Financial Mindset

Iran’s supreme leader vowed Thursday in a defiant tone to protect the Islamic Republic’s nuclear and missile capabilities, which U.S. President Donald Trump has sought to curtail through airstrikes and as part of  a wider deal  to cement the war’s shaky ceasefire. In a statement read by a state television anchor,  Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei  said the only place Americans belonged in the Persian Gulf is “at the bottom of its waters” and that a “new chapter” was being written in the region’s history. Khamenei has not been seen in public since taking over as supreme leader following the killing of his father in the war’s opening airstrikes. His remarks come as  Iran’s economy is reeling  and its oil industry is  being squeezed  by a U.S. Navy blockade halting its tankers from getting out to sea. The world economy is also under pressure as Iran maintains its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of all crude oil is ...

For more than 50 years, OneUnited Bank has operated on the belief that financial empowerment in Black communities requires more than products and services—it requires confronting the systems that keep wealth out of reach. Now, the nation’s largest Black-owned bank is extending that mission into addressing how to close the racial wealth gap. On May 5, OneUnited launches  Who’s Your Ma Honey? , a 10-episode podcast and video series that the Boston-based bank frames as both a cultural reckoning and a direct extension of its community development work. The show streams on YouTube , Apple Podcasts, Spotify , and Audible, and invites high-profile guests to surface buried experiences of shame—then reframe them as the origin story of their resilience and success. The concept lands with particular weight coming from OneUnited. The bank, a designated Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), has financed nearly $1 billion in loans —the majority in low-to-moderate income communit...

Making his first appearance before Congress since the Trump administration went to war in Iran, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faced withering questioning from skeptical Democrats Wednesday over a costly conflict being waged without congressional approval. The war has cost $25 billion so far, according to Pentagon numbers presented to the House Armed Services Committee during the contentious hearing that was ostensibly focused on the administration’s  2027 military budget proposal , which would boost defense spending to a historic $1.5 trillion. While Republicans focused on the details of military budgeting and voiced support for the operation, Democrats pivoted to the ballooning  costs of the war , the huge drawdown of  critical U.S. munitions  and the  bombing of a school that killed children . Some lawmakers also questioned President Donald Trump’s dealings with allies and  his shifting justification for the conflict . Hegseth dismissed the criticism ...

In 1865, English economist William Stanley Jevons observed that the invention of the Watt steam engine — which improved the efficiency of the coal-fired steam engine — made coal a more effective energy source. Jevons called it “a confusion of ideas” to assume the efficiency born from this invention would reduce coal consumption. That efficiency actually dramatically increased consumption even as the total amount of coal required for a particular task fell. There’s now a term for this seemingly contradictory idea: the Jevons paradox. In a note on Tuesday, Apollo Global Management’s influential chief economist Torsten Slok applied the Jevons paradox to the AI age. In this scenario, labor is playing the role of coal, meaning as AI adoption increases, the technology will beget more jobs, not fewer. Slok calls this the Jevons employment effect. As the cost of professional work falls as AI makes tasks more efficient, the market for those tasks will actually expand. The total number...

In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady shares highlights from a conversation with Michael Rogers. The big leadership story: Budget airline execs ask the Trump administration for help. The markets: Mixed globally after the S&P 500 hit another record high. Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune . Good morning. What does it mean to be agile during these volatile, fast-moving and often dangerous times? Fortune co-hosted a CEO dinner with BCG in Chicago on Thursday where we talked about opportunities in AI, along with the realities of driving change in a more complex threat environment. Here are some highlights from the group discussion and my on-the-record conversation with Admiral Michael Rogers, former head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, who’s now a senior advisor at Brunswick Group. As he put it: “We have to optimize ourselves to deal with a high level of uncertainty, a high level of complexity and a low tolerance for failure by the peop...

China has blocked Meta’s deal to acquire AI startup Manus. The National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s top macroeconomic regulator, unceremoniously posted on Monday that it had “decided to block the foreign acquisition of the Manus project and require the parties to unwind the deal.” The move is a headache for Meta, for whom the Manus acquisition, reportedly valued at around $2 billion, was a key element of its new AI strategy. It’s also not clear how Meta can “unwind” the deal: Manus employees had already joined Meta’s AI team, and backers like Tencent and Hongshan Capital had already received their cut of the deal, according to a report from Bloomberg . The blocked deal also shows how quickly the U.S. and Chinese AI ecosystems are decoupling, as both Washington and Beijing now seek to maintain control of strategic technologies and prevent them from leaking to the other.  “The transaction complied fully with applicable law. We anticipate an appropriate resol...

