesn’t expire until May.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks to reporters at the White House in Washington, D.C., Oct. 22, 2025.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday confirmed that the list of candidates to replace Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has been winnowed down to five, and President Donald Trump said the replacement is likely to be named by the end of the year.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Bessent said the finalists are current Fed Governors Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh, and BlackRock executive Rick Rieder, according to several media outlets.

Those names were reported earlier this month by CNBC.
Bessent, who had been rumored to be a top candidate as well, said he has been conducting interviews and that he expects to do one more round before presenting a “good slate” to Trump after the Thanksgiving holiday.
Trump, also speaking to reporters Monday on Air Force One, said he anticipates naming a replacement by the end of the year. Powell’s term doesn’t expire until May. Powell then can either step down from the Fed entirely or continue serving a term as governor that lasts until 2028.
The Federal Open Market Committee meets this week, with an interest rate decision due Wednesday. Markets are pricing in a near certainty that the committee will lower its benchmark overnight borrowing rate by a quarter percentage point, which would follow a similar cut in September.
Trump has three appointees on the seven-member board of governors: Waller and Bowman, as well as Stephen Miran, who is filling an unexpired term that ends in January. Miran, who was confirmed in September as the head of the Council of Economic Advisers, is not expected to be reappointed. He has campaigned for the FOMC to be more aggressive in easing.
Should Powell opt to leave the Fed, that would give Trump four appointees. Trump thus far has been unsuccessful in trying to remove Governor Lisa Cook from the board. A rotating cast of five regional presidents joins the governors as voters during the FOMC meeting. More

HSBC said on Monday that it will recognize a provision of $1.1 billion in its third quarter results.
A Luxembourg court denied HSBC’s appeal in respect of Herald’s securities restitution claim.

A view of the logo of HSBC bank on a wall outside a branch in Mexico City, Mexico, on June 14, 2024.
Henry Romero | Reuters

HSBC said on Monday that it will recognize a provision of $1.1 billion in its third quarter results following a court ruling in Luxembourg related to the Bernard Madoff investment fraud case.
Herald Fund SPC sued HSBC’s Luxembourg unit in 2009, claiming restitution of securities and cash it said were lost in the fraud.

The court denied HSBC unit’s appeal in respect of Herald’s securities restitution claim, but accepted the unit’s appeal in respect of the cash restitution claim.
The bank will now pursue a second appeal before the Luxembourg Court of Appeal, and added that if unsuccessful, it would contest the amount to be paid in subsequent proceedings.
Madoff was described as the mastermind of the largest investment fraud in U.S., defrauding clients of as much as $65 billion. He pleaded guilty in 2009 to a scheme that started in the early 1970s, ripping off more than 40,000 people in 125 countries over four decades, before being caught on Dec. 11, 2008.
Madoff’s victims included director Steven Spielberg and actor Kevin Bacon, besides scores of ordinary investors. Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison, and passed away in 2021.
In its interim report for 2025 released in July, HSBC said Herald had claimed a restitution of securities and cash of $2.5 billion plus interest, or damages of $5.6 billion plus interest from HSBC.

HSBC, Europe’s largest lender, said that various non-U.S. HSBC companies provided custodial, administration and similar services to a number of funds whose assets were invested with Bernard Madoff Investment Securities.
The news comes a day before HSBC is due to announce its results, with the bank saying that the $1.1 billion provision will impact its Common Equity Tier 1, or CET1, ratio by about 15 basis points. The CET1 ratio is a measure of a bank’s financial strength, and is used to determine its ability to withstand distress.
Estimates from analysts compiled by the bank on Oct. 17 had forecast CET1 ratio for the third quarter to come in at 128.9, compared to 128.2 in the second quarter.
HSBC, which said that the final financial impact could be “significantly different,” given the pending appeals, is currently undergoing a restructuring under CEO Georges Elhedery, and will see the bank split its operations into four divisions.
The bank has said the reorganization will cut costs by about $300 million this year, creating separate “Eastern markets” and “Western markets” sectors.
— CNBC’s Marty Steinberg and Scott Cohn contributed to this report. More

