Finance

Despite worries over bad loans at midsize U.S. banks, there’s little evidence of a systemic problem, according to Marc Pinto, Moody’s head of global private credit.
“One cockroach does not a trend make,” Pinto said.
Market sentiment appeared to improve Friday after a sell-off Thursday.

Despite worries over bad loans at midsize U.S. banks, there’s little evidence of a systemic problem, according to a senior analyst at Moody’s Ratings.
Marc Pinto, the agency’s head of global private credit, acknowledged in a interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that there are concerns over loose lending standards and some slack in the conditions that institutions attach to loans.

However, he said when looking at the system as a whole, contagion the likes that could trigger a broader financial crisis is not evident.
“When we dig deeper here and look to see if there’s a turn in the credit cycle, which is effectively what the market seems to be focusing on, we can find no evidence,” Pinto said. “Now that’s what we’re seeing today. That could always change. But if we look at the asset quality numbers that we’ve seen over the last several quarters, we’re seeing very little deterioration at all.”
Bank stocks sold off aggressively across the board Thursday after Zions and Bancorp and Western Alliance Bancorp disclosed holding bad loans related to the bankruptcies of two auto lenders. The worries have dragged down shares of investment bank Jefferies this month since it disclosed some exposure to bankrupt auto parts maker First Brands.
Losses swept across the sector Thursday as worries grew that the danger could be more widespread. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon raised some eyebrows earlier this week when he said on the bank’s earnings conference call that “when you see one cockroach, there are probably more.”
“One cockroach does not a trend make,” Pinto said.

In fact, Pinto said default rates on high-yield debt this year have been relatively low, holding under 5%, and are expected to drift down to below 3% in 2026. By comparison, during the 2008 financial crisis, defaults in high-yield debt were in low double digits.
At the same time, the U.S. economy has proven stronger than thought, Pinto added, despite persistent worries about labor market weakness and the impact that President Donald Trump’s tariffs might have on inflation and consumer demand.
Pinto said he is at a conference this week with about 2,000 bankers “and one of the words that I keep hearing is resilience.”
“With respect to GDP growth, we’re doing much better than many people thought just six months ago,” he said. “So again, the credit conditions, looking at GDP growth as well as an expected decline in interest rates, we feel the credit quality is in a pretty good place today and potentially may improve.”
Market sentiment appeared to improve Friday after a sell-off Thursday.
The SPDR S&P Regional Banking exchange-traded fund, which tracks the mid-market leaders, tumbled 6.2% Thursday but rose 2% in premarket trading Friday. More

Pony.ai’s Luxembourg unit and Stellantis said Friday they will work together on testing robotaxis for Europe.
The companies will start testing in Luxembourg in the coming months, before expanding to other parts of Europe next year.
The agreement comes as Waymo this week announced plans to start testing robotaxis in London.

Robotaxi operator Pony.ai has begun testing rides with human staff inside between a suburb of Beijing and a major high-speed train station.
CNBC | Evelyn Cheng

Chinese robotaxi company Pony.ai announced Friday it is working with Stellantis for testing self-driving taxis in Europe.
The companies said they will start tests in the coming months in Luxembourg, where Pony.ai’s European division is headquartered. Starting next year, the companies plan “a gradual rollout across European cities.”

Pony.ai will provide the autonomous driving software, while Stellantis — which owns brands including Chrysler, Citroën and Jeep — will provide the electric vehicles, starting with the Peugeot e-Traveller.
Deploying robotaxis for the mass market typically starts with local testing on public roads in order to establish a safety track record for obtaining regulatory approval.
“Pony.ai stands out for their technical expertise and collaborative approach,”
Stellantis’ Chief Engineering and Technology Officer Ned Curic said that Pony.ai is known for its “technical expertise and collaborative approach.” He noted that the automaker has built car systems for autonomous driving integration and is “partnering with the best players in the industry.”
Major U.S. and Chinese cities have been some of the first in the world to allow local companies to operate public-facing robotaxis.

The companies have, in the last year, ramped up efforts to expand to the Middle East and Europe.
Earlier this week, U.S. robotaxi operator Waymo announced plans to start tests in London before launching the self-driving taxi service there next year. Waymo is owned by Google parent Alphabet.
Pony.ai and its Chinese rival WeRide are both listed in the U.S. The two companies this week received Chinese regulatory approval for their plans to offer shares in a dual listing in Hong Kong.
—CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report. More

Regulators are doing away with controversial regulations that required banks to plan for losses in the event of climate-related events, according to an announcement Thursday.
Trump administration officials have criticized the Fed for falling prey to mission creep, or exceeding the scope of its mandates for monetary policy and bank supervision.

