Financial Mindset

As Donald Trump searches for an exit to the Iran war, the narrow Strait of Hormuz increasingly looks like a labyrinth in which the commander-in-chief has no good options.  Any ceasefire or U.S. disengagement that cedes control of the strait risks creating new problems, including potentially triggering a nuclear arms race among Gulf states, experts say. But taking control of the strait militarily requires massive costs and risks, including a strategic invasion that comes short of occupying the country. Trump said March 31 he wants to leave Iran in two or three weeks, hours after he vented against allies to “Go get your own oil!” Continuing with the status quo, meanwhile—in which the U.S. and Israel pound Iranian targets, while Iran charges multi-million dollar tolls to let select ships pass through the strait—could send the global economy into a recession. “If this goes on for another two months, we’re in a global recession. There’s no way around it,” Jim...

As the bell rang out over the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday afternoon, it was an unusually beautiful day: 71 degrees, sun pouring on the faces of people swarming through the city. After the brutal cold of winter, it felt like something of a miracle. The markets had spent the day chasing one of their own. Iran’s official news agency reported an unconfirmed phone call between President Masoud Pezeshkian and the European Council president, where Pezeshkian said Iran had the “necessary will” to end the war; provided that “essential conditions are met, especially the guarantees required to prevent repetition of the aggression.” The S&P went vertical immediately afterwards. It didn’t matter that Pezeshkian had said nearly the same thing on X earlier this month, or that it wasn’t even clear how big a development this was. The Nasdaq still snapped back 795 points, recovering nearly half of its total drawdown over the course of the U.S.-Israeli-Iran war in a single day. The S...

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell offered a sobering assessment of America’s fiscal health on Monday, telling a Harvard economics class audience that while the nation’s $39 trillion debt load is not immediately dangerous, the path the country is on demands urgent attention from lawmakers. “The level of the debt is not unsustainable,” Powell said during a wide-ranging conversation before roughly 400 students, “but the path is not sustainable. It will not end well if we don’t do something fairly soon.” The remarks extend a consistent warning Powell has sounded for years, that while the the debt level is manageable in the short term, the fiscal trajectory absolutely is not. His comments also came as the average national gas price neared $4 per gallon amid a war in Iran that shows no signs of resolving soon, despite President Trump’s inconsistent noises about a potential end to hostilities. Powell was careful to draw a distinction between the stock of debt and its trajectory, noting...

Even after  President Donald Trump  ordered emergency pay for Transportation Security Administration agents to ease  long security lines , major U.S. airports on Sunday were still urging travelers to arrive hours early — and federal immigration officers brought in to help may not be leaving anytime soon. Trump’s  executive order  on Friday instructed the Department of Homeland Security to pay TSA officers immediately, though it’s unclear how quickly travelers will see an impact. The move comes during a busy travel stretch, with spring breaks underway and Passover and Easter approaching. Tens of thousands of TSA employees have been working without pay since DHS funding lapsed on Valentine’s Day. The department’s shutdown reached 44 days on Sunday, eclipsing the  record 43-day shutdown  last fall that affected all of the federal government. Trump  deployed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents  to some airports a week ago to help with s...

Investors are looking past President Donald Trump’s attempts to talk oil prices down as reports signal an increasingly likelihood that U.S. ground troops will be deployed to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit has arrived in the Middle East, and the 11th MEU is en route, while thousands of paratroopers with the 82nd Airborne Division are headed there too. Another 10,000 U.S. troops are reportedly under consideration for deployment as well. Futures tied to the Dow Jones industrial average fell 298 points, or 0.66%. S&P 500 futures were down 0.62%, and Nasdaq futures lost 0.68%. U.S. oil futures rose 2.4% to $101.99 a barrel, and Brent crude climbed 2% to $114.88. The national average gasoline price reached $3.98 a gallon on Sunday, up $1 over the past month, according to AAA . The U.S. dollar was up 0.14% against the euro and flat against the yen. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell 1.2 basis point to 4.428%. Borrowin...

Asia is getting wealthier, older—and potentially sicker, as rates of non-communicable disease rise across Southeast Asia. Yet governments aren’t investing enough in public healthcare, threatening to open up a massive funding gap. “Asia has more diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular patients than anywhere else in the world,” Abrar Mir, co-founder and managing partner of Singapore-based healthcare private equity firm Quadria Capital, tells Fortune. Asia’s healthcare market is expected to reach roughly $5 trillion in size by 2030 and contribute 40% of growth in the global healthcare sector, according to a report by the Boston Consulting Group . Yet it currently accounts for just 20% of global healthcare spending, despite making up more than half of the world’s population.  Southeast Asia is particularly at risk from rising rates of chronic disease. The World Health Organization estimates that non-communicable diseases (NCDs) claim 8.5 million lives annually in the region , driven by ...

