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With the Federal Reserve widely expected Wednesday to reduce its key interest rate by a quarter-point to about 4.1%, economists and Wall Street investors will be looking for signals about next steps: How deeply might the Fed cut in the next few months?There are typically two different approaches the central bank takes to lowering borrowing costs: Either a measured pace that reflects a modest adjustment to its key rate, or a much more rapid set of cuts as the economy deteriorates in an often-doomed effort to stave off recession.For now, most economists expect the Fed will take the first approach: What many analysts call a “recalibration” of rates to keep the economy growing and businesses hiring. Under this view, the Fed would reduce rates as many as five times by the middle of next year, bringing its rate closer to a level that neither stimulates or slows the economy.Wall Street traders expect three reductions this year and then two more by next June, according to futures pricing tracked by CME Fedwatch.A rate cut Wednesday would be the first in nine months. The Fed, led by Chair Jerome Powell, reduced borrowing costs three times last year. But it then put any further cuts on hold to evaluate the impact of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on the economy.As recently as their last meeting in late July, Powell described the job market as “solid” and kept rates unchanged as officials sought to take more time to see how the economy evolved.Since then, however, the government has reported a sharp slowdown in hiring, and previous government data has been revised much lower. Employers actually cut back slightly on their payrolls in June, shedding 13,000 jobs, and added just 22,000 in August.The government also said last week that its estimate of job gains for the year ended in March 2025 would likely be revised down by 911,000, a sharp reduction in total employment. Powell and other Fed officials had previously pointed to a robust job market as a key reason that they could afford to keep rates unchanged. But with businesses pulling back on hiring, the economic case for a rate cutwhich can spur more borrowing and spendingis stronger.The downward revision of nearly a million jobs is a “huge downgrade,” said Talley Leger, chief market strategist at the Wealth Consulting Group. “If that doesn’t light a fire under the Fed just from an economic perspective I don’t know what will.”Still, inflation remains stubbornly elevated, partly because tariffs have lifted the cost of some goods, such as furniture, appliances, and food. Prices rose 2.9% in August from a year earlier, the government said last week, up from 2.7% a month earlier.Persistent inflation could keep the Fed from cutting too rapidly. The central bank will release its quarterly economic projections after the meeting Wednesday, and many economists forecast they will show that officials expect three total reductions this year and at least two more next year.Five reductions would bring the Fed’s key rate down to just above 3%. Many economists think that is roughly the rate that would neither stimulate nor slow the economy.If Fed officials began to worry the economy would slip into recession, they would likely cut rates more quickly. But for now, most economists don’t see rapid cuts as necessary.“We’re not at a break-glass moment,” said Vincent Reinhart, chief economist at BNY Investments. “This is a recalibration.” Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer
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E-Commerce
The relentless march of initial public offerings continues this week with another closely watched IPO happening today. At some point after the opening bell, ticket reseller giant StubHub is expected to make its public debut. Heres what you need to know about StubHubs IPO. What is StubHub? StubHub is a ticket reseller platform that was founded in 2000. It specializes in selling tickets to live events, such as concerts, plays, and sporting events. While StubHub does sell some tickets directly to its users, the majority of customers who buy tickets on StubHub do so from third-party sellers. StubHub is one of the largest secondary ticketing marketplaces in the world. However, the company is not without controversy. In July 2024, StubHub was hit with a lawsuit by the attorney general of Washington, D.C. The suit alleged that StubHub was engaged in drip pricing, where the company advertises low fees for tickets, but then increases the final cost by adding on extra fees. StubHub said in a statement at the time that it was disappointed in the lawsuit and asserted that its user experience is “consistent with the law,” as noted by CNBC. While StubHub is holding its initial public offering today, this is not the first time the company has attempted to go public. The company was reportedly considering an IPO back in 2022 before ultimately shelving those plans. Then, in March 2025, the company was getting ready for an IPO, but put those plans on hold as markets around the world tanked due to President Trumps Liberation Day tariffs. Today, StubHub is finally expected to debut as a publicly traded company. StubHub by the numbers StubHub has been around for a quarter of a century, but as it has been privately held, many of its financial metrics have been unknown. But as a public company, its finances will be more of an open book, and in preparation for its IPO, as all companies must, StubHub filed a Form S-1 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), detailing its financials and other metrics. For 2024, those include: Gross merchandise sales (GMS) of $8.7 billion. 27% year-over-year GMS growth. More than 40 million sickets sold. More than 1 million unique sellers are using its platform. Buyers originate from more than 200 countries. The companys financial statements also show that its revenue has steadily increased over the past three years, rising from $1 billion in 2022 to $1.3 billion in 2023 to $1.7 billion in 2024. However, it had a net loss of income in each of those years, though the net loss in its most recent year shrank significantly. In 2022, StubHub reported a net loss of $260 million, which rose to a net loss of $405 million in 2023. But in 2024, its net loss shrank to just $2.8 million. According to PitchBook, StubHub has 895 employees as of August 2025. When is StubHubs IPO? StubHub priced its shares on Tuesday. It’s expected to list today, Wednesday, September 17. What is StubHubs stock ticker? StubHubs stock will trade under the ticker STUB. What exchange will StubHubs shares trade on? StubHub shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). What is the IPO share price of STUB? StubHub priced its shares at $23.50 each. That’s around the mid point of a target range of between $22 and $25 per share that was disclosed earlier this month, as Fast Company previously reported. How many STUB shares are available in its IPO? StubHub is offering 34,042,553 shares of Class A common stock in its IPO, according to its press release. How much will StubHub raise in its IPO? StubHub raised around $800 million in its IPO. How much is StubHub worth? As of its IPO share price of $23.50, StubHub has a valuation of $8.6 billion, notes CNBC. What else is there to know? StubHub is just the latest company to have a closely watched IPO in 2025. Throughout the year, many notable companies have gone public, including the stock trading platform eToro, stablecoin company Circle Internet Group, cryptocurrency exchange Bullish, and just last week, buy now, pay later firm Klarna Group.
