Financial Mindset

The housing market has been frozen since the COVID-era boom ended, with higher borrowing costs, limited supply, and elevated home prices mostly taking the blame. But stricter lending rules put in place after the housing crash that sparked the Great Financial Crisis are also weighing on prospective homeowners, according to a study last month from the Pew Charitable Trusts . “These changes helped to reduce delinquencies and defaults but also made it more difficult for many Americans to qualify for a mortgage,” wrote Adam Staveski, a principal associate with Pew’s housing policy initiative, in the study. To be sure, the tighter standards reined in excesses during the housing boom, such as abuse of “liar loans” that required little proof of income. And today, default rates are at historic lows, due also in part to loss-mitigation tools like forbearance, loan modifications, and payment deferrals. Just 4%-5% of delinquent borrowers now default, down from 5...

Donald Trump’s childhood home has sold for nearly $2 million after a renovation transformed the New York City residence from a mold-ridden cat den to a modern abode. The president lived at the Tudor-style Queens estate until age 4. His father, developer Fred Trump, built the home in the affluent Jamaica Estates neighborhood in 1940. The family hasn’t owned it in years. The sale price, $1.93 million, appeared Friday on real estate websites after a buyer, whose name hasn’t been disclosed, entered into a contract in July. The seller, Tommy Lin, had purchased the five-bedroom, three-bathroom home last year for $835,000 after it sat vacant and neglected for years. Lin, a developer, spent another $500,000 on an eight-month interior overhaul that added amenities including a chef’s kitchen, herringbone wood floors and spa-like bathrooms,  the New York Post reported . The home has changed hands several times in recent years, including for $2.14 million month...

The U.S. national debt is more than $40 trillion , and it’s only growing from here. Wage growth keeps stalling ; job growth is staying stagnant ; and grocery prices are trending up. With the 10-year Treasury yield nearing 5% as heavy government borrowing puts pressure on the bond market, some investors are looking for safer places to store their hard-earned cash. Investing in alternative assets isn’t new: In recent years, there have been many different (let’s say creative) investment opportunities, from NFTs to tokenized gold , and from crypto to traditional market trading. But for one person, the draw of a childhood game brings back more than just memories: collecting Pokémon cards has become a long-term investment vehicle with the upside of having beautiful art to relish in. “I love the way they look” Peter Levin is not what you would call a casual collector. The 55-year-old venture capitalist, co-founder and managing director at Griffin Gaming Partners has collect...

When Lululemon Athletica announced in April that former Nike senior executive Heidi O’Neill was becoming its new CEO this month, the athleisure pioneer was already struggling. Its core North American business was slipping, and there was a sense the yogawear maker had lost much of the magic that had inspired intense devotion among its customers for years. But in the five months between her appointment and when she assumed the job on Tuesday, Lululemon’s deterioration has only accelerated. The company, which had been run on an interim basis by two C-suite executives since late January, reported another terrible quarter last week, with a 12% drop in comparable sales in North America. It cut its full-year outlook for the second time in three months, intensifying worries that first-time CEO O’Neill might not be able to stop the decline. “Incoming CEO O’Neill has a mountain to climb,” Jefferies analyst Randal Konik wrote in a research note last week.  A steep hill from day...

Amazon’s newest feature for Prime Video is trying to make real life more like TV by letting you immediately buy what your favorite actors are wearing—or something similar. The company on Thursday announced a new feature called Shop the Scene that will let users shop for products featured in a show or movie. With minimal interruption to the viewing experience, users can pull up items on the Amazon Shopping app inspired by what’s being shown in the scene they’re watching at the moment. Amazon said Thursday that the Shop the Scene feature is now available on more than 600 Prime Video titles through the Amazon Shopping app for users in the U.S.  The broader Shop the Show experience, which Amazon introduced last year to let users browse products related to shows on Prime, like bobbleheads or LEGO sets, is also expanding to more than 8,000 titles, from 1,300 previously. “We are making it easier than ever for Prime Video customers to shop what they see on screen,”...

Business leaders can’t predict their way through today’s turbulent environment—and should stop trying. “Instead of trying to predict the future, it’s probably better off to really enhance the muscle of adaptability,” Carol Liao, chair of BCG Greater China, said at the Fortune Leaders Forum on Sept. 8. And in an era when AI is commoditizing knowledge, she added, “judgment does have a premium.” Liao spoke alongside Chanda Beppu, president of Starbucks Asia Pacific, and Feroz Sheikh, chief information and digital officer at Syngenta Group, and all three arrived at the same prescription: Leaders should focus less on forecasting and more on building organizations that can change course quickly. Today’s executives face several challenges at once, Liao said. “There are a few anxieties Chinese leaders have,” she noted. “Globalization anxiety, AI anxiety, as well as generational shift… It’s quite a lot for leaders to think...

As U.S. prices for diesel fuel surge to all-time highs, some California pumps literally can’t price their diesel any higher—maxing out the display at $9.999 per gallon. Fuel-tracking firm GasBuddy reported Thursday that a small handful of California fueling stations hiked their retail diesel up to the maximum display pricing as the state’s overall diesel average hit $7.91 per gallon. GasBuddy said it had confirmed that the $9.999 price was on displays at pumps in the San Diego suburb of Serra Mesa on Wednesday, and that it was investigating reports in other locations. Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, cautioned that some pumps could simply be out of fuel. He noted that it is practice for some fueling stations to list “$9.999” to warn drivers away when diesel has run dry temporarily. But what is clear is that several stations in California are pricing well above $9 per gallon. On a national level, the U.S. average for diesel surpassed $6 a gallon...