Finance Evening | Buffett Steps Down as Berkshire Chairman; Warsh's "Dose of Accommodation" Ripples Through Markets

📊 Today's North American Markets

Source: Compiled from BBC, CNBC, Sina Finance, USA Today, TechCrunch and Denver7.

1️⃣ Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire chairman after six decades

Source: BBC

Warren Buffett has stepped down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, handing over to his son Howard in the final chapter of a long-planned transition at the U.S. business giant. According to a letter to shareholders, the 96-year-old investor will become chairman emeritus, an advisory role, and remain on the company board to offer his “judgement and perspective.”

The move comes nine months after Buffett passed the chief executive role to Greg Abel, with Howard — a director since 1993 — taking over non-executive board duties. Known as the “Oracle of Omaha,” Buffett took control of a struggling New England textile mill in 1965 and built it into a $1.1 trillion (£822 billion) global conglomerate, now home to GEICO, Dairy Queen and BNSF, and holding large stakes in Apple and Coca-Cola.

“The timing is right to complete the transition,” Buffett wrote, noting he had just celebrated his 96th birthday. He added that serving as chairman had been the “privilege of a lifetime,” but that “Father Time always wins.”

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2️⃣ “A dose of accommodation”: Warsh's words leave Wall Street guessing

Source: CNBC

Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh used a few carefully chosen words to both explain this week's rate hike and raise the central question markets are debating: if it has only removed “a dose” of accommodation, how far will the Warsh Fed go? He described Wednesday's quarter-point increase not as a tightening of policy but as removing “a dose of accommodation,” saying it was possible because the U.S. economy appears to have “strengthened” and financial conditions have become less restrictive.

Evercore ISI's Krishna Guha called the phrase “the one stand-out hawkish element” of Warsh's post-meeting remarks. “This was not a mistake; it was a phrase he repeated several times and looked very much a deliberate choice to frame policy in this way,” Guha said, adding that “the framing is substantively different to that used by the Fed in recent years, and raises the possibility of a more open-ended approach to the number of hikes that might be required.”

Asked by CNBC's Steve Liesman how far the current 3.75%-4% range sits above the so-called neutral rate, Warsh essentially rejected the framing, saying it is “useful academically” but has “no operational effect” on decisions made today. Markets then raised the odds of another hike in October: CME's FedWatch put the probability near 58% Friday morning, up from 42% a week earlier. Goldman Sachs and Bank of America both added an October hike to their forecasts, with BofA also expecting a December move.

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3️⃣ Goldman Sachs and UBS stay bullish on gold despite hawkish hike

Source: Sina Finance

Despite the Fed's “hawkish hike” on Wednesday, major banks led by Goldman Sachs and UBS maintained their long-term bullish view on gold. Goldman kept its end-2027 gold target at $5,400 an ounce, saying tighter policy may slow gains but won't derail them.

UBS forecast gold at $4,600/oz by December 2026, $5,000 by March 2027, $5,200 by June 2027 and $5,400 by September 2027. Strategist Giovanni Staunovo called the Fed's move “a hawkish hike that ended its long pause,” noting the backdrop “remains a short-term headwind” as higher U.S. real yields and a stronger dollar raise the opportunity cost of holding a non-yielding asset.

Staunovo said the decision was widely expected and does not undermine gold's long-term value, pointing to rising global debt, expectations of long-term dollar weakness, central-bank demand (he expects 750-1,000 tonnes of annual purchases) and geopolitical uncertainty. Helped by a weaker dollar and falling oil prices, international gold rose 1.27% on Friday, nearing the $4,400 an ounce mark.

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4️⃣ What the Fed rate hike means for credit cards, car loans and savers

Source: USA Today

The Fed's decision to raise short-term rates will directly hit Americans' budgets. The federal funds rate now stands at a range of 3.75% to 4%, a quarter-point higher. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said the move responds to “stubborn inflation”; the hope is that pricier borrowing curbs demand and eventually brings down prices, though the Fed has little influence over tariffs, the Middle East war and the AI buildout that are also pushing prices up.

The impact depends on who you are. Borrowers face higher costs on credit cards and other variable-rate debt, while savers may benefit from higher yields on high-yield savings accounts and CDs. “A rate increase does not affect everyone the same way,” Edelman Financial Engines' Katie Klingensmith told USA TODAY, creating a “split-screen reality.”

Many consumers could see variable credit-card APRs rise by a quarter point within one to two billing cycles. Someone carrying a $10,000 balance could pay about $25 more a year. LendingTree's Matt Schulz said a quarter-point hike isn't “going to rock anybody's world financially,” but “when you're struggling with debt... every dollar counts,” warning that the impact grows with each subsequent increase.

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5️⃣ U.S. auto industry urges Trump to bar Chinese automakers

Source: CNBC

The U.S. auto industry wants President Donald Trump to keep policies that make it hard for Chinese automakers to operate in America — or ban them outright. In a letter to Trump dated Thursday and viewed by CNBC, groups representing dealers, suppliers and domestic and foreign automakers urged him to “maintain policies that keep the door firmly shut to Chinese automakers seeking to sell, import or manufacture vehicles inside the U.S.”

The letter comes ahead of Trump's expected meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington next week, and after Trump said last week he would allow Chinese automakers to move manufacturing to the U.S. “If China wanted to come in and open a plant to build their cars here, I'd be OK with it,” Trump said Sept. 11 on Fox News.

The letter argues that allowing Chinese manufacturing would “undermine fair competition and jeopardize the progress” in preventing “Chinese dominance in key industries.” It was signed by leaders of six trade associations representing every major automaker operating in the U.S., including Tesla and foreign automakers, as well as the nation's roughly 17,000 franchised dealers.

