Financial Mindset

Stock futures jumped while oil prices and bond yields tumbled Monday evening on reports that a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz was coming together, even as the U.S. military conducted new airstrikes on Iran. Futures tied to the Dow Jones industrial average surged 297 points, or 0.58%. S&P 500 futures were up 0.64%, and Nasdaq futures leapt 0.90%. All three indexes pulled back a bit from earlier highs. U.S. oil futures sank 5.5% to $91.32 a barrel, but also pared steeper losses. Gold rose 0.48% to $4,545 per ounce. The U.S. dollar was up 0.07% against the euro and up 0.04% against the yen. The yield on the 10-year Treasury plunged 7.2 basis points to 4.50%. Reports over the holiday weekend pointed to an emerging agreement that would extend the ceasefire for 60 days. At the same time, Iran would allow ship traffic to flow freely through the Strait of Hormuz, while the U.S. would lift its naval blockade on Iranian ports. But the thornier issues of Iran’s ...

When the CEO of a family-owned business hangs up the hat, bad things are likely to happen. According to recent McKinsey research analyzing more than 200 family-owned businesses across 50 countries and 10 sectors, these companies underperform on revenues, shareholder returns, and earnings for five years after a leadership transition, compared with the five years before. On average, returns fall 5.7 points. Revenue growth and earnings margins decline too. So what makes succession in family-owned businesses so difficult to get right? The usual suspect is the heir — the sniping siblings on HBO’s  Succession  embody the popular fascination with families in business. But the data does not support the stereotype of the underperforming heir. McKinsey’s research shows family-owned businesses decline after a CEO transition regardless of whether the successor is a family member or an outside executive. Indeed, only about one-third of al...

Hong Kong’s fertility rate has sunk to roughly 0.8 children per woman, far below the replacement rate of 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population. Registered births in the city fell to just over 31,000 in 2025, a record low following years of declines.  Long working hours and high childcare costs make starting a family a difficult choice for many households. Hong Kong’s statutory maternity leave stands at 14 weeks of paid leave; it offers just five days of paternity leave. Hong Kong has tried to implement policies to subsidize some of the costs of childcare, including a one-off “ baby bonus ” of 20,000 Hong Kong dollars ($2,550) to no avail.  Hong Kong’s problem isn’t unique, as several Asian economies like South Korea, Japan, and Mainland China are also grappling with falling birth rates . Even less wealthy markets across Asia, like Thailand, are aging faster than their level of development would suggest, leading to fears that such countries might “grow old before...

In 1974, New York Times humorist Russell Baker identified a “ pig in the python ” working its way through the economy: the bulge of 76 million Baby Boomers squeezing through America’s economic system, distorting everything they passed through. When Boomers flooded the labor market in the 1970s, they created a competitive squeeze that never fully released — leaving the generations behind them without the wage rebound economists had predicted. When they bought homes, prices soared. When they took the top jobs in business, culture, and civic life, they held them — and held them, and held them. For half a century, the Baby Boom generation has functioned like a slow-moving wave through the American economy — and as the last of them cross into retirement age, the country is discovering just how much of its future they’re still holding in place. In the labor market, four decades of Boomer dominance suppressed wages and opportunity for younger workers, and their ac...

Oil dropped as the US and Iran edged toward a deal, although President Donald Trump said that Washington’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would remain until an agreement was completed. Global crude benchmark Brent fell as much as 5.2% to $98.12 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate was near $92. Trump said in social-media posts he wouldn’t “rush” into a deal, which “isn’t even fully negotiated yet.” Any final approval may take  several days , according to senior US officials. Still, it remains unclear how  key differences , including the fate of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, will be addressed. Iran’s Tasnim news agency said the draft agreement could still collapse because the US was obstructing some key clauses, including a demand that its assets be unfrozen. Global energy markets have been upended by the crisis, which began in February when the US and Israel attacked Iran. The conflict spread rapidly across the Persian Gulf region, forcing producers...

The Swedish government has come up with some drastically different economic figures on Russia that make the Kremlin’s official data seem like a Potemkin village. In a New York Times op-ed on Wednesday , Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard cautioned the West against overestimating Russia and said the economy is more fragile than it appears. While Russia has claimed GDP expanded by about 13% between 2020 and 2024, Sweden’s analysis of nighttime luminosity suggests the economy actually shrank by 8% during that span. Moscow has also lowballed inflation substantially, according to Stenergard, who pointed out that Russia’s official inflation figure in 2024 was 10% while the central bank hiked interest rates to 21% that year. Similarly, Sweden’s military intelligence chief has estimated that today’s inflation is likely closer to the current benchmark borrowing cost of 15% than the government’s official reading of 5.2%. “This...

When John Kurz left Alaska’s North Slope in 2009, he was staring at a grim future for what had once been the country’s premiere oil field.  Crude production had  plummeted  to 567,000 barrels per day, barely more than a quarter of the roughly 2 million barrels pumped daily at the field’s peak two decades earlier. The decline stoked concerns that the Trans Alaska Pipeline System, built to carry the state’s oil bounty to the continental US, might stop operating.  Engineers even worried that slow-moving crude would congeal inside the pipeline, creating waxy buildup that could turn TAPS into the world’s biggest tube of ChapStick. “The industry was dying,” said Kurz, who at the time was BP Plc’s senior operations manager for Greater Prudhoe Bay. “We could see the end of TAPS coming.” Kurz fled Alaska for more promising opportunities overseas, but he was beckoned back in 2023 to run Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., overseeing the same pipeline whose future h...