The U.S. stock market seems to be steadying on Friday, as banks recover some of their sharp losses from the day before.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.2% in midday trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 23 points, or 0.1%, as of 11:30 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.5% lower. All three indexes drifted between gains and losses through the morning, but the moves weren’t as jarring as the big hour-to-hour swings they had earlier in the week.
Drops for Big Tech stocks weighed on the market, including a 0.5% dip for Nvidia. Theyre fighting criticism that their stock prices have soared too high because of the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology, even though their profits have also been growing quickly.
Bank stocks stabilized after several reported stronger profits for the latest quarter than analysts expected, including Truist Financial, Fifth Third Bancorp, and Huntington Bancshares. That helped steady the group, a day after tumbling on worries about potentially bad loans hitting smaller and mid-sized banks.
The two banks at the center of Thursdays action also rose Friday to trim some of their sharp losses.
Zions Bancorp., which is charging off $50 million of loans where it found apparent misrepresentations and contractual defaults by the borrowers, added 2.8% following its 13.1% loss.
Western Alliance Bancorp, which is suing a borrower due to allegations of fraud, rose 1.3% after its 10.8% fall on Thursday.
Scrutiny is rising on the quality of loans that banks and other lenders have broadly made following last months Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing of First Brands Group, a supplier of aftermarket auto parts.
One of the financial firms that could feel pain because of First Brands’ bankruptcy, Jefferies Financial Group, rose 5.1% Friday. It had lost roughly 30% of its value since mid-September.
The question is whether the lenders problems are just a collection of one-offs or a signal of something larger threatening the industry. Uncertainty is high following a long stretch where many borrowers were able to keep running, even with the weight of higher interest rates. And with prices soaring to records for all kinds of investments, the appetite for risk may have gotten too high.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon addressed the issue on an earnings conference call with analysts earlier this week.
When you see one cockroach, there are probably more, Dimon said. Everyone should be forewarned on this one.
But banks make loan loss provisions and typically have plenty of capital to keep the cockroaches from causing structural damage, said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management. Based on earnings and data so far, it looks like this isnt an infestation and that the potential canary in the coal mine is probably passed out and not dead.
Trading has been shaky on Wall Street, with stocks regularly swinging between gains and losses, since President Donald Trump threatened to crank tariffs much higher on China at the end of last week.
But Trump told Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures that such high tariffs are not sustainable, helping to ease some of the worries. He also said that he would meet with Chinas leader, Xi Jinping, at an upcoming conference in South Korea after earlier saying there seemed to be no reason for such a meeting.
In the bond market, Treasury yields steadied following their sharp slides from Thursday, which came as investors rushed into investments seen as safer.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury edged up to 4.00% from 3.99% late Thursday.
Gold also pulled back from its latest record as more calm seeped through the market.
The price for an ounce slipped 1.3% to fall back to $4,247.40, but it’s still up more than 60% for the year so far. Besides worries about tariffs, gold’s price has also surged on expectations for coming cuts to interest rates by the Federal Reserve and concerns about the massive amounts of debt that the U.S. and other governments worldwide are building.
In stock markets abroad, indexes tumbled across much of Europe and Asia after Wall Street’s weakness from Thursday moved westward.
Germanys DAX lost 1.7%, and Hong Kongs Hang Seng sank 2.5% for two of the worlds bigger moves.
Stan Choe, AP business writer
AP Writers Teresa Cerojano and Matt Ott contributed.
An American businessman whose firm invested in several European soccer clubs that struggled under its ownership has been indicted in New York on charges of financial wrongdoing in an alleged $500 million fraud scheme.
Josh Wander was a co-founder of Miami-based 777 Partners that owned stakes in an Australian airline, plus soccer clubs Hertha Berlin in Germany, Genoa in Italy, Standard Liege in Belgium, and Vasco da Gama in Brazil.
The 777 story became a cautionary tale in the global soccer trend of multi-club ownership investors taking stakes in several clubs in different countries. European soccer body UEFA has identified the trend as a threat to the integrity of games and the player trading industry worth more than $10 billion each year.
As alleged, Wander used his investment firm, 777 Partners, to cheat private lenders and investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars by pledging assets that his firm did not own, falsifying bank statements and making other material misrepresentations about 777s financial condition, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement.
The indictment charging Wander with wire fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit those crimes was unsealed Thursday in federal court in Manhattan. Most of the charges carry a maximum prison term of 20 years.
Wanders lawyer, Jordan Estes, told The Associated Press on Friday that Wander looks forward to setting the record straight.
This is a business dispute dressed up as a criminal case, Estes said in a written statement.
Wander and 777 had failed last year in targeting their biggest capture in soccer, nine-time English champion Everton, amid increasing scrutiny of the business and a lawsuit in New York from a London-based investor.
Reporting about 777s soccer interests, led by Norwegian soccer magazine Josimar, intensified even before Wander was elected to a board seat at the influential European Club Association, a network of hundreds of teams that shapes the Champions League and other competitions.
Wanders firm had moved heavily into soccer in 2021, buying stakes in financially distressed clubs recovering from playing in empty stadiums during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The former chief financial officer at 777, Damien Alfalla, is cooperating with the government, the FBI said, and made a guilty plea this week.
The women and men of the SDNY and our law enforcement partners will continue to work tirelessly to protect our investors and our markets, Clayton said.
Another 777 executive, Steven Pasko, also is targeted in a civil law court filing Thursday by the Securities and Exchange Commission. It wasn’t immediately clear who is representing Pasko.
