Author: Money Mechanics

The recent bitcoin sell-off is shining a fresh light on crypto ETFs, and financial advisors are scrambling to stay out of the dark. While the general financial planning community, along with much of traditional Wall Street, initially held a cautious view of digital currencies, crypto has been gaining momentum ever since the first spot bitcoin ETFs launched in the US nearly two years ago. Today, there are more than 150 crypto-related ETFs across a host of strategies, representing the fastest growing segment of exchange-traded funds. The iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT), by far the largest crypto ETF at nearly $88…

just hit a new all-time high. Neither did gold, nor mining stocks. They all reversed on an intraday basis, but silver’s move to new highs makes it still bullish overall, while the almost complete reversals in gold and miners make the latter technically bearish. Interesting, right? How can these parts of the same sector behave so similarly, yet so differently? The reason is that while they are all likely to respond to many of the same factors (soaring will be bearish for all of them and the same goes for plunging stock market valuations), there are some silver-specific reasons that…

There’s been a rise of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) wrangling on my Bluesky timeline, largely the result of intra-left mudslinging. I just want to stick my nose into the discussion, although I do not really spend much time thinking about U.K. policy options (I tend to either shake my head or snort in derision whenever U.K. economic debates surface). (The last piece of my EU5 series has been delayed.)Grace Blakely recent wrote “On MMT” in which she discusses an argument with Richard Murphy. Meanwhile, a few of the anti-MMT conventional Labour economists started up their usual attacks on MMT. The…

Indiana homes sold 17.6% faster year-over-year in the week ending Nov. 29, with absorbed listings jumping to 1,780 from 1,514. Nearly half of active listings (47.7%) featured price reductions across the state’s tracked metros, creating favorable conditions for buyers entering the traditionally slower holiday season. The surge in buyer activity came as median list prices reached $293,900, down 0.3% from $294,900 a year earlier. Homes spent a median 49 days on market, unchanged from last year but well below the national median of 70 days. The state maintained slight seller-favorable conditions with 1.8 months of supply. Inventory and pace Active…

Mike Winkelmann, the digital artist known as Beeple, has placed himself at the center of the pack — literally — with his latest viral installation at Art Basel Miami Beach, and there’s still time to see it through Sunday. His “Regular Animals” project features $100,000 robotic dogs outfitted with hyper-realistic heads resembling Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos, alongside art legends Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. The robot dogs roam a plexiglass pen, capturing images through chest-mounted cameras that are processed by AI and then essentially pooped out, according to the WSJ. Of the prints produced, 256 include QR…

(World Oil) – Equinor and Aker BP have announced a new gas and condensate discovery in the North Sea after drilling two exploration wells at the Lofn and Langemann prospects, marking a promising start for Production Licence 1140. Taken with sony a7 2 The wildcat wells—15/5-8 S and 15/5-8 A—were drilled about 7 km north of the Eirin field and roughly 240 km west of Stavanger using Odfjell Drilling’s Deepsea Atlantic rig. The license, awarded in 2022, is now seeing its first exploration results. Early estimates indicate that the Lofn prospect contains 22–63 million barrels of oil equivalent, while Langemann could hold 6–50 million barrels. Together,…

Metrics That Matter: Derivatives Cboe Japan Corporate Webpage to be permanently terminated effected from November 2025 November HighlightsU.S. Index OptionsSPX Record VolumesS&P 500 Index Options (SPX) set multiple monthly Average Daily Volume (ADV) records including 4.6 million SPX contracts overall, up 4% from October.2.85 million zero-days-to-expiry (0DTE) SPX options contracts were traded in November, a 7% increase from October.122,000 SPX contracts were traded during Global Trading Hours (GTH).On November 20, 6.39 million SPX contracts were traded, the second-best day for SPXXSP Record VolumesMini S&P 500 Index Options (XSP) set a new monthly ADV record of 132,000 contracts, surpassing the January…

Key Takeaways Netflix said Friday it agreed to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in an $83 billion deal.Warner Bros. Discovery still plans to split its cable TV channels like CNN and TBS off into a standalone company before its TV and movie studios and streaming services are acquired by Netflix. The bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) is officially over, as the entertainment giant and Netflix (NFLX) announced an $83 billion deal Friday. Warner Bros. Discovery plans to continue with its previously planned break-up, which will involve spinning off its cable TV channels including CNN and TBS into a standalone…

Key Takeaways Inflation in September showed a mixed trend with overall inflation accelerating and “core” inflation, which excludes food and energy, slowing down.The decrease in core inflation was unexpected and leaves the Federal Reserve on track to cut interest rates next week, putting the battle against inflation on the back burner in favor of helping stabilize the job market. A seriously belated government report confirmed what you may already have known by looking at your grocery receipts: inflation stayed hot in September.Consumer prices rose 2.8% over the 12 months through September as measured by the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, up…

Key Takeaways Federal Reserve officials are widely expected to cut the central bank’s key interest rate by a quarter-point next week.In doing so, the Fed is prioritizing helping the faltering job market over fighting inflation. The Federal Reserve is widely expected to cut its key interest rate next week to give a boost to the faltering job market, despite concerns that lower borrowing costs could stoke inflation.As of Friday, financial markets were pricing in an 87% chance the central bank would cut its key interest rate by a quarter-point to a range of 3.5% to 3.75%, according to the CME…