Author: Money Mechanics

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.It may have taken more than a decade, but smart glasses are finally taking off. Sales of Meta Platforms’ Ray-Ban AI specs more than tripled last year to more than 7mn units. Yet shares in EssilorLuxottica, the €110bn Franco-Italian eyewear maker that makes the devices, have been falling. Squint a little, and that isn’t so strange after all. It might seem like partnering with the Facebook owner on its next big thing is a win. After the false start of earlier models…

Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ:COST) is included among the 16 Best Dividend Stocks with Rising Payouts. Evercore ISI Raises Costco (COST) Price Target, Citi Also Lifts Valuation After Q2 Beat Niloo / Shutterstock.com On February 10, Evercore ISI analyst Greg Melich raised his price recommendation on Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ:COST) to $1,050 from $1,025. The analyst reiterated an Outperform rating on the shares. More recently, on February 20, Citi analyst Steven Zaccone increased his price objective on COST to $1,000 from $990 while keeping a Neutral rating. He noted that Costco delivered a modest beat in same-store sales and earnings during…

Gold Chinese New Year Chinese demand played a leading role in this metal’s record bull run in recent years. And frenzied Chinese buying fueled gold’s popular speculative mania in recent months, partially from preparations for Chinese New Year celebrations. Those play into gold’s strong January seasonality, but are followed by a sizable seasonal slump. That could prove way worse this year out of gold’s recent extreme overboughtness. From early October 2023 to late January 2026, gold soared 196.4% higher in its biggest cyclical bull ever in dollar terms! The first 24.5 months of that into mid-October 2025 grew increasingly impressive,…

Many Americans are borrowing and incurring debt to keep up with rising costs for basic necessities, such as groceries, rent and utilities, as well as to make larger purchases. Credit card balances reached a record $1.28 trillion at the end of 2025, according to the New York Fed. As consumers look to manage that debt, personal loans will be the primary driver of new borrowing this year, according to a forecast released Thursday from TransUnion, one of the three major credit reporting agencies.”Personal loans have truly become the middle-class refinancing option for high-interest credit card debt. That’s why they’re growing exponentially,” said…

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman addressed concerns about AI’s environmental impact this week while speaking at an event hosted by The Indian Express. For one thing, Altman — who was in India for a major AI summit — said concerns about AI’s water usage are “totally fake,” though he acknowledged it was a real issue when “we used to do evaporative cooling in data centers.” “Now that we don’t do that, you see these things on the internet where, ‘Don’t use ChatGPT, it’s 17 gallons of water for each query’ or whatever,” Altman said. “This is completely untrue, totally insane, no…

Key Takeaways President Donald Trump said he is imposing new tariffs to replace the ones the Supreme Court struck down Friday, starting with a 15% global tariff.Tariffs on specific countries and products will require his administration to carry out investigations. Get personalized, AI-powered answers built on 27+ years of trusted expertise. When the Supreme Court struck down the majority of President Donald Trump’s tariffs Friday, he lost little time revealing his backup plan: imposing more tariffs under different legal mechanisms from the one the high court ruled against.The new tariff regime will begin with a global 15% tariff on all…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.In theory, the market for small, cheap computers should be saturated. Most hobbyists who want them already have several. Older models are fine for retro gaming and tinkering, while industrial buyers don’t often need upgrades. Yet shares in Raspberry Pi, a Cambridge-based maker of simple devices on single circuit boards, shot up this week.The reason, ostensibly, was a burst of enthusiasm from AI hobbyists playing with OpenClaw, a personal assistant that runs on a home computer. This new embodiment of AI efficiency…

Members Capital Management Limited (MembersCap), the Bermuda-regulated investment manager, has broadened its tokenized reinsurance fund distribution by making its listed insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund, MCM Fund I, available to institutional investors on the Aptos blockchain via the Archax digital asset exchange.This comes as Archax, the UK/EU regulated digital asset platform, has entered into a partnership with Aptos, a institutional Layer-1 blockchain, which allows Archax to be able to bring Aptos into its tokenization engine, which enables regulated real-world assets (RWAs) to be issued and managed through the Aptos blockchain. The first of which will be the MembersCap Tokenized Global Reinsurance…

The Armstrong suit, which was first filed in early November, contained similar allegations, claiming that Zillow pressures agents in its Premier Agent and Flex lead programs to steer buyers to Zillow Home Loans for their purchase mortgage pre-approval. Allegedly, agents who sent more clients to Zillow’s mortgage arm for their pre-approvals received extra or higher-quality leads in exchange. In an amended complaint filed in the consolidated lawsuit in early January, the plaintiffs again claimed that Zillow tricks consumers into using agents affiliated with Zillow through its Flex and Premier Agent programs, resulting in inflated home purchase prices.  In its motion,…

(World Oil) – Ecopetrol reported proved reserves of 1.94 Bboe at year-end 2025, representing a 2.7% increase from 2024 and marking the company’s highest annual reserve additions in four years. The Colombian national oil company added 300 MMboe of proved reserves during 2025 and achieved a reserves replacement ratio of 121%, driven primarily by enhanced recovery projects and improved operational performance across key producing assets. The group’s average reserve life now stands at 7.8 years. According to Ecopetrol, the majority of reserve additions were tied to enhanced recovery and optimization programs in the Castilla, Chichimene and Akacías fields, along with improved operational…