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E-Commerce
On a rural road in Kansas, surrounded by farm fields, a startup called Vaulted Deep is pioneering a new type of carbon removal: injecting animal manure and sewage sludge 1,000 feet underground to permanently store CO2. One of its biggest customers is Google, which announced today that it plans to buy 50,000 tons of carbon removal from the startup over the next five years. Microsoft announced a similar deal in July. Its part of the tech giants broader effort to deal with their carbon footprints as AI energy demand grows. The companies are also trying to help accelerate new solutions that others can use. Our carbon removal program is all about finding the right ways to fix the atmosphereand then being the tip of the sphere to catalyze those right ways, says Randy Spock, who leads Google’s work on carbon removal. What we look for in that regard is pretty simple. We care about things that can be highly certain of having impact. And can reach really high scale to the extent that they can put a dent in climate change. [Photo: Courtesy of Google/Vaulted Deep] How Vaulted Deep tackles two problems Vaulted Deeps unconventional approach tackles two problems at once, says CEO Julia Reichelstein. We tackle excess organic waste and what to do with it in a safe, affordable, scalable way. And then we also tackle the problem of climate change. The company injects the waste into rock formations deep underground, where it’s locked up for hundreds of thousands of years. It doesn’t decompose and add CO2 and methane emissions to the air. (It’s also far away from groundwater, so it doesn’t create new pollution.) [Photo: Courtesy of Google/Vaulted Deep] At the startups site in Kansas, dozens of trucks deliver waste each day. Most of it comes from nearby cattle feedlots. “If you go to these feedlots, you’ll often see mountains of manure piled up,” Reichelstein says. That leads to multiple issues beyond climate pollution. Runoff from the waste pollutes water and can lead to algae blooms and dead zones. The stink can travel miles. Methane from the manure adds to local air pollution. That’s a deeper problem in the food system: The environment can’t keep up with current levels of meat production. Americans now eat around twice as much meat, per capita, as they did a century ago. Small family farms used to be able to use manure as fertilizer on nearby fields; now there’s far more poop than farms can use. But until Americans start eating fewer burgers, Vaulted Deep’s approach offers another way to deal with the excess waste. Farms aren’t the only challengehuman waste from wastewater treatment plants is often spread out on fields to return to the soil. That can introduce other problems, including pollution from PFAS (forever chemicals) or other contamination found in the waste. Waste is also sometimes sent to landfills or incinerated. Vaulted Deep can also make use of waste from paper mills, which causes other pollution. The company plans to build multiple sites across the country to deal with organic waste. Turning waste tech into climate tech Vaulted Deep spun out from another company, Advantek, that has been injecting waste underground in L.A. for 15 years. Initially, the technology focused only on the problem of disposal. Most sewage sludge from Los Angeles is either shipped to California’s Central Valley, causing pollution issues, or used to produce electricity. (Turning poop into electricity doesn’t eliminate emissions, though it’s called renewable energy.) Putting some of the waste deep underground8,000 feet deep, in that casehelped reduce how much was being sent elsewhere. When Reichelstein learned about the technology, she helped launch Vaulted to focus on the climate benefits, knowing that it was a relatively simple and affordable way to store CO2 durably. When the startup sells carbon removal to companies, it measures how much carbon in the waste otherwise would have been emitted on a field or in a landfill. Now, it’s working with Google to also measure how much methane is being reduced. [Photo: Courtesy of Google/Vaulted Deep] Google is especially interested in tackling “superpollutants” like methane, which are heating up the planet even faster than CO2. In the short term, methane has around 80 times the warming power of CO2. ̴The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) estimates that these superpollutants, like methane, have been responsible for close to half of planetary warming to date,” says Spock. “Everyone agrees if we don’t take action to destroy them, they will keep warming the planet really rapidly in the near term. So if we only focus on CO2, we’re only focusing on a piece of the puzzle rather than the whole planet puzzle.” The tech company is paying for carbon removal from a wide range of companies, from a startup helping fight ocean acidification to a company that helps HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) technicians destroy HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons), another superpollutant, from air conditioners. The goal is to support as many potential solutions as possible, as quickly as possible. “We’re keenly aware that we are at the starting line of these efforts as a planet,” says Spock. “And now is the time to cast a really wide net and see what works at pilot scale, so that we can make an informed decision about what makes sense to really press the accelerator on as a planet.”
Category:
E-Commerce
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