Between July and September, electric vehicle sales in the U.S. hit a record high. Americans bought more than 430,000 EVs, up 40% from the previous quarter, as they race to qualify for federal tax credits before they expire.
That EV boom wasnt just limited to the U.S., though: Global EV sales hit an all-time high of 2.1 million in September. Two-thirds of those sales were in China, the worlds largest EV market.
And yet, theres still talk of an EV retreat, both in the U.S. and abroad. Automakers have expressed concerns about their EV profits, and policymakers in Canada and the European Union are pausing, or adjusting, their EV mandates.
Theres an inherent duality of the market moment were in, says Corey Cantor, research director of the Zero Emissions Transportation Association. On the one hand, EV sales are higher than they have ever been, and yet automakers still remain concerned.
Heres why, and whats going on in the electric vehicle landscape.
EV rush before tax credits expired
EVs counted for nearly 11% of total vehicle sales in the U.S. between July and September. Thats a big increase from the same time period last year, when their share was 8.6%, according to Cox Automotive, which recently released data about the countrys third quarter EV sales.
That jump wasnt a surpriseit was expected, experts say. Americans were rushing to buy EVs before the federal tax credits expired on September 30.
The tax credits, part of President Bidens Inflation Reduction Act, offered up to $7,500 back for Americans who bought a new EV, if the cars they purchased met certain conditions. There was also a credit of up to $4,000 available for used EVs.
President Trumps One Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminated those tax credits, killing what analysts say was a key catalyst for EV adoption. EVs are still seen as a premium purchase; in August, the average EV cost more than $57,000, according to Cox$9,000 more than a similar gas car.
Concerns about future growth
Not every automaker benefited from all those third quarter EV sales, either. Cox Automotive notes that Mercedes-Benz EV sales in that time period were mostly flat year-over-year, and Toyota and Nissan sold fewer EVs during that boom than they did in the third quarter of 2024.
Despite the backlash Tesla has been dealing with throughout 2025, that carmaker actually saw an 8% sales increase year-over-year, but its share of total EV sales has fallen. Tesla once made up 49% of all EV sales in the third quarter of 2024, but its share this past quarter was 41%.
Volkswagen, General Motors, Honda, and Hyundai had notable increases in their EV sales. Volkswagen and GMs sales were more than double the levels one year ago.
But those automakers still have concerns. This week, GM said it was taking a $1.6 billion hit from changing its EV rollout in the U.S. It changed its rollout in part because of Trumps elimination of the tax credits, and his move to loosen emissions regulations.
These policies make the future far less certain for automakers. Federal policies could tighten again in a couple of years or remain the same, Cantor says. The federal policy pathway is far less clear moving forward than it was a year ago.
One thing experts do expect is that U.S. EV sales will slump after this quarter, because that surge to purchase before the tax credits expired pulled forward sales that would have been spread out over more time. Cox Automotive forecasts that EV sales will drop notably in Q4 and through the early months of 2026.
EV struggles worldwide
Changing U.S. policies arent only affecting the EV sales outlook here. Trumps tariffs are also adding costs for automakers in international markets, like Canada and across the European Union.
The EU recently said it would review its 2035 target for cutting car emissions to zero. A policy note published before those talks highlighted challenges for the European car industry, including higher tariffs on shipments to the U.S., the Wall Street Journal reported, as well as low profit margins for EVs and the growth of cheaper Chinese offerings.
China has been dominating the EV market, not just in its own country but worldwide, in part because it offers extremely affordable EVssome priced as low as $10,000.
But that could make the market oversaturated. While Chinese EV sales are increasing, that growth is happening more and more at the expense of profitability, the Wall Street Journal notes; more than 110 EV brands operated there in 2023, and they likely wont all last.
Hope for the future
Even before Trumps policies, there was talk of an EV sales slump in 2024. Thats because while sales were increasing, the rate at which they were growing sloweda common issue for all new technologies as they vie for mainstream appeal. Early adopters drive that beginning growth, and then the industry has to figure out how to attract everyone else.
Now, changing federal policies are making that next step even more difficult. But EV experts still have hope.
We’d expect the impact of these policy changes to be most acute during the forthcoming year, Cantor says. Overall, the global move towards electric vehicles continues. The International Energy Agency said in May that it expects one in four cars sold worldwide this year to be electric.
Cox Automotive says EV sales are the future, too. Cx Automotive continues to believe that over the long termthe next 10 years or moresales of vehicles powered solely by internal combustion engines will continue to decline, the company wrote in its Q3 EV sales report. Electrified vehicleshybrids, plug-in hybrids and pure EVsare the future.
We might not get to that future as fast as EV advocates hoped, though. Biden set a goal for EVs to make up 50% of all vehicle sales by 2030. Cox now says EV sales can hit 25% by then. So growth will be slower, but certainly moving out of the niche category, Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of industry insights at Cox, wrote in September.
And though the future of U.S. federal policy is up in the air, experts still say innovations will advance to help the EV market. Continued innovation in battery technology, improved transparency in battery health and expanding infrastructure give reason for optimism, Valdez Streaty wrote. The road ahead wil be challenging, but progress will continue.
If theres any doubt whether people are willing to pay $900 for a premium credit card, just look at the latest quarterly results for American Express: The credit card issuer reported Friday that it beat third-quarter earnings estimates and raised its full-year outlook.
