10-year Treasury yields rose for their sixth straight day on Tuesday to their highest level since June. And while the 10-year note may not be the main conversation topic in your group chat, investors pay close attention to it as a benchmark for borrowing costs and future economic growth.

• Quick note: Bond yields move inversely to prices, so yields increase when investors sell bonds.

So what is the 10-year trying to tell us? By selling off bonds, investors are preparing for the Fed to wind down its economic stimulus measures later this fall and an interest rate hike in the not-too-distant future.

Surging yields also signal that higher inflation could last longer than expected, a reality that Fed Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged in remarks on Capitol Hill yesterday. (Don’t look now, but used car prices are on the rise again, too.)

Tech companies were hit the hardest

Despite all three major indexes tumbling yesterday, one was not like the rest. The Nasdaq, which is more focused on the tech sector than the S&P or Dow, got bruised the most.

• Wall Street’s top tech names, such as Nvidia, Facebook, and Amazon, lost more than $200 billion in market value.

Rising yields don’t necessarily spell doom for stocks. In fact, right now they appear to be signaling that a more “normal” economy—one that doesn’t require unprecedented government stimulus—is arriving.

But high-growth tech stocks can take a hit when yields spike. These companies are expensive relative to their current earnings, and are priced based on their growth prospects five or 10 years down the road (see: Tesla’s mammoth $770 billion market cap). Rising yields, and the higher returns they offer investors, can make bonds more attractive relative to riskier stocks.

Big picture: Some market watchers were concerned about a choppy September, and they’ve been proven right—the S&P is on pace for its first monthly loss since January.—NF

If you’re not experiencing an energy crisis, are you even a country in 2021? As the UK confronts its own gas shortages, a widespread energy crunch in China has led to power cuts and forced a chunk of its muscular manufacturing sector offline.

Goldman Sachs became the latest bank to cut China’s GDP forecast on account of the energy shortages. It calculates that up to 44% of the country’s industrial activity has been affected.

What’s going on? A couple of things.

1. Beijing has instituted tougher emissions standards to curb the country’s coal use, which accounts for more than 70% of China’s electricity generation. Current production is not meeting demand.
2. The soaring price of coal has made producing electricity an unprofitable endeavor, so utilities aren’t exactly rushing to make more.

Why it matters: Add China’s electricity shortage to the laundry list of problems crimping the global supply chain, which is about to come under even more pressure ahead of the holiday shopping season.—SQ

At its fall product event on Tuesday, Amazon announced its first home robot: a distinguished little gentleman named Astro that looks kind of like a Kindle glued to a travel toaster oven.

Astro can keep a watchful eye on pets, children, and would-be home invaders, all while topping out at speeds of 2 mph. Users will be able to set boundary limits on which rooms Astro can enter, and even make it beatbox. It’s basically a very slow guard dog that can’t use the stairs and also has a cupholder.

Astro is $999 for Day One purchasers, and will cost $1,499 once widely released.

Other products announced at the event:

• The Always Home Cam: a security drone that will fly around your home when you aren’t there and have a will-they-won’t-they thing with Astro, probably
• The Halo View: a fitness band à la Fitbit
• Hey Disney: a Disney-themed voice assistant working alongside Alexa
• Alexa Together: a subscription service aimed at helping users care for elderly loved ones
• A $60 smart thermostat to take on Google’s Nest—MK

Stat: India shut down the internet for more than 25 million people across the state of Rajasthan on Sunday. Why? To prevent cheating at a time when hundreds of thousands of candidates took a standardized test to become eligible for teaching roles.

Quote: “You have acted to make our banking system less safe, and that makes you a dangerous man to head up the Fed and that is why I will oppose your renomination.”

At a Senate hearing yesterday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren told Fed Chair Jerome Powell to his face that she doesn’t think he deserves another four years in the position. President Biden must decide whether to reappoint Powell, who has broad bipartisan support, before his term expires in February.

Read: Is going to the office a broken way of working? (New Yorker)

Every year, the MacArthur Foundation awards $625,000 apiece to 25 individuals doing remarkable things in their respective fields—and no field’s off limits: Winners range from poets to humanitarians to, in Miele’s case, a designer at Amazon.

In a nutshell, Miele creates accessible technology for blind people like himself. When he was four, he was blinded by a neighbor who poured sulfuric acid on him, and he’s been advocating for the blind community since. “I want to be famous for the right reasons, for the work I’ve done, and not for some stupid thing that happened to me 40 years ago,” he told the NYT in 2013.

Here are some of the amazing projects Miele has led:

• Fire tablets that are Braille-compatible, and a “Show and Tell” feature on Echo devices that can identify different foods and pantry items
• “Tactile maps” for the Bay Area’s BART train—known for ferrying tech workers to and from San Francisco and the suburbs—that users can explore with their fingers and an audio smart pen
• “YouDescribe,” a platform that crowdsources audio descriptions for popular videos

+ Read Miele’s backstory here, and learn more about the 24 other 2021 MacArthur fellows here.—JW

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Can’t sleep? Try the 4-7-8 breathwork technique then let us know if it works for you.

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