Michelle Bowman, vice chair for supervision at the US Federal Reserve, during the Federal Reserve Board Community Bank Conference in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025.
Eric Lee | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Regulators are doing away with controversial rules that required banks to plan for losses in the event of climate-related events, according to an announcement Thursday.
A joint release from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve said they no longer believe the requirements are necessary as they are redundant with other provisions banks make to plan for emergencies and unusual events.

“The agencies do not believe principles for managing climate-related financial risk are necessary because the agencies’ existing safety and soundness standards require all supervised institutions to have effective risk management commensurate with their size, complexity, and activities,” a joint release from the three regulators said.
Fed Governor Michael Barr, the former vice chair for supervision, issued a statement disagreeing with the move.
“Rescinding the principles is shortsighted and will make the financial system riskier even as climate-related financial risks grow,” Barr said in a statement.
Mission creep
Trump administration officials have criticized the Fed for falling prey to mission creep, or exceeding the scope of its mandates for monetary policy and bank supervision. The climate change provisions, established in October 2023, were one point of criticism.
Chair Jerome Powell has repeatedly stated that climate is not a direct Fed issue. The rules required banks, as part of routine testing, to list potential losses they might suffer from climate-related issues.

Governor Michelle Bowman, a Trump appointee who succeeded Barr as the Fed banking supervisor, praised the move rescinding the rules as part of an attempt at “refocusing the supervisory process on material financial risk.”
“Rescission of the climate principles is an important step in this process,” Bowman said. She criticized the climate rules, saying “the effect of this guidance was to create confusion about supervisory expectations and increase compliance cost and burden without a commensurate improvement to the safety and soundness of financial institutions or to the financial stability of the United States.”
While acknowledging the risks that climate change poses, Bowman said the Fed’s mission does “not extend to climate policymaking.” More

Fed Governor Stephen Miran said Thursday he plans to repeat his push for a half-percentage-point interest rate cut when the central bank meets later this month.
Governor Christopher Waller advocated a quarter-percentage-point reduction at the meeting later this month, a position that appears more in line with the Fed consensus.
Earlier this week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell indicated that a softening labor market kept the door open to additional easing.

Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran speaks with CNBC during the Invest i America Forum on Oct. 15, 2025.

Federal Reserve Governors Stephen Miran and Christopher Waller provided conflicting views on how quickly the central bank should lower interest rates in the face of a weakening labor market and heightened geopolitical tensions.
Miran said Thursday he plans to repeat his push for a half percentage point interest rate cut when the Fed meets later this month.

In a speech delivered in New York, Waller advocated a quarter percentage point reduction at the October meeting, a position that appears more in line with the Fed consensus.
Taken together and combined with recent statements from other monetary policymakers, the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee looks to be on a clear path to more reductions, the extent to which remains unclear.
“Based on all of the data we have on the labor market, I believe that the FOMC should reduce the policy rate another 25 basis points at our meeting that concludes Oct. 29,” Waller told the Council on Foreign Relations. “But beyond that point, I will be looking for how the solid GDP data reconcile with the softening labor market.”
Fed officials have been operating in a quandary between indications of a standstill in hiring against nagging inflation pressures exacerbated by President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Waller has been among officials advocating an approach in which the Fed looks through the tariffs as one-off price increases that will not provide lasting inflationary pressures.
Waller pointed to two scenarios — one in which gross domestic product continues its upward climb and the labor market improves, in which case the Fed would need a more cautious approach on cutting, and the other in which the economic picture darkens and additional rate cuts on the order of up to 1.25 percentage points are necessary.

“What I would want to avoid is rekindling inflationary pressure by moving too quickly and squandering the significant progress we have made taming inflation,” he said. “The labor market has been sending some clear warnings lately, and we should be ready to act if those warnings are validated by what we learn in the coming weeks and months.”

