Stock indexes had a mild rebound following a significant sell-off Monday that resulted in the market’s worst day in almost two years.

The S&P 500 and the tech-focused Nasdaq Composite both closed 1% higher. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.7%, or about 300 points.

Leading the rally was Nvidia, which has led the entire market for much of the year thanks to the importance of its chips for artificial intelligence programming. It finished 4% higher after having fallen 7% Monday. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, also climbed 4% Tuesday. Uber, which reported strong earnings early Tuesday, soared 11%.

Japan’s Nikkei stock index, which had its worst day in a generation Monday, rallied for its best day since 2008, surging 10.2%

Still, the day’s gains won’t make up for the losses stocks suffered Monday, when the Dow plunged more than 1,000 points, or 2.6%, the S&P fell 3%, and the Nasdaq dropped 3.4%.

But the indices remain higher this year, with the Dow up about 3.5%, the S&P 500 up about 10% and the Nasdaq up about 9.5% since the start of the year.

Some market participants said Monday’s tumble was overdone. In a note to clients Tuesday, Goldman Sachs analysts noted that central banks like the Federal Reserve ‘are no longer constrained by the fear of high inflation’ and are ready to lower interest rates. In addition, investors across the spectrum have built up ‘very significant cash piles’ that can be used to purchase stocks at their suddenly lower prices, they wrote. And debt among firms remains low, meaning they ‘can absorb the impact of weaker growth better than in many other downturns.’

Yet, there remains disagreement about how fast the economy is slowing. Analysts with Citibank said Tuesday that they disagreed with the notion that Friday’s jobs report, which showed unemployment unexpectedly increasing to 4.3% and just 114,000 jobs added in July, was an outlier data point, as at least two regional Federal Reserve presidents have suggested.

‘The unfortunate reality is that a range of data confirm what the rise in the unemployment rate is now prominently signaling — the U.S. economy is at best at risk of falling into a recession and at worst already has,’ they wrote in a note to clients Tuesday, pointing to a variety of data — from a hiring rate that has slowed to a crawl to increasing unemployment claims — that things are worse than they seem.

The focus remains on what the Federal Reserve, which is in charge of balancing inflation and jobs growth by raising and lowering the cost of borrowing, will do after it announced last week that it was leaving rates unchanged.

Some analysts have now come to see the decision as a mistake.

The Citi analysts said that a larger-than-usual 50-basis-point rate cut by the Fed at its next meeting in September is now the most likely scenario and that a potential inter-meeting cut — usually done only in emergencies — is “on the table.”

‘Data over the next month is likely to confirm the continued slowdown,’ they wrote.

Still, others argued there is zero chance that the Fed would make such a move, which is usually reserved for extreme scenarios like the Covid pandemic.

Torsten Sløk, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, said in a note Tuesday that the economy remains in decent shape. His case was bolstered by the latest real-time data on gross domestic product from the Atlanta Federal Reserve on Tuesday, which showed third-quarter GDP tracking 2.9%, up from 2.5% last week.

‘If the economy were crashing, default rates would be spiking higher, and that is not what the data shows,” he wrote.

Disney is raising prices on its streaming platforms.

Starting mid-October, most plans for Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ will cost $1 to $2 more per month, according to a press release Tuesday. The most expensive plans for Hulu, which include live TV, will cost $6 more per month.

Disney+ basic and premium will be priced at $9.99 and $15.99, respectively. Hulu with ads will cost $9.99 monthly, while Hulu without adds will cost $18.99 per month. ESPN+, which features ads, will cost $11.99 per month.

The price hikes come as Disney continues to push its customers toward bundles to get a bigger bang for their buck.

For some time, Disney has offered a bundle of its own services, either Hulu and Disney+, or the two streaming services plus ESPN+. The existing bundle of Disney+ and Hulu, with ads, will also get a price hike this fall, up $1 to $10.99 per month. The same bundle without ads won’t see any price increase from it’s current rate of $19.99 per month.

Disney has also partnered with Warner Bros. Discovery to offer a bundle, which will include Disney+, Hulu and Max. In July, the companies announced the bundle would be available for $16.99 with ads, and $29.99 commercial-free, noting “a savings of 38% compared with the price of the services purchased separately.”

