Finance

Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel, speaks at the Milken Global Conference 2024 at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, on May 6, 2024.
David Swanson | Reuters

Billionaire investor Ken Griffin’s suite of hedge funds at Citadel eked out small gains in what proved a volatile month in August as markets grappled with an emerging growth scare.
Citadel’s multistrategy Wellington fund gained about 1% in August, bringing its year-to-date return to 9.9%, according to a person familiar with the returns, who spoke anonymously because the performance numbers are private. All five strategies used in the flagship fund — commodities, equities, fixed income, credit and quantitative — were positive for the month, the person said.

The Miami-based firm’s tactical trading fund rose 1.5% last month and is up 14.5% on the year. Its equities fund, which uses a long/short strategy, edged up 0.8%, pushing its 2024 returns to 9.3%.
Citadel declined to comment. The hedge fund complex had about $63 billion in assets under management as of Aug. 1.
Volatility made a strong comeback in August as fears of a recession were rekindled by a weak July jobs report. On Aug. 5, the S&P 500 dropped 3%, its worst day since September 2022. Still, the market quickly bounced back, with the equity benchmark ending August up 2.3%. The S&P 500 is now ahead more than 15% in 2024.
Overall, the hedge fund community recently moved into a defensive mode as macroeconomic uncertainty mounted. Hedge funds on net sold global equities for a seventh straight week recently, driven by sales of communication services plus financial and consumer staples stocks, according to Goldman Sachs’ prime brokerage data. More

Investors returning from summer holidays might feel dispirited upon checking their portfolios. Stocks have had a poor start to September. America’s benchmark S&P 500 index dropped by 2% on its first day of trading. European shares followed suit on September 4th; those in Japan have fallen by even more. It is a striking change from the calm that had settled over markets before Labor Day. American share prices ended August less than a hundredth of a percentage point below an all-time high reached in July, European ones fared similarly and Japanese stocks were just a few percentage points below their peak. Adding to the good vibes, rich-world inflation had continued to cool, setting the scene for the Federal Reserve to begin cutting interest rates when its policymakers next meet on September 17th and 18th. More

Global semiconductor and associated stocks fell on Wednesday, following a steep plunge in Nvidia’s share price in the U.S. overnight.
On Tuesday, around $279 billion of value was wiped off of Nvidia. That was the biggest one-day market capitalization drop for a U.S. stock in history.
Nvidia shares continued sliding in post-market trading Tuesday, falling 2%, after Bloomberg reported that the company received a subpoena from the Department of Justice as part of an antitrust investigation.

People walk past the logo of Samsung Electronics in Seoul on July 7, 2022. South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co Ltd turned in its best April-June profit since 2018 on Thursday, underpinned by strong sales of memory chips to server customers even as demand from inflation-hit smartphone makers cools.
Jung Yeon-je | Afp | Getty Images

Global semiconductor and associated stocks fell on Wednesday, following a steep plunge in Nvidia’s share price in the U.S. overnight.
In the U.S., chipmaker Nvidia plunged more than 9% in regular trading, leading semiconductor stocks lower amid a sell-off on Wall Street. Economic data published Tuesday resurfaced jitters about the health of the U.S. economy. Nvidia shares continued sliding in post-market trading Tuesday, falling 2%, after Bloomberg reported that the company received a subpoena from the Department of Justice as part of an antitrust investigation.

Around $279 billion of value was wiped off of Nvidia on Tuesday, in the biggest one-day market capitalization drop for a U.S. stock in history. The previous record was held by Facebook-parent Meta, which suffered a $232 billion fall in value in a day in February 2022.
Nvidia’s value chain extends to South Korea, namely, memory chip maker SK Hynix and conglomerate Samsung Electronics.

Samsung shares closed 3.45% lower, while SK Hynix, which provides high bandwidth memory chips to Nvidia, slid 8%.
Tokyo Electron dropped 8.5%, while semiconductor testing equipment supplier Advantest shed nearly 8%.
Japanese investment holding company SoftBank Group, which owns a stake in chip designer Arm, fell 7.7%.

Contract chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company declined more than 5%. TSMC manufactures Nvidia’s high-performance graphics processing units which power large language models — machine learning programs that can recognize and generate text.
Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry — known internationally as Foxconn — lost nearly 3%. It has a strategic partnership with Nvidia.
The selling in Asia filtered through to European semiconductor stocks. Shares of ASML, which makes critical equipment to manufacture advanced chips, fell 5% in early trade. Other European names such as ASMI, Be Semiconductor and Infineon, were all lower.
—CNBC’s Lim Hui Jie contributed to this report. More

Stock trading app Robinhood on Wednesday launched a new feature in the U.K. allowing retail traders to lend out any stocks they own outright in their portfolio to interested borrowers.
Shares lent out via the Robinhood app will be treated as collateral, with Robinhood receiving interest from borrowers and paying it out monthly to lenders.
Share lending is risky — not least due to the prospect that a borrower may end up defaulting on their obligation and be unable to return the value of the share to the lender.