Its been a month since American Express refreshed its Platinum line of credit cards, raising the annual fee by $200 to $895, and that change is already paying dividends. The company has seen strong demand for these cards and more than 500,000 people have requested the New York-based issuers new pocket mirror card.
The initial customer demand and engagement exceeded our expectations, with new U.S. Platinum account acquisitions doubling compared to pre-refresh levels, Stephen J. Squeri, chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement.
American Express reported that revenue rose 11% from a year ago to a record $18.4 billion in the third quarter, driven largely by a 9% increase in card member spending. Earnings per share came in at $4.14, higher than the consensus of analyst estimates.
American Express Platinum cardholdersboth individuals and businessesaccount for about $530 billion in annual billings, according to the company, and the recent refresh has helped drive additional revenue. In the first three weeks since the card refresh, the company reported a 45% increase in new high-yield savings accounts from these members and record-high bookings on Amex travel.
RACE FOR PREMIUM MARKET
Squeri said the successful relaunch of Platinum cards reinforces our leadership in the premium space. Indeed, the race for the premium credit card market has heated up in recent years as issuers have raced to one-up each other with a wide variety of cardholder benefits.
JPMorgan Chase bumped up the annual fee on its Sapphire Reserve card from $550 to $795 in June, promising even more perks at this higher rate, and American Express followed with its fee increase in September.
Offering these types of perks comes at a cost: American Express has paid $13.6 billion in card member rewards year-to-date, a 12% increase from the same period in 2024. Thats more than double the amount of another expense: Salaries and employee benefits.
But nabbing the premium market is clearly a priority for issuers, even if a majority of cardholders arent willing to fork over $800 to $900 for the privilege of using a credit card. Consumers who pay more than $500 in annual credit card fees spend nearly three times more each month than those with lower-fee cards, according to figures from J.D. Power.
MARKET REACTION
And thanks partly to the successful relaunch of its Platinum cards, American Express also announced Friday that it has raised its full-year guidance for both revenue growth and earnings. It now expects a 10% increase in revenue, up from 9% previously, and a $0.30 boost to earnings per share, to a total of $15.50.
Stock market investors rewarded the better-than-expected earnings report: Shares of American Express surged more than 6% by mid-day Friday. The stock is up nearly 16% this year, and has outperformed the S&P 500.
ChatGPT will be able to have kinkier conversations after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the artificial intelligence company will soon allow its chatbot to engage in erotica for verified adults.”
OpenAI won’t be the first to try to profit from sexualized AI. Sexual content was a top draw for AI tools almost as soon as the boom in AI-generated imagery and words erupted in 2022.
But the companies that were early to embrace mature AI also encountered legal and societal minefields and harmful abuse as a growing number of people have turned to the technology for companionship or titillation.
Will a sexier ChatGPT be different? After three years of largely banning mature content, Altman said Wednesday that his company is not the elected moral police of the world and ready to allow more user freedom for adults at the same time as it sets new limits for teens.
In the same way that society differentiates other appropriate boundaries (R-rated movies, for example) we want to do a similar thing here, Altman wrote on social media platform X, whose owner, Elon Musk, has also introduced an animated AI character that flirts with paid subscribers.
For now, unlike Musk’s Grok chatbot, paid subscriptions to ChatGPT are mostly pitched for professional use. But letting the chatbot become a friend or romantic partner could be another way for the world’s most valuable startup, which is losing more money than it makes, to turn a profit that could justify its $500 billion valuation.
Theyre not really earning much through subscriptions so having erotic content will bring them quick money, said Zilan Qian, a fellow at Oxford University’s China Policy Lab who has studied the popularity of dating-based chatbots in the U.S. and China.
There are already about 29 million active users of AI chatbots designed specifically for romantic or sexual bonding, and that’s not counting people who use conventional chatbots in that way, according to research published by Qian earlier this month.
It also doesn’t include users of Character.AI, which is fighting a lawsuit that alleges a chatbot modeled after Game of Thrones character Daenerys Targaryen formed a sexually abusive relationship with a 14-year-old boy and pushed him to kill himself. OpenAI is facing a lawsuit from the family of a 16-year-old ChatGPT user who died by suicide in April.
Qian said she worries about the toll on real-world relationships when mainstream chatbots, already prone to sycophancy, are primed for 24-hour availability serving sexually explicit content.
“ChatGPT has voice chat versions. I would expect that in the future, if they were to go down this way voice, text, visual it’s all there,” she said.
Humans who fall in love with human-like machines have long been a literary cautionary tale, from popular science fiction of the last century to the ancient Greek legend of Pygmalion, obsessed with a woman he sculpted from ivory. Creating such a machine would seem like an unusual detour for OpenAI, founded a decade ago as a nonprofit dedicated to safely building better-than-human AI.
Altman said on a podcast in August that OpenAI has tried to resist the temptation to introduce products that could juice growth or revenue but be very misaligned with its long-term mission. Asked for a specific example, he gave one: Well, we havent put a sexbot avatar in ChatGPT yet.
Idaho-based startup Civitai, a platform for AI-generated art, learned the hard way that making money off mature AI won’t be an easy path.
When we launched the site, it was an intentional choice to allow mature content, said Justin Maier, the company’s co-founder and CEO, in an interview last year.
Backed by the prominent venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which has also invested in OpenAI, the Idaho startup was one of several that tried to capitalize on the sudden popularity of tools like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney that enabled people to type a description and conjure up almost any kind of image. Part of Stable Diffusion’s initial popularity was the ease with which it could generate a new kind of synthetic and highly customized pornography.