Seen from the skies, China’s Dongjiakou oil storage looks like a tray of god-sized cake tins. As fuel fills up the tanks, their floating roofs rise, turning the containers into panettone-shaped domes. And lately the bakers have been busy. Some 10m barrels of crude have been added since early December, taking the total to 24m. The state-owned facility—the largest of its kind on the Chinese coast—is barely two years old. It is already 56% full. More

ONE HUNDRED dollars invested in the tech-heavy Nasdaq index in January 2024 would now be worth $160. If you had bought American tobacco companies, you would now have even more: some $165. The share-price boom in part reflects a strange economic phenomenon. In recent years, the operating margin on a cigarette sold in America has grown from about 50% to about 60%. This year cigarette- and cigar-makers are expected to make $22bn of operating profit in the world’s largest economy. More

Passive investing through exchange-traded funds may be losing its appeal.
Tidal Financial Group Chief Revenue Officer Gavin Filmore finds many of his clients are no longer satisfied with buying popular ETFs tied to market indexes.

 “I think investors are looking beyond just the let’s call it the ‘VOO and chill approach’ where you just buy the index in an ETF, which is a great approach but they’re looking for diversification,” Filmore told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week.” “And they’re not finding it within the product or within the index, so they have to look beyond that.” 
Filmore refers to the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO), which tracks the S&P 500’s performance. Both are up almost 16% so far this year.

‘Imbalance is the perfect word’

Meanwhile, Strategas Securities’ Todd Sohn contends investors are losing diversification by using the S&P 500 as a benchmark.
“Imbalance is the perfect word,” said the firm’s senior ETF & technical strategist in the same interview. He added technology now accounts for more than 35% of the index, a record high.
Meanwhile, defensive sectors including consumer staples, health care, energy and utilities are at an all-time low weight of 19% in the S&P 500, according to FactSet.

So, where are traders turning? Sohn is seeing renewed interest in small-cap stocks.
The Russell 2000, which tracks the group, hit an all-time high on Wednesday and just saw its best week since August. It’s now up more than 28% over the past six months — outperforming the S&P 500. Earlier this month, the Russell 2000 topped 2,500 for the first time ever.
“I wonder if you’re seeing this broadening happen outside the large cap space where investors are comfortable with their tech and AI exposure and seeking other routes,” Sohn said.
While there is a growing chorus of voices throwing support behind the small caps, the heavy hitters will take center stage on Wall Street next week. That’s when five of the seven so-called “Magnificent 7” — Meta Platforms, Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon — are due to report their latest earnings.

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China opposes decoupling from the U.S., Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao said Friday.
The White House expects Trump and Xi to meet Oct. 30 in South Korea, though Beijing hasn’t confirmed.
Chinese officials at the same event emphasized advancing new technology and energy systems as part of future development goals.

China’s Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao spoke alongside other senior officials at a press conference on Friday, Oct. 24, 2025.
Picture Alliance | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

BEIJING — The U.S. and China can still find ways to work together, Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao told reporters Friday, ahead of an expected meeting between the presidents of both countries on Oct. 30.
“General Secretary Xi Jinping has stressed that dialogue and cooperation are the only right choice for China and the U.S.,” Wang said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC. “China, as a responsible big nation, has always opposed decoupling and ‘breaking the chain,’ [while] adhering to global supply chain security and safety.”

Wang said that both sides can find ways to address the issues they have with each other “on the basis of mutual respect.” The two countries, he added, can “find the right path for getting along, for the healthy, stable and sustainable development of China-U.S. relations.”
While China has not yet officially confirmed a meeting, the White House said overnight that U.S. President Donald Trump and Xi are expected to meet on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea next Thursday.
Beijing has said Vice Minister He Lifeng would travel to Malaysia from Friday to Monday for trade talks with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Commerce Minister Wang was speaking Friday during a press conference following the “Fourth Plenum,” a high-level meeting to discuss five-year development goals, which ended Thursday.
At the same press briefing, Han Wenxiu, a senior official within the Central Committee of the ruling Communist Party, said China must “strive to achieve major breakthroughs” in new tech drivers, while promoting consumption and accelerating the construction of a new energy system.
“Relations between big countries influence the international situation, and changes in the international situation deeply impact China’s domestic development,” said Han, who is the executive deputy director of the central committee’s financial and economic affairs office. More

