Some of the investment industry’s claims about sustainability aren’t sustainable. A U.S. probe into Deutsche Bank ’s asset-management arm could help sift out the fakers.

American officials are investigating DWS Group , according to a Wall Street Journal report Thursday, after its recently departed head of sustainability said it overstated how widely it used sustainable-investing criteria. The outcome will likely be investors’ first indication of how U.S. regulators will clamp down on Wall Street “greenwashing.”

Investing based on environmental, social and governance criteria has become a hot trend. Amid strong demand for ethical financial products, ESG funds offer money managers the chance to differentiate themselves and raise margins after years of fee pressure from cheap index-tracker funds.

Scrutiny of their claims is becoming trendy, too. ESG criteria can be woolly, data is often scarce and a variety of ranking methodologies makes it hard for...

Lordstown Motors Corp. on Thursday said Daniel Ninivaggi, a longtime automotive industry executive and lieutenant to billionaire Carl Icahn, has joined the electric-truck startup as chief executive and a member of the board.

Mr. Ninivaggi once served as CEO of Icahn Enterprises LP and ran Icahn’s automotive aftermarket service network and parts distribution businesses. He also served as co-chairman and co-CEO of Icahn’s Federal Mogul unit before its sale to Tenneco Inc.

As of June 30, Carl Icahn, the billionaire activist investor, didn’t hold a stake in Lordstown Motors.

Lordstown Motors plans to begin production of electric pickup trucks at a former General Motors Co. assembly plant in Ohio next month, but the company’s stock has been slammed in recent months due to several challenges that have emerged since it went public last fall.

Shares were up nearly 25% in Thursday morning trading.

With the global chip shortage continuing to muck up automotive supply chains and vehicle prices at record levels, consumers looking for a new set of wheels have a lot to consider.

“I always say don’t get stuck with a ‘new-car only’ or ‘used-car only’ buyer mentality,” says Ivan Drury, an automotive analyst at the car-shopping website Edmunds.com. “Depending on the market and your situation, the best deal could be the opposite of an outdated paradigm.”

Some consumers are finding that their used vehicles are worth thousands of dollars more than what they had paid. Others have decided to buy their leased vehicles rather than risk not being able to find one comparable in size or price.

If you have a car that is financed—whether it is a loan or a lease—it likely has positive equity, granting you leverage in negotiating with dealers who are eager to fill their lots.

Here’s what you need to consider to calculate which option is right for you.

U.S. stocks ticked lower Thursday, suggesting that the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite Index will retreat from record levels.

The S&P edged down less than 0.1%, suggesting a pause to the benchmark index’s five-day rally. The Nasdaq slipped 0.1%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.1%.

Stocks have ground upward this week, pushing both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq to all-time highs. Money managers say their focus is largely on comments expected from Federal Reserve officials on Friday that could offer cues on the central bank’s plans for tapering stimulus measures. Some investors are betting that the Fed may slow those plans if there are signs that the economic recovery is faltering.

Fresh data Thursday showed that the U.S. economy grew 6.6% on an annualized basis in the second quarter, an upward revision from the first print last month, but still below economists’ forecasts.

Meanwhile, weekly jobless claims came in at 353,000,...

Riverstone Holdings LLC rode the shale boom to big profits. Now the New York investment firm is betting on technologies that would cut demand for fossil fuels, hoping for better results than its earlier push into renewables.

Investors have handed Riverstone four blank checks totaling nearly $1.3 billion to acquire businesses that “advance the objectives of global decarbonization.” The last time investors gave Riverstone so much money to make clean-energy deals, some barely broke even, while others lost roughly 90%, according to public pension data.

Riverstone is best known for its energy-focused private-equity funds. For its green efforts, the firm is using special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. These are blank-check companies that raise cash from stock-market investors, merge with private companies and take them public. SPACs have raised a record of roughly $120 billion from investors this year and invested heavily in clean-energy businesses.

...

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Coinbase Global’s stock valuation is predicated on a view that cryptocurrencies will only gain in popularity and acceptance in the years ahead. Regulators could have a thing or two to say about that in the coming months.