“What we had seen was that there was a lot of interest in mature content, Maier said. Training these AI systems, known as models, on mature themes actually made it so that these models were more capable of human anatomy and resulted in actually better models, he said.
We didnt want to prevent the kind of growth that actually increased everything for the entire community, whether you were interested in mature content or Pixar, Maier said. So we allowed it early on and have always kind of had this battle of making it so that we can keep things filtered and safe, if thats not what youre interested in. We wanted to ultimately give the control to the user to decide what they would see on the site and what their experience would be.
That also invited abuse. Civitai last year implemented new measures to detect and remove sexual images depicting children, but it remained a hub for AI-generated pornography, including fake images of celebrities. Confronting increasing pressure, including from credit card processors and a new law against nonconsensual images signed by President Donald Trump, Civitai earlier this year blocked users from creating deepfake images of real people. Engagement dropped.
Another company that hasn’t shied away from mature content is Baltimore-based Nomi.ai, though its founder and CEO Alex Cardinell said its companion chatbots are strictly for users over 18 and were never marketed to kids. They are also not designed for sex, though Cardinell said in an interview earlier this year that people who build platonic relationships with their chatbot might find it veering into a romantic one.
Its kind of very user-dependent for where theyre kind of missing the human gap in their life. And I think thats different for everyone, he said.
He declined to guess how many Nomi users are having erotic conversations with the chatbot, comparing it to real-life partners who might do mature content things for some part of their lives but all sorts of other stuff together as well.
Were not monitoring user conversations like that, Cardinell said.
Altman’s announcement that erotica for adults could arrive on ChatPT in December came a day after California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed legislation that would have banned companies from making AI chatbots available to anyone under 18 years old if it was foreseeable that they would engage in erotic or sexually explicit interactions” with kids or encourage them to harm themselves. The tech industry lobbied heavily against the bill, which Newsom said was too broad, but OpenAI, Meta, and others introduced new age restrictions and parental controls for AI-teen interactions.
Matt O’Brien, AP technology writer
Last night, New Yorkers and viewers across the country tuned in to watch the first general election debate for mayor of New York City. And as far as debates go, this one was charged, full of spats, and came with a direct and thoroughline of questioning that didn’t leave anything off the table.
Within minutes, Democrats Andrew Cuomo (who is running as an independent) and Zohran Mamdani, and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, made clear that they came not just prepared to share their positions, but also to follow up, push back on criticisms or mistruths, and repeatedly fire well-rehearsed jabs at one another.
The trio let viewers know just how different they arenot just as candidates, but also, as people. The tension was so high it prompted Sliwa to comment, “There’s a lot of testosterone in this room,” minutes into the debate.
Here are some key takeaways from the event:
Cuomo’s past is not forgottenand likely will never be
Early on, Cuomo, who resigned as governor following an investigation into sexual misconduct allegations, had to answer tough questions about his record.
As both Sliwa and Mamdani attacked the former governor about his handling of nursing homes during the COVID pandemic, and the sexual misconduct allegations, it felt clear that his past won’t soon be forgotten.
But Cuomo wasn’t the only candidate who was pressed.
Mamdani, a 33-year-old assemblyman, was asked hard-hitting questions that came with follow-up after follow-up on how he will fund his major proposals: making buses and childcare free and freezing rent.
Mamdani talked about taxing the wealthiest one percent, while Sliwa called his ideas “fantasies” and Cuomo seemed to criticize him for wanting to lower the cost of living.
The rent is still too damn high
When candidates were asked how much they pay in rent, Cuomo and Mamdani gave starkly different answers.
While Mamdani answered that his rent is $2,300 per month, Cuomo said he pays $7,800 and claimed that Mamdani “has a rent-stabilized apartment that a poor person should have.”
Given that many New Yorkers are struggling to pay their rent, the comment felt out of step with what residents can actually afford.
Gaza looms large in NYC
Another issue that took up a solid chunk of the debate was the Israel-Hamas conflict. Mamdani was pressed over his pro-Palestine stance, which Cuomo said makes Jewish New Yorkers feel unsafe.
Cuomo repeatedly brought up that Mamdani has failed to explicitly condemn Hamas and the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which Cuomo asserted means “kill all Jews.”
Mamdani countered that “of course” he condemns the attacks by Hamas, and that in talking with Jewish New Yorkers on the campaign trail, he has learned that the phrase in question invokes fear; he noted that he will “discourage” the language, calling it “language that I do not use.”
However, he pressed that, like many New Yorkers, he stands firmly against genocide and the occupation of Palestinian territories, which the International Court of Justice has said is illegal. He also stood up for Muslim New Yorkers, questioning why Cuomo has never been a leader for Muslims.
“It took Andrew Cuomo being beaten by a Muslim to ever set foot in a mosque,” Mamdani said.
A study in contrasts
Overall, while Cuomo leaned into his experience, Mamdani pressed that if New Yorkers want more of the same, they should vote for Cuomo.
What I dont have in experience, I make up for in integrity, Mamdani said to the former governor. What you dont have in integrity, you could never make up for in experience.
As the two frontrunners sparred back and forth, Sliwa held his own. But at times, the Guardian Angels founderwho appeared at the debate without his trademark red beretfelt lost in the shuffle.
This was especially true when he accidentally answered a question that wasn’t meant for him, and when he didn’t give a president’s name when asked to name his favorite modern president.
He also couldn’t manage to say Zohran correctly. He repeatedly called his fellow candidates “the architect” (Cuomo) and “the apprentice” (Mamdani), in an apparent attempt to paint a picture of how he stands out from the both.
