Uranium prices are rising, enriching a handful of hedge funds that have been betting a market laid low by a nuclear disaster a decade ago would rebound.

The price of uranium hit an eight-year high of $44 a pound this week, according to the price tracker UxC LLC. The surge follows the recent launch of an exchange-traded trust by Sprott Asset Management LP, which has bought large stockpiles of uranium after raising money from shareholders and emerged as a favored trading vehicle in its own right, traders said.

Environmental, social and governance issues have become major themes in stock investing by exchange-traded funds. Now, other funds are bringing ESG approaches to bonds.

Investor appetite for ETFs focused on ESG-friendly bonds has surged this year. From the start of the year through Aug. 31, ETFs focused on ESG bonds recorded inflows of about $2.1 billion—about the same amount as for all of 2020, says Dave Nadig, chief investment officer and director of research at ETF Trends.  

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is buying specialty lender GreenSky Inc. for $2.2 billion, striking a deal it hopes will further its reinvention from Wall Street powerhouse to Main Street player.

Goldman will pay roughly $12 a share in stock for GreenSky, which arranges loans for big one-time purchases like construction projects or cosmetic surgery. It works with thousands of merchants ranging from Home Depot Inc. to independent doctors and dentists, and pitches its loans as cheaper and more responsible alternatives to credit cards.

Investors who yearn to align their portfolios with their values often face a dilemma. Many working Americans hold the bulk of their retirement money in a 401(k) or other employer-sponsored retirement-savings plan, and such plans rarely include funds that are clearly focused on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

But there are ways to build ESG into a retirement-savings strategy, either within an employer plan or in tandem with one. Doing so requires a little work, such as looking closely at the fund choices within a plan to see whether any might have ESG leanings, or researching ESG investments to hold in another account.

Microsoft Corp.’s board approved a plan to buy back as much as $60 billion of its stock, extending the tech giant’s extensive repurchase program at a time when Congressional Democrats have proposed taxing companies that do buybacks.

Microsoft didn’t provide a timetable for the repurchases. It said Tuesday the program doesn’t have an expiration date and could be terminated any time.

Wells Fargo & Co. unveiled a decadelong initiative to update its digital infrastructure in part by moving its workloads to cloud services from Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google—the latest large bank to make a significant bet on the public cloud.

About 10 years from now, the goal is for all of Wells Fargo’s workloads to be on public clouds, said Saul Van Beurden, Wells Fargo’s head of technology. “It’s a big, hairy goal” that acknowledges the cloud trends occurring in the banking industry, Mr. Van Beurden said. The advantages of the cloud are speed, scalability and resiliency, he added.

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A top Senate Democrat has been circulating a proposal that would hit the rapidly growing world of exchange-traded funds. Big money managers are bracing for a fight.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden’s proposal aims to tax ETFs’ use of “in-kind” transactions that currently avoids triggering capital-gains taxes. With such in-kind transactions, ETFs—bundles of securities that trade on exchanges—transfer appreciated stock, bonds or other assets to Wall Street intermediaries instead of cash.

BlackRock Inc. has vaulted from fourth to first place in socially responsible fund assets in the past 18 months with a barrage of 29 launches of mutual funds and exchange-traded funds.

Long the No. 2 index mutual-fund and ETF manager behind Vanguard Group, BlackRock has gained ground thanks to its deep ties with institutional investors and a push to include its sustainable funds in model portfolios used by advisers with individuals as clients. 

Peloton Interactive ’s treadmill business is finding its legs, but it may be a while before it is truly up and running.

After voluntary recalls of its two treadmill products due to safety concerns, Peloton’s new lower-priced treadmill became available for sale in the U.S., U.K. and Canada on Aug. 30. The company’s treadmill opportunity has been a big focus for Wall Street lately: On the company’s most recent conference call, the word “tread” came up 60 times.

U.S. stocks opened mixed and oil prices rose Wednesday, signaling a tepid rebound for major indexes that have come under renewed pressure on concerns that the economic recovery is slowing.

The S&P 500 edged up 0.2%. The broad stocks gauge fell for the sixth time in seven trading days Tuesday, but remains roughly 2% below the all-time high it notched in early September.

Even as shoppers stock up on new clothes to return to the office and bars, fast-fashion stocks have been left on the shelf. This could show nerves about fresh lockdowns, but another explanation is possible: Investors might be starting to pay more attention to the clothing industry’s environmental footprint.