In its April stock market debut, Coinbase, which runs the largest U.S. exchange for bitcoin and other private digital currencies, made a very big splash. It closed its first day of trading at $328.28 a share, putting its market capitalization at $85 billion—more than 10 times what it was valued at in its previous fundraising round.

Its stock fell shortly thereafter, in part because a series of ransomware attacks raised worries that cryptocurrencies could end up in regulators’ crosshairs, pushing the price of bitcoin lower. At $256.77 Coinbase still doesn’t look particularly cheap, trading at 31 times expected earnings, which...

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Food-delivery company Deliveroo has almost bounced back from one of London’s worst market debuts. But some risks that turned investors off earlier this year are growing.

Deliveroo’s shares still change hands for slightly less than their initial public offering price, after plunging 26% on their first day of trading back in March. The stock got a boost when German competitor Delivery Hero took a 5% stake in the business in early August. In a supportive sign that diners are sticking with the app as restaurants reopen, the company said revenue increased 82% in the first half of the year compared with the same period of 2020.

Wage pressures may have increased since the company’s IPO, though. Globally, shareholders worry that new labor protections for so-called gig workers could push up costs for businesses like Deliveroo. Laws are tightening up...

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In the parlance of Wall Street, a clean story means that investors can expect favorable business conditions that lead to steady growth. With medical hygiene specialist Steris , investors won’t have to get their hands dirty.

Steris products are likely to be found at healthcare sites like emergency rooms and dialysis centers, as well as drug manufacturing plants. The company sells capital equipment like steam sterilizers and single-use products like cleaning supplies and it generates additional revenue from servicing its equipment. Roughly 80% of the company’s top line recurs from year to year. As an extra benefit, some research and manufacturing expenses overlap across its business segments, which means that new investments can potentially generate extra sales.

While the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in short-term disruptions to elective...

Cash-strapped developer China Evergrande Group said its flagship property business incurred a rare loss in the first half of 2021, after slashing prices of many apartments to boost sales.

The Shenzhen-based property unit’s loss, equivalent to around $618 million, was its first since at least 2009, the year Evergrande went public on Hong Kong’s stock exchange, according to several analysts who follow the company. Evergrande’s billionaire chairman and founder, Hui Ka Yan, recently stepped down as chairman of the onshore business after it scrapped plans for a listing on the mainland.

Evergrande, China’s largest developer by contracted sales, warned in a regulatory filing that its reported net profit for the six months to June 30 would be substantially lower than a year ago, as its electric-vehicle subsidiary lost the equivalent of $741 million. That business, China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group Ltd. , previously said it has ambitions of rivaling Tesla, but...

Home retailer Williams-Sonoma raised its dividend and introduced a new buyback program. Shares jumped 13% in premarket trading. Looser Covid-19 restrictions are putting a gloss on Ulta Beauty ‘s stock. Shares were up 4.4% after the beauty retailer said it expects full-year net sales between $8.1 billion and $8.3 billion. Analysts had forecast about $7.9 billion. Salesforce . com gained 2.3% after reporting a jump in quarterly sales. Analysts at Piper Sandler raised their price target for the business-software stock to $280 a share following the results.

It isn’t usually the case that the stocks of both the potential buyer and seller as well those of their rivals go up on reports of a deal. But that is what happened after The Wall Street Journal reported that memory-chip maker Western Digital is in advanced talks to acquire its Japanese peer Kioxia. The market reaction underlies the logic of the transaction.

Shares of Western Digital jumped 7% Wednesday after the Journal reported that the chip maker could spend more than $20 billion to buy Kioxia, formerly Toshiba Memory, as soon as next month. Toshiba, which owns 40% of Kioxia, rose 1.7% Thursday. American chip maker Micron, which was looking at a potential deal with Kioxia earlier but has since cooled on the prospect, also gained 2.9% Wednesday.

An all-stock deal probably means dilution of existing Western Digital shareholders, but they may also be relieved that the company doesn’t need to take on tons of debt for the acquisition. Even after Wednesday’s...

