Financial Mindset

The recent escape of several research monkeys after the truck carrying them  overturned on a Mississippi interstate  is the latest glimpse into the secretive industry of animal research and the processes that allow key details of what happened to be kept from the public. Three monkeys have remained on the loose since the crash on Tuesday in a rural area along Interstate 59, spilling wooden crates labeled “live monkeys” into the tall grass near the highway. Since then, searchers in masks, face shields and other protective equipment have scoured nearby fields and woods for the missing primates. Five of the 21 Rhesus macaques on board were  killed during the search , according to the local sheriff, but it was unclear how that happened. Key details remain shrouded in secrecy Mississippi authorities have not disclosed the company involved in transporting the monkeys, where the monkeys were headed or who owns them. While Tulane University in New Orleans has acknowledged that...

Two federal judges ruled nearly simultaneously on Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration must continue to pay for SNAP , the nation’s biggest food aid program, using emergency reserve funds during the government shutdown. The judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island gave the administration leeway on whether to fund the program partially or in full for November. That also brings uncertainty about how things will unfold and will delay payments for many beneficiaries whose cards would normally be recharged early in the month. The U.S. Department of Agriculture planned to freeze payments to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program starting Nov. 1 because it said it could no longer keep funding it due to the shutdown. The program serves about 1 in 8 Americans and is a major piece of the nation’s social safety net — and it costs about $8 billion per month nationally. U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat and the ranking member of the Senate Agriculture committee ...

A novel experiment at Procter & Gamble reveals that artificial intelligence isn’t just a tool—it’s becoming a genuine teammate that can match human collaboration. For decades, the holy grail of business performance has been effective teamwork. We’ve organized entire companies around the premise that collaboration beats individual effort—that two heads are better than one. But what happens when one of those “heads” is artificial intelligence? A remarkable field experiment involving 776 professionals at Procter & Gamble—and led by Harvard’s D^3 Institute, where I’m an executive fellow—has fundamentally challenged our assumptions about teamwork, expertise, and the future of collaborative work. The results suggest we’re witnessing the emergence of what researchers call the “cybernetic teammate”: AI that doesn’t just assist but actively participates in the collaborative process. When teaming with AI equals teaming with humans The P&G experiment was elegantly simple yet profo...

Bitcoin accumulator Strategy Inc. returned to profitability in the third quarter, with results bolstered by an unrealized gain tied to the rising value of the company’s roughly $69 billion cryptocurrency stockpile.  Net income was $2.8 billion, or $8.42 a share, compared with a loss of $340 million, or $1.72 in the year-ago period, the Tysons Corner, Virginia-based firm said in a statement Thursday. The company, formerly known as MicroStrategy, adopted accounting standards in January that required it to include the fair value of its Bitcoin holdings in its earnings. The change triggered multibillion dollar swings between profits and losses in the the previous two quarters.  The company said in the statement that it is “actively laying the groundwork for credit securities in international jurisdictions.” Strategy’s shares fluctuated in after-hours trading.  Even though Bitcoin reached a record high during the third quarter and dozens of public firms copied the treasury...

Industries and countries may have pivoted from overhyping their clean energy efforts through “greenwashing” to quietly advancing green goals through “greenhushing.” Still, the energy transition is moving forward despite rising political pushback from the U.S. and other Western nations, executives said at the Fortune Global Forum in Riyadh. One big change is the switch from empty promises of net-zero carbon goals to the more practical applications of green energy that make business sense and include positive returns on investment, they said. “This bump in the road in this green agenda is being driven by this myth that if we continue to do things in a green way it’s going to be more expensive for the economy and cause people to lose their jobs,” said Jose La Loggia, EMEA group president for the HVAC giant Trane Technologies . That myth is not true, he said, arguing that Trane’s more efficient combined heat and power, or cogeneration, systems can be 400% more energy efficient and quic...

The crypto markets fell slightly on Wednesday after Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve Board, hinted that an October interest rate cut of 25 points may be the last such cut of 2025. Bitcoin dipped 1.6% over the past 24 hours to trade at nearly $111,000, according to data from Binance . Ethereum , the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was down about 2% to a bit more than $3,900. The total market cap of all cryptocurrencies dropped 1.8%.  While Powell said there were “strongly differing views” among his colleagues about future rate cuts, he added during a press conference that “there’s a growing chorus now of feeling like maybe this is where we should at least wait a cycle.” The S&P 500 ended Wednesday essentially flat, the Dow Jones was down about 0.2%, and the Nasdaq finished almost 0.6% up. Despite the wavering markets, some crypto analysts were cautiously optimistic. “Easing monetary conditions are supportive of upward price momentum for B...

