Bloomberg - Evening Briefing - Deposit rates finally rise

Online high-yield savings accounts became popular in the last few years as a low-risk way to keep cash liquid while still generating a return higher than traditional savings accounts. Now, some rates are climbing as savers battle inflation. Goldman Sachs’s consumer bank Marcus, along with similar options from firms including Barclays and Ally Bank, generally follow the trajectory of the two-year Treasury yield, with a lag. That meant high-yield savings rates plunged in 2020, as the Federal Reserve eased monetary policy to stimulate the economy. Now, as the central bank raises benchmark rates to curb inflation, online banks are following suit. Marcus is now offering the best interest rate for its high-yield savings account since the pandemic began, raising its annual percentage yield to 1.7% from 1.5% at the end of July. The recent move catapults Marcus above its competitors, which previously raised rates more aggressively this year. Ally Bank provides a 1.6% annual percentage yield, while Barclays and Synchrony Bank offer 1.65%. —Natasha Solo-Lyons

Bloomberg is tracking the coronavirus pandemic and the progress of global vaccination efforts.

Top Wall Street strategists are divided on whether the US stock market is poised to extend its longest weekly winning streak of the year—or slip back after another false dawn. 

US stocks rose for a second day in a row, with megacaps catching bids as investors digested weak data on New York manufacturing and the Chinese economy. Treasuries gained with the dollar, while commodities from oil to iron ore tumbled. The S&P 500 closed near highs of the day, reversing an early loss of as much as 0.5%, with only the energy and materials sectors ending in the red. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 outperformed, with Tesla, Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia leading gains. Here’s your markets wrap.

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in June Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

A “next generation” coronavirus booster which may only need administering once a year has been approved by UK officials for use in adults. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has authorized Moderna's bivalent vaccine, which targets the original Covid strain and the Omicron variant. British health authorities said people should take whatever Covid-19 booster shot is offered to them this fall, even as the country became the first in the world to approve a new two-strain vaccine. 

Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal invested more than $500 million in Russian firms around the time of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, in a sign of the careful political position the Gulf state has maintained with its OPEC+ partner.

Rudy Giuliani is a target of a Georgia criminal probe of potential election fraud. Robert Costello, a lawyer for Giuliani, said that the former New York mayor’s legal team was informed on Monday that he was a target of the probe and not just a witness. 

Rudy Giuliani Photographer: Chris Kleponis/Polaris

For Adam Neumann’s next venture after WeWork’s rise and fall, the venture-capital powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz pledged a big financial commitment. The investment in Flow, a residential real estate company led by Neumann, is roughly $350 million, according to the New York Times.

Much of the US will be an “extreme heat belt” by the 2050s. Heat index temperatures will hit 125°F (52°C) at least once a year in a band stretching from Texas to Wisconsin, researchers say. 

• Bloomberg Opinion: Why did Trump take classified documents?
• Google Maps regularly misleads people searching for abortion clinics.
• Google’s Gmail redesign is part of a larger push at the company.
• Battle against Whole Foods’ Black Lives Matter stance has  huge stakes.
• Peloton retools bikes for do-it-yourself assembly to cut costs.
• Bloomberg Opinion: Will housing prices flatten—or collapse?
• US homebuilder confidence hits worst slump since 2007 collapse.

Statistically speaking, Denver’s economy is on fire. Unemployment has more than halved in the past year, GDP is expected to grow 73% faster in 2022 than the national figure and inflation—even more so than in the rest of the country — is on a tear. And then there are the intangibles: well-heeled crowds waltzing through the ritzy Cherry Creek shopping district, impossible-to-get reservations at freshly anointed hotspots and queues of gleaming SUVs clogging Interstate 70 en route to the mountains for weekend jaunts.

But the housing market is something else altogether. While there’s some evidence of cooling, Redfin calls Denver’s housing market “very competitive." And even if its real estate is near a peak, it’s at a level that would have been unthinkable a generation earlier. Colorado’s capital has been transformed from a city in decline to a magnet for the affluent.

Denver, Colorado  Photographer: Matthew Staver

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