Financial Mindset

Global oil inventories are approaching their lowest point in eight years, with Goldman Sachs analysts estimating that stocks could fall to 98 days of global demand by the end of May.  Yet if you’re looking at the markets , things look relatively rosy.  Brent crude prices are hovering around $100 a barrel, down from a post-Iran war peak of $126 in April. West Texas Intermediate crude also stood around $100 a barrel in the past week, down from its April 7 high of $113. (Both benchmarks are still far above their pre-war levels). “The market has been complacent,” Chen Chien-Ming, an associate professor of operations management at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU), says. “There’s clearly an oil shortage, but the futures market is heavily suppressed by market-moving headlines and investors’ wishful thinking that the war will soon end.” Experts and analysts estimate that oil prices could skyrocket past $150 a barrel if the Strait of Hormuz rem...

Berkshire Hathaway more than tripled the size of its investment in Google’s parent company and bought over $2.6 billion worth of Delta Airlines stock as Greg Abel  settled into the CEO job  after taking over from  Warren Buffett  at the start of the year. The conglomerate also dumped a number of other stocks, including Visa , Mastercard , Domino’s Pizza, Amazon and United Healthcare after  the departure late last year  of Todd Combs, who was one of the two investment mangers Buffett hired to help manage the portfolio. Buffett was always reluctant to invest in tech companies because he said he didn’t understand them well enough to predict the long-term winners. Buffett did make an exception to that rule near the end of his career by buying a massive Apple stake after he recognized how devoted consumers are to that company’s iPhones and computers. Abel appears to be more comfortable because by the end of March Berkshire...

SpaceX is seeking to file publicly for its long-awaited IPO as soon as Wednesday, according to people familiar with the matter. Elon Musk’s rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence company aims to kick off formal marketing as soon as June 4, price its initial public offering as early as June 11 and list on June 12, one of the people said, asking not to be identified as the information isn’t public. Details of the IPO including the size and timing could still change, the people said. A representative for SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.  The company has picked Nasdaq for its IPO and will list under the ticker SPCX, Reuters reported earlier Friday, citing people it didn’t identify. The news agency was first to report the new timeline. Nasdaq declined to comment. SpaceX has filed confidentially to go public and is seeking to raise as much as $75 billion at a valuation of  more than $2 trillion , Bloomberg News has reported, which...

Cisco shares jumped more than 13% Thursday. The rally followed an earnings report Wednesday that showed the networking giant’s multi-year pivot to AI infrastructure is finally paying off. For the third quarter ended April 25, Cisco reported record revenue of $15.8 billion, up 12% year over year, topping the high end of its guidance. The company also raised its fiscal 2026 outlook, lifting its AI revenue target to $4 billion (from $3 billion) and AI orders target to $9 billion (from $5 billion). It guided current-quarter revenue as high as $16.9 billion, above Wall Street expectations. “In Q3, we once again delivered double-digit growth on both the top and bottom lines, which exceeded the high end of our guidance, coupled with record non-GAAP operating income,” Cisco CFO Mark Patterson said in a statement. The results, he added, show “great execution and financial discipline by our teams.” Chuck Robbins, Cisco’s chair and CEO, said the com...

In an  interview  this week on Fox Business, IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna pressed Washington on the central question facing AI policy: “The balance between too many regulations, it’s terrible; too few, we may not love the outcome, so we got to find the Goldilocks middle.” Krishna extended his warning to the international landscape: “If it turns into a bloated bureaucracy, that would not be so good for us to win the AI race.” The balance Krishna identifies extends well beyond federal policy. It runs downward into a state-by-state patchwork of legislation now reshaping how American companies build and deploy AI, and upward into a global contest where technological competitiveness underwrites both economic prominence and national security. No clear path forward has emerged at any level. In our conversations with CEOs and political leaders, that lack of clarity is the common refrain. In the past nine months, the United States has produced more AI legislation than...

On a recent weekend, I built a version of the classic video game Pong for my kids using AI. It’s a simple example, but it shows how quickly the gap between idea and execution is disappearing. At Nokia , we’re seeing the same compression in our work. It means engineering teams can explore multiple architectural paths in parallel, test them quickly and achieve stronger outcomes faster. Work that was once categorized as operationally difficult or too time-consuming becomes achievable – opening up new opportunities while reinforcing the importance of focus. More output, faster delivery The real productivity gain is more output from the same teams, delivered faster for customers. That happens when AI moves from individual use into repeatable workflows. Since the broad rollout of the AI coding tool Cursor across Nokia earlier this year, more than 14,000 of our team are using the platform across software R&D, with weekly active usage at 67% – and growing. Six months a...

Anthropic’s Claude is telling people to go to sleep and users can’t figure out why. A quick scan of Reddit reveals that hundreds of people have had the same issue dating back months—and as recently as Wednesday. Claude’s sleep demands are varied and, often, quirky variations of the same message. To one user it may write a simple “get some rest,” yet for others its messages are more personalized and empathetic. Oftentimes, Claude will repeat the message multiple times. “Now go to sleep again. Again . For the THIRD time tonight…” it replied to a person with the Reddit username, angie_akhila. Some users have said they find Claude’s late night rest reminders “thoughtful,” while others have said they’re annoying, given Claude often gets the time wrong, anyway.  “It often does it at like 8:30 in the morning. Tells me to go get some rest and we’ll pick back up in the morning,” wrote one user on Reddit.  Online speculation abounds on why the chatbot ...