Being CEO has its many perks: Business leaders get to command the world’s most powerful companies, shape their legacies as pioneers of industry, and enjoy hefty billion-dollar paychecks . But in the steep climb up the corporate ladder, many won’t notice all the peers left behind until they’re looking down from the very top. It can be a lonely, solitary job. Leaders at some of the world’s largest companies—from Airbnb and UPS to PepsiCo and Apple —are finally opening up about the mental toll that comes with the job. As it turns out, many industry trailblazers are grappling with intense loneliness; at least 40% of executives are thinking of leaving their job, mainly because they’re lacking energy and feel alone in handling daily challenges, according to a Harvard Medical School professor. And the number could even be higher: About 70% of C-suite leaders “are seriously considering quitting for a job that better supports their well-being,” according to a 2022 Deloitte study .  To...

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell doesn’t think the AI boom is another dot-com bubble . In fact, he made that distinction explicit on Wednesday, arguing that the current wave of artificial-intelligence investment is grounded in profit-making firms and real economic activity rather than speculative exuberance. “I won’t go into particular names,” Powell told reporters after the Fed’s policy meeting, “but they actually have earnings.” “These companies… actually have business models and profits and that kind of thing. So it’s really a different thing” than the dot-com bubble, he added. The comments mark what seems like Powell’s most direct acknowledgment yet that AI’s corporate build-out—spanning hundreds of billions of dollars in data-center and semiconductor investments —has become a genuine engine of U.S. growth.  A productivity play, not a rate-sensitive one Powell emphasized that the explosion of AI spending isn’t being driven by monetary policy—or by cheap money. “I do...

The Hollywood model of work—specialized teams assembling for specific projects, then dissolving and reconfiguring for new ones—is a refreshing alternative to the rigid corporate structures inherited from the industrial era. For decades, this fluid approach seemed impractical for most businesses. Now, it is becoming feasible as AI handles the logistical complexities and knowledge management that once required permanent bureaucracies. With agentic technology, next-generation enterprises can use the Hollywood model to reshape organizations into more flexible, dynamic systems that reward performance and create new paths to shared prosperity. An industry’s evolution for a shifting market During Hollywood’s “Golden Age,” large studios operated like industrial-era giants, keeping vast talent pools—actors, directors, technicians—under long-term exclusive contracts. This centralized studio model reliably produced a steady flow of films for a uniform market. As audiences expanded and prefere...

Startups may cast incumbents as hapless Goliaths, but in ranking Europe’s biggest companies, David is nowhere to be seen. Minus a merger here and an acquisition there, Europe’s business giants remain largely unchanged from two—or even 20—years ago. Every company in the Fortune 500 Europe top 10 has roots from before the Second World War. The oldest, Banco Santander , was founded in 1857. They’re hardly struggling: Total revenue for the 500 rose 2.5% to $14.9 trillion, and market capitalization climbed 13.7% to $15.9 trillion. Profits, however, slipped 5.1% to $978.2 billion. That doesn’t mean Europe’s largest businesses are standing still. The three largest sectors by revenue—finance (107 companies, $3.5 trillion), energy (71 companies, $3 trillion), and motor vehicles and parts (23 companies, $1.4 trillion)—are all being reshaped by digital technology and in the case of energy, renewables. Yet even in these fast-changing industries, the domin...

A shortage of air traffic controllers caused  more flight disruptions  Monday around the country as controllers braced for their first full missing paycheck during the federal government shutdown. The Federal Aviation Administration reported  staffing-related delays  on Monday afternoon averaging about 20 minutes at the airport in Dallas and about 40 minutes at both Newark Liberty International Airport and Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. The delays in Austin followed a brief ground stop at the airport, meaning flights were held at their originating airports until the FAA lifted the stop around 4:15 p.m. local time. The FAA also warned of staffing issues at a facility in Jacksonville, Florida, that could cause some problems. Just last week, U.S. Transportation Secretary  Sean Duffy  had predicted that travelers would start to see more flights delayed and canceled as the nation’s air traffic controllers work without pay during the  shutdown , ...

“I think it’s maybe understatement of the century to say that global trade is facing the greatest disruption in 80 years.” It’s a significant statement from anyone, let alone Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the director-general of the World Trade Organization. She warned at the Fortune Global Forum in Riyadh that the global economy is in its choppiest waters since the 1930s, no small feat considering that decade saw the Great Depression and the outbreak of the Second World War — and the Great Recession of 2008 is still in living memory. Still,  Dr. Okonjo-Iweala, a Nigerian economist who is the first woman and the first African to lead the World Trade Organization as director-general, insisted that what’s happening isn’t a replay of that dark decade in the early 20th century. “It is functioning,”  Dr. Okonjo-Iweala said of trade, but it’s not functioning quite in the way it used to before. This is due to President Donald Trump enacting several sudden changes to world trade that reflect wha...

