Financial Mindset

A volcano erupted in Indonesia early Sunday, prompting the cancellation of all flights at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport and disrupting other domestic airports as ash drifted across western parts of  the country . The volcanic island of Anak Krakatau, located in Indonesia’s Sunda Strait between the main Java and Sumatra islands, had showed signs of activity since Friday before erupting for 30 seconds at 3:53 a.m. Sunday and for 16 seconds about three hours later, Indonesia’s Geological Agency said. Closed-circuit camera footage showed lava flares from the volcano. No casualties were reported and no evacuation order was issued. The nearest settlement is more than 16 kilometers (10 miles) away, but authorities warned residents and visitors to stay at least 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the active crater. Volcanic ash spread across parts of Jakarta and Lampung province on Sumatra’s southern tip, Indonesia’s Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitiga...

While President Donald Trump’s tariffs have caused much heartburn on Wall Street, China’s cheap and overwhelming exports have also been rippling through the global economy. But the Chinese growth model is running out of road, setting the stage for another global economic crisis, according to Michael Froman, a former U.S. Trade Representative and current president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Writing in Foreign Affairs last month, he warned “the world’s ability to absorb Chinese overcapacity is approaching a breaking point.” For example, the International Monetary Funds estimated that global GDP growth is running around 3.1% this year, while China’s trade surplus expanded more than 20% in early 2026. That’s after China posted a $1.2 trillion trade surplus in 2025—the largest in recorded history—growing three times faster than global goods trade. Now there’s widespread pushback against the flood of Chinese exports. Most n...

Alex Bhathal and his sister Lisa Bhathal Merage have some rules they follow ahead of each Portland Fire game they attend. For Alex, it means wearing a lucky red shirt—a switch from his usual black attire, which was correlated with two team losses. And for Lisa, she sits in seat 11 of her designated row. The pre-game rituals of the owners of the first-year WNBA franchise are a product of their father, a businessman and sports investor who emigrated from India to the U.S. in 1960. Lisa remembers one of the superstitions their father would espouse: “If your left eye twitches, it means that money is coming your way.” The siblings have certainly seen recent success through their family investment firm RAJ Sports. After buying the Portland Thorns in the growing NWSL in early 2024 for a reported $63 million, the siblings are expanding their roots in the city. In September of that year, RAJ Sports purchased the Portland Fire for $125 million to secure control of the newly announ...

The global AI landscape is increasingly shaped by two competing world orders: Washington’s Pax Silica and Beijing’s World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO). The two initiatives reflect sharply different visions of how power, technology and access to critical AI infrastructure should be organized. Pax Silica, which the U.S. launched in December 2025, purportedly seeks to secure global supply chains for semiconductors and semiconductor manufacturing equipment, AI technologies and rare earth minerals. Washington positions it as a cooperative organization, rather than a way to enforce its own policies. The China-led WAICO, on the other hand, was launched in Shanghai in July 2026 with 29 founding members. WAICO positions itself as a champion of the interests of emerging economies and of accessible AI, drawing upon the impressive surge in open-weight models from Chinese developers. Originally, Washington said it wouldn’t stop Pax Silica members from workin...

The U.S. labor market is bracing for a decade of slower overall growth, but a handful of industries and occupations are set to expand at a breakneck pace, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. From 2025 to 2035, total employment will edge up by 5.9 million jobs to 176.2 million, representing growth of just 3.5%—a fraction of the 10.9% pace during the prior decade, BLS said in a report late last month. As the AI boom continues to ripple through the economy, the utility industry is expected to hire at the fastest rate, growing employment by 9.8%. That’s as hyperscalers scramble to build data centers that require immense amounts of electricity. “Nearly all the job growth is expected from electric power generation, transmission, and distribution due to increasing demand for electricity, including artificial intelligence power demands,” BLS said. Within that category, certain sub-sectors will see even bigger employment gains, with solar electric pow...

The old rule says you’re supposed to stop wearing white after Labor Day. For job seekers who spent the summer sending resumes into the void, there’s another piece of September lore worth paying attention to—the job market is supposed to pick back up. The phenomenon has been dubbed the “September Surge,” a term Fortune was writing about as early as 2023, when it was gaining traction on TikTok .  Friday’s jobs report offered some encouraging signs heading into September. U.S. employers added 162,000 jobs in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics , while estimates for June and July were revised up by a combined 55,000 jobs. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.1%. Kory Kantenga, LinkedIn’s head of economics for the Americas, told Fortune that economists typically adjust labor-market data to remove predictable seasonal swings. But those swings can matter to job seekers, and September is one of them. “You see more job postings in September than you do...

Inside the G20 event in Chapel Hill, N.C. this week, tech leaders like OpenAI’s Sam Altman raved about AI’s capabilities and the need to build more data centers. But outside, protestors struck a different tune. In a “fireside chat” with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Altman called AI “incredible magic of intelligence in a bottle,” while also warning AI’s infrastructure needs would keep expanding. “Even with great gains in efficiency, we are going to need to build much more infrastructure, unless we want this to be a highly priced model, which we don’t,” he added, according to local news outlet the News & Observer . Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Palantir CEO Alex Karp were also present and projected similar positive messages. Tesla CEO Elon Musk spoke via conference call. Beyond the security perimeter just outside the Carolina Inn, a hotel on the campus of the University of North Carolina where the tech leaders gathered, hundreds of protestors assemble...