Financial Mindset

Investors were bullish on Sunday evening as the U.S. and Iran continued to halt their attacks on each other, providing space for negotiations that could reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, Wall Street is also looking ahead to a busy week of tech earnings and the Federal Reserve’s policy meeting. Futures tied to the Dow Jones industrial average surged 337 points, or 0.65%. S&P 500 futures jumped 0.80%, but Nasdaq futures shot up 1.28%. South Korea’s Kospi index, which has been a bellwether for global stocks lately, climbed 74 points, or 1.1%, as chip heavyweights SK Hynix and Samsung reached new deals. U.S. oil prices tumbled 5.44% to $84.45 a barrel, and Brent crude dived 5.25% to $91.70. Gold rose 1.15% to $4,118 per ounce. President Donald Trump and Iranian officials have said both sides are actively engaged in diplomacy after nearly two weeks of daily bombardment. Separately, Iran and Oman are also in talks, with a potential deal coming ...

A federal appeals court has upheld a ruling that in nearly half of U.S. states halted President Donald Trump’s  executive order  to create a federal list of eligible voters and limit delivery of mail ballots only to people on that list. The ruling Saturday by judges of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration’s effort to move forward with the mail-in voting restrictions in 23 U.S. states  that sued  ahead of November’s midterm elections. Trump issued an executive order in March for the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration to create a “state citizenship list” of eligible voters. It also ordered the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on that list. While Trump touted the proposed changes as safeguards to keep non-U.S. citizens from voting, state election officials argued they were ripe for abuse and could cause...

It was, perhaps, the worst-kept secret in the AI community. In mid-July, online sleuths who obsessively track the internet for signs of new AI models started to whisper about the latest offering from Moonshot AI, the Beijing-based artificial intelligence startup behind the Kimi large language model: Something big was coming . Moonshot AI’s latest model didn’t just live up to the hype—it raised the stakes. On July 16, Moonshot debuted Kimi K3, the largest open-source model ever released, and promised it could perform close to the level of Anthropic’s Fable 5—perhaps the most powerful publicly available model on the market today—at a fraction of the cost. Moonshot’s official benchmarks consistently rank K3 among the top three AI models; one independent benchmark from Arena.AI even pegged K3 as the best model currently available, ahead of Anthropic. The launch was a triumph for the lab and its founder Yang Zhilin, a 34-year-old Tsinghua and Carnegie Mellon alumnus—and Pin...

A controversial, self-styled tech prophet had been searching the world for a place to set up a nomadic education community. Balaji Srinivasan, the former chief technology officer for Coinbase, thought he’d found one in Malaysia—specifically, in a largely uncompleted complex just across the waterway separating the Southeast Asian country from its neighbor, Singapore.  Srivansan’s Network School had operated for years without incident, until a single social media video that was studiously vague about its location caught the eye of social media users, which built into a regulatory crackdown that shuttered the school’s doors on July 21. The day after, Srivansan was in Central Asia, signing an MOU with authorities in Kazakhstan. “Our new campus will become a haven for global techno-optimism, with expedited visas, streamlined redomiciliation, and active recruitment of talent,” he wrote in a July 22 post on X .  It’s the latest development in a weekslong saga involving Sriniv...

A  Canadian  woman was arrested and accused of espionage while working as an intern in the operational headquarters of the  NATO  military alliance, Belgian authorities said Saturday. Belgium’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office said it launched an espionage investigation after NATO’s security services tipped off Belgium’s military intelligence. Authorities then detained “a Canadian citizen of Chinese origin” on Friday, a day after raiding the suspect’s home and workplace inside NATO’s vast command center. “She is suspected of spying on behalf of a third country and of being a member of a criminal organization,” the prosecutors said in a statement. The strategic headquarters of the Allied Powers, known as SHAPE, is located in the southern Belgian city of Mons near the French border. Military officials at SHAPE plan and command joint strategy, tactics and operations. The alliance’s political headquarters is in Brussels, where ambassadors ...

Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh apparently relishes a good debate, and the upcoming policy meeting is expected to see some robust back-and-forth. The Federal Open Market Committee convenes Tuesday and Wednesday, marking his second meeting as chair. After his first one last month, he told reporters there was a “good family fight” about rates, though central bankers voted unanimously to keep them steady. That’s a phrase he has used frequently in recent months as he seeks so-called regime change at the Fed. Since his nomination hearing in April, Warsh has mentioned “family fight” publicly 13 times, according to a CNBC tally . But if the June FOMC meeting was a good family fight, the temperature for the next one could go up a notch. And unlike last month’s unanimous vote, Wall Street sees at least two dissents in favor of tightening policy at the upcoming meeting. That’s because much has changed. Most notably, the U.S.-Ira...

Inside the Pennsylvania Convention Center during Major League Baseball’s All-Star Week, Capital One made a big play for sports enthusiasts and loyal cardholders. The company served as the title sponsor of All-Star Village from July 11–14 in Philadelphia, filling roughly 500,000 square feet with interactive exhibits, youth baseball activities, player tributes, food vendors, and a family party-like atmosphere. For the Capital One, it reflected a broader strategy of sports partnerships to deepen customer relationships through experiences rather than traditional advertising. MLB reported attendance of 111,616 at this year’s All-Star Village—the event’s highest since 2022, when it was held in Los Angeles. Perks for Capital One customers included early access, complimentary admission for eligible cardholders, and premium experiences tied to its Venture X Business card. Capital One ( No. 63 on the Fortune 500) became MLB’s official bank and credit card partner in 2022, and commi...