Financial Mindset

The U.S. leads the world in both crude oil and natural gas production, but the top exporters are already shipping near their capacities, allowing them to reap larger profits but not fill the supply gaps caused by the temporary loss of 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) volumes triggered by the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz near Iran. President Donald Trump’s pledge late March 3 to insure and protect oil and LNG tankers in the effectively shuttered waterway helped stop the surge in oil and gas prices. Energy analysts have pointed to expensive or unavailable insurance coverage as a key reason for the lack of traffic, in addition to the threat of attacks. But the unprecedented explosion of a Russia-flagged LNG tanker in the Mediterranean added more unease to global energy markets. Reuters reported that Ukraine was suspected of a drone attack on the vessel. Oil, natural gas, and retail gasoline prices in the U.S. all continued to rise much of March 3, but not n...

Ring founder and CEO Jamie Siminoff believes police would have “solved” the Nancy Guthrie case if people had more cameras on their doors—including Guthrie’s. “I do believe if they had more of it, if there was more cameras on the house, I think we might, you know, have solved,” the case, Siminoff told Fortune in an interview. “The video that they have,” he added, “appears to be the best evidence they have of what happened.” Siminoff’s comments come as footage from Guthrie’s Google Nest camera have blown up on the internet, showing the final few moments that occurred before the mother of the Today Show host Savannah Guthrie was kidnapped from her Arizona home over a month ago. “The Nancy Guthrie thing has shown just how important video and more video would be in a case like this,” Siminoff said. “I think it’s been clear, but I think this is just another example of, like, how important it is to have have video at your house.” Guthrie last seen on Jan. 31, when son-in-law Tommaso C...

On Friday, just hours after publicly backing rival Anthropic for standing firm against the Pentagon’s demands, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced his company had struck its own deal with the Pentagon. The move came shortly after the US government had taken the highly unusual step of designating Anthropic a “supply chain risk.” OpenAI’s decision drew criticism from across many AI researchers and tech policy experts, even though OpenAI said it had achieved limitations in its agreement around surveillance of U.S. citizens and lethal autonomous weapons that Anthropic wanted in its contract but which the Pentagon had refused. One of the key points of contention was over domestic mass surveillance. Experts have long warned that advanced AI is capable of taking scattered, individually innocuous data—like a person’s location, finances, search history—and assembling it into a comprehensive picture of any person’s life, automatically and at scale. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said that this ki...

U.S. stock futures pointed to a risk-off trade Sunday evening as investors reacted to the U.S.-Israeli bombardment of Iran over the weekend. The selloff comes after the U.S. military reported the first casualties from Operation Epic Fury, while the FBI is investigating a mass shooting last night in Texas as potential terrorism . Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has suggested the  conflict with Iran could last a while  as he makes regime change a goal, saying on social media Saturday that the bombing will continue “as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!” Futures tied to the Dow Jones industrial average tumbled 482 points, or 0.97%. S&P 500 futures were down 0.85%, and Nasdaq futures sank 0.88%. U.S. oil futures shot up 7.25% to at $71.88 a barrel, and Brent crude gained 8.1% to $78.77. In over-the-counter trading earlier on Sunday, Brent prices jumped 10% to about $80 a barrel,...

As strikes hit Tehran on Saturday morning, millions of Iranians got a strange push notification on their phones. The BadeSaba Calendar prayer app, which has more than 5 million downloads, had been compromised, and the app issued alerts saying, “Help has arrived!” and called for a “People’s Army” to defend their “Iranian brothers,” according to an assessment from cyber intel firm Flashpoint. On Sunday, the app sent with surrender instructions for rank-and-file members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard and safe locations for protesters to gather.  Then regime loyalists quickly struck back. According to Flashpoint, what followed on Sunday was the “most aggressive” use so far of what’s known as Iran’s “Great Epic” cyber campaign, which is a loosely coordinated group of cyber operatives under a channel called the “Cyber Islamic Resistance.” Under the group’s umbrella, various cyber attackers have shut down gas stations in Jordan , and led attacks against U.S. and Israeli military p...

A senior White House official said Sunday that Iran’s “new potential leadership” has suggested it is open to talks with the United States after American and Israeli forces  launched a major attack against Tehran , killing the country’s supreme leader and other high-ranking officials. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations, said President Donald Trump says he is “eventually” willing to talk but that for now  the military operation “continues unabated.”  The official did not say who the potential new Iranian leaders are or how they made their alleged willingness to talk known. Trump told The Atlantic on Sunday that he planned to speak with Iran’s new leadership. “They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” he said, declining comment on the timing. The potential future diplomatic opening comes as new details are emerging about  the detailed planning that went into  the ...