Finance

Nexi CEO Paolo Bertoluzzo said the Italian payments firm is “contributing to the design” of the European Central Bank’s proposed digital currency.
The ECB outlined plans for a digital version of the euro in July, aiming to complement the existing monetary system rather than replacing physical cash.
Central banks around the world are actively working on or exploring their own central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs.

Italian payments giant Nexi says it is working with the European Central Bank on its proposed central bank digital currency.
“We are engaging with the European Central Bank and contributing to the design of the future digital euro because we believe that can be a positive force in the evolution of digital payments,” Nexi CEO Paolo Bertoluzzo told CNBC’s Karen Tso at the Money 20/20 fintech conference in Amsterdam on Tuesday.

The ECB outlined its plans for a digital version of the euro in July. The euro zone’s central bank envisages the currency as complementary to its existing monetary system, rather than replacing physical cash or reducing the role of commercial lenders.
An ECB spokesperson declined to comment.
Central banks around the world are actively working on or exploring their own central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs. It comes as cash use is increasingly on the decline in several developed economies, and amid growing interest in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.
China is seen as the leading player in the race toward CBDCs, having tested its digital yuan currency with millions of citizens in a number of regions. Earlier this year, the U.S. Federal Reserve said it would soon release a research paper exploring the prospect of a digital dollar, while the Bank of England is also examining the potential of central bank-issued digital money.
Nexi’s chief said his company was helping to inform the ECB’s thinking on CBDCs.

“The situation will evolve because clearly there will be more to it,” Bertoluzzo said. “We’re starting to talk about a new version of cash. That’s the way they think about it.”
Bertoluzzo said digital currencies like bitcoin and ether were unlikely to play a role in cross-border payments, citing wild swings in the prices of such assets.
“They are clearly an asset class,” he said. “But they fluctuate up and down on a daily basis based on the latest statement from someone in Silicon Valley … which is exactly the opposite of what you need in payments. You need the certainty of the value you are exchanging.”
“Today those types of cryptocurrencies have basically zero impact in payments,” Bertoluzzo said, adding he thinks CBDCs and stablecoins designed to avoid volatility seen in other cryptocurrencies will play a much larger role.
With a market value of over $20 billion, Nexi is one of the biggest payment companies in the European Union. Last year, the firm signed two major acquisitions, agreeing to buy rivals SIA and Nets for a combined total of $14.5 billion. It competes for business in the electronic payments space with the Netherlands’ Adyen and France’s Worldline.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

Dapper Labs, the start-up behind digital basketball trading card platform NBA Top Shot, is now valued at $7.6 billion following a $250 million funding round.
Sorare, a French fantasy soccer game that incorporates NFTs, raised $680 million in a round led by SoftBank which valued the company at $4.3 billion.
Crypto and blockchain start-ups have received about $19 billion in venture funding so far this year, according to figures shared with CNBC by data firm Pitchbook.

LeBron James #23 of the Los Angeles Lakers drives to the basket against the Phoenix Suns during the 2021 NBA Playoffs on June 3, 2021.
Adam Pantozzi | National Basketball Association | Getty Images

Two start-ups in the red-hot NFT market raised a combined $930 million this week, highlighting continued appetite from investors for cryptocurrency companies as the industry experiences massive growth.
Dapper Labs, which makes virtual basketball trading cards, said Wednesday it has raised $250 million in a funding round led by Coatue. Bond, the investment firm run by former Wall Street analyst Mary Meeker, and Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC also backed the round.

The new round values the Vancouver, Canada-based firm at $7.6 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter who preferred to remain anonymous as the information is not public.
Sorare, a French fantasy soccer game that incorporates NFTs, also announced Tuesday that it bagged $680 million in a bumper cash injection led by SoftBank. Venture capital companies Atomico, Bessemer Ventures and IVP also invested, along with investment firms D1 Capital and Eurazeo.
French soccer star Antoine Griezmann and former English player Rio Ferdinand are also investors in Sorare.
The investment gives Sorare a valuation of $4.3 billion, the company said, making it by far the most valuable private tech firm in France and one of the largest start-ups in Europe.

What are NFTs?

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are a new but fast-growing phenomenon in the crypto industry. They are digital tokens that represent ownership of a virtual item, such as a work of art. Ownership is tracked on the blockchain, a digital ledger of transactions.