Disney also aims to entice subscribers with ABC News Live and a playlist featuring preschool content, available to all subscribers starting September 4, according to the release Tuesday. The company plans to introduce four more curated playlists for premium subscribers.

“Playlists are the latest example of how we’re providing the best value and experience for our subscribers every time they open Disney+,” Alisa Bowen, president of the streaming platform, said in the news release.

Disney reports its fiscal third-quarter earnings before the bell on Wednesday.

DETROIT — A once “dirty” word, and business, in the automotive industry has become a multibillion-dollar battleground for U.S. automakers, led by Ford Motor.

The Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker has turned its fleet business, which includes sales to commercial, government and rental customers, into an earnings powerhouse. And Ford’s crosstown rivals General Motors and Chrysler parent Stellantis have taken notice, restructuring their operations as well.

“There’s much more of an emphasis now on profitability and how fleet can help that,” said Mark Hazel, S&P Global Mobility associate director of commercial vehicle reporting. ”[Automakers] are looking at how they strategically go about this. It’s been a very targeted approach with how they deal with fleets.”

Many fleet sales, especially daily rentals, have historically been viewed as a negative for auto companies. They are traditionally less profitable than sales to retail customers and are used by automakers at times as a dumping ground to unload excess vehicle inventories and boost sales.

But Ford has proven that’s not always the case by breaking out financial results for its “Ford Pro” fleet business. The operations have raked in about $18.7 billion in adjusted earnings and $184.5 billion in revenue since 2021.

Such results have led Wall Street to praise the business, as analysts have called it a “hidden gem” and Ford’s “Ferrari,” referring to the highly profitable Italian sports car manufacturer.

“No other company has Ford Pro. We intend to fully press that advantage,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said July 24 during the company’s second-quarter earnings call, in which Ford Pro was the dominant performer.

Fleet sales typically account for 18% to 20% of annual industrywide U.S. light-duty vehicle sales, which exclude some larger trucks and vans, according to J.D. Power.

Part of the opportunity in fleet sales comes from the aging vehicles on U.S. roadways. The average age of the 25 million fleet and commercial vehicles on American roads was 17.5 years last year, according to S&P. That compares with light-duty passenger vehicles at 12.4 years in 2023.

While commercial sales, which are viewed as the best fleet sales, are estimated to be slightly lower this year compared with 2023, both GM and Stellantis have recently redesigned and doubled down on such operations. However, neither reports such results out separately.

“Breaking apart the fleet channel, we see that Commercial sales have been the weakest. And zooming in further, there are just two [original equipment manufacturers] that appear especially challenged: STLA and, to a lesser extent, GM,” Wolfe Research said in an investor note Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Ford’s commercial volumes have increased a “strong” 7% this year compared with 2023, Wolfe said.

While fleet sales data isn’t as available as retail, Wolfe Research estimates Ford is by far the leader in such earnings at a forecast of $9.5 billion this year. That compares with North American operations at GM at $5.5 billion and Stellantis around $3.5 billion, Wolfe estimates.

S&P Global Mobility reports Ford has been the fleet leader for some time. Since 2021, Ford’s market share of new fleet vehicle registrations (categorized by businesses with 10 or more vehicles weighing under 26,000 pounds) has been about 30%. GM, meanwhile, had around 21%-22% during that time, and Stellantis about 9%.

GM, citing third-party data, claims it outsold Ford last year in a segment of fleet sales: commercial vehicles sold exclusively to businesses (with five or more vehicles) and not individual buyers.

Ford, meanwhile, said it counts “all customers who register their full-size, Class 1-7 truck or van under their business,” not just those with five or more vehicles.

Ford claims to lead sales of commercial vehicles, categorized as Class 1-7 trucks and vans, with a roughly 43% share of U.S. registrations through May of this year. That’s up 2.3 percentage points compared with a year earlier, the company said.

The Ford Pro business is led by sales of the automaker’s Super Duty trucks, which are part of its F-Series truck lineup with the Ford F-150, and range from large pickups to commercial trucks and chassis cabs.

It also covers sales of Transit vans in North America and Europe, all sales of the Ranger midsize pickup in Europe, and service parts, accessories and services for commercial, government and rental customers.