The spread of the highly contagious Delta variant of Covid-19 across Asia is weighing on emerging-market debt in the region.

In recent months, investors have been demanding higher returns on bonds from Southeast Asian nations with relatively low vaccination rates that have reported sharp increases in Covid-19 cases. Governments in the region have imposed fresh lockdowns or social-distancing restrictions that are slowing their economic recoveries, and are spending more to help their citizens and businesses.

The spread, or additional yield above Treasurys, on long-dated U.S. dollar sovereign bonds from Indonesia and the Philippines has increased by 0.3 to 0.6 percentage point since mid-May, according to FactSet. Spreads on Malaysia’s dollar bonds have also widened. The three countries have investment-grade credit ratings, and yields on their bonds that mature in more than 20 years now range from 2.7% to 3.5%.

Part of the reason for the recent move has...

In less than two weeks, El Salvador will become the first country to adopt bitcoin as a national currency. No one knows what comes next.

The government of the impoverished Central American nation aims to spend up to $75 million as part of a plan to hand out $30 to people who sign up to an e-wallet called Chivo, or “Cool.” That software-based system would allow an estimated 2.5 million Salvadorans to buy goods or pay for services in U.S. dollars or bitcoin, El Salvador’s two official currencies as of Sept 7.

The foray into bitcoin risks wrecking El Salvador’s $26 billion economy. The indebted nation’s central bank could be forced to spend hard-currency reserves to buy bitcoin if the value of the crypto asset craters and consumers rush to the safety of the dollar. The government can’t print its own money—El Salvador ditched the colón in favor of the greenback two decades ago—and is struggling to earn dollars.

“Adopting bitcoin as legal tender puts us on a...

U.S. stock futures wavered ahead of gross domestic product data for the second quarter and weekly jobless figures.

S&P 500 futures slipped 0.1% and futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average were flat. Changes in futures don’t necessarily predict market moves after the markets open.

In Europe, the Stoxx Europe 600 was down 0.4% in morning trade dragged down by declines in utilities and energy sectors.

The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was lower 0.7%. Other stock indexes in Europe also mostly fell as France’s CAC 40 lost 0.7%, the U.K.’s FTSE 250 shed 0.4% and Germany’s DAX declined 0.8%.

The Swiss franc and the British pound dropped 0.3% and 0.2% respectively against the U.S. dollar whereas the euro was flat against the dollar, with 1 euro buying $1.18.

Kuaishou Technology , a major rival to ByteDance Ltd. that owns a popular short-video platform in China, said it expects tighter regulations to hurt its revenues, adding that it would try to weed out undesirable content that authorities have frowned upon.

The Hong Kong-listed shares of Kuaishou tumbled 10% on Thursday, after the Beijing-based company reported a loss equivalent to $1.1 billion for the second quarter, which ended in June.

While Kuaishou’s revenues jumped 49% to nearly $3 billion in the second quarter, firm Chief Executive Su Hua warned during an earnings call Wednesday that cyberspace regulations, including China’s newly-passed privacy law, could dent Kuaishou’s revenue in the short term as the company adapts to the changes.

Kuaishou, which means “fast hand” in Chinese, operates a namesake app that allows users to share short videos, stream live broadcasts and shop online, similar to ByteDance’s Douyin and TikTok apps. Kuaishou said...

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The nice thing about being Warner Music these days is that the company still does well even when listeners go old school.

Streaming is now the main driver of the music business, accounting for about 83% of the industry’s $12.2 billion in U.S. revenue last year, according to data from the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA. But the industry is also seeing a strong uptick in sales of vinyl albums, which generated nearly $620 million in U.S. sales last year—up 29% from the previous year. That is the highest sales figure for the vinyl format in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1988.

It is all good news for Warner. As still the only pure-play record label on the public market, Warner offers investors exposure across the music industry’s various distribution channels. Most of that is from streaming; digital recorded music and...

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As a black-box company in a technical industry, battery startup QuantumScape was always an unlikely investor darling. Chances that it can revive the early hype around its early-stage technology seem slim.