Unlike bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, NFTs aren’t fungible. This means they cannot be exchanged with one another like dollars or gold. Each NFT is unique and acts as a collector’s item that can’t be duplicated — however, the underlying media can still be viewed by someone else on the internet.
“When we think about the collectibles in the physical world, most of them have no utility value,” Nicolas Julia, CEO and cop-founder of Sorare, explained. “You put them in an album and that’s nice but it’s kind of limiting.”
“When you translate it to NFTs in the digital world, there’s many more things which you can do, like using them in a game for instance. But you also have provable scarcity, which is very appealing to collectors.”
Prices of NFTs spiked earlier this year, with sales reaching a record $2.5 billion in the first half of 2021. High-profile transactions include a record $69 million artwork sold by digital artist Beeple at a Christie’s auction and the $2.9 million sale of the first-ever tweet by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
The huge sums of money flowing into firms like Dapper Labs and Sorare highlights how investors are chasing the next big thing in crypto.
Crypto and blockchain start-ups have received about $19 billion in venture funding so far this year, almost triple the $6.4 billion raised by the sector in 2020, according to figures shared with CNBC by data firm Pitchbook.

However, like other assets in the fledgling crypto industry, NFTs have proven vulnerable to abuse by bad actors. Last week, digital collectibles marketplace OpenSea disclosed that insider trading had occurred on its platform.

NFTs enter the world of sport

Several sports organizations are turning to NFTs and other crypto assets as a way of making additional revenue.
English Premier League club Manchester City, for example, has launched two collections of NFTs. Meanwhile, a number of soccer clubs have launched “fan tokens” that allow holders to vote on mostly minor club decisions and receive certain perks.
Dapper Labs’ NBA Top Shot platform lets users trade and collect basketball match highlights in the form of NFTs. The highlights, or “moments,” are licensed by the NBA, which receives royalties on each transaction.
Dapper Labs also developed its own blockchain designed for NFTs, called Flow. It had previously used Ethereum but shifted away from that network after its popular digital pet game CryptoKitties in 2017 led to slower transaction processing. It’s currently in the process of migrating CryptoKitties to Flow.

In addition to announcing its latest funding Wednesday, Dapper Labs unveiled a partnership with LaLiga, Spain’s top soccer league, to introduce a similar experience to NBA Top Shot for soccer fans. Dapper Labs says it plans to invest part of the fresh cash into new experiences, like paid trips to big games.
“Part of this funding will go toward expanding functionality on NBA Top shot, developing a mobile product, and connecting the digital collecting experience with the experience of a fan showing up to a live game, or even supporting their team on social media,” Roham Gharegozlou, Dapper Labs’ CEO, told CNBC.
It comes a week after LaLiga announced a separate partnership with Sorare to add digital player cards from the league. 
Sorare is also upping its rivalry with Dapper Labs, planning to expand into the U.S. with a new office on the ground. Sorare has been approached by a number of U.S. sports organizations, its CEO told CNBC.
Sorare also plans to launch a mobile app and have all of the top 20 soccer leagues signed up by the end of 2022. Both Dapper Labs and Sorare indicated they hope to take advantage of sports stars’ huge social media followings to get the word out about their platforms.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

Robinhood is testing “crypto wallets” with select clients next month to allow investors to send, receive and move cryptocurrencies in and out of the Robinhood app.
In recent months, some users have taken to social media to complain that by using Robinhood, they had exposure to crypto prices but not actual ownership of the coins themselves.
The move comes as cryptocurrency makes up an increasingly large part of Robinhood’s revenue.

Arrows pointing outwards

Robinhood is debuting a feature that gives traders more control over digital tokens in its latest expansion in the cryptocurrency space.
The newly public brokerage is testing “crypto wallets” with select clients next month, the company announced in a blog post Wednesday. The so-called wallet will allow investors to trade, send and receive digital currencies, as well as move them in and out of the Robinhood app.

