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Tech giants lift stocks.

US stocks rebounded Thursday, with tech behemoths, including Tesla, Nvidia, and Meta, driving the Nasdaq 100 higher. Treasury yields, which had been surging this week, retreated, with shorter-dated debt leading the decline. The 10-year rate pulled back from a nearly 16-year high hit earlier in the session and the dollar slid.

Coming Up... Look for a slew of Japanese data — including the Tokyo CPI gauge and national figures on retail sales and industrial production — as well as balance of payments numbers for Thailand and Hong Kong retail sales. Meanwhile, China is starting its Golden Week holiday period. 

The US Federal Reserve has suggested the build-up of bets in the Treasury market could pose a stability risk. FT montage: Dreamstime

401(k) advocates gear up to fight Wall Street on fiduciary rule

Consumer advocates are readying themselves for a renewed battle with Wall Street over conflicted retiree financial advice as the US Labor Department prepares its latest fiduciary rulemaking project. Advocacy organizations that shuttered or laid low after a federal appeals court axed the first fiduciary regulation in 2018 are reemerging, fueled once more by a friendly administration intent on trying again. (Bloomberg Law | Sep 28)

Lawmakers grill Gensler on impact of SEC rule-making

Lawmakers pressed SEC Chair Gary Gensler on a variety of the agency's rule proposals and their effects Sept. 27, amid a looming deadline for Congress to avoid a government shutdown. During the hearing, many GOP lawmakers focused their questioning on the SEC's climate-disclosure rule proposal, to which Gensler repeatedly said, "We're not a climate regulator." (Pensions & Investments | Sep 27)

The debt-fueled bet on US Treasuries that’s scaring regulators

The Federal Reserve and the Bank for International Settlements are intensifying their scrutiny of a mounting potential risk to the gilt market’s much bigger cousin: the $25 trillion US government bond market. The so-called basis trade involves playing two very similar debt prices against each other — selling futures and buying bonds — and extracting gains from the small gap between the two using borrowed money. (Financial Times | Sep 26)

Wall Street's need for speed in stocks is reshaping the FX world

A looming shift in the way US equity trades are settled is sending unintended shock waves through the $7.5 trillion-a-day global market for foreign exchange. At major financial institutions including banks, brokers, and investment houses, currency desks are preparing for the world’s biggest stock market to halve the time it takes to settle equity transactions to just one day. (Bloomberg Markets | Sep 26)

The risks of money-market funds need careful watching

In the last 10 years, both retail and institutional investors have swarmed into US money-market mutual funds, supposedly a safe place to park money in the short term while figuring out what else to do with it. At the moment, some $5.6 trillion of cash sits in these funds, according to the Investment Company Institute, up from $2.6 trillion a decade ago. Is this something to worry about, or just a reflection of the human instinct to creep up the risk scale in exchange for a higher yield? (Financial Times | Sep 23)

Illustration: Daniel Pudles | Financial Times

PRC-linked cyber actors hide in router firmware

People's Republic of China-linked hackers are lurking in firmware within network routers and storage devices, cybersecurity officials in the US and Japan warned on Wednesday. Companies should review subsidiary connections and patch routers in an effort to shut out the group, known as BlackTech, according to the alert. Equipment from Cisco, Citrix, D-Link, Fortinet, Netgear, and several other tech providers has been exploited.

— Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency

Boards still lack cybersecurity expertise

Few board directors at the most prominent U.S.-listed companies have direct experience with cybersecurity, presenting a challenge for how executives handle cyberattacks. An analysis of board composition in companies in the S&P 500 index found that 88% have no cybersecurity expert as a director. Only seven companies had a current or former chief information security officer on their board, the research found, and in two cases, that was the same person.

— The Wall Street Journal

Your online account may have been breached? Don't just sit there. Do something.

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. consumers would return to a site after they were notified of a breach — with only the bare minimum of precautions, according to research from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Here's what they should be doing.

— The Wall Street Journal

Sign up for CISA Alerts

Report a Cybersecurity Incident: Report anomalous cyber activity and/or cyber incidents 24/7 to report@cisa.gov or (888) 282-0870.

• Report an incident
• Report phishing
• Report a vulnerability

Contact CISA: https://www.cisa.gov/about/contact-us

Illustration: George Wylesol | Bloomberg Businessweek

Wave of zombies is rising from private equity's slow carnage

Across the $12 trillion industry, hundreds of private equity firms are lumbering on years after their funds’ intended twilight with no new fundraising in sight — a cohort that investors and regulators have dubbed “zombies.” Now, a historic shakeup of the industry is threatening to impose the same fate on more fading money managers whose past funds are inching toward limbo.

— Bloomberg

The new phone call etiquette: Text first and never leave a voice mail

Voice mails are an artifact of the days before text messages. If you have information that needs to be communicated in an accurate, timely manner, you’re far better off putting it into writing as a text or email. Calling someone without warning can feel stressful to the recipient. Instead, text them ahead of time to ask if they’re free to talk now, if they can call you when they’re free, or if they can pick a time they’d like to chat.

— Washington Post

Millions of people see staying home and cleaning as their idea of a good time

Cleaning evangelists have long drawn fans — think of Marie Kondo, author of the bestselling “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.” But the pandemic, during which many at home took more interest in spiffing up their living spaces, helped vault cleaning from the mundane to the celebrated.

— The Wall Street Journal