Author: Money Mechanics

Population growth might be slowing, and more apartments and homes are going unsold and unoccupied. But that doesn’t mean the nation’s affordability challenges are getting better.Depressed demand and harsh affordability challenges are the defining stories of 2026, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies’ latest State of the Nation’s Housing report.For years, the solution to the U.S. housing crisis was simple: We just needed to build more. But the frenzied bidding wars of the early 2020s have given way to a more complex reality. Today, construction is up and population growth is down, yet the average American is…

The main equity indexes were mixed on Monday, as market participants continued to monitor negotiations between the U.S. and Iran and the status of the Strait of Hormuz. Investors, traders and speculators also observed the passing of Alan Greenspan, who led the Federal Reserve for almost 20 years and was among the most important central bankers of our time.At the closing bell, the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.3% to 51,712, but the S&P 500 was down 0.4% to 7,472, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite had shed 1.3% at 26,166.Communication services stocks were the worst-performing group, with the…

Rising food costs driven by inflation have been a problem for U.S. steakhouses ranging from high-end to budget establishments, leading some well-known restaurants to permanently shut their doors and in some cases file for bankruptcy An increase in the cost of beef that led to steak prices spiking 16% to $12.73 per pound in March 2026, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, affected menu prices and discouraged some diners from dining in steakhouses, taking a bite out of restaurant revenue. Steakhouses that have closed locations in the U.S. over the last three months have included Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse…

Thank you, Beth Anne, and I would like to welcome everyone to the fifth installment of this Conference on the International Roles of the U.S. Dollar.1 Over the years, this gathering has aimed to bring together different perspectives to better understand the forces shaping the dollar’s central role in the global financial system. Last year’s conference, for instance, focused on global investor allocation to U.S. safe assets and their liquidity in a time of geopolitical and technological change. This year, we are here to discuss the implications of financial innovations, especially digital assets such as stablecoins, for the international roles…

U.S. President Donald Trump talks as he meets French President Emmanuel Macron for a bilateral meeting at Hotel Royal Evian on June 15 in Évian-les-Bains, France. Anna Moneymaker | Getty ImagesU.S. President Donald Trump asserted that he has unlimited power and insisted the deal reached with Iran amounts to “unconditional surrender” by Tehran, in an interview with Axios. The U.S. and Iran signed the agreement on Thursday, after three and a half months of conflict that shut the Strait of Hormuz and rattled global energy markets. Trump said he negotiated the agreement to prevent the conflict from triggering a global…

On Friday, Claude Code creator Boris Cherny made an appearance at Meta’s @Scale conference and, surprisingly, the first question from the audience was about loops. “Are loops the next hype cycle,” the questioner asked, “or are they for real?” Cherny’s answer was an emphatic “yes, they’re for real,” he said. “Two years ago, we wrote source code by hand. We started to transition so agents write the code. And now we’re transitioning to the point where agents are prompting agents that then write the code,” he continued. “As big as the step from source code to agents was, loops are…

(Oil & Gas 360) By Greg Barnett, MBA – Devon Energy’s merger with Coterra Energy may represent the company’s most consequential strategic shift in more than a decade, but reinvention is hardly new for Devon.   Over the past thirty years, the company has repeatedly reshaped itself alongside changing commodity cycles, basin economics, and investor preferences. The newly combined Devon now appears positioned for another transition — this time toward a more concentrated, oil-weighted Delaware Basin model focused on free cash flow generation, portfolio rationalization, and shareholder returns. That evolution has been long and at times dramatic. Devon was once…

Article published at 9:35 a.m. CTJJ Kinahan is Senior Vice President, Head of Retail Expansion and Alternative Investment Products at Cboe Global Markets, Inc. (Cboe).Key Takeaways:Investors await progress reports on U.S./Iran negotiationsPCE data on Thursday to offer insight on inflation directionAlan Greenspan, long-respected Fed chair, diesInvestors appear to be hanging on the sidelines in the early going Monday as they await news of the progress of negotiations in the Middle East, which were paused over the weekend amid reports of escalating tensions and sharp rhetoric between the U.S. and Iran.By morning, however, Iran said all-night talks were promising toward reaching…

Adventure across Portugal.gettyNot everyone who retires overseas spends years searching for the perfect destination. Sometimes, a place simply feels right.That was the case for British journalist Stephen Powell. What began as time spent in Portugal eventually turned into something more permanent. Today, he lives near Tavira in the Algarve, where he has purchased a home, become part of the local community, and embraced a lifestyle that convinced him to stay for good.The Start Of A JourneyIn the early 90s, Stephen got the opportunity to go to Portugal to be a correspondent in Lisbon. “At this point, I had been away…

Disappointed with the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, I decided in 2023 to reinvent the index to reflect the changing nature of the U.S. economy. I kept 11 of the Dow’s 30 components and added some choices from among personal favorites, old 10 Best lists and the Wired Index, concocted by the tech magazine in 1998.Top 30 is beating expectations. Over the past 12 months, it returned 27%, compared with 24% for the Dow itself. Total cumulative return for three years: 69% for Top 30, 54% for the Dow.Investing lessons from the Top 30Performance, however, isn’t the only…