In recent months, some users — particularly Dogecoin traders — have taken to social media to complain that by using Robinhood as their broker, they had exposure to crypto prices but not actual ownership of the coins themselves.
“We’re not first to the market — we’ve been taking our time to make sure that we build this in a phased approach,” Robinhood’s chief product officer Aparna Chennapragada told CNBC in a phone interview. “We’ll have a few customers come in, iterate on the product, get the customer feedback and then expand from there.”
Certain clients will begin testing the product and Robinhood will share their feedback over its blog and Twitter, said Chennapragada, who spent 12 years at Google leading product, engineering and design teams before joining Robinhood. The rollout will eventually allow clients on a waitlist to join.

Robinhood’s growing crypto business

The start-up debuted cryptocurrency trading three years ago but it has become increasingly important to the company’s top line. Last quarter, more than half of Robinhood’s transaction-based revenue came from cryptocurrency trading, up from just 3% a year earlier.
The new wallets will let clients to consolidate their digital coins into one account. Clients can then trade, send and receive cryptocurrencies to and from other wallet addresses. Rivals Coinbase and Gemini already offer this feature. Bloomberg News first reported Robinhood’s plan to roll out this feature in a beta version of the trading app.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have seen sharp volatility since bitcoin’s all-time high in April amid more concerns about regulation.
Cryptocurrencies took a dive alongside the broader market on Monday, with bitcoin ending the day about 7% lower. The slide resurfaced the debate about whether bitcoin can or should serve as a safe-haven asset. In more recent years, bitcoin has shown more of a tendency to dip with the broader markets.

Arrows pointing outwards

Robinhood also said a new feature that allows the set-up of recurring crypto investments is live on the app on Wednesday. Clients can schedule a crypto purchase, commission free, for as low as $1.
The broker’s move comes as cryptocurrencies are under more scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly Chairman Gary Gensler. Last week, Gensler assured lawmakers that Wall Street’s top regulator is working overtime to create a set of rules to oversee the volatile cryptocurrency markets, while balancing the interests of American innovators.
“Currently, we just don’t have enough investor protection in crypto finance, issuance, trading, or lending,” Gensler said in prepared remarks to the Senate Banking Committee. “Frankly, at this time, it’s more like the Wild West or the old world of ‘buyer beware’ that existed before the securities laws were enacted.”
Robinhood said the crypto wallets will have several safety features including identity verification, multi-factor authentication, and email and phone verification to keep coins safe from hackers.
“We are completely aligned with our regulators and the SEC to make sure that we are working on this with educational tools, with protection with safety. That’s great for customers that’s great for us,” Chennapragada said.
Shares of Robinhood ticked 2% higher in premarket trading on Wednesday.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

Delivering Alpha virtual summit will take place on September 29, 2021

A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, on Monday, Sept. 20, 2021.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

(Click here to subscribe to the new Delivering Alpha newsletter.)
Wall Street investors believe it’s time to take some risk off the table as concerns continue to pile up this month, according to a new CNBC Delivering Alpha survey. 

We polled about 400 chief investment officers, equity strategists, portfolio managers and CNBC contributors who manage money about where they stood on the markets for the rest of 2021 and next year. The survey was conducted this week.
More than three quarters of the respondents said now is a time to be very conservative in the stock market when asked what kind of market risk they are willing to accept for themselves and their clients.

Arrows pointing outwards

A confluence of uncertainties have emerged in the market, threatening to derail stocks’ record-setting recovery rally. On Monday, the S&P 500 suffered its worst sell-off since May as investors grew concerned about China’s troubling real estate sector and the Federal Reserve’s likely rollback of its massive stimulus. Meanwhile, fears of slowing economic growth amid high inflation — so-called stagflation — have also crept back nearly two years since the pandemic began.
While holding a more cautious view on the market right now, investors still believe stocks could grind higher over the next 12 months. About half of the survey respondents said the S&P 500 will rise more than 5% in the next 12 months. Forty-four percent said the equity benchmark will be fairly flat, while only 5% said it will fall over the next year.

Arrows pointing outwards

After this week’s pullback, the S&P 500 is about 4.2% off its record high from early September. The benchmark is still up about 16% this year following eight consecutive months of gains. Many believe the market is experiencing seasonal weakness in a historically choppy month of September.