But the candidates mostly seemed to ignore him.
The final questions of the night focused on the candidate’s human side. When each were asked if they had ever purchased cannabis, Cuomo said no, Sliwa said he had for medical reasons, and Mamdani giggled as he openly answered that he had purchased cannabis from a legal dispensary. The moment is likely one that younger voters will find relatable (and memeable).
There was no clear winner of the night, as what stood out the most was just how different Cuomo and Mamdani are. But, in terms of zingers, Mamdani had the best ones.
The final jab of the night when they were all asked whether they’d go to a Knicks or Mets game if they were both happening at the same timeand Cuomo said “both.”
Mamdani laughed as he said, “This is what New Yorkers are tired of. Just pick a team.”
The candidates will have one more opportunity to make their positions clear at the next debate, which takes place next Wednesday, October 22, just three days before the start of early voting.
Fear over credit quality in U.S. regional banks rippled through markets on Friday, dragging global financial stocks lower and reviving memories of the crisis of confidence that shook sentiment just over two years ago.
The selloff hit Wall Street, with main equities indexes seeing a mixed open, as investors stayed on edge with banking sector worries adding to anxiety already heightened by escalating U.S.-China trade tensions and renewed worries about the global economic outlook.
The banking sector’s exposure to two recent U.S. auto bankruptcies has rekindled concerns about lending standards more than two years after Silicon Valley Bank’s failure, when high interest rates drove paper losses on its bonds and sparked a global bank stocks rout.
Investors are now trying to assess whether recent issues in U.S. credit markets will have a similar effect, as an overnight selloff on Wall Street rippled across Asia and Europe and shone a spotlight on the recent AI-led surge in broader stock markets that some fear could have created a bubble.
Some analysts said, at this stage, the concerns around U.S. regional banks appeared idiosyncratic rather than a sign of something more systemic.
“Pockets of the U.S. banking sector including regional banks have given the market cause for concern,” said Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell.
“This includes Zions flagging an unexpected loss on two loans and Western Alliance alleging a borrower had committed fraud.”
Markets whipsaw
Some of the largest U.S. banks fell in Friday trading, closing a week marked by broadly strong earnings on a dour note.
The KBW Banks Index, which tracks large-cap banks, fell 0.4%.
White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on Friday that banks have ample reserves and that he was optimistic that credit markets could stay ahead of the curve.
He added in an interview with Fox Business Network that Trump administration officials led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve’s Michelle Bowman are “cleaning things up right now” without providing further details.
“What we see in the banks selling off overnight in the U.S., Asia wakes up to it, Europe wakes up to it, and so it spreads,” said TD Securities head of global macro strategy James Rossiter.
European banks fell almost 3%, with Deutsche Bank and Barclays sliding around 6%, and Societe Generale down 4.6%, after financial firms in Asia, especially Japanese banks and insurers sank.
In early U.S. trading, the SPDR S&P regional banking ETF was up 0.4%, a day after the benchmark tumbled 6%, its steepest one-day selloff in six months.
Strong earnings from Truist Financial, Regions Financial, and Fifth Third bolstered investor sentiment, sending most U.S. regional banks higher in morning trading.
Zions Bancorp, at the heart of the investor scrutiny, recovered some lost ground, after closing down 13%. Western Alliance was up 2.6% after losing roughly 11% on Thursday.
“Despite growing hopes of further rate cuts this year, attention is turning to the underlying health of the economy, as emerging credit losses amongst Americas regional banks raised further questions about lending practices,” said Derren Nathan, head of equity research, Hargreaves Lansdown.
The U.S. KBW Regional Banking Index closed down 6.3% on Thursday.
The latest selloff came after Zions said it would take a $50 million loss on two commercial and industrial loans from its California unit, while Western Alliance disclosed it had initiated a lawsuit alleging fraud by Cantor Group V, LLC. Attorneys for Cantor denied the allegations.
Credit impairments in private debt have been rising and default rates have hit 5.5%, said Mark Dowding, chief investment officer at RBC BlueBay Asset Management, citing the latest available data for the second quarter.
Despite tenuous gains in U.S. bank stocks, the gloom spread across other pockets of the U.S. financial sector, weighing on mortgage lenders, buy-now-pay-later firms, and brokerages.
Analysts say that any cracks in credit on Wall Street are likely to spill over into other areas of the financial sector.
Robinhood and Interactive Brokers fell 1.5% and 2%, respectively.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said earlier this week about credit markets: “When you see one cockroach, there are probably more, and so everyone should be forewarned.”
Broader market impact
“The market is clearly priced for perfection,” said Bo Pei, analyst at US Tiger Securities. “This leaves sentiment vulnerable, so even isolated negative headlines can trigger outsized reactions like what we saw yesterday.”
European bank shares are up some 40% year-to-date. Gold meanwhile hit a fresh record high.
U.S. banks borrowed nearly $15 billion from the Federal Reserve’s Standing Repo Facility (SRF) on Wednesday and Thursday, suggesting tightness in meeting funding obligations with large net Treasuries settlement due this week.
That was the largest borrowing over a two-day period since the Covid-19 pandemic.
On Friday morning, however, banks did not tap the repo facility, although they get another chance to do so in the afternoon.
The SRF acts as a liquidity backstop for potential funding shortfalls. Introduced in July 2021 in response to the pandemic, the Fed’s facility provides twice-daily overnight cash loans in exchange for eligible collateral such as U.S. Treasuries.