The company, which went public last fall via a special-purpose acquisition company, says it has hit on a wonder material that could, based on initial testing, enable the manufacture of “solid state” batteries with pure lithium anodes. This would be a breakthrough innovation, extending battery range, supporting fast charging and reducing costs. Electric vehicles might finally be as cheap and easy to fill with power as today’s gas ones.

QuantumScape became a stock-market sensation, with a strong following among individual investors. Valued at $3.3 billion in the deal that brought it to market, the company reached a peak enterprise value of...

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The stock-trading frenzy seems to be calming down for some of Robinhood Markets ’ customers. The same comedown could happen to its shareholders at current prices.

After an extraordinary period that helped propel the company to a public listing, Robinhood’s stock-trading activity is no longer surging. Daily average revenue trades in equities not only dropped from the huge first quarter but they were flat from the second quarter a year ago, even as Robinhood added well over 10 million accounts in that time span.

In effect, the average funded account traded stocks roughly half as often in the second quarter as it did in the first quarter, or in the second quarter of last year. Equities transaction-based revenue was down from $71 million in the second quarter a year ago to $52 million.

For now, though, cryptocurrency is making up for...

WASHINGTON—Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler named an outspoken investor-protection advocate to his inner circle of advisers Wednesday, the latest sign he is gearing up to take a more adversarial approach toward Wall Street.

Mr. Gensler appointed Barbara Roper, longtime director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America, to serve as a senior adviser focused on policy issues, broker-dealer oversight, investment-adviser oversight and examinations.

“Barb is a champion for investors and will provide invaluable counsel on behalf of the American public,” Mr. Gensler said in a statement. He said he has worked with Ms. Roper on landmark Wall Street reform projects dating back to the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley overhaul of public-company accounting rules, as well as the Dodd-Frank Act passed in 2010 following the global financial crisis. “I’m thrilled to collaborate with her again at the SEC.”

A prolific writer of comment...

Economically sensitive stocks and banks led major U.S. indexes to another set of fresh records.

The stock market on Wednesday continued its general upswing over the past few days after U.S. regulators gave full approval for one of the Covid-19 vaccines. Manufacturers got an additional boost as the government moved toward a September vote on a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill.

Shares of banks climbed even higher as bond yields rose ahead of the annual Jackson Hole gathering of central bankers. Yields rise as prices fall, usually making lending activities more profitable for financial firms.

That all helped send the S&P 500 up 9.96 points, or 0.2%, to 4496.19, notching a fifth straight day of gains and its 51st record of the year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 39.24 points, or 0.1%, to 35405.50, up four straight days, while the Nasdaq Composite rose 22.06 points, or 0.1%, to 15041.86, also hitting a record.

All eyes are now...

U.S. authorities are investigating Deutsche Bank AG’s asset-management arm, DWS Group, after the firm’s former head of sustainability said it overstated how much it used sustainable investing criteria to manage its assets, according to people familiar with the matter.

The probes, by the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors, are in early stages, the people said. Authorities’ examination of DWS comes after The Wall Street Journal reported that the $1 trillion asset manager overstated its sustainable-investing efforts. The Journal, citing documents and the firm’s former sustainability chief, said the firm struggled with its strategy on environmental, social and governance investing and at times painted a rosier-than-reality picture to investors.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, which is handling the probe, declined to comment. A spokesman for the SEC declined to comment.

A DWS spokesman said the firm doesn’t...

U.S. companies are rushing to cash in on soaring stock prices.

It isn’t just the white-hot market for initial public offerings. Companies are returning to the public markets to issue shares and raise cash from investors at the same time that existing shareholders are tapping the public market to unload their stockholdings at a record clip.

Companies including Zoom Video Communications Inc. and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. have sold billions of dollars of shares this year.

The list of companies tapping the public markets this year is sprinkled with meme stocks that have benefited from the momentum in their share prices such as AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. and GameStop Corp.

There have been 556 follow-on offerings, or stock sales by companies or existing shareholders, among U.S. companies this year, the most since 1996, according to Dealogic data. They have raised a total of $133 billion.