“There seems to be a change in market sentiment over the past couple of weeks that favors the bears,” said Brian Price, head of investment management at Commonwealth Financial Network. “After a relatively quiet summer where the path of least resistance for equities was steadily higher it seems as though market participants are looking to fade this year’s rally.”
Some notable strategists are sticking to their bullish calls on the market. Widely followed Tom Lee of Fundstrat believes the stock market’s Monday rout is a buying opportunity for investors. JPMorgan’s quant guru Marko Kolanovic also called the sell-off overdone.
However, Morgan Stanley’s Mike Wilson, one of the biggest bears on Wall Street, sees a “destructive” scenario where the S&P 500 suffers a 20% correction as some economic indicators have started to deteriorate.
For investors focusing on yield, the best strategy right now is private credit, according to the survey result. Only 2% of the respondents believes Treasurys could offer attractive income.

Arrows pointing outwards

Government bonds are quickly becoming one of the most hated asset classes as their safe-haven appeal dampened amid the economic recovery. Meanwhile, the Fed, which has been buying $120 billion in Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities through its quantitative-easing program, may soon embark on its taper process.
One-time bond king Bill Gross recently called Treasurys trash, saying the 10-year yield will trade around 2% for the next 12 months. Leon Cooperman last week said bonds are “totally overpriced,” calling a big decline in prices.

Enjoyed this article?For exclusive stock picks, investment ideas and CNBC global livestreamSign up for CNBC ProStart your free trial now More

Worries about highly indebted property developer China Evergrande’s ability to pay interest on its U.S. dollar-denominated bonds has prompted comparisons to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and the subsequent financial crisis.
When it comes to the actual scale of impact, analysts point out that Evergrande holds land, while Lehman held financial assets.
International Monetary Fund Chief Economist Gita Gopinath told Reuters this week the organization believes “China has the tools and the policy space to prevent this turning into a systemic crisis.”

The Evergrande headquarters is seen in Shenzhen, southeastern China on September 14, 2021, as the Chinese property giant said it is facing “unprecedented difficulties” but denied rumours that it is about to go under.
Noel Celis | AFP | Getty Images

Evergrande holds physical assets

However, when it comes to the scale of potential impact on international financial markets, analysts point to a major difference between the Evergrande crisis and the Lehman collapse: Evergrande holds land, while Lehman held financial assets.
Evergrande has cash flow problems, but talk of systemic risks is “a bit overdone, frankly,” Rob Carnell, regional head of research for Asia-Pacific at ING, said Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.”
“Let’s face it, this is not Lehman’s, this is not LTCM,” Carnell said, referring to a large American hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management, that failed in the 1990s. “It’s not a hedge fund with massive leveraged positions or a bank whose financial asset prices are hurtling towards zero. It’s a property development firm with quite a lot of debt, you know, 300 billion plus thereabouts in dollar terms.”

He expects that if Evergrande can get some cash flow into its physical assets, the company can finish its development projects, sell them and start paying down debt.

On Wednesday, the company’s real estate group announced it would pay the interest on time on a mainland-traded bond denominated in yuan.
“Evergrande is facing a liquidity crunch although it owns a large land bank,” Larry Hu, chief China economist at Macquarie, said in a report Tuesday. He noted the developer’s assets consist primarily of land and housing projects that are worth just over 1.4 trillion yuan ($220 billion).

No Lehman-style contagion story makes sense here and therefore no Lehman Moment will there be.

China Beige Book

The collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 led to a crash in financial derivatives — credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations — “causing the market to doubt the health of other banks,” Hu said.
“But it’s quite unlikely that the Evergrande saga would cause the land price to crash,” he said. “After all, the value of land is simply more transparent and stable than financial instruments. It’s especially so in China, where local government monopolizes the land supply.”
“As the result, [the] local government has a strong incentive to stabilize land price. In the worst-case scenario, local government could even buy back land, as they did in 2014-15,” he added.

Strong government control

Another critical difference in Evergrande’s case is the greater level of government control and involvement in China’s real estate industry.
“Chinese banks and many other entities are government arms first, intermediators a distant second,” analysts at research firm China Beige Book said in a report Monday. “Even non-state financials can be controlled to an extent rarely seen outside China. Commercial bankruptcy is a state choice.”
“Beijing says lend, so you lend; when or even whether you get your money back is secondary,” the report said. “No Lehman-style contagion story makes sense here and therefore no Lehman Moment will there be.”