‘It should be 50’

Both Waller and Miran were appointed by President Donald Trump. Waller is considered one of the final front-runners to succeed Chair Jerome Powell when his term expires in May 2026.
In separate remarks, Miran conceded he still expects his colleagues to vote for another quarter-point reduction even as he thinks current circumstances warrant a more aggressive approach.
“My view is that it should be 50” basis points, he said during a Fox Business interview. “However, I expect it to be an additional 25 and I think that we’re probably set up for three 25 basis point cuts this year, for a total of 75 basis points this year.”
One basis point equals 0.01%, so 50 would be the equivalent of half a percentage point. Miran pushed for a half-point cut at the September meeting but was outvoted 11-1 on the Federal Open Market Committee.
Earlier this week, Powell indicated that a softening labor market kept the door open to additional easing. Participants at the September meeting indicated the likelihood of two more moves coming this year, though Miran favored an approach that would lop a total 1.25 percentage points off the fed funds rate by the end of 2025.
A government shutdown that has blocked the issuance of most key data points has made the Fed’s job tougher.
“It would be really helpful to have the economic data in order to be able to make the decisions we need to make,” Miran said. “Certainly, we would want to be inspecting the economy for signs of moves lower in inflation, for signs of changes in the job market. But without those data, we still have to make a decision anyway, and so we’ll have to rely upon our forecasts for doing so.”
Miran said economic growth largely looks “OK for most of this year” though he is concerned about the recent acceleration in tensions between the U.S. and China, which he sees as boosting the case for big rate cuts.
The FOMC next meets Oct. 28-29, with markets pricing in a nearly 100% of a quarter-point reduction. More