On Wednesday, Zara’s owner Inditex said sales in the quarter through July increased 51% at constant exchange rates compared with the same period last year, and even 7% versus the 2019 quarter. The company is in better shape than before the crisis on other measures as well. Inventory levels are lower than in 2019, net cash is higher at €8 billion euros, equivalent to $9.5 billion. E-commerce is expected to account for 25% of total sales this fiscal year, compared with 14% before the pandemic, and the company cut its total number of stores by 9% over the past 12 months.

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Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is buying specialty lender GreenSky Inc. for $2.2 billion, striking a deal it hopes will further its reinvention from Wall Street powerhouse to Main Street player.

Goldman will pay roughly $12 a share in stock for GreenSky, which arranges loans for big one-time purchases like construction projects or cosmetic surgery. It works with thousands of merchants ranging from Home Depot Inc. to independent doctors and dentists, and pitches its loans as cheaper and more responsible alternatives to credit cards.

Netflix badly needs the second half of the year to go better than the first. Investors are already betting that it will.

The video streaming pioneer has seen anemic subscriber growth in the first six months of 2021, with a little over 5.5 million net new subscribers added in the period. That was well below the 25.9 million added in the same period last year, fitting with the company’s frequent warnings that mass lockdowns early in the Covid-19 outbreak pulled forward a significant amount of future growth. But this year also has been slow compared with the company’s pre-pandemic performance. First-half subscriber additions averaged about 10.6 million in the years 2015-2019. Subscriber growth in the first half of this year has been the lowest for Netflix since 2013 when it had about one-sixth its current base of 209 million subscribers.

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Robinhood Markets Inc., the go-to trading app for young investors, wants its user base to get even younger.

The digital brokerage is kicking off a nationwide marketing campaign Wednesday that is designed to turn more college students into Robinhood customers. Robinhood will give students who sign up for brokerage accounts using their school email address $15 to trade, and enter them into a $20,000 giveaway. Robinhood executives will tour campuses of community colleges and historically black colleges and universities this fall.

SmartNews Inc. has raised $230 million in its latest funding round, valuing the news-discovery app at roughly $2 billion and setting the stage for a potential listing of its shares.

SmartNews is a news-aggregation website that forms partnerships with external outlets such as USA Today and Time magazine to publish their content. The app prides itself on aiding local news organizations, many of which have been under extreme pressure, by driving traffic to their articles through a tab that shows personalized headlines based on a user’s location.

Uranium prices are rising, enriching a handful of hedge funds that have been betting a market laid low by a nuclear disaster a decade ago would rebound.

The price of uranium hit an eight-year high of $44 a pound this week, according to the price tracker UxC LLC. The surge follows the recent launch of an exchange-traded trust by Sprott Asset Management LP, which has bought large stockpiles of uranium after raising money from shareholders and emerged as a favored trading vehicle in its own right, traders said.

Manufacturers are facing the highest steel and aluminum prices in years, another hurdle for U.S. companies already struggling to make enough cars, cans and other products.

Rapidly increasing metal costs are pushing manufacturers to take what steel they can get and hire more people to seek out available supplies, company executives said. The rising costs are flowing through to some producers of consumer goods: Campbell Soup Co. is paying more to get the cans it fills with tomato soup; Peloton Interactive Inc. is seeing prices rise for parts that go into its stationary bikes; and Steelcase Inc. is paying more to make metal desks and filing cabinets. Car makers like Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. are also dealing with rising metal prices.

Investors are folding their bets on Macau as they worry the gambling hub could be the next target of China’s all-encompassing regulatory crackdown.

Shares of casino operators in Macau plunged Wednesday after the semiautonomous Chinese city launched a public consultation on amending its gambling laws, ahead of the expiration of casino licenses next June. Wynn Macau fell 29% while Sands China lost 33% on the news.

U.S. stock futures ticked up Wednesday, signaling a tepid rebound for major indexes that have come under renewed pressure on concerns that the pace of the economic recovery is slowing.

Futures on the S&P 500 edged up 0.2%. The broad stocks gauge fell for the sixth time in seven trading days Tuesday, but remains roughly 2% below the all-time high it notched in early September.

Pagaya Technologies Ltd. is close to an agreement to go public through a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company that would value the financial-technology startup at about $9 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

Based in New York and Tel Aviv, Pagaya operates an artificial-intelligence network to make financial transactions like lending more efficient and give more people the ability to borrow money. Banks and other financial-services providers use its platform, which analyzes troves of data to help partners serve more customers, Pagaya says.

Interest in special-purpose acquisition companies has faded fast. As old investors mourn their losses, though, it may be time for new ones to raid the spoils.

Only five SPACs priced their shares for a public-market debut in August, followed by a single one thus far in September, FactSet figures show. This compares with a peak of 141 in February.