Financial Mindset

Christina Zhu , the head of Walmart’s China business, remembers when Chinese shoppers did not have much choice. As a child, she watched her parents wake up at 4:30 a.m. on Sundays to go to the wet market. “They had to haggle, and high-quality produce wasn’t always guaranteed,” Zhu, born in 1973, recalled at the Fortune Leaders Forum in Macau in September. Today, Chinese shoppers are “probably the group with the most choices [in the world],” and they have become “the most demanding customers,” she said. Meeting those rising expectations has become the defining challenge for retailers in China, and Walmart has managed it better than most. It entered China in 1996 with a Supercenter and a Sam’s Club in Shenzhen. Three decades later, the U.S. retailer is thriving in the world’s second-largest economy even as other foreign brands struggle. China represents 3% of Walmart’s overall business, but it is growing, generating $24.6 billion in sales in its past fiscal year, a 19.3%...

The Jessica Chastain horror  “Other Mommy”  topped the North American box office this weekend with a bigger audience than expected, while  “The Social Reckoning”  got off to a lackluster start. ‘Other Mommy’ is another win for horror “Other Mommy,” released by Universal Pictures, earned $27.5 million in its first few days in 3,365 theaters, according to studio estimates on Sunday. The movie, about a sinister supernatural creature that terrorizes a young girl who thinks it’s her mother, got dismal reviews from both critics and audiences. It also joins the ranks of “Megalopolis” and “Hereditary” with a D+ CinemaScore. But with a production budget of around $19 million, it’s also another win for the horror genre and producer Blumhouse Atomic Monster, which was behind  “Backrooms” and “Obsession.”  “Other Mommy” opened in 50 international markets as well, boosting its global debut to $45.2 million. Jim Orr, Universal’s head of domes...

To hear Silicon Valley tell it, artificial intelligence will usher in a glorious new era of abundance. But ask the chief financial officers of the world’s largest companies how AI is transforming their bottom line and, per McKinsey’s 2026 State of AI survey , the answer for 88% of them is: “Not so much.” We have been here before. When the iPhone launched in 2007, pundits predicted a mobile-first transformation of everything. When broadband went mass-market, Businessweek heralded a “New Economy.” When the PC colonized every desk, Robert Solow quipped that you could see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics. Over five decades, waves of digital innovation have delivered spectacular consumer adoption yet continuously declining productivity growth. I call this the Innovation Paradox: the faster we innovate, the slower we grow. Two K-shapes, one problem Technology diffusion in the digital age follows what I call a double K-shaped pattern. The first...

Sometimes, when relationships and world politics give people plenty to be angry about, the impulse is to go outside, disconnect, and be one with nature. But for some women, it means letting out a good guttural scream . At Lumalia Emmy Armstrong’s Holy Rage Retreats in the Oregon woods near Portland, small groups of women gather among the trees, expressing themselves through sound and movement. In intimate groups of up to 10 women, hearing one woman growl can give another permission to do the same. Later, they burn letters written during a group discussion and close the retreat with a song. A group of adults growling in the woods might sound like an unusual way to spend an afternoon, let alone money. But organizers are selling something they say participants struggle to find elsewhere: a place to be angry without judgment. Prices vary widely. Armstrong charges $600 for a 3.5-hour session , while the Bay Area CBT Center advertises multi-day rage retreats for up to $4,500 p...

The new, bipartisan legislation to expedite the construction of energy projects—and power the AI boom—is creating strange bedfellows and opponents. In a rare instance, the fossil fuel industry is united with renewable energy, while some environmental groups are pitted against the green power sector. There’s arguably more momentum than ever for the seemingly boring topic of infrastructure permitting reform, but it could be the most important decision Congress makes from now until January for the future of the tech boom, the environment, and energy affordability. Power demand is rising at a nearly unprecedented scale—largely, but not entirely, driven by the data center construction spree—and electricity and utility prices are spiking for a myriad of reasons, including rising demand and antiquated infrastructure. In short, the legislation accelerates permitting timelines for everything from solar farms and power lines to oil and gas pipelines, makes it harder for presidential...

The latest attack on the international airport in  Saudi Arabia’s  capital of Riyadh killed 12 people and injured over 300 others, civil aviation authorities said early Sunday, with some in critical condition. The attack was the deadliest in any Gulf Arab country since the start of the Iran war, whose fronts have expanded to include the recent surge in fighting between the  Iran-backed Houthi rebels  in Yemen and Saudi-backed government forces there. The statement, which did not assign blame for the attack, said the dead included four Saudi citizens as well as two Bangladeshi nationals, a Palestinian, a U.S. citizen, an Egyptian, a Jordanian, a Syrian and a Sudanese. It said the injured were being treated at several hospitals. The attack — the latest of several in the past week on King Khalid International Airport that  killed  four people — is expected to increase Saudi pressure on allies including the United States to provide military s...

Congressional Budget Office Director Phillip Swagel said faster economic growth is unlikely to keep U.S. debt in check, even if GDP expands at more than double its current pace. Gross debt is now $40 trillion, and publicly held debt is 100% of GDP. Just keeping that ratio flat, let alone bringing it down, would require a massive, sustained boom. For now, CBO see the debt-to-GDP ratio soaring to 120% by 2036. During a Minneapolis Fed conference on Thursday, Swagel said stronger economic growth will help by bringing in more revenue for the federal government, but it’s not that simple. Federal spending also boosts growth, which lifts wages that in turn affect outlays on Social Security benefits, he pointed out. A robust economy also tends to send interest rates higher, which adds to debt interest costs. “So growth will help, but it’s probably not plausible that growth alone will stabilize our fiscal trajectory,” Swagel added. “So then we...