In this photo illustration, the Robinhood Markets Inc. website is shown on a computer on June 06, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. 
Scott Olson | Getty Images

Online brokerage platform Robinhood on Wednesday launched a share lending program in the U.K. that would allow consumers there to earn passive income on stocks they own, in the company’s latest bid to grow market share abroad.
The stock trading app, which launched in the U.K. last November after two previous attempts to enter the market, said that its new feature would enable retail investors in the U.K. to lend out any stocks they own outright in their portfolio to interested borrowers.

You can think of stock lending like “renting” out your stocks for extra cash. It’s when you allow another party — typically a financial institution — to temporarily borrow stocks that you already own. In return, you get paid a monthly fee.
Institutions typically borrow stocks for trading activities, like settlements, short selling and hedging risks. The lender still retains ownership over their shares and can sell them anytime they want. And, when they do sell, they still realize any gains or losses on the stock.
In Robinhood’s case, shares lent out via the app are treated as collateral, with Robinhood receiving interest from borrowers and paying it out monthly to lenders. Customers can also earn cash owed on company dividend payments — typically from the person borrowing the stock, rather than the company issuing a dividend.
Customers are able to sell lent stock at any time and withdraw proceeds from sales once the trades settle, Robinhood said. It is not guaranteed stocks lent out via its lending program will always be matched to an individual borrower, however.
“Stock Lending is another innovative way for our customers in the UK to put their investments to work and earn passive income,” Jordan Sinclair,  president of Robinhood U.K., said in a statement Wednesday.

“We’re excited to continue to give retail customers greater access to the financial system, with the product now available in our intuitive mobile app.”

Niche product

Share lending isn’t unheard of in the U.K. — but it is rare.
Several firms offer securities lending programs, including BlackRock, Interactive Brokers, Trading 212, and Freetrade, which debuted its stock lending program just last week.
Most companies that offer such programs in the U.K. pass on 50% of the interest to clients. That is higher than the 15% Robinhood is offering to lenders on its platform.
Share lending is risky — not least due to the prospect that a borrower may end up defaulting on their obligation and be unable to return the value of the share to the lender.
But Robinhood says on its lander page for stock lending that it aims to hold cash “equal to a minimum of 100% of the value of your loaned stocks at a third-party bank,” meaning that customers should be covered if either Robinhood or the institution borrowing the shares suddenly couldn’t return them.
Robinhood keeps cash collateral in a trust account with Wilmington Trust, National Association, through JP Morgan Chase & Co acting as custodian, a spokesperson for the firm told CNBC.
Simon Taylor, head of strategy at fintech firm Sardine.ai, said that the risk to users of Robinhood’s share lending program will be “quite low” given the U.S. firm is behind the risk management and selecting which individuals and institutions get to borrow customer shares.

“I doubt the consumer understands the product but then they don’t have to,” Taylor told CNBC via email.
“It’s a case of, push this button to also make an additional 5% from the stock that was sitting there anyway. Feels like a no brainer.”
“It’s also the kind of thing that’s common in big finance but just not available to the mainstream,” he added.
The new product offering might be a test for Robinhood when it comes to gauging how open local regulators are to accepting new product innovations.
Financial regulators in the U.K. are strict when it comes to investment products, requiring firms to provide ample information to clients to ensure they’re properly informed about the risk attached to the products they’re buying and trading activities they’re practicing.
Under Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority’s consumer duty rules, firms must be open and honest, avoid causing foreseeable harm, and support investors’ ability to pursue their financial goals, according to guidance published on the FCA website in July last year.
Still, the move is also a chance for Robinhood to try to build out its presence in the U.K. market, which —apart from a select number of European Union countries — is its only major international market outside of the U.S.
It comes as domestic U.K. trading firms have faced difficulties over the years. Hargreaves Lansdown, for example, last month agreed a £5.4 billion ($7.1 billion) acquisition by a group of investors including CVC Group.
The company has been battling issues including regulatory changes, new entrants into the market, including Revolut, and the expectation of falling interest rates.
Unlike Robinhood, which doesn’t charge commission fees, Hargreaves Lansdown charges a variety of different fees for consumers buying and selling shares on its platform. More

Zilch said Tuesday that it made an operating profit in July 2024, hitting profitability faster than other major consumer fintechs that have also managed to break even.
The company also said it topped £100 million ($130 million) in annual revenue run rate, doubling from the run rate it reported last year.
Philip Belamant, Zilch’s CEO, told CNBC the firm was able to hit profitability by growing rather than cutting back like other fintechs have done.

