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Fed’s Powell has had no contact with Trump after president said he’ll demand rates drop

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Fed Chair Powell on President Trump's interest rate comments: I've had no contact with the president

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday he has not spoken to President Donald Trump since last week’s remarks by the president when he said he would demand the central bank lower interest rates.

Speaking after the central bank’s decision to hold interest rates steady, Powell said he has had “no contact” with Trump since the remarks, which came during a virtual appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“I’m not going to have any response or comment whatsoever on what the president said. It’s not appropriate for me to do so. The public should be confident that we will continue to do our work as we always have, focusing on using our tools to achiever our goals and really keeping our heads down and doing our work,” Powell said Wednesday.

The Federal Reserve is designed to make interest rate decisions independent of pressure from elected officials. However, Trump in his first term was unusually vocal with his opinions on what the central bank should do.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

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Warner Bros. Discovery, Tesla, Robinhood, IonQ and more

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Robinhood shares drop after the online brokerage fails to get the nod to join the S&P 500

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People wait in line for T-shirts at a pop-up kiosk for the online brokerage Robinhood along Wall Street after the company went public with an initial public offering earlier in the day on July 29, 2021 in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

Robinhood shares sold off on Monday as the online brokerage was snubbed in the latest quarterly rebalance of the S&P 500 Index after months of speculation that it could earn a coveted spot in the benchmark.

Shares of Robinhood dropped nearly 5% in premarket trading. The stock has rallied 3.3% Friday to bring last week’s gain to over 13% before the S&P Dow Jones Indices said after the bell that the S&P 500 would remain unchanged.

Just last week, Bank of America called Robinhood a top candidate to join the S&P 500 during the big reshuffling in June. The S&P 500 rebalance, which typically comes on the third Friday of the last month in a quarter, is usually an impactful event as it can spark billions of dollars of trading and spur passive funds to snap up its shares. Companies being added to the index can generally expect funds like that to buy huge amounts of their shares in the coming weeks.

Crypto exchange Coinbase was the latest beneficiary of such an inclusion. The stock skyrocketed 24% in the next trading session following the announcement last month.

Still, Robinhood has had a major comeback this year so far with shares doubling in price. The online brokerage’s shares hit a fresh record high last week amid a rebound in both stocks and crypto. The company had fallen out of favor after the GameStop trading mania of 2021 fizzled and the collapse of FTX triggered a sell-off in digital assets.

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UK’s FCA teams up with Nvidia to let banks experiment with AI

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Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

LONDON — Britain’s financial services watchdog on Monday announced a new tie-up with U.S. chipmaker Nvidia to let banks safely experiment with artificial intelligence.

The Financial Conduct Authority said it will launch a so-called Supercharged Sandbox that will “give firms access to better data, technical expertise and regulatory support to speed up innovation.”

Starting from October, financial services institutions in the U.K. will be allowed to experiment with AI using Nvidia’s accelerated computing and AI Enterprise Software products, the watchdog said in a press release.

The initiative is designed for firms in the “discovery and experiment phase” with AI, the FCA noted, adding that a separate live testing service exists for firms further along in AI development.

“This collaboration will help those that want to test AI ideas but who lack the capabilities to do so,” Jessica Rusu, the FCA’s chief data, intelligence and information officer, said in a statement. “We’ll help firms harness AI to benefit our markets and consumers, while supporting economic growth.”

The FCA’s new sandbox addresses a key issue for banks, which have faced challenges shipping advanced new AI tools to their customers amid concerns over risks around privacy and fraud.

Large language models from the likes of OpenAI and Google send data back to overseas facilities — and privacy regulators have raised the alarm over how this information is stored and processed. There have meanwhile been several instances of malicious actors using generative AI to scam people.

Nvidia is behind the graphics processing units, or GPUs, used to train and run powerful AI models. The company’s CEO, Jensen Huang, is expected to give a keynote talk at a tech conference in London on Monday morning.

Last year, HSBC’s generative AI lead, Edward Achtner, told a London tech conference he sees “a lot of success theater” in finance when it comes to artificial intelligence — hinting that some financial services firms are touting advances in AI without tangible product innovations to show for it.

He added that, while banks like HSBC have used AI for many years, new generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT come with their own unique compliance risks.

Zopa CEO: Fintechs face challenges when it comes to scaling in the UK

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