Financial Mindset

Nearly five months into the war in Iran, the conflict has entered a “second round” as bombs fly throughout the Middle East after a temporary truce collapsed. Iran is again threatening passage through the now-infamous Strait of Hormuz, while the U.S. has reinstated a naval blockade on Iranian oil exports. As the world’s emergency petroleum supplies dangerously dwindle and prices again rise, the Trump administration appears to have lost the upper hand and faces a stark choice: escalate the conflict in a prolonged morass resembling Ukraine, or capitulate and let Iran control the world’s leading energy artery—with the ability to charge service fees for passage and recoup costs, a toll in all but name— energy and geopolitical analysts told Fortune . The decision could shape energy and fuel prices heading into the fall , including the midterm elections, and set a precedent for how far the U.S. will go to defend global shipping lanes. “I don’t think there’s any milita...

Once every four years, fans travel across the globe to watch one of the world’s biggest sporting events: the FIFA World Cup.  The 2026 World Cup is no exception. For the first time, the tournament has been hosted jointly by three nations—the U.S., Canada and Mexico—and marks North America’s first time hosting the competition since 1994. FIFA also expanded the tournament from 32 to 48 national teams, making it the largest World Cup in history. Across the tournament’s 16 host cities, from Kansas City to Guadalajara and Toronto, millions of fans traveled far and wide to cheer on their countries, transforming city streets into seas of brightly colored jerseys and national flags.  Millions are also watching the World Cup on TV, and audiences have continued to expand, with each marquee matchup setting a new viewership benchmark. Spain’s semifinal victory over France drew a then-record 11.46 million viewers on Fox before Argentina’s semifinal win over...

President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs were supposed to raise billions of dollars in government revenue while reviving American manufacturing. Instead, after a Supreme Court ruling forced the Trump administration to reimburse much of the money it collected, it’s now looking for workarounds to impose tariffs anyway. One such workaround will take effect later this month, when the Trump administration imposes 25% tariffs on many imports from Brazil . The fresh tariffs, announced this week, arrived after the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative conducted a yearlong investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 that concluded Brazil had engaged in unfair trade practices. The move revives a battle the Trump administration has waged specifically against Brazil since last year, when the White House imposed tariffs totaling 50% on certain Brazilian imports after Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, was accused of leading a conspiracy to overturn his reelection lo...

American companies are finally getting relief from tariff refunds—only it’s just in time for a new wave of inflationary economic factors. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued $49.2 billion in refunds in June, according to the U.S. Treasury’s monthly statement , bringing total tariff refunds to about $71 billion, or more than 60% of the $166 billion available following the Supreme Court striking down tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) in February. But as companies recoup costs associated with the  import taxes they were forced to pay last year, they’re finding that, in many cases, those funds are being eaten up thanks to the impact of other economic pressures. “We do expect some more pressure on the business from a commodity standpoint,” PepsiCo Chief Financial Officer Steve Schmitt said in the company’s earnings call last week. “We will be using the tariff, essentially the refunds, to help offset some commodity inflation tha...

Chinese startup Moonshot AI has released the latest version of its Kimi AI model, further shrinking the performance gap between Chinese and U.S. models just as global businesses are increasingly questioning the cost of deploying models from Anthropic and OpenAI. On July 16, Moonshot AI unveiled Kimi K3, the latest version of its Kimi model. It boasts 2.7 trillion parameters, making it the largest open-weight large language model available today. (Parameters refer to the weights within the LLM; more parameters generally means that models can handle more complex reasoning.) DeepSeek V4 has 1.6 trillion parameters. “K3 stands as Moonshot AI’s most powerful open-source coding model to date,” Moonshot AI wrote in a press release announcing the model’s release. “Operating with minimal human oversight, it can sustain long engineering sessions, navigate massive repositories, and orchestrate terminal tools.” In its release, Moonshot claimed K3 performed “competitively” with An...

The American Experiment is a five-episode documentary that features Apocalypse Now actor Martin Sheen as the voice of George Washington along with a panoply of contemporary figures from U.S. politics including ex-vice presidents Kamala Harris and Mike Pence. It also included 17 minutes of AI-enhanced footage that was produced “twice as fast and at half the cost,” said Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos. Faster and less expensive could potentially become central to the way Netflix plans to spend what could be up to $20 billion this year on content creation, a line item number that has grown from $16.2 billion in 2024 to $17.1 billion in 2025. Meanwhile, investors appear to be losing patience with the streaming giant as some of the tide appears to be moving in the opposite direction, with revenue growth decelerating from 16% in the first quarter of 2026, to 13% this quarter, and 12% guided for Q3. After earnings results were released, the stock price fell as much as 9% after hours, desp...

Airbnb cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky appears to have been the target of a cyberattack, a source with knowledge of the situation tells Fortune . On Monday, Chesky’s X account shared a multi-post thread setting out a bullish view on “real-world asset tokenization,” a term from the crypto world that describes converting traditional assets like stocks into digital tokens. “I’ve been quietly keeping an eye on real-world asset tokenization for a while now,” the account wrote in the now-deleted series of tweets. “Most of it is noise. But underneath the noise, something real is happening.” Chesky is an active user of X, where he routinely shares product updates, earnings commentary, and lessons from building Airbnb with his more than 1.2 million followers. He’s even used the platform to crowdsource suggestions for business improvements, such as lowering cleaning fees and, ironically, crypto payments , which earned praise from X owner Elon Musk. “This kind of interaction w...