“The market has been concerned on a bubble brewing on private credit for the past few months,” said Alan Devlin, Global Financials Research Analyst, Impax Asset Management. “The market is basically shooting first, asking questions later.”
Ankur Banerjee, Alun John, and Manya Saini; Additional reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss, Kevin Buckland, Stella Qiu, Dhara Ranasinghe, Jose Joel, Pritam Biswas and Medha Singh, Reuters
Thanksgiving is now less than six weeks away, which means many families are making plans for travel and meal prep. But the cost of inflation will also be weighing heavily on their minds, especially for those who have large Turkey Day gatherings to feed.
However, the world of grocery shopping is highly competitive, and one chain, Aldi, is aiming to outdo the competition in enticing cost-conscious consumers to shop at its stores. The national grocery store chain has announced that it will put a full Thanksgiving meal, which feeds 10, on your table for just $40.
Heres what you need to know as the turkey dinner wars kick off for 2025.
Aldi announces a Thanksgiving meal for 10 for just $40
Every national and regional chain that sells groceries will be vying for Americans dollars over the next six weeks as they begin shopping for their Thanksgiving meals.
Today, Aldi has announced that it intends to give cash-conscious consumers the ability to get a full turkey spread for 10 people for just $40. As Aldi notes, at an average cost of just $4 per person, the deal, per household guest, costs less than a pumpkin spice latte.
The deal also happens to be $7 cheaper than the $47 Thanksgiving dinner for 10 that Aldi offered last year.
It should be noted that the $40 price isnt for a package of set food items. Instead, Aldi calculated the price by adding up the cost of 21 individual products and ingredients that are needed for making a Thanksgiving meal of nine dishes.
Those dishes include:
a 14-pound turkey
rolls
cranberry sauce
mac and cheese
stuffing
mashed potatoes with gravy
sweet potato casserole
green bean casserole
pumpkin pie
In a potential dig at competitors like Costco, Aldi notes that no coupons or memberships are needed to buy the individual items that go into making the $40 meal for 10.
The grocery store chain is also providing a downloadable list of those items here.
The average cost of a Thanksgiving dinner has hovered around $60 for years
The cost of Thanksgiving dinner can vary widely based on numerous factors, including the dishes you plan to prepare, the number of guests youll be feeding, and where in the country you are located. However, 2024 data from the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) found that the average cost of a Thanksgiving meal for 10 people has hovered around $60 for years.
The AFBF found that the average Thanksgiving meal for 10 cost $58.08 in 2024. That was down 5% from the $61.17 average meal cost in 2023. In 2022, the average cost of a Thanksgiving meal for 10 hit a record high of $64.05, according to the AFBF.
Of course, Aldi wont be the only one vying for your Thanksgiving dinner dollars. Last year, the chain was in a heated competition with other major U.S. grocery stores, including Walmart and Target.
As reported by CBS Mornings last November, while Aldi was offering a 2024 Thanksgiving meal for 10 for $47, Target was offering a Thanksgiving meal for eight for $40, and Walmart was offering a meal for eight for $54. You can expect both of those major chainsand many othersto be similarly competitive this year.
This year, Thanksgiving falls on Thursday, November 27.
The gyoza needs to look a little whiter. Its too pink.
Nigel Ng is genially micromanaging the look and feel of Fried, an animated series that will premiere on YouTube later this year. His feedback comes during an early planning session at Toonstar, the company producing the show, which is headquartered in a former furniture warehouse in downtown L.A.s arts district.
Ng has every right to be fussy about Frieds world. The show represents the cartoon debut of Uncle Roger, the volatile middle-aged Chinese guy he has portrayed in live-action YouTube videos since 2020. They famously depict the character growing agitated as he watches western chefssuch as Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, and Nigella Lawsonbotching, by his estimation, the preparation of Asian food. (Especially fried rice.)
In his own idiosyncratic way, Uncle Roger is a perfectionist. So is Ng.
People follow my YouTube channel because they like Uncle Roger, Ng tells me during a break. They like how he thinks, they like how he talks, and the jokes he makes. People can tell it’s not a decision made by a committee. Its this one person’s sense of humor. Probably not the best sense of humor, but it’s his sense of humor. Doing this animation, I need to bring that ethos into this.
Nigel Ng [Photo: Courtesy Asian Nation (@asian_nation) and @dollyave]
During the planning meeting, as Ngs critiques of Frieds visuals keep comingspanning subtle details of characters, settings, and other aspects of the productionToonstar staffers swiftly incorporate them into updated artwork. In many ways, its not a radically different process than animation studios employed decades ago. But theres one crucial new element: The closer the show gets to completion, the more AI will perform much of the heavy lifting.
Thats the not-so-secret ingredient at Toonstar, which Hollywood veterans John Attanasio and Luisa Huang cofounded in 2017 after working together at Warner Bros. As much a platform as a studio, it built two proprietary pieces of software that it uses in all its productions. One, Ink & Pixel, uses generative AI to produce much of the art thatonce upon a timewould have been handled entirely by humans with pencils and paintbrushes. The other, Spot, uses analytics to help the company figure out how to turn raw ideas into stories that people will actually watch. It sounds cliché, but its part art, part science, says Attanasio, Toonstars CEO.
Even Frieds food went through multiple passes of human-rendered art before being generated by Toonstars Ink & Pixel software for the show. [Image: Courtesy of Toonstar]
Now is as good a moment as any to confront an inescapable fact: Many in Hollywood are instinctively repelled by the very notion of mixing the art of entertainment with the science of AI. They regard it as robbing creative people of jobs and the work of its soul. The web is already bulging with AI slop that confirms their worst fears.
