Financial Mindset

President Donald Trump on Friday said the U.S. has entered an agreement with Venezuela to take control of 65 billion barrels of the South American country’s oil reserves. Trump in a social media post announced the agreement he said was negotiated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez. “The United States of America has just entered into an Agreement with the Country of Venezuela on, THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!” Trump wrote. The announcement of the deal comes nearly nine months after the U.S. military at Trump’s direction carried out an operation to  capture Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro  and spirit him to the United States to face federal narcoterrorism and drug trafficking charges. Trump faces mounting pressure to address high gas prices as  the war in Iran  reaches a six-month milestone with no conclusion in sight. The U.S. has tapped its strategic petrol...

The world has lost a music legend in Dolly Parton, who has died at 80 after a “brief battle” with cancer. She’s remembered for her twanging country vocals, decades of hit recordings, Grammys, Emmys and a liberal splash of acting. But the biggest legacy Parton leaves is her songwriting, and three songs define her more than any others. Jolene , I Will Always Love You and 9 to 5 are not just memorable Parton songs – they are integral to popular music history. They show a skilful musician who knew how to blend the story of lyrics with the drama of music. Like many songwriters, Parton had things to say. What makes her contribution notable was when her lyrics told a story, and her music matched it. Jolene In Jolene, released in 1974, Parton’s lyrics capture the torment of watching your lover flirt with someone else. It’s a powerful human experience – particularly for women despairing over how easily the next pretty young thing grabs male attention. Parton’s despera...

Zach Abrams, the founder of stablecoin company Bridge, admits he was surprised when the bulk of his business ended up coming from non-U.S. markets in Latin America, Europe, and Africa. “We were very U.S.-centric. We didn’t know what the opportunities were in the Philippines, Africa, or Latin America,” Abrams says. “Unbeknownst to us, there was all this pent up demand outside the U.S. to build with stablecoins.” The firm’s first customers asked it to build cross-border payment infrastructure between the U.S. and Colombia and to facilitate payouts into countries like Venezuela and the Philippines. Bridge’s rapid rise was driven by regions that featured high friction across borders, like Latin America. Now part of Stripe, Abrams argues that the next phase of growth could come from tokenizing non-dollar currencies. Today’s stablecoin sector is dominated by coins denominated in the U.S. dollar , with these tokens making up over 95% of all transactions. That’s unnerved gove...

At 7:15 a.m. Eastern Time, the price of oil sits at $87.41 per barrel, using Brent as the benchmark (we’ll explain what that means shortly). That’s a decrease of $2.80 since yesterday morning and roughly $20 more than at this time last year. oil price per barrel % Change Price of oil yesterday $90.21 -3.10% Price of oil 1 month ago $98.69 -11.42% Price of oil 1 year ago $67.31 +29.86% Check Out Our Daily Rates Reports Discover the highest high-yield savings rates , up to 4.50% for August 27, 2026. Discover the highest CD rates , up to 4.50% for August 27, 2026. Discover the top CD rates from major banks on August 27, 2026. Discover the current mortgage rates for August 27, 2026. Discover current refi mortgage rates report for August 27, 2026. Discover current ARM mortgage rates report for August 27, 2026. Discover current HELOC rates for August 27, 2026. Discover the current price of gold for August 27, 2026. Discover the current price of silver for Augu...

A sales force of more than 100 agents allegedly cold-called thousands of prospective investors with sleek, scripted pitches for shares in the most exclusive private tech companies in the world, including SpaceX, Anduril, Anthropic, and Perplexity, while promising repeatedly there would be no hidden fees. The agents worked for The Spaventa Group (TSG), a Long Island financial firm founded by Andrew Spaventa, a former broker who spent years selling pre-IPO investments before founding TSG in 2020.  More than 800 people bought in. Most were retail investors, and more than 650 put in $100,000 or less, while over 100 were retirees, according to the Securities & Exchange Commission. The alleged boiler room raked in more than $74 million for 11 private funds run from offices on Long Island and New Jersey over the course of four and a half years from December 2020 to June 2025.  Despite the promise of no rip offs from “unnecessary fees,” investors paid on average 46% ...

The apocryphal quip attributed to Mark Twain, “the rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated,” rings true for certain companies in the software space amidst widespread but premature fears of AI-driven obsolescence.  Over the last year, approximately $2 trillion in software value has been torched on fears that AI will render many software businesses obsolete in the years ahead, in what has become known as the “SaaSpocalpyse,” prematurely announcing the death of the software as a service (SaaS) sector. The original SaaSpocalpyse thesis of “death,” or at least massive disruption, was how bears were thinking in the early part of the year, but that bearish thesis has now morphed into a less drastic, but still incorrect, theme of how software companies will have to pay more for customer acquisition moving forward with far less pricing power, compressing margins and hindering profitability. Just as the classic 1979 Francis Ford Coppola film Apocalypse Now was based on a f...

Nvidia jolted investors on Wednesday with a projection that its revenue would skyrocket by 70% next fiscal year and said demand for its AI chips is growing at 100%, prompting an after-hours stock rally. The 70% preliminary expectation wildly exceeded projections for fiscal 2028 revenue of roughly $570 billion, or 44% growth from fiscal 2027 (the current year). Nvidia’s projected growth, applied to fiscal 2027 revenue and expected revenue, would imply fiscal 2028 revenue in the range of $690 billion to $700 billion, more than $100 billion over the $570 billion analysts had been modeling.  “We wanted to make sure that everybody has the same set of information,” CEO Jensen Huang said on a conference call Wednesday. “We’ve got a huge year coming up next year, and it’s going to be pretty extraordinary.” “It is the case that we’ve never forecasted, never guided to a year in advance,” Huang noted later in the call. Melissa Otto, global head of Visible Alpha research at...