Zilch CEO Phil Belamant.

British financial technology firm Zilch on Tuesday reported its first-ever month of profit, marking a key milestone for the company as it looks toward an eventual initial public offering.
In a trading update, Zilch, which competes with the likes of Klarna and Block in the buy now, pay later space, said that it made an operating profit in July 2024, hitting profitability within four years of its founding date — faster than other major consumer fintechs that have also managed to break even.

Competitors Starling and Monzo, meanwhile, took more than three and four years to make their first profit, respectively. Others have managed to hit profitability faster. Digital banking startup Revolut, for example, broke even for the first time just two years after its launch.
Zilch also said it topped £100 million ($130 million) in annual revenue run rate, doubling from the run rate it reported last year.
Philip Belamant, Zilch’s CEO and co-founder, told CNBC Tuesday that, despite the current high-interest rate environment, the firm was able to hit profitability by growing its business rather than cutting back like other fintechs have done.

“If you think of the last two and a half, three years, a lot of VC-backed companies, especially high growth fintech businesses have had to cut their way to get to profitability. And some of those have actually cut so far they went bust along the way,” Belamant told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”
“It’s not been easy. And, for Zilch, we took a different approach. We looked at this and said let’s grow our way to profitability,” Belamant added.

Separately Tuesday, Zilch announced the appointment of former Aviva CEO Mark Wilson to its board. Wilson, who was made a non-executive director, said he was “excited” to join the firm at a critical juncture and “further help Zilch steer its path toward sustainable success as a category leader.”
Zilch’s CEO Belamant told CNBC in June that he wants to list the business publicly in the next 12 to 24 months. That same month, the company announced that it had raised $125 million of initial debt financing from Deutsche Bank.
That deal, which gives Zilch the option to draw down up to $315 million of credit from both Deutsche Bank and other banks, is expected to help the company triple its overall sales volumes in the next couple of years, according to the firm.
Klarna, which Zilch competes with in the U.K., is also planning a stock market flotation in the medium term, with its CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski having previously told CNBC it wouldn’t be “impossible” for the firm to list as soon as this year. More

China’s property struggles and U.S. sanctions have significantly affected some of its cities, even as others benefit from Beijing’s tech push, Milken Institute’s best performing cities China index showed Tuesday.
Hangzhou, capital of the eastern Zhejiang province and home to Alibaba and other tech companies, ranked first in this year’s rankings.
Other cities, such as Zhuhai, once a “rising star,” dropped in the rankings due to the slump in real estate.

HANGZHOU, CHINA – SEPTEMBER 1, 2024 – Photo taken on Sept 1, 2024 shows a newly built building of China Vanke in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China. 
Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images

BEIJING — China’s property struggles and U.S. sanctions have significantly affected some of its cities, even as others benefit from Beijing’s tech push, Milken Institute’s best performing cities China index showed Tuesday.
Since 2015, the index has studied China’s large- and mid-sized cities for their economic vibrancy and growth prospects. The latest version generally compares data for 2023 with that of 2021. Last year, the institute did not publish a report due to a reassessment of its methodology.

Hangzhou, capital of the eastern Zhejiang province and home to Alibaba and other tech companies, ranked first in this year’s rankings.
While other cities, such as Zhuhai, once a “rising star,” dropped in the rankings due to the slump in real estate.
The city, in the southern province of Guangdong near Hong Kong, fell 32 places from the previous index published in 2022 to 157th place. Suddenly no one bought houses.
“Builders didn’t have much money to complete their projects,” Perry Wong, managing director of research at the institute, told reporters in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.
Property and related sectors once accounted for more than a quarter of China’s gross domestic product. But in 2020, Chinese authorities started cracking down on real estate developers’ high reliance on debt.