The legendary U.S. investment bank collapsed 13 years ago this month in an iconic moment of the global financial crisis. The bank underwrote tens of billions of dollars’ worth of securities backed by risky mortgages during a U.S. housing bubble. The U.S. government ultimately allowed Lehman to fail, while bailing out other financial institutions.
In China’s case, Beijing has tried to allow the market to play a greater role in the economy by letting more state-owned enterprises’ loans default.
Authorities will be patient in Evergrande’s case as they have two goals of preventing excessive risk-taking and maintaining stability in the property market, said Macquarie’s Hu.

Read more about China from CNBC Pro

“Policymakers would choose to wait first, then step in later to ensure an orderly debt restructuring,” he said. “A wholesale bailout is not very likely and shareholders/lenders might take a big loss. But the government would make sure that the pre-sold apartments get done and delivered to homebuyers.”
Hu also pointed to the Chinese government’s recent track record in restructuring giants such as Anbang Insurance, Baoshang Bank, HNA Group and China Huarong Asset Management. “China’s banking system has an annual profit of 1.9 [trillion yuan] and a provision of 5.4 [trillion yuan], which could easily absorb the loss from Evergrande,” he said.

‘China has the tools,’ IMF says

In Evergrande’s case, the property developer has more direct ties to foreign investors than the bulk of China’s economy.
The company has about $19 billion in total offshore bonds outstanding, equivalent to about 9% of U.S. dollar-denominated Chinese bonds, according to investment bank UBS. Evergrande’s total liabilities of about $313 billion is about 6.5% of the total liability of China’s property sector, the report said.
The UBS analysts expect Evergrande to restructure its debt, and predict that bond prices will recover from their lows and limit contagion.
The analysts also laid out a range of possible spillover effects if Evergrande were to enter the less likely scenario of full liquidation, such as the failure of exposed banks and selling across emerging market credit.
International Monetary Fund Chief Economist Gita Gopinath told Reuters this week the organization believes “China has the tools and the policy space to prevent this turning into a systemic crisis.”
The IMF can organize bailouts for countries or regions in financial stress.

Loading chart…

Even though public government statements in recent months have called for preventing major financial risks, Chinese authorities’ intervention is not a given.
Chinese officials have so far made few major public statements about Evergrande.
At a press conference last week, a National Bureau of Statistics spokesman said the department is monitoring the difficulties of some large real estate companies and the potential impact on the economy.
China’s real estate market, along with related industries such as construction, accounts for more than a quarter of national GDP, according to Moody’s estimates.
Bets that property prices would only rise ultimately forced many Chinese households to take out mortgages to afford homes. In the last few years, the government has tried to cool the market with measures such as restrictions on the level of debt developers can take on.
— CNBC’s Eustance Huang and Weizhen Tan contributed to this report.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

Check out the companies making headlines in the premarket.
General Mills — Shares of General Mills added 1.7% in the premarket after the food company reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings. General Mills posted adjusted earnings of 99 cents per share compared with the analyst consensus of 89 cents per share, according to StreetAccount. Quarterly revenue also topped projections.

Adobe — Adobe shares fell 3.7% in early morning trading despite the software company’s quarterly financial results beating Wall Street expectations. The company reported earnings of $3.11 per share on revenue of $3.94 billion. Analysts expected earnings of $3.01 per share on revenue of $3.89 billion, according to Refinitv.
FedEx — FedEx shares dropped 6.1% in premarket trading after the company’s quarterly earnings missed expectations. The transport company reported earnings of $4.37 a share, 54 cents below the Refinitiv analyst consensus.
Stitch Fix — Stitch Fix shares surged 12.8% in early morning trading after reporting a surprise profit in the fiscal fourth quarter. The online shopping and styling service reported earnings of 19 cents per share versus an expected loss of 13 cents per share, according to Refinitiv. Stitch Fix also topped revenue projections and reported 18% year-over-year growth in active clients.
Hyatt Hotels — Hyatt Hotels shares were down 1.2% in the premarket after the hotel corporation announced a public offering of 7 million Class A common shares to fund a portion of its anticipated acquisition of Apple Leisure Group.
Disney — Disney shares ticked up 0.9% in the premarket after Credit Suisse said the selloff in Disney the day prior was an overreaction and the stock could rebound more than 27%. Shares of the media and entertainment giant retreated more than 4% on Tuesday after CEO Bob Chapek warned of headwinds on subscription video streaming growth in the fourth quarter and projected lower-than-expected fourth-quarter subscriber growth.