BlackRock , a giant in the world of stocks and bonds, is ramping up its efforts to serve the stablecoin market, the company first told CNBC. This latest move from Larry Fink’s firm, set to be announced Thursday, aims to further capitalize on the boom in cryptocurrencies. The manager of $13.5 trillion in assets has retooled one of its money market funds with an investment strategy designed to appeal to stablecoin issuers. One of its defining attributes: It complies with the landmark piece of U.S. legislation, signed into law this summer by President Donald Trump , that provides a regulatory framework for stablecoins. Stablecoins are a key part of the cryptocurrency ecosystem — with a lot of potential growth ahead. Citi analysts forecasted in late September that, in an optimistic scenario, total stablecoin issuance could surge to $4 trillion by 2030, up from roughly $280 billion this fall. “We want to be — and we believe we are — a preeminent reserve manager” for stablecoin issuers, Jon Steel, the global head of product and platform for BlackRock’s cash management business, told CNBC ahead of Thursday’s announcement. After all, BlackRock has for years partnered with the second-largest stablecoin issuer, Circle, managing the majority of its reserve fund. Circle went public in June in a red-hot deal. With the updated fund, the world’s largest asset manager is looking to bring capabilities similar to what it does for Circle to the wider stablecoin issuer community. Stablecoins trade on digital ledgers known as blockchains, just like popular cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. The difference, though, is that stablecoins are designed to maintain a consistent value relative to another asset — often pegged to the U.S. dollar — rather than gain in price over time. In this way, stablecoins are commonly used to transact on blockchains, including making purchases of cryptocurrencies. People looking to buy stablecoins go to an issuer and pay for them with actual money. The stablecoin issuer doesn’t want to just hold the cash. It wants to get some yield by putting its customer’s cash somewhere safe and accessible; if a client wants to redeem their stablecoins for dollars, the issuer needs ready access to the funds to pay them back. That makes money market funds popular destinations for those stablecoin reserves – they’re considered both safe and liquid because they’re invested in things like short-term U.S. Treasurys. They also provide the added benefit of throwing off a higher yield than a traditional savings account at a bank. That’s where BlackRock, a seasoned operator of money market funds, comes into the picture. The overhauled money market fund – now dubbed the BlackRock Select Treasury Based Liquidity Fund (BSTBL) – is designed to have more liquidity than its previous iteration. The fund will also provide additional access by extending its trading deadline from 2:30 pm to 5:00 pm ET. Those changes come alongside its compliance with the so-called GENIUS Act, which introduced the first federal guardrails for stablecoins and spelled out the safe places where reserves need to be invested. With Trump’s signature in July, the government effectively gave U.S. companies their blessing to issue these digital tokens – a big win for the crypto industry. A titan of traditional finance, BlackRock is betting the BSTBL fund will be a win in its efforts to move deeper into crypto. Steel told CNBC that the fund allows the firm to continue to grab market share in a growing segment of the digital asset space. “It represents an opportunity not just to help our clients if they’re looking to issue a stablecoin and how we can help them in doing that, but clearly this is going to create the potential for new distribution opportunities,” Steel added. BLK XLF YTD mountain BlackRock’s year-to-date stock performance versus the S & P 500’s financial sector. To be sure, the retooled money market fund is not exclusively for issuers of stablecoins. Institutional investors such as pensions and endowments can also put cash in it. For example, Steel said the expanded trading hours could appeal to clientele located on the West Coast. That “gives corporate treasurers, particularly those in the West Coast, just a bit more time to work through their own [profit and loss] needs,” he said. In the digital asset world, BlackRock’s existing offerings include a popular bitcoin exchange-traded fund and an Ethereum exchange-traded product , which both launched last year. The investment manager is also behind the largest tokenized money market fund, called the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL). Launched in March 2024, BUIDL distinguishes itself from a traditional money market fund in that ownership is recorded on a blockchain and it trades 24/7. BlackRock’s earnings report on Tuesday showed that its efforts in crypto are paying off. The aforementioned bitcoin and Ethereum products were among the biggest drivers of its 10% organic base fee growth in the third quarter, CFO Martin Small said on the conference call. Meanwhile, its cash management business surpassed $1 trillion in assets under management for the first time ever last quarter. Indeed, BlackRock’s partnership with Circle as the primary manager of their cash reserves is “driving meaningful growth,” Small said. The executive continued, “Our mandate surpassed $64 billion this quarter. BlackRock delivered some of the strongest organic base fee growth in recent history, and we enter the fourth quarter in an excellent position.” After gaining 3.4% Tuesday to close at a record high, BlackRock shares tacked on a modest gain in Wednesday’s session. The stock rose 0.7% and closed above $1,200 a share for the first time ever. This is all part of BlackRock’s efforts to expand outside the traditional world of publicly traded stocks and bonds. The iShares ETF operator has announced a slew of deals since the start of 2024 in alternative assets, including acquisitions of private credit manager HPS Investment Partners, infrastructure investment firm Global Infrastructure Partners and alternative data provider Preqin . On Wednesday, a consortium of investors including BlackRock acquired a data center operator for $40 billion . The Investing Club’s stake in BlackRock, initiated a year ago this month, is rooted in large part on its strategy to get bigger in these areas. Moving forward, BlackRock plans to expand even further in digital assets. On Tuesday’s earnings call, chief executive Fink touted tokenization as “one of the most exciting areas of growth in financial markets.” Tokenization refers to the creation of blockchain-based versions of various assets. Although a onetime “proud skeptic” of bitcoin, Fink has spoken positively about blockchain technology going back at least seven years . “We see future commercial opportunities in using tokenization to further bridge the gap between traditional capital markets and the growing digital asset space,” Fink, who co-founded BlackRock in 1988, said on Tuesday’s earnings call. “There’s over $4.5 trillion in value sitting in digital wallets across crypto assets, stablecoins and tokenized assets. We see this market growing significantly over the next few years.” (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long BLK. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED. More

In e-commerce, Alibaba is already making back what it has spent on artificial intelligence, vice president Kaifu Zhang told reporters on Thursday.
Zhang said preliminary testing has showed consistent results from AI, including a 12% increase in returns on advertising spend.
The Chinese tech giant has bet hard that AI will generate returns despite market concerns that companies are spending too much on the technology with little to show for it.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has pledged to spend more than $50 billion on artificial intelligence over the next three years.
CNBC | Evelyn Cheng

SHANGHAI — Chinese tech giant Alibaba is already recouping its investment on artificial intelligence in the company’s e-commerce business, vice president Kaifu Zhang told reporters on Thursday.
The Chinese tech giant has bet big that AI will generate returns despite market concerns that companies are spending too much on the technology with little to show for it. Alibaba last month announced it will increase its spending on AI and cloud infrastructure, after pledging in February it would spend 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) over the next three years on the tech.

