Financial Mindset

President Donald Trump  said the U.S. forcibly seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship that tried to get around a naval blockade near the  Strait of Hormuz  on Sunday, the first such interception since the blockade of Iranian ports began last week. Trump on social media said the ship was warned by a U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer in the Gulf of Oman to stop, but it did not. He said the Navy “stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engineroom” and that U.S. Marines had custody of the vessel, named Touska, and were “seeing what’s on board!” There was no immediate Iran comment. The news threw into question Trump’s earlier announcement that U.S. negotiators would head to Pakistan on Monday for another round of talks with Iran. That had raised hopes of extending  a fragile ceasefire  set to expire by Wednesday, even as Washington and Tehran remain in a standoff over the  Strait of Hormuz . Iran has not confirmed it would attend. While it...

In the December 10, 2001 issue of Fortune , Warren Buffett wrote a landmark 7-page article that introduced a crucial market metric that became renowned as the “Buffett Indicator.” The Great Man adapted the piece from a speech he’d given that July at the annual Allen & Co. bash in Sun Valley, privately delivered to the audience mainly comprising top CEOs. It was the legendary Fortune writer Carol Loomis who persuaded Buffett to adapt and extend his remarks for the article. Carol was my mentor during my early career at the magazine; I had the honor of working as her research assistant (no coasting allowed!) and she displayed the noblesse oblige to edit a couple of my pieces. Even then, Carol had a great friend in Buffett. For many years, she famously edited the Berkshire Hathaway annual letter. I’m sure she’d admit that his guidance helped hone her forensic skills to the point where Carol could dissect the true financial performance of big enterprises from ITT to Hewlett-Packard...

President Donald Trump on Saturday directed his administration to speed up reviews of certain psychedelic drugs, including ibogaine,  which recently has been embraced  by  combat veterans  and conservative lawmakers despite having serious safety risks. Ibogaine and other psychedelics remain banned under the federal government’s most restrictive category for illegal, high-risk drugs. But the administration is taking steps to ease restrictions and spur research on using the drugs for medical purposes, including conditions like severe depression. “Today’s order will ensure that people suffering from debilitating symptoms might finally have a chance to reclaim their lives and lead a happier life,” Trump said as he signed an  executive order on the drugs . The Republican president said his directive will help “dramatically accelerate” access to potential treatments. “If these turn out to be as good as people are saying, it’s going to have a tremendous impact,” he s...

Airline passengers should brace for more aggravation in the next few months as carriers around the world deepen cancellations and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying Thursday it will scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc., Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. which have all pruned itineraries to contain the damage. Global capacity for May has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all but one of the 20 largest airlines slashing flights, according to data compiled by analytics firm Cirium Ltd. It’s revising an initial prediction of 4%-6% growth for the year and says a decline of as much as 3% is possible under certain conditions. “It appears extremely likely that more reductions are ahead,” wrote Richard Evans, a senior consultant at Cirium, in a re...

Russian President Vladimir Putin made his concerns about the economy public as he vented frustration at aides and demanded they come up with solutions. During a televised meeting on the economy Wednesday, he revealed that GDP shrank by combined 1.8% in January and February, adding that manufacturing, industrial production and construction were negative. “I expect to hear detailed reports today on the current economic situation and why the trajectory of macroeconomic indicators is currently below expectations,” Putin said. “Moreover, below the expectations of not only experts and analysts, but also the forecasts of the government itself and the central bank of Russia.” The meeting was attended by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Kremlin Deputy Chief of Staff Maxim Oreshkin, First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina, and ​the CEO of PSB ​bank. Russia’s economy had already been slowing down as Putin’s wa...

John Kapon knew that the bottle of 1945 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti up for sale at his New-York based wine seller’s auction last month was going to do well. After all, it was one of only 600 bottles of the burgundy produced in a year marked in history as end of World War II, and considered one the greatest vintages of all time. Still, it was a little shocking when the bottle sold for $812,500—setting a new world record for a bottle of wine sold at auction at nearly 50% more than the record price that same bottle had fetched in 2018. “Scarcity really drives the bus,” says Kapon. “When it comes to really rare, and really old wines among the greatest, people don’t really care what they pay for it.” Wines are not the only category of collectible items seeing a surge in value at auction. Last month, the 1969 black Fender Stratocaster guitar that Pink Floyd member David Gilmour played on that band’s most iconic albums, including “Dark Side of the Moon,” went for $14.55 million at a Christi...

Hong Kong’s AI IPO boom produces its latest entrant today, as design AI startup Manycore Tech begins trading after seeking up to 1.02 billion Hong Kong dollars ($130 million) in funding, becoming the first of China’s six celebrated “Little Dragons” from Hangzhou to reach public markets. “The IPO is important for us to attract the most talented engineers to join us, to buy more GPUs, and to collect more data,” Victor Huang, Manycore’s chair and one of its cofounders, told Fortune ahead of the trading debut. Manycore shares closed at 18.60 Hong Kong dollars ($2.38), 144% above the offer price of 7.62 Hong Kong dollars. The Hangzhou-based startup is a bet on “spatial intelligence,” moving beyond the word- and language-based work of large language models like OpenAI’s GPT and DeepSeek’s V3 to instead create AI models that can autonomously work in the real world. These programs, also called “world models,” are key to operations like robotics and autonomous driving, where machinery h...