In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady on the lessons from this weekend’s shooting. The big leadership story: Incoming Apple CEO John Ternus is inheriting a messy China business. The markets: Edging up after Iran reportedly proposed a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune . Good morning. The world is more dangerous for leaders, across multiple dimensions. The attempted shooting attack at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday and the Molotov cocktail attack on Sam Altman’s home earlier this month are further proof of that. Researchers tracked more than 2,200 direct threats to CEOs across different channels in the five weeks following the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson in late 2024, more than the entire year that preceded it. Spending on physical security is up and the geopolitical landscape is obviously more risky with the war on Iran. Now add AI, which has made it dramatically cheaper t...

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is using the shooting at the  White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday  to try to pressure preservationists to drop their lawsuit over his planned $400 million ballroom on the site of the former East Wing of the White House. “It’s time to build the ballroom,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said plainly Sunday on X , posting a letter in which Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate gave the National Trust for Historic Preservation,  which has sued to block construction , until 9 a.m. Monday to dismiss its lawsuit. If it doesn’t do so, Shumate wrote, the government would ask a court to do so “in light of last night’s extraordinary events,” calling the Washington Hilton — the site of Saturday’s gala — “demonstrably unsafe” for events with the president “because its size presents extraordinary security challenges for the Secret Service.” The White House ballroom, Shumate wrote, “will ensure the safety and security o...

The Iran conflict has confirmed a transformation in the economics of warfare toward cheap, mass-produced weapons, forcing a wholesale rethinking of military procurement, according to a recent report. While the U.S. and Israel have decimated Iran’s military, the Islamic republic still has enough combat power to inflict meaningful economic and physical damage, said Noah Ramos, chief innovation strategist at Alpine Macro, in a note earlier this month. In particular, the regime has leveraged its Shahed drones, which cost only $20,000-50,000, forcing the U.S. and its allies to shoot them down with $4 million PAC-3 missiles or THAAD interceptors that cost $12 million-15 million. “Even with interception rates above 90%, the value of asset protection is diminished given the obscene economics,” Ramos wrote. “This imbalance has haunted Western military planners since the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” He explained that such lopsided attrition is the opposite of the West’s model...

Charlie Greene, the cofounder and CEO of Remento, first learned about the importance of recording memories when his father, Don Greene, died during the hijacking of United Airlines Flight 93 on 9/11. A 10-year-old boy at the time of the terrorist attack, which resulted in his father’s plane crashing in Shanksville, Penn., the now 34-year-old Greene mostly has a collection of old home videos to remember him by.  So when his mother Claudette, 74, was diagnosed with stage-three lung cancer, he quickly acted to record her memories. With the intention of conducting an oral history interview, Greene searched “Questions to ask a parent,” which Google morbidly autocompleted with “before they die.”  When he started asking her the questions like “How did you get to elementary school as a kid,” she lit up, surprised he was interested at all.  “The thing that blew me away about that experience was how unmorbid it felt,” he said. Claudette is in remission, but her battle with ca...

Elon Musk dropped his fraud claims against OpenAI and co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, narrowing the scope of his lawsuit against his business rivals on the eve of trial. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on Friday agreed to Musk’s request to “streamline” the case, leaving just two claims to proceed to trial of the 26 included in his November  2024 complaint .  Jury selection is set for Monday in federal court in Oakland, California. Musk alleges the artificial intelligence startup abandoned its founding mission as a nonprofit to benefit humanity when it took billions of dollars in backing from Microsoft Corp. and planned its restructuring as a for-profit business. Musk is seeking as much as $134 billion in damages that he has asked be directed to OpenAI’s charitable arm, if he wins at trial. He also wants a court order restoring the firm’s status as a nonprofit research organization and wants a judge to order that Altman and Brockman both be removed from t...

President Donald Trump’s “gold card” visa, where a foreigner can shell out at least $1 million to  legally live and work in the U.S. , has been approved for one person, said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick Thursday — appearing to fall a bit short of an earlier claim. After it  launched in December , Lutnick said that the government had sold $1.3 billion “worth” in just several days, as Trump stood by holding up the gilded ticket and said, “essentially it’s the green card on steroids.” Lutnick did not address the apparent discrepancy in an exchange with a congresswoman at Thursday’s committee hearing. Trump pushed the idea last year, initially suggesting  a cost of $5 million , and arguing that it would  entice foreign talent  to U.S. shores and fill out federal coffers. It’s meant to replace the EB-5 program, a decades-old program that offered U.S. visas to people who invested about $1 million in a company with at least 10 employees. Though only one person...