SoFi — Shares of SoFi jumped 3.4% after Jefferies initiated the personal finance app with a buy rating, saying the stock can jump more than 60% in the next 12 months. “We believe that ‘Flywheel’, SoFi’s synergistic business model, will continue to drive significant user growth, product adoption, and margin expansion,” Jefferies said.

Become a smarter investor with CNBC Pro. Get stock picks, analyst calls, exclusive interviews and access to CNBC TV. Sign up to start a free trial today

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

A significant buying opportunity may be unfolding on Wall Street.
Canaccord Genuity’s Tony Dwyer believes a record rally will follow the recent market tumult.

“We’re going to move from this summer of indigestion into the year-end opportunity,” the firm’s chief market strategist told CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Tuesday. “We’re just not quite there yet.”
The Dow and S&P 500 just recorded their fourth negative session in a row. The activity follows the indices’ sharp decline on Monday. Right now, the Dow is off 5% from its all-time high while the S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq are down 4%.
“It’s a multi-month correction in the broader market,” said Dwyer. “We’re neither extremely overbought or extremely oversold at this point given the near 2% decline yesterday.”
Dwyer, a long-term market bull who went on pullback watch last Spring and downgraded the market to neutral in April, lists heated exchanges over the fiscal cliff in Washington, Wednesday’s Federal Reserve decision on interest rates and the debt crisis fallout from China developer Evergrande as rational near-term downside catalysts.
“These are good excuses for profit-taking,” he said.

In Dwyer’s Tuesday research note to investors, he indicated the Street will likely see a near-term reflex rally. However, he considers the intermediate readings more ominous.
“There has already been a sharp bounce off Monday’s intraday low and the catalysts for the correction have yet to be resolved, so we would expect a bit more indigestion and begin adding risk back into the market on any further weakness as the bottoming process begins,” wrote Dwyer.
He expects the magnitude of the near-term pullback to be limited to a few percent.
On additional downside, Dwyer plans to buy financials, industrials, materials and energy. Right now, materials and energy are firmly in correction territory, off more than 10% from their 52-week highs.
He contends the euphoria surrounding the economic reopening trades is now largely over, and they’ll be key to a record market break out within months.
“It’s more important to… look at what the year-end opportunity is,” Dwyer said.
CNBC’s Christopher Hayes contributed to this report.
Disclaimer More

U.S. stock futures opened slightly lower Tuesday night after the major averages tried but failed to rebound from Monday’s Evergrande-led sell-off in the regular session.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell 50 points, or 0.15%. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures fell 0.19% and 0.22%, respectively.

In regular trading the Dow lost 50.63 points, or 0.15%. The S&P 500 shed about 0.1% following its worst day since May on Monday. The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.2%.
The global markets continued to digest the news of the possible default of the embattled Chinese property developer Evergrande. At its high point, the Dow Jones Industrial average reclaimed more than half of Monday’s losses but those gains eventually evaporated in what ended up being a volatile session.
The Dow and S&P looked poised to snap a three-day losing streak in the late afternoon but turned lower into the close, finishing in the red for the fourth day in a row and the fifth of the past six sessions. The Dow is down 4% in September while the S&P is down 3.7%.
“In a way the markets being flat today is actually a pretty good outcome,” Fundstrat’s Tom Lee said on CNBC’s “Fast Money” Tuesday night. “We’re still in a position where ultimately stocks are going to rally hard off this, because unless Evergrande is going to cause a real seismic effect on the U.S. economy, the U.S. fundamentals are in good shape.”
The Federal Reserve will conclude its two-day meeting on Wednesday and release a policy statement with economic and interest rate forecasts. Chairman Jerome Powell is expected to speak to the media at 2:30 p.m. ET.

Investors expect to hear details about when exactly the central bank plans to begin tapering its bond buying. Powell has previously said it could begin as soon as this year. That may not necessarily happen, however.
“I think they’re going to lay out that they had a discussion on tapering. I don’t think they’re going to provide any details,” BlackRock chief investment officer of global fixed income Rick Rieder told CNBC. “I think they’re going to provide a framework where they can start doing it in November or December.”
General Mills and Blackberry will report quarterly earnings Wednesday.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More