Zhang oversees e-commerce AI applications at Alibaba. Earlier in the day, he shared how the company has rolled out a range of AI tools, from making search results more personalized to improving the accuracy of virtual clothing try-ons.
The presentation comes a day after Alibaba began presales for Singles Day, China’s biggest shopping event of the year that’s akin to Black Friday.
Zhang said preliminary testing has showed consistent results from AI, including a 12% increase in returns on advertising spend.
“It’s very rare to see double-digit changes” in such tests, he said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC. Zhang predicted that thanks to AI integration, there would be a “very significant” positive impact on Alibaba’s gross merchandise volume during this year’s Singles Day shopping period, which centers on Nov. 11.
Alibaba’s China e-commerce unit remains the tech giant’s largest source of revenue, with growth of 10% year-on-year in the quarter ended June 30 to the equivalent of $19.53 billion.

Despite lackluster Chinese consumer spending in the last few years, during the Singles Day period last year, research firm Syntun estimated 20.1% year-on-year growth in sales to 1.11 trillion yuan for Alibaba’s Tmall, JD.com and PDD.
The company on a late August earnings call cast AI and consumption as “two major historic opportunities” that require Alibaba to make investments of “historic scale.”
“Our first priority at this point is making these investments,” CFO Toby Xu said at the time. “So for now, we may place relatively less emphasis on profit margins. But that does not mean that we don’t care about margins.” More

Upgrade, a provider of online loans and other financial services, said it raised $165 million in its first funding round since 2021.
The startup is now valued at $7.3 billion, according to CEO Renaud Laplanche.
Neuberger Berman led the round, with participation from LuminArx Capital Management.

Upgrade CEO Renaud Laplanche speaks at a conference in Brooklyn, New York, in 2018.
Alex Flynn | Bloomberg via Getty Images

Upgrade, the online lender started by LendingClub founder Renaud Laplanche, has raised a new round of funding that values the startup at $7.3 billion.
The company said in a press release on Thursday that it raised $165 million in a round led by Neuberger Berman, with participation from LuminArx Capital Management. Laplanche, who created Upgrade in 2016, said it’s the first time the company has raised money since 2021.

“We’ve been cash flow positive over the past three years, so we didn’t have to do a new round,” Laplanche said in an interview.
Upgrade got its start offering relatively small personal loans, operating in a similar market as LendingClub. The company has since expanded deeper into financial services with checking and savings accounts, a credit card, credit health monitoring and a buy now, pay later offering. In 2023, Upgrade acquired BNPL travel company Uplift for $100 million.
Revenue has more than doubled since the company’s last fundraise, Laplanche said, and annualized revenue passed $1 billion in May.
Laplanche, who took LendingClub public in 2014, said Upgrade is looking to IPO but wanted additional capital for its balance sheet in the meantime. He said the company is also establishing a new valuation as it begins to offer employee liquidity.
“We were probably 12 to 18 months away from an IPO at this stage,” he said. “So we wanted to go ahead and make sure everyone could sell a little bit of stock now without having to wait for the IPO.”

Although consumer lending is still dominated by traditional banks like JPMorgan Chase, Laplanche said the majority of Upgrade’s customers are migrating from the legacy banks to take advantage of more automated and faster services.
“This year, we’re focusing mostly on making the customer experience make sense across multiple products and making sure that the customer who might have joined Upgrade through a BNPL product has a very seamless experience,” Laplanche said.
The company has also been focusing on home improvement and auto financing, areas that surpassed $2 billion and $1 billion, respectively, in total loan originations earlier this year.
Competition is rising across the board.
Chime, which offers an array of online banking services, went public in June. SoFi has been gaining popularity. And fintech companies including PayPal and Square parent Block have been adding more banking services to their portfolios.
Within BNPL, there’s Affirm and Klarna, which held its IPO last month.
Laplanche said Upgrade’s focus in BNPL has been in the travel industry, through relationships with airlines, cruise lines, car rental companies and hotels.
“It’s a pretty specific industry that’s different from retail, where Klarna and Affirm are stronger,” he said.
WATCH: Trust is the key to unlocking real-time payments More

Shobha Devi runs a tailor’s shop in the narrow lanes of Vapi, an industrial town in Gujarat. A former teacher, she now earns more from pins and petticoats. “I am proud that I am standing on my own feet,” she says. “That’s by God’s grace.” Some credit also goes to microfinance lenders. One, IIFL Samasta, lent her 65,000 rupees ($732) to expand her business. Part of that funds her daughter’s education and she repays 1,470 rupees every fortnight. She belongs to a group of women with joint responsibility for each other’s loans. More