Tesla’s earning calls in the last few quarters have always been a study in extremes: The EV-maker’s profits from making and selling cars and batteries keeps shrinking, while CEO Elon Musk’s promises of wonders to come for the likes of robotaxis and humanoid robots keep ballooning. The Q1 edition, held after the market close on April 22, set a new standard. Digging into financial statements reveals that Tesla earned almost zip in repeatable, bedrock profits on the EV side. Yet Musk greatly ramped his already super-ambitious investment agenda for pending blockbusters, “revolutionary” offerings that he’s long promised as a year or two away, but that suffer serial delays, and keep gestating as prototypes either in the labs, or making trial runs on the roads. So the question arises that didn’t get answered on the call: How is Tesla going to pay for all that extra CapEx when the only arm generating cash is fading? And can it possibly earn a big enough return on all the capital newly piled ...

Southwest Airlines Co. reported adjusted quarterly profit and revenue that fell just shy of Wall Street’s expectations, as the US carrier joins rivals in grappling with higher fuel costs. Shares in the Dallas-based airline extended losses in aftermarket trading after Southwest declined to update its  full-year profit guidance  of at least $4 a share, underscoring the volatility in the industry.  It said achieving those results would require lower fuel prices mixed with stronger revenue performance. It also projected second-quarter adjusted EPS in a range of 35 cents to 65 cents, with analysts expecting 59 cents.   Southwest fell 3.8% and closed at $39.35 in regular trading Wednesday, mirroring stock declines of other carriers.  Southwest’s decision is broadly in line with other carriers contending with fuel costs driven higher by the US-Iran war. Rival carrier Delta Air Lines Inc. has declined to update its full-year forecast, while others such as United A...

Lululemon Athletica Inc. named Heidi O’Neill its new chief executive officer on Wednesday as the athletic retailer looks to move beyond a turbulent period of slowing growth and investor unrest. O’Neill, who was most recently Nike Inc.’s president of consumer, product and brand, will take over as permanent CEO on September 8, the company said in a statement. Calvin McDonald, who had led Lululemon since 2018, left his post in January and went on to lead a beauty business. Lululemon shares dropped as much as 7% in postmarket trading. The shares had fallen more than 21% so far this year as of Wednesday’s close.  O’Neill arrives with a series of fires to put out. Recent product mishaps, including selling leggings that were see-through, and a disappointing sales outlook, have left investors concerned that the company can pull itself out of a rut. Sales growth has slowed since losing share to trendier competitors. Elliott Investment Management has built a stake of more than $1 billi...

New data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows a surprising phenomenon: The average age of first-time homebuyers getting a mortgage has barely budged over the past two decades, remaining in the mid-30s. At first glance, that doesn’t seem to make sense. You’d think that given the steep rise in home prices versus incomes, it’s primarily the young who delay purchases as they get stuck in rentals waiting for paychecks, and banking savings. The evidence says not so. Expanding on the New York Fed’s findings, a new study from the American Enterprise Institute’s Housing Center concludes that the same problem is haunting would-be buyers at all age levels. “When purchasing power declines, fewer people buy homes at 28—but also fewer purchase at 38 or 48,” writes the author, the Housing Center’s co-director Ed Pinto. “The result is a broad-based drop in home ownership.” The AEI also points to a disturbing trend that amounts to the de-democratization of American housing. “The less-rich a...

The new leadership of the AI power startup Fermi is feuding with its fired CEO and top shareholder over a potential sale of the company. The struggling Texas company, which went public last year at a nearly $20 billion market cap, aspires to build the largest data center campus in the world, called Project Matador, in the Texas Panhandle, but it has struggled to nail down anchor tenants. Fermi is now advising against recommendations from its fired co-founder and CEO to sell the company. The company’s market cap has plunged to less than $3.2 billion as of April 21. The former CEO, Toby Neugebauer, who’s the top Fermi shareholder, said he was fired “without cause” last week and now supports an immediate process to sell the company in order to make “money for all shareholders.” Neugebauer said his family and former executive allies own about 40% of Fermi shares. Neugebauer and former chief financial officer Miles Everson, who abruptly resigned April 