The daily business briefing: August 17, 2023

1. Aldi to buy Winn-Dixie parent Southeastern Grocers

Discount grocer Aldi announced Wednesday that it had reached a deal to buy Florida-based Southeastern Grocers, the parent company of the Winn-Dixie and Harveys chains. The proposed merger would give Aldi 400 Winn-Dixie and Harveys supermarkets in the southern U.S., including Florida. The acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2024 if regulators approve it. Aldi, based in Germany with a U.S. headquarters in Illinois, did not disclose the terms of the deal. Both companies are private. Aldi said the purchase was part of a growth plan that will give it 2,400 stores in the U.S. by the end of 2023.

NPR

2. US bond yield rises to 15-year high

The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note rose Wednesday to a 15-year high, stoking fears of fallout from rising borrowing costs. The 10-year yield, a benchmark for interest rates that affect many consumers, settled at 4.258%, up from 4.220% on Tuesday, according to Tradeweb. That was the highest close for the bonds since June 2008. The 10-year yield is still significantly below the target rate set by the Federal Reserve, which has been aggressively raising rates to slow the economy and bring down inflation. That means the 10-year Treasury yield could continue climbing, The Wall Street Journal noted. Investors demand higher yields on these bonds to offset inflation risk.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The Wall Street Journal

3. Target shares rise despite sales slump from Pride Month backlash

Target's stock gained 3% on Wednesday even though the retailer reported that conservative backlash over its Pride Month collection had hurt its second-quarter sales. The company also slashed its full-year guidance. Target said sales fell 5.4% compared to the same quarter last year. Online sales fell 10.5%. Still, the company said profit margins increased beyond analysts' expectations as it offered fewer discounts and cut some costs. Target has faced a conservative boycott since May, when some shoppers objected to its Pride Month products and displays celebrating the LGBTQ community.

The New York Times

4. Fed minutes suggest more rate hikes possible

Federal Reserve minutes released Wednesday indicated that policymakers expressed concerns at their July meeting that it could take more interest rate hikes to slow the economy enough to bring inflation down to the central bank's 2% target. The doubts suggested the Fed might hike rates again in September. Fed officials unanimously voted in July to raise interest rates by a quarter-point to a range of 5.25-5.5%, a 22-year high. According to the minutes, Fed officials "noted the recent reduction in total and core inflation rates" but "stressed that inflation remained unacceptably high and that further evidence would be required for them to be confident that inflation was clearly on a path toward the committee's 2% objective."

CNN

5. Stock futures edge up after latest Fed comments

U.S. stock futures rose slightly early Thursday after the release of Federal Reserve meeting minutes indicating that more interest rate hikes might be necessary to bring down inflation. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were up about 0.2% at 6:30 a.m. ET. The three major U.S. indexes fell on Wednesday on concerns about rising borrowing costs. The Dow and the S&P 500 fell 0.5% and 0.8%, respectively. The tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 1.2%. Investors will be watching fresh corporate earnings on Thursday, along with the weekly report on jobless claims.

CNBC