But Fried, and other Toonstar properties such as StEvEn & Parker, belie AI-assisted medias sketchy reputation. Theyre hardly mass-produced: Frieds first season consists of just 12 eight-minute episodes. Theyre written by creators, not algorithms. Voices are recorded by actors in a studio (with some use of AI-synthesized dialog for purposes such as filling in pickup lines).
Perhaps most important, the shows visual identities are their own, not LLM-produced offal. Judging from Frieds preliminary artI havent seen any final footageit will owe its greatest stylistic debt to hand-drawn TV animation of the Saturday morning sort, leavened with a dash of anime.
Its undeniably true that tiny Toonstar, which employs just 20 people, is using AI to create more animation faster and with fewer staffers. The company sees its technological bent as reflecting a time-honored tradition for the medium, dating to when Walt Disney himself adopted innovations such as sound and Technicolor. The cartoon business also has a long history of shrinking headcounts to control costs, historically by offshoring much of the production to Asian studios as contract labor.
Today, Hollywoods titans are ever-more skittish about gambling on properties that arent already household names. Toonstar argues that its efficiencieswhich include using YouTube as its primary streaming venuepermit it to take greater creative risks. Without the companys ability to do a lot with a little, something like Fried might never have gotten greenlit in the first place.
In other words, Toonstars goals do not involve wringing the humanity out of its shows. Fundamentally, storytelling is a team effort, says COO Huang. Its about putting together a band. In this case, its one thats unafraid to use technology as an accelerant.
[Image: Courtesy of Toonstar]
YouTubeand beyond
Backed by investors such as Founders Fund, Greycroft, and Snap, Toonstar has gone through several iterations of what it means to be a tech-forward cartoon maker. They have included using NFTs to let fans get involved in shaping stories. But its current modus operandi came into focus with StEvEn & Parker, the family-friendly saga of two silly young blond-haired brothers.
Derived, like Fried, from the live-action bits of a social-media comedianTexas-based TikTok star Parker Jamesthe show became a bona-fide YouTube hitits in five languages, says Attanasio. Now, with 3.29 million subscribers, its a franchise capable of conquering other media. They include an upcoming smartphone game and, starting next spring, a graphic novel series from Random House.
Distributing StEvEn & Parker on YouTube let it reach an audience without Toonstar needing to cut a deal with a megastreamer such as Netflix or HBO Max. Spinning off games and books gave the property a business model bigger than subsisting on YouTube ad revenue, though Attanasio stresses its making good money there. If the company could replicate that formula, it might end up with many multi-platform properties. Thats the blueprint, says Huang.
With StEvEn & Parker as precedent, Toonstar grew even keener on identifying creators whose existing ideas held promise as fodder for new shows. Last June, it announced that it was teaming up with WME to find them.
The giant talent agency has an incredible roster of digital creators, says Attanasio. They’ve also got an incredible roster of traditional writers and showrunners. And so the combination of that is really supercharging the creative pipeline and projects that are going to be coming. Fried is up first.
The idea of cartoonifying Uncle Roger originated at Toonstar, but when WME brought it to Ngs attention, he was instantly amenable. I’ve always wanted to do something in the animation world with Uncle Roger, because I feel the character itself lends itself well to being in cartoon form, he says. So when they reached out, I was like, Oh, perfect. Like Toonstar, he saw potential for his character to become a business empire unto himself: Already, there are Uncle Roger restaurants in Malaysia.
Variations on Uncle Roger, who ended up looking like his middle self from this triptych. [Image: Courtesy of Toonstar]
Ng grew up watching cartoons. But he knew enough about animation to realize he didnt know that much about animation. So he studied up on its techniques. I watched a lot of these YouTube explainers, he recalls. I had to read what makes good character design, what makes bad character design. And then there’s that Disney handbook, the 12 rules of animation thing.
Fortified with this crash course, he was ready to take an active hand in imagining the show. That was a major undertaking. After all, until now, Uncle Roger has basically been Ng wearing an orange polo shirt, ranting at cooking shows, and using catch phrases such as Haiyaa! and Fuiyoh! (His accent has occasionally led people to accuse Ng, who was born in Kuala Lumpur, of stereotyping, and was the subject of a scholarly paper.)
On Fried, Uncle Roger has a rich backstory. Hes a restaurant owner. His ex-wife, Auntie Helenoft-referenced in Ngs comedyis not yet his ex; the show is set before they split. He has an arch-rival, fellow restaurateur Olivier. Theres a cat named Lucky. Eventually, all of these characters and the environments they inhabit will be rendered by AI, with human oversight and polishing. But first they had to be designed.
Uncle Rogers restaurant, in preliminary sketch form. [Image: Courtesy of Toonstar]
That involved a million little decisions. For instance: Should Uncle Rogers eyes have whites? (Nojust pupils.) Should his trademark polo cover his entire torso, or leave a skosh more of his pants visible? (The longer-shirt version made him look too much like a bell when he walked, says Huang.) How should the food look at Oliviers eatery? (Healthier than it does at Uncle Rogers place.)
AI came in handy during these deliberations, because it let Ng and his collaborators quickly look at several options, even in animated form if it helped. At least when I spoke to Ng early in the production process, he claimed not to notice the technology playing much of a role. They either beam up some drawigs to the screen or they print it out for me, he explained. But he did find progress happening far quicker than hed experienced with another Uncle Roger project, a now-shelved live-action sitcom: That got optioned in 2021, and then wed do a draft a year.