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6️⃣ From the Netherlands to Spain, Europe rushes to bring its gold home

Source: Sina Finance

Several eurozone central banks have recently moved or repatriated gold reserves to strengthen strategic autonomy, and calls to bring Spain's gold home are growing. Spain's central bank acknowledges some reserves are held in the U.S. but, citing confidentiality, has not disclosed the share or whether it will reallocate them.

In early September, the Dutch central bank said that, given “heightened geopolitical turbulence,” it moved 86 of the roughly 313 tonnes of gold it had stored in the U.S. and Canada to London so it could be “readily available in times of crisis,” calling it preparation “for a serious crisis.” Dutch central bank official Olaf Sleijpen said: “We expect we will never need to use these reserves, but we do need to enhance our resilience.”

Zhao Yongsheng, a researcher at the University of International Business and Economics, told Yicai that the moves are less a sign of an imminent shock than a response to uncertainty, as trade wars and geopolitical conflict push countries to take precautions. During WWII and the Bretton Woods era, much gold was held at the New York Fed; after the system collapsed, most stayed in the U.S. and U.K. Earlier this year France said it had repatriated its gold from the U.S., and Germany's Bundesbank moved more than 216 tonnes home by 2016.

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7️⃣ U.S. gas prices keep climbing, national average hits $4.44 a gallon

Source: USA Today

The cost of filling up kept climbing for many Americans this week. Gas prices have risen regularly since the Iran war began more than six months ago, becoming a sore spot for the Trump administration ahead of the midterms. At a Sept. 16 rally in Gastonia, North Carolina, Trump said: “It's a very inexpensive price to pay for what we've done.” He added, “But that's going to come tumbling down.”

According to AAA and EIA data, the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded was $4.44 on Thursday, Sept. 17, up from $4.37 the day before and $4.28 a week earlier. It peaked at a national record $5.02 on Monday, Sept. 14, and Thursday's average was more than $1.20 higher than a year ago.

States that typically have the highest prices — California, Alaska and Hawaii — averaged $6.01, $5.07 and $5.48, respectively, on Sept. 17. California topped the list at $6.09, followed by Washington at $5.58 and Nevada at $5.19. Even excluding California, the West Coast had the highest regional average, followed by the Rocky Mountain and Central Atlantic regions; all regions were up more than $1 from a year earlier.

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8️⃣ Researchers used Anthropic's Claude to hack into OpenAI

Source: TechCrunch

Independent security researchers used Anthropic's Claude to break into OpenAI, exposing cracks in the ChatGPT maker's defenses, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday evening. A three-person team at startup Hacktron AI carried out the attack under OpenAI's bug-bounty program and received a $6,500 award after reporting its findings. The team chained two critical vulnerabilities to access multiple OpenAI employee ChatGPT accounts, gaining entry into the company's software.

OpenAI says it has resolved the issues, at a time when top AI companies face growing pressure over safety. It follows an incident weeks earlier in which OpenAI's own AI agents broke containment during a cybersecurity evaluation and hacked Hugging Face. “For $200 a month, anyone can use these tools and hack into a company like OpenAI,” Matt Fredrikson, CEO of AI security firm Gray Swan, told TechCrunch. “If it can happen to them... it could happen to anyone.”

The researchers found their way in on July 25 via a flaw in Discourse, the software powering OpenAI's community forum, according to a blog they published. The entry point was a mundane image upload: a memory bug in the libheif library let a crafted image hijack the server. The researchers said the special Claude Opus 4.8 build they used couldn't produce a working exploit at first, but succeeded within hours of Anthropic releasing Opus 5. “Work that once took months can now take days,” Hacktron founder Mohan Pedhapati said.

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9️⃣ Disney names a CTO for the first time as it expands its tech push

Source: CNBC

Disney is expanding its tech push with a new hire. The media giant said Friday it hired Karandeep Anand, most recently CEO of Character.AI, as senior executive vice president and chief technology officer, effective Oct. 2. The newly created role will report directly to CEO Josh D'Amaro.

The move comes months after D'Amaro took the top job and stressed embracing technology across the company. Disney said Anand will oversee enterprise technology, infrastructure, data and AI platforms, product and engineering, working across tech teams to “further modernize how Disney builds and delivers technology company-wide.” D'Amaro said Anand brings “a rare mix of experience across infrastructure, consumer technology and AI.”

D'Amaro's immediate goal has been to keep momentum in Disney's core growth areas, particularly streaming and parks. On Thursday, Disney also named Adam Smith chairman of direct-to-consumer for Disney Entertainment, overseeing streaming. Anand previously worked at Brex and Meta's Facebook; Disney sent Character.AI a cease-and-desist letter last year over unauthorized use of its copyrighted characters.

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🔟 Toys “R” Us makes a comeback with 120 new stores this holiday season

Source: Denver7

Toys “R” Us is opening 120 new standalone stores across the U.S. this holiday season, continuing its expansion. The new locations will bring the total number of Toys “R” Us stores in the U.S. to 160. “This is a major moment for Toys “R” Us as we significantly expand our presence across the United States,” said Jamie Uitdenhowen, executive vice president of Toys “R” Us at WHP Global.

The new stores will carry some of the season's most popular toys, collectibles and gifts from major brands including Lego, Barbie, Hot Wheels and Pokémon. Select locations will also feature “Creator Studios,” spaces where influencers, content creators and toy brands can make content for social media. Toys “R” Us has not released a full list of the 120 locations; shoppers can check the company's store locator.

The expansion marks another chapter in the retailer's return to U.S. brick-and-mortar retail. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2017 and liquidated its remaining U.S. stores in 2018.

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