DONALD TRUMP is frustrated with Vladimir Putin. Friendly calls, offers to meet, the prospect of post-war deals—none has tempted the Russian leader into a peace agreement. On October 22nd the American president snapped. In his first serious economic barrage against Russia since returning to the White House, Mr Trump placed sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, the country’s two largest oil firms, as well as on 34 of their subsidiaries. The aim, according to America’s Treasury, is “to degrade the Kremlin’s ability to raise revenue for its war machine and support its weakened economy”. Oil prices leapt by 5% on the day (see chart). More

Concentration in mega-cap tech stocks is pushing more investors to diversify with non-equity hedges, from classic cash and gold holdings to cryptocurrency.
Institutional adoption and ETFs are making gold and crypto mainstream portfolio tools.
The shift marks a broader move towards flexible, multi-asset strategies built for volatility and uncertainty, say ETF experts.

With a handful of mega-cap tech and AI stocks at the top of the S&P 500 Index dominating the U.S. market in a way without historical precedent, portfolio concentration risk has taken on a new form for investors long told to follow some version of Warren Buffett’s stock advice to “never bet against America.”
But with the nine tech stocks that are above Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway by weight in the index representing nearly 40% of the market, it’s an imbalance that has investors looking for new ways to hedge. Buffett may not agree with their response, either, having been a long-time vocal doubter on the value of precious metals, but many are moving toward cash, gold, and crypto to find uncorrelated returns and protection from volatility.

“If you break down category ETF flows, it’s cash, precious metals, and then crypto,” Todd Sohn, Strategas Securities senior ETF and technical strategist, said on CNBC’s “ETF Edge” earlier this week, referencing what have been the most popular trades by investors this year. “They’re clearly being adopted by more mainstream [investors].”
He linked this trend directly to concentration risk. “Some investors are realizing they have a lot of tech and AI exposure, so they have to differentiate and find uncorrelated assets,” Sohn said.
While some experts are recommending eyebrow-raising allocations to gold and crypto, and there is more talk of a 60-20-20 portfolio to replace the classic 60-40 stock-bond mix, most allocations are still small, but growing.
“Most of the conversations I have and the allocation papers I’ll read say one to three percent on crypto and three to seven [percent] on gold,” Sohn said.
Gold has experienced a rough week, with significant selling, but up over 60% for the year coming into this week’s trading, it is not a major surprise to see some profit-taking. Gold had hit record highs above $4,400 this month, supported by central bank buying, a depreciating dollar, and persistent geopolitical risk, the so-called “debasement trade.”

The SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) has seen around $6.8 billion in flows over the past month, in a year during which gold funds have neared the $40 billion mark in net inflows from investors.
Crypto, the newer hedge becoming more compelling to investors, has also had a good year, though gold has more than tripled bitcoin’s return of 17%, while ethereum has gained 15%. The launch of spot bitcoin ETFs has brought institutional money into the space and has turned digital assets into legitimate portfolio tools. The iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) is one of the largest spot bitcoin ETFs, managing close to $90 billion in assets, according to VettaFi.
Sohn says the use of ETFs to access new approaches to the market has been core to its history and evolution. “We started with large-cap equities in ’93, gold and emerging markets in 2004, and now we have covered call and yield-max products,” Sohn said.
That also means investors can manage risk differently. Instead of relying on high-yield stocks or simple bond funds, they can build portfolios with derivative-based ETFs or alternative exposures.
Crypto tells a similar story. With regulated ETFs now in place, bitcoin and ethereum have moved from speculative trades to recognized components of diversified strategies. “The pace of these developments and innovation that launches these ETFs is lightning speed,” Sohn said.

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