Large crowds protested Saturday against the war in Iran and  President Donald Trump’s actions  in “No Kings” rallies across the U.S. and in Europe. Minnesota took center stage, with thousands of people standing shoulder-to-shoulder to celebrate resistance to Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement. Minnesota’s flagship event on the Capitol lawn in St. Paul drew  Bruce Springsteen  as its headliner. He and other speakers praised the state’s people for taking to the streets over the winter in opposition to a surge of U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement agents. Springsteen performed “ Streets of Minneapolis ,” the song he wrote in response to the fatal shootings of  Renee Good  and  Alex Pretti  by federal agents. Springsteen lamented Good and Pretti’s deaths but said the state’s pushback against ICE has given the rest of the country hope. “Your strength and your commitment told us that this was still America,” he said. “And this reactiona...

Home buyers have gained even more leverage over sellers as housing market supply continues to overwhelm tepid demand. In February, there were 46.3% more sellers than buyers, representing a gap of 629,808, the largest in Redfin’s records going back to 2013, the real estate company said in a report on Monday . The latest number is up 30% from a year earlier, when the mismatch was 449,409. And recently as October, it was 528,769 people. According to Redfin, a buyer’s market is when there are over 10% more sellers than buyers. And by this definition, buyers have held the advantage since May 2024. That came after the Federal Reserve’s most aggressive rate-hiking cycle in four decades, sending mortgage rates higher as central bankers scrambled to bring down inflation. The result was a sharp unwinding of the seller’s market that saw home prices and sales boom in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic. But even though the Fed began reducing rates two years ago, the housing market has la...

Palmer Luckey is clear when asked whether he would sell weapons to North Korea. “If the U.S. asks me to, yes.” Anduril, the defense-technology startup Luckey founded in 2017 after his politically charged departure from Facebook, could be set for a $60 billion valuation . The company is riding a record surge in global defense spending and a shift in Silicon Valley sentiment toward working with the military, selling autonomous systems such as its Fury drone and Ghost Shark submarine to U.S. partners including Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.  War in the Middle East—between high-tech planes on the side of the U.S. and Israel, and relatively low-tech drones and missiles on the side of Iran—is also revealing how current-day warfare is changing, and how manufacturing capacity can quickly become stretched.  But as Anduril grows into one of America’s most closely watched weapons makers, Luckey’s position—that arms makers should function as extensions of U.S. government po...

Meta will pay for a total of 10 gas-fired power plants—enough to power more than 5 million homes—to electrify its rapidly expanding plans for its massive AI data center complex in northeastern Louisiana, dubbed Hyperion. Meta’s agreement with New Orleans-based Entergy , announced March 27, is to build and finance seven new power plants in Louisiana. That comes on top of plans approved last year to build three gas power plants for the sprawling AI hub. The 10 power plants with 7.5 gigawatts of capacity would represent more than a 30% increase to Louisiana’s entire grid capacity, not even counting up to 2.5 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity, including battery storage, that Meta also agreed to help fund. Meta initially announced plans for a $10 billion investment in December 2024 for a 2,250-acre data center campus in northeastern Louisiana in rural Richland Parish. But Meta recently, and quietly, acquired an additional 1,400 acres, as Fortune reported in February . In October ...

Airlangga Hartato was all smiles on Feb. 19 as he signed his name to what he called a “win-win” deal. After four trips to Washington, seven formal negotiating rounds, and nine meetings with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, Indonesia’s economy minister had finally secured a reduction in U.S. duties on Indonesian goods—from a punishing 32% to a more tolerable 19%. The agreement, grandly titled Toward a New Golden Age for the U.S.–Indonesia Alliance, promised tariff exemptions for key exports like palm oil, coffee, cocoa, and rubber. In exchange, Jakarta pledged to scrap barriers on more than 99% of U.S. imports and commit to some $33 billion in purchases of American energy, aircraft, and agricultural products. The very next day, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs —including the original 32% levy that had forced Jakarta into the talks in the first place—as unconstitutional. (Trump has since followed up with two new trade probes on Indonesia,...

Most working women in the U.S. believe they are disadvantaged when it comes to earning competitive wages, but many men hold a different view, according to a new AP-NORC poll. Equal pay emerged as a major source of concern for working women in the poll and an area where men and women are far apart in their perception of gender equity. Most women who are employed full-time — about 6 in 10 — say men have more opportunities when it comes to earning competitive wages, according to the survey from  The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research , while about one-third think neither gender has an advantage. About 3 in 10 employed women say they have personally experienced wage discrimination because of their gender. Men who are employed full-time are more divided: About 4 in 10 believe men have an advantage when it comes to wages, while about half think both genders have about the same opportunities and about 1 in 10 say women have more opportunities. Just about 1 in 10 m...

Iran on Wednesday dismissed an American plan  to pause the war in the Middle East  and launched more attacks on Israel and Gulf Arab countries, including an assault that sparked a huge fire at Kuwait International Airport. Iran’s defiance  came as Israel launched airstrikes on Tehran and as the United States deployed  paratroopers and more Marines to the region . Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in an interview on state TV that his government has not engaged in talks to end the war, “and we do not plan on any negotiations.” That followed a report from Iranian state TV’s English-language broadcaster, which quoted an anonymous official as saying Iran rejected America’s ceasefire proposal and has its own demands for an end to the fighting. Earlier, two officials from Pakistan, which transmitted the U.S. plan to Iran, described  the 15-point proposal  broadly, saying it addressed sanctions relief, a rollback of Iran’s nuclear program, limits on mi...