Financial Mindset

On March 31, over a hundred of Baidu’s Apollo Go robotaxis simultaneously froze on the streets of Wuhan. Vehicles stalled on overpasses and elevated roads, trapping passengers for up to two hours. A few weeks later, Beijing suspended all new autonomous driving permits nationwide. The suspension suspension blocked robotaxi companies from adding to their fleets, starting new tests, or expanding to additional cities, according to Bloomberg. In the U.S., meanwhile, some autonomous vehicles are driving into street lights and even into the middle of ongoing crime scenes. In just one month in Austin, Tesla’s robotaxis crashed into a fixed object head on and in reverse, while also hitting trees, poles, buses and trucks. Waymo’s robotaxis are incapable of closing their own doors —and the company has taken to hiring DoorDashers to door dash and close the doors after a passenger gets out. In October 2023, a Cruise AV dragged a pedestrian 20 feet. During the June ...

Vladimir Putin is losing the Russian people as the economy and his war machine go in reverse amid withering Ukrainian attacks. On the economic front, Putin himself recently revealed that GDP contracted in the first two months of the year. And on the Ukraine front, Russian forces suffered a net loss of territory last month for the first time since 2024. After Russia launched a sudden invasion in 2022, Putin has not only failed to defeat Ukraine, his forces have been unable to take full control of the Donetsk region. “The overall mood is that’s enough already; you’ve been fighting for long enough,” a Russian official told the Washington Post last week on condition of anonymity. “It seems to everyone that it’s been going on for longer than World War II, the Great Patriotic War — and at the same time we can’t even take one region.” With Western military aid and innovations from Ukraine’s now-thriving domestic defense industry, Kyiv has weakened Russia’s econ...

The San Diego Padres have reached an agreement to sell control of the team to an investor group led by Kwanza Jones and José E. Feliciano. The family of late owner Peter Seidler formally announced the deal Saturday. The sale must still be approved by Major League Baseball. The deal with private equity billionaire Feliciano and his wife took shape last month at  an MLB-record valuation of $3.9 billion . The Padres’ announcement of the deal didn’t give specifics on the members of the investor group or the purchase price. “The Padres are more than a baseball team; they are a unifying force in San Diego, rooted in community, connection and belonging,” Jones and Feliciano said in a joint statement. “As life and business partners, and as a family, we are honored to lead this next chapter together. We have worked hard for everything we have achieved, and we have built it together. We see that same spirit in this team and its fans, and we know what it takes to win....

Investing legend Warren Buffett bemoaned the gambling culture that has taken over financial markets while continuing to preach his brand of patience. In an interview with CNBC on Saturday as Berkshire Hathaway held its annual shareholders meeting, he noted that of the 60 years he’s been in business, only five of them were “really juicy” with opportunities. But when there are no good bargains to be found, the “oracle of Omaha” is fine doing nothing. That’s largely been the case for years. While Berkshire has acquired some smaller companies, the lack of mega-deals has sent the conglomerate’s cash pile to nearly $400 billion . Buffett stepped down as CEO at the end of last year, but he remains involved in the investment portfolio—and still doesn’t like the prices that he’s seeing. That’s due in part to investors acting like they’re playing a card game. To be sure, he’s long compared financial markets...

EBay Inc. jumped more than 13% in after-hours trading on Friday after the Wall Street Journal reported that video-game retailer GameStop Corp. is preparing a bid for the company. GameStop, led by e-commerce entrepreneur Ryan Cohen, has been building a position in the online auctioneer and plans to make an offer for the business this month.  Spokespeople for eBay and GameStop didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Shares in GameStop also rose. Cohen, the founder of pets supplies e-tailer Chewy , plans to turn the combined companies into a retail juggernaut, the newspaper reported. GameStop had a market value of $11.8 billion before the news broke, while eBay’s is much larger at around $46 billion. Both companies have struggled to adapt to changing consumer preferences. GameStop has shut stores and emphasized collectible toys and trading cards as more video games are purchased online. EBay has been pushing collectibles and used goods on its marketp...

Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods predicted that crude oil and fuel prices will continue to surge higher in the weeks ahead if the Strait of Hormuz remains blockaded . Both Exxon and Chevron are projecting big profit gains in the ongoing second quarter because of higher prices, even with some of their Middle Eastern operations remaining disrupted. Exxon and Chevron reported first-quarter profits May 1 that beat market expectations, but they both saw their net incomes dip precipitously year-over-year because of lower oil prices early in the year, poorly timed financial hedges, and operational woes in the Middle East and beyond. Chevron, for instance, had to recover from a major fire in January at its massive Kazakhstan operations. Woods said oil prices—even above $100 per barrel—don’t come close to matching the “historically unprecedented disruption” of almost 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) flows through the Strait of Hormuz from the ongoing war in Iran. ...

Iran’s supreme leader vowed Thursday in a defiant tone to protect the Islamic Republic’s nuclear and missile capabilities, which U.S. President Donald Trump has sought to curtail through airstrikes and as part of  a wider deal  to cement the war’s shaky ceasefire. In a statement read by a state television anchor,  Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei  said the only place Americans belonged in the Persian Gulf is “at the bottom of its waters” and that a “new chapter” was being written in the region’s history. Khamenei has not been seen in public since taking over as supreme leader following the killing of his father in the war’s opening airstrikes. His remarks come as  Iran’s economy is reeling  and its oil industry is  being squeezed  by a U.S. Navy blockade halting its tankers from getting out to sea. The world economy is also under pressure as Iran maintains its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of all crude oil is ...