California Gov.  Gavin Newsom , a leading Democratic critic of President Donald Trump, says he will consider running for the White House in 2028 after the midterm elections next year. Asked in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” whether if would be fair to say he would give a campaign serious thought after the November 2026 vote, the term-limited governor said, “I’d be lying otherwise.” Newsom has been trying to raise his national profile, adopting a combative style that parodies Trump’s social media strategy with similar all-caps posts, memes and merchandise. The Democratic governor has sparred with the Republican president over the  deployment of the California National Guard  following immigration protests and Trump’s redistricting moves in Texas. Newsom has also  led a campaign to redraw California’s own maps  to add five Democratic U.S. House seats in response to the changes in Texas.  Voting is underway  on the so-called Proposition 50 and ...

The way Saudi entrepreneur Mohammed Aldossary sees it, innovators are animated by the same motivations whether they are in Silicon Valley, the Arabian peninsula or in South Asia: they want to solve vexing problems at scale. “What excites talent, what excites the community is to go build around those needs,” Aldorassy told the Fortune Global Forum on Sunday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He is the founder and CEO of SILQ, the result of the merger in April between Saudi business-to-business marketplace Sary, which connects small businesses with manufacturers to buy supplies, and Bangladesh’s ShopUp, which offers similar services. Aldorassy said the vast majority of companies in Saudi Arabia are small and medium-sized enterprises, but they only account for 9% of bank lending. And that is the kind of problem that young Saudi entrepreneurs are tackling—and sparking a culture of innovation there, as evidenced by SILQ. “What differentiates us here is we have a younger generation,” Aldosarry sai...

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had sharply contrasting views of longtime U.S. ally Canada, which is a top target in President Donald Trump’s trade war, and Argentina, which is getting a U.S. currency lifeline. In an interview Sunday on NBC’s  Meet the Press with Kristen Welker , he was asked about the additional 10% tariff Trump said he will impose on Canada due to an anti-tariff TV ad that Ontario’s government aired. “This is a kind of propaganda against U.S. citizens. It’s psy-ops,” Bessent replied, using shorthand for psychological operations. The ad features remarks from President Ronald Reagan criticizing tariffs. Ontario’s premier said he would take down the ad on Monday, after the first two games of the World Series between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers. In a  Truth Social post  on Saturday, Trump claimed the ad was a “misrepresentation of the facts,” though trade experts say it was not, and a “hostile act.” He had earlier called off...

Forget scanning LinkedIn for the latest six-figure gig, one website has a lucrative job that involves teaching a one-year-old how to “excel socially and emotionally.” A family based in London recently gained attention for offering nearly $240,000 a year (£180,000) for a private tutor willing to prepare their toddler for Eton, one of the world’s most elite boarding schools, once attended by Prince William. “Having started at age 5 with this child’s older brother, they felt that even this was too late to achieve their goal, hence their search for a tutor now,” the listing reads. Behind the listing online is a company called “Tutors International”. They describe themselves as a “special tutoring company” that caters to high-net-worth households who want a full-time, bespoke private tutor. The company vows to give its clients the “highest level of service of any tutoring company.”  The instructor’s compensation is far from unusual for them. Most of their postings are in the six-f...

President Donald Trump’s extra 10% duty on Canada added fuel to the debate over his legal authority on trade, just as the Supreme Court is about to consider a challenge to his global tariffs. In a Truth Social post on Saturday, he blasted the Ontario provincial government for not immediately taking down a TV ad that features remarks from former President Ronald Reagan criticizing tariffs. “Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now,” Trump wrote. He didn’t cite a specific law for the extra levy, and the White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But because he is adding it to his existing Canada tariffs, the 10% presumably invokes the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Trump also claimed the TV ad was meant to influence the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on Nov. 5 in a case disputing his ability to invoke IEEPA to jus...

The mystery donor who offered $130 million to pay troops during the government shutdown is Timothy Mellon, sources told The New York Times on Saturday. The extremely private billionaire is a top Republican backer and contributed $125 million to the Make America Great Again super PAC that supported Donald Trump during his presidential bid last year. Trump announced the anonymous donation on Thursday, declining to name the benefactor, only saying that the individual was a “patriot” and a friend. When asked about Mellon on Friday, Trump declined to identify him as the donor while speaking to reporters. He said the individual was “a great American citizen” and a “substantial man.” “He doesn’t want publicity,” Trump said, according to The Times. “He prefer that his name not be mentioned which is pretty unusual in the world I come from, and in the world of politics, you want your name mentioned.” The Pentagon told The Times it accepted the donation under the “general gift acceptance ...

President  Donald Trump said on Saturday that he plans to hike tariffs on imports of Canadian goods by an extra 10% because of an anti-tariff television ad aired by the province of Ontario. The ad used the words of former President Ronald Reagan to criticize U.S. tariffs, angering Trump who said he would end  trade talks with Canada . Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford said he would pull the ad after the weekend, and it ran Friday night during the first game of the World Series. “Their Advertisement was to be taken down, IMMEDIATELY, but they let it run last night during the World Series, knowing that it was a FRAUD,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform as he flew aboard Air Force One to Malaysia. “Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now.” Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney will both attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summi...