If Ng doesnt feel like theres a layer of AI between him and his show, thats kind of the point. With any luck, his experience will bolster Toonstars reputation among creators who start out skeptical about the companys process. We’re very artist-first and story-first, says Attanasio. Theres this compounding effect of creators like Nigel that won’t work with other AI tools or studios, but he’ll work with us.
Even as Toonstar gets ready to release Fried, Attanasio and Huang say theyre poised to expand furtherand faster than they ever could sans AI. Another dozen shows are in various stages of production, with a couple dozen more in the pipeline. We have folks that we’re working with who are very interested in horror as a category, says Huang. Suspense thrillers are another. There’s young adult, maybe more female-led voices.
Also on the horizon: distribution beyond YouTube, which could become another component of the companys multipronged business strategy. Already, three different streamers have inquired about the possibility of a longer-form StEvEn & Parker series.
Whatever happens, entertainment is headed for a period of AI disruption, and Toonstar intends to lean into it. Depending on your frame of reference, the company could be the moments Disney, Hanna-Barbera, or Pixar. It will accept any of those comparisons. Yet even at its present scale, it has certain advantages that the iconic cartoon factories of yore couldnt have imagined.
Historically, animation has taken a very long time to produce and it’s been very expensive, says Attanasio. Those have been the reasons why there hasn’t been as much produced as we believe there’s a market for. Theres an audience for more. There are more genres you can do. There’s just a lot more to be done.
October is usually a month for innocent frights and fun scares, but for Bitcoin investors, this month has left many holding the token legitimately fearful.
In the last 24 hours alone, the cryptocurrency king has lost nearly 7% of its value. Bitcoin is currently sitting at below $104,000 per token. Thats especially notable considering that the cryptocurrency hit an all-time high of more than $126,000 just 12 days ago.
Heres what you need to know about Bitcoin’s most recent crash.
Bitcoins tumultuous 2025
Bitcoin has been on a wild ride in 2025. The token began the year with considerable faith from investors, largely due to the incoming Trump administration, which clearly favored cryptocurrencies more than any other presidential administration before it.
In the weeks surrounding Trumps inauguration, Bitcoin spiked, going from a January low of around $91,000 to above $106,000 on the day Trump was sworn in for his second term.
But as Trumps Liberation Day tariffs loomed and roiled markets in March and April, Bitcoin slumped, reaching lows of nearly $76,000 at the beginning of April.
Yet, into and over the summer, Bitcoin steadily rose. By August, it had hit a high of over $123,000, and by October 5 of this year, it had hit an all-time high of $126,198.
Since that all-time high, the token’s value has been slidingand Bitcoins decline has accelerated in the past 24 hours.
Whats behind this recent slide? There seem to be two main factors pulling the token lower recently.
2 events are weighing Bitcoin down
This year has been no stranger to geopolitical uncertainty. Such uncertainty can negatively impact markets, including stocks, cryptocurrencies, and other financial assets.
Throughout 2025, weve had the ongoing conflicts between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Hamas. These conflicts introduce uncertainty into the world, and if theres one thing investors hate, its uncertainty.
But recently, another geopolitical uncertainty has arisen: This time, not from a physical conflict but from an economic one.
Earlier this month, President Trump threatened to impose an additional 100% tariff on China after the country introduced new export controls on rare earth elementsminerals vital for industries such as technology and national security due to their importance in electronic devices.
So far, neither Trump nor China has backed down, leading investors to fear that the two largest economies on the planet may yet again raise barriers against each other. These barriers could have severe negative knock-on financial effects for both countries.
Besides the U.S.-China economic conflict, a second event seems to be weighing on Bitcoin. This one is domestic: the continuing U.S. government shutdown.
The current shutdown has now lasted 17 days and counting. It began on October 1, with Republicans and Democrats being unable to reach an agreement on funding the federal government.
One of the primary issues in the shutdown is the implementation of spending cuts. Republicans want to reduce spending on critical social services, while Democrats want to ensure that funding for healthcare subsidies is included.
Like the ongoing U.S.-China economic conflict, the continuing U.S. government shutdown breeds uncertainty, which makes investors nervous. And nervous investors tend to sell, rather than buy, in order to lock in gains and hedge against potential further losses in the future.
Gold seems to be the preferred safe-haven this time
Paradoxically, investor uncertainty can sometimes benefit Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Thats because cryptocurrencies are sometimes viewed as safe-haven assets. These are assets that people turn to during times of economic uncertainty, which often sends traditional stock markets down.
Howeverso far at leastthis time around, investors seem to have gone back into the arms of a more traditional safe-haven asset: gold.
While Bitcoin is down more than 10% in the past month, the price of gold is up more than 18%. As gold rises, some investors who own cryptocurrency may choose to convert their digital token profits into physical gold.
Over the past 24 hours, during which Bitcoin has fallen nearly 7%, gold has risen by over 1.1%.
One ounce of gold is now worth $4,352nearly an all-time high. The precious metal is up over 9.4% in the last five days alone. During that time, Bitcoin has fallen more than 9%.
Yet Bitcoin isnt the only cryptocurrency seeing steep losses in recent days. As of the time of this writing, other major cryptocurrencies are also down significantly in the past 24 hours, including Ethereum, which has fallen more than 8%, and BNB, which has fallen 11.5%.