Wong added that real estate dragged down growth for several of the main cities in that region, except for Dongguan. The city of factories, home to Huawei’s sprawling European-style campus, was instead hit by U.S. sanctions. Dongguan dropped 15 places in the Milken index rankings to 199th place.
There are 217 cities in the index. While the nearby metropolis of Shenzhen went up in rankings, the city landed in 9th place, behind Beijing. A majority of the Chinese companies initially blacklisted by the U.S. were based in Shenzhen or Beijing, Wong pointed out in an interview with CNBC.
“Zhuhai is an extremely good place to do service jobs, to do even production jobs, high-end production jobs in biotech,” he said. “So [excluding the real estate impact] it should have a pretty promising future.”
Another city affected by the geopolitical drag on exports is Zhengzhou, capital of the Henan province and home to iPhone manufacturer Foxconn. Zhengzhou fell to 22nd place, down from 3rd.
Historically, Wong pointed out, having control of Zhengzhou, Hefei, and Wuhan have been critical to ensuring control of the country.
From an economic perspective, Hefei, in the Anhui province, and Wuhan, in Central China’s Hubei province, fared better in the latest index.
Wuhan surged by nearly 30 places to second, while Hefei remained among the top ten. Wong attributed this to Wuhan’s efforts to keep factories running during the pandemic, allowing the city to rebound quickly, while a university in Hefei received direct government support for technological development.
As for Hangzhou’s success, the institute’s research pointed to the city’s growth as a hub for e-commerce, manufacturing and finance.
But asked on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” if Hangzhou’s success could be replicated, Wong said it would be difficult, partly due to the outperformance of the local property sector that’s increased living costs. More

When commodity prices move in tandem, it is usually because real-world events jolt markets. China is the world’s biggest consumer of raw materials, so its economic leaps and stumbles matter. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hindered the trade of fuels and grains, causing prices to surge. But every once in a while it is news in the financial sphere that prompts traders to act. And the most common source of such news is America’s Federal Reserve. More

American demand for international trips has supported continued strength in overall travel spending.
Declining prices for international airfare has helped underpin the trend.
Europe is the most popular destination abroad, while Asia has seen the largest annual growth.

Hinterhaus Productions | Digitalvision | Getty Images

Travel spending among American households continues to outpace its pre-pandemic levels, a trend underpinned by a zeal for international trips, according to new Bank of America research.
“A key part of travel momentum lies within vacationing abroad,” Taylor Bowley and Joe Wadford, economists at the Bank of America Institute, wrote in a note Wednesday.

Overall, travel spending is down slightly from 2023, yet it remains “much higher” than 2019 — up by 10.6% per household, they wrote, citing Bank of America credit and debit card data from January to mid-August.
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International travel is “one area of continued strength,” Bowley and Wadford said.
About 17% of Americans said in June that they intended to vacation abroad during the next six months, up from roughly 14% in 2018 and 2019, according to a recent Conference Board survey.  
“I do expect the demand to continue,” said Hayley Berg, lead economist at travel site Hopper.

Lower airfares underpin international travel demand

Demand for international travel surged over the past two years as Covid-19-related health fears waned and countries began dropping their pandemic-era travel restrictions.
Americans spent zealously amid pent-up wanderlust and a stockpile of cash.
Falling prices for international airfare have helped underpin high demand this year, Berg said.
“Those lower prices are definitely going to drive some incremental demand for international [travel] more so than what we’ve see the last couple years,” she said.

For example, average round-trip fares to Europe — generally the most popular international destination for U.S. tourists — declined to roughly $950 this summer, down from more than $1,000 the prior two years, Berg said.
European fares in 2022 were the highest on record, according to Hopper data, which goes back a decade.
A flight to Rome during the fall shoulder season is now about $600, down from a pandemic-era peak of roughly $1,300, for example, Berg said.
(The fall shoulder season is the time of year between the summer high season and the winter low season, usually from September to November.)
Europe accounted for the bulk of Americans’ spending from May to July, at 43%, according to Bank of America. Canada and Mexico combined held the No. 2 spot, at 21% of spending.

However, Asia has been the fastest-growing region: Spending on the continent jumped 11% relative to 2023, compared to 3% in Europe, Bank of America said. Advantageous exchange rates played into that relative strength, it said.
While international travel spending remains robust, most Americans are still vacationing domestically: About 68% of all trips that start in the U.S. remain within its borders, according to a recent analysis by the consulting firm McKinsey.
That said, “domestic demand has softened slightly, as American travelers return abroad,” McKinsey wrote.

High earners ‘splurge on travel’

Higher-income households — those earning more than $125,000 a year — seem to be driving the international-travel trend, according to Bank of America economists.
High-end luxury hotels have “outperformed” standard offerings this summer, suggesting high earners “are more resilient and continue to splurge on travel,” the Bank of America report said.
While “cost-constrained” travelers seem to be worried by a pandemic-era spike in inflation, most plan to continue traveling, McKinsey said.
“Instead of canceling their trips, these consumers are adapting their behavior by traveling during off-peak periods or booking travel further in advance,” McKinsey wrote. More