But automakers, including Ford, also see fleet operations as a key driver in other ways, including for electric vehicle sales, as well as reoccurring revenue options such as software and logistical services.

“This revenue has gross margins of 50-plus-percent which drives significant operating leverage and improved capital efficiency,” Farley said during the quarterly call. “The major part of this new software business is actually Ford Pro.”

Ford is aiming to achieve $1 billion in sales of software and services in 2025, led by its fleet and commercial business.

“Ford Pro is core to Ford, and there is potential upside on volumes as well as in software and service,” BofA’s John Murphy said Thursday in an investor note. “On software, Ford Pro accounts for ~80% of Ford’s software subscriptions with an attach rate of only 12%, which is projected to grow to 35%+ over the next few years.”

As Ford touts its fleet business, its closest rivals have amped up their operations.

Chrysler parent Stellantis is relaunching its “Ram Professional” unit this year with goals of achieving record profitability in 2025 and, eventually, becoming the No. 1 seller of light-duty commercial vehicles, which exclude some larger vehicles.

Christine Feuell, CEO of Stellantis’ Ram brand, declined to disclose a time frame for achieving that target but said the automaker believes it can do so after completely revamping its operations to focus on better mainstreaming operations for customers and earnings growth through sales and new services.

“It’s a highly profitable business. Not only on the product side, but on the services side,” she told CNBC during a media event last week. “Software and connected services are really a significant growth opportunity for us as well.

“We’re a little bit behind Ford in launching those services, but we definitely expect to see similar kinds of growth and revenues generated from those connected services.”

Ram makes up about 80% of Stellantis’ U.S. fleet and commercial business. It has a new or revamped lineup of trucks and vans coming to market, plus a host of connected and telematics products to assist fleet customers. It also increased the availability of financing and lending for commercial customers.

“This year truly begins our commercial offensive,” Ken Kayser, vice president of Stellantis North American commercial vehicle operations, said during the media event. “2024 is a foundational year for our brand, as we look to build momentum into 2025.”

GM isn’t sitting idle either. It has revamped its fleet and commercial business. It launched “GM Envolve” last year, its overhauled fleet and commercial business focused on fleet sales, digital telematics and logistics for commercial customers.

Sandor Piszar, vice president of GM Envolve in North America, said the Detroit automaker views the business as a competitive advantage not just to sell vehicles but to create reoccurring revenue and relationships with businesses.

GM Envolve, formerly known as GM Fleet, reorganized the automaker’s business to be a one-stop shop for fleet customers — from sales and financing to fleet management, logistics and maintenance.

“GM Envolve is a critically important piece of General Motors business. It’s a profitable business,” he told CNBC earlier this year. “We think it is a competitive advantage in the approach we’re taking in this consultative approach of a single point of contact and coordinating the full portfolio that General Motors has to offer.”

GM and Stellantis declined to disclose the earnings and profitability of their fleet businesses.

GM Envolve includes the company’s EV commercial business BrightDrop, which was folded back into the automaker last year instead of it acting as a subsidiary. It didn’t accomplish the growth GM had expected, but EVs have an opening for automakers’ fleet and commercial sales.

“BrightDrop is a great opportunity for General Motors and for GM Envolve,” Piszar said, citing all-electric vans specifically for last-mile deliveries as well as small local businesses. “There’s a lot of use cases and as we ramp up production and get customers to try the vehicle that’s a key piece of our model.”

Unlike retail customers, many fleet and commercial customers have predefined routes or schedules that could accommodate EVs well because they drive locally in a region and could charge overnight when electricity costs are lower.

S&P Global reports EV startup Rivian Automotive led the U.S. in all-electric cargo van registrations last year, roughly doubling Ford, its closest competitor, at No. 2.

While the upfront investment is high, automakers have argued the eventual payback could be worthwhile for some businesses.

All three of the legacy Detroit automakers are touting such advantages to their fleet customers, while still offering traditional vehicles with internal combustion engines.

Stellantis and Ford also have started highlighting their portfolios of different powertrains such as hybrids and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles as adoption of EVs has not occurred as quickly as many had expected.

Ford last month announced plans valued at about $3 billion to expand Super Duty production, including to “electrify” Super Duty trucks.

“We’ve gone to, on all of our commercial vehicles, a multi-energy platform so we will offer customers the choice that we think no other competitor will have,” Farley said during the earnings call. “We believe we will be a first mover, if not the first mover, in multi-energy Super Duty.”

— CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.

Alex Ingrim knows a lot about how to move to a new country.

He was studying in San Diego when a study abroad trip to France led him to meet his now-wife, Louisa; in the 17 years since, the pair have grown their family and lived in Canada, France, the UK, Malta and now Italy.

Ingrim, 36, is a financial advisor with Chase Buchanan USA based in Florence, which has roughly 70 clients, where he advises fellow Americans about taxes and other financial planning involved with moving to Europe.

In his years helping Americans move overseas, he says one major expense ends up not be worth it: paying to ship your belongings to your new home.

“You can’t just pick up everything from your old house and put it into your new house in Europe,” Ingrim tells CNBC Make It. “It’s not going to fit the same way or look and feel the same way.”

A lot of times, larger furniture pieces simply don’t fit in oftentimes smaller European spaces, he says. Plus, “The plugs on the appliances are a lot different. Certain things about TVs might be at a different standard. People underestimate a lot of those aspects. So that’s been one piece of feedback we’ve gotten from people, they didn’t think [shipping their belongings] was that worthwhile.”

Instead, Ingrim says people have a better time of selling most of their belongings in the U.S. and moving to their new home country with a few suitcases.

The good news is that people are often “pleasantly surprised” at “how much cheaper a lot of the furniture is in Europe,” Ingrim says. That goes for appliances, too: “A new kitchen in Europe is a lot cheaper than it is in the U.S.”

Overall, Ingrim says his No. 1 piece of advice for people moving to a new country is to be realistic with their expectations and generally throw any ideas of space, efficiency and speed out the window.

“The one piece of advice I always give people is that your move is set up to fail when your expectations don’t match reality,” Ingrim says. “You need to go in with relatively loose and low expectations around what what your lifestyle in that country is going to look like. Expect life in Spain to be slow, because it’s going to be. Don’t expect it to be efficient.”

“Don’t expect a 2,000-square-foot apartment, it’s not going to happen most of the time,” he adds.

Of course, where there may be logistical challenges in making the move, there are plenty of cultural benefits to look forward to. “Expect the food to be good. Expect the people to be pretty friendly and nice, as long as you treat them with respect,” Ingrim says. On that note, defer to local customs and consider how showing respect may look different in your new home country.

“As long as you set your expectations accordingly, then you can take it slow and adjust at your own pace,” Ingrim says. “If you expect your American life to be transplanted to Paris, that’s going to be really, really hard to adjust to.”

Mortgage interest rates dropped last week to the lowest level since May 2023, causing a surge in mortgage demand from both homebuyers and especially current homeowners.

Total mortgage application volume rose 6.9% last week compared with the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index. Volume was at the highest level since January of this year.

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($766,550 or less) declined to 6.55% from 6.82%, with points falling to 0.58 from 0.62 (including the origination fee) for loans with a 20% down payment.

“Mortgage rates decreased across the board last week … following doveish communication from the Federal Reserve and a weak jobs report, which added to increased concerns of an economy slowing more rapidly than expected,” said Joel Kan, vice president and deputy chief economist at the MBA, in a release.

Applications to refinance a home loan, which are most sensitive to weekly rate changes, jumped 16% for the week and were 59% higher than the same week one year ago. While the percentage increases are large, they are still coming off a very small base. The vast majority of borrowers today have loans with rates below 5%. There are less than 1 million borrowers who can benefit from a refinance and shave at least 75 basis points off their current rate.

Applications for a mortgage to purchase a home increased just 1% for the week, but were still 11% lower than the same week one year ago.

“Despite the downward movement in rates, purchase activity only saw small gains, with an increase in conventional purchase applications offset by decreases in government purchase applications. For-sale inventory is beginning to increase gradually in some parts of the country and homebuyers might be biding their time to enter the market given the prospect of lower rates,” added Kan.

Mortgage rates fell further to start this week, following a stock market rout Monday. They rose sharply again, however, on Tuesday after some more positive economic data.

“This is how things often play out when the bond market forces a quick move to extreme rate levels. For example, several of the biggest drops in daily mortgage rates have followed quick moves to long-term highs,” wrote Matthew Graham, chief operating officer at Mortgage News Daily.

Microsoft fired back at Delta Air Lines on Tuesday accusing the carrier of not modernizing its technology before it canceled thousands of flights in the wake of last month’s global massive IT outage.

Delta CEO Ed Bastian told CNBC last week that the carrier has “no choice” but to seek damages from Microsoft and CrowdStrike for the mass disruptions, which he said cost the company, an airline that prides itself on reliability, about $500 million.

Delta struggled more than rival airlines to recover from the outage, canceling more than 5,000 flights in the days following the July 19 incident, which was sparked by a botched software update from CrowdStrike and affected millions of computers running Microsoft Windows.

Mark Cheffo, a Dechert partner representing Microsoft, said in a letter Tuesday to Delta’s attorney David Boies of Boies Schiller Flexner, said Microsoft is still trying to figure out why American Airlines, United Airlines and others were able to recover more quickly than Delta.

“Our preliminary review suggests that Delta, unlike its competitors, apparently has not modernized its IT infrastructure, either for the benefit of its customers or for its pilots and flight attendants,” Cheffo wrote.

Delta responded on Tuesday that it has “a long track record of investing in safe, reliable and elevated service for our customers and employees.

“Since 2016, Delta has invested billions of dollars in IT capital expenditures, in addition to the billions spent annually in IT operating costs,” Delta said in response to the Tuesday letter from Microsoft,” the airline said in a statement.

In a July 29 letter, Boies told Microsoft’s chief legal officer, Hossein Nowbar: “We have reason to believe Microsoft has failed to comply with contractual requirements and otherwise acted in a grossly negligent, indeed willful, manner in connection with the Faulty Update” from CrowdStrike that caused Windows computers to crash, Boies told Microsoft’s chief legal officer, Hossein Nowbar, in a letter dated July 29.

Microsoft lawyer Cheffo wrote in his response that the company empathizes with Delta and its customers on the impact of the CrowdStrike incident. “But your letter and Delta’s public comments are incomplete, false, misleading, and damaging to Microsoft and its reputation,” he said.

Microsoft’s letter followed a similar one from CrowdStrike on Sunday rejecting claims from the Atlanta-based airline. Cheffo wrote that Microsoft offered to help Delta for free. Each day from July 19 to July 23, Microsoft employees said they could help, but Delta turned them away, according to the letter.

Delta CEO Bastian told CNBC’s Squawk Box” that CrowdStrike didn’t offer any financial compensation but did extend “free consulting advice” on dealing with the fallout from the outage. 

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emailed Bastian, “who has never replied,” Cheffo wrote Tuesday. CrowdStrike also said its CEO George Kurtz had reached out to his counterpart at Delta “but received no response.”

Cheffo described a letter on July 22, from Microsoft to a Delta employee, offering help. The Delta employee wrote back: “All good. Cool will let you know and thank you.”

Delta executives said the outage, which led to more cancellations than in all of 2019, overwhelmed its crew-scheduling platform that matches crews to flights. But Cheffo said Delta doesn’t rely on Windows or Microsoft’s Azure cloud services.

In 2021, IBM announced a multiyear deal with Delta to help it implement a hybrid-cloud architecture running on Red Hat’s OpenShift software. In 2022, Amazon said Delta had picked the digital commerce company’s Amazon Web Services unit to be its preferred cloud provider.

“It is rapidly becoming apparent that Delta likely refused Microsoft’s help because the IT system it was most having trouble restoring — its crew-tracking and scheduling system — was being serviced by other technology providers, such as IBM, because it runs on those providers’ systems, and not Microsoft Windows or Azure,” Cheffo wrote in his letter.

Bastian said last week Delta had to manually reset 40,000 servers.

Microsoft demands that Delta retain records showing how much technologies from IBM, Amazon and others contributed to the airline’s issues from July 19 to July 24, Cheffo wrote. Spokespeople for IBM and Amazon didn’t immediately provide comment.

Bastian told CNBC last week, “If you’re going to be having access, priority access, to the Delta ecosystem in terms of technology, you’ve got to test this stuff. You can’t come into a mission critical 24/7 operation and tell us we have a bug. It doesn’t work.”

In the market’s eyes, the Federal Reserve finds itself either poised to head off a recession or doomed to repeat the mistakes of its recent past — when it was too late seeing a coming storm.

How Chair Jerome Powell and his cohorts at the central bank react likely will go a long way in determining how investors negotiate such a turbulent climate. Wall Street has been on a wild ride the past several days, with a relief rally Tuesday ameliorating some of the damage since recession fears intensified last week.

“In sum, no recession today, but one is increasingly inevitable by year-end if the Fed fails to act,” Steven Blitz, chief U.S. economist at TS Lombard, said in a note to clients. “But they will, beginning with a [half percentage point] cut in September telegraphed in late August.”

Blitz’s comments represent the widespread sentiment on Wall Street — little feeling that a recession is an inevitability unless, of course, the Fed fails to act. Then the probability ramps up.

Disappointing economic data recently generated worries that the Fed missed an opportunity at its meeting last week to, if not cut rates outright, send a clearer signal that easing is on the way. It helped conjure up memories of the not-too-distant past when Fed officials dismissed the 2021 inflation surge as “transitory” and were pressed into what ultimately was a series of harsh rate hikes.

Now, with a weak jobs report from July in hand and worries intensifying over a downturn, the investing community wants the Fed to take strong action before it misses the chance.

Traders are pricing in a strong likelihood of that half-point September cut, followed by aggressive easing that could lop 2.25 percentage points off the Fed’s short-term borrowing rate by the end of next year, as judged by 30-day fed funds futures contracts. The Fed currently targets its key rate between 5.25%-5.5%.

“The unfortunate reality is that a range of data confirm what the rise in the unemployment rate is now prominently signaling — the US economy is at best at risk of falling into a recession and at worst already has,” Citigroup economist Andrew Hollenhorst wrote. “Data over the next month is likely to confirm the continued slowdown, keeping a [half-point] cut in September likely and a potential intermeeting cut on the table.”

With the economy still creating jobs and stock market averages near record highs, despite the recent sell-off, an emergency cut between now and the Sept. 17-18 open market committee seems a longshot to say the least.

The fact that it’s even being talked about, though, indicates the depth of recession fears. In the past, the Fed has implemented just nine such cuts, and all have come amid extreme duress, according to Bank of America.

“If the question is, ‘should the Fed consider an intermeeting cut now?’, we think history says, ‘no, not even close,’” said BofA economist Michael Gapen.

Lacking a catalyst for an intermeeting cut, the Fed is nonetheless expected to cut rates almost as swiftly as it hiked from March 2022-July 2023. It could start the process later this month, when Powell delivers his expected keynote policy speech during the Fed’s annual retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Powell is already being expected to signal how the easing path will unfold.

Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at SMBC Nikko Securities, expects the Fed to cut rates 3 full percentage points by the end of 2025, more aggressive than the current market outlook.

“Go big or go home. The Fed has clearly said that rates are too high. Why would they be slow at removing the tightness?” he said. “They’ll be quick in cutting if for no other reason than rates aren’t at the right level. Why wait?”

LaVorgna, though, isn’t convinced the Fed is in a life-or-death battle against recession. However, he noted that “normalizing” the inverted yield curve, or getting longer-dated securities back to yielding more than their shorter-dated counterparts, will be an integral factor in avoiding an economic contraction.

Over the weekend, Goldman Sachs drew some attention to when it raised its recession forecast, but only to 25% from 15%. That said, the bank did note that one reason it does not believe a recession is imminent is that the Fed has plenty of room to cut — 5.25 percentage points if necessary, not to mention the capacity to restart its bond-buying program known as quantitative easing.

Still, any quakes in the data, such as Friday’s downside surprise to the nonfarm payrolls numbers, could ignite recession talk quickly.

“The Fed is as behind the economic curve now as it was behind the inflation curve back in 2021-2022,” economist and strategist David Rosenberg, founder of Rosenberg Research, wrote Tuesday. He added that the heightened expectation for cuts “smacks of a true recession scenario because the Fed has rarely done this absent an official economic downturn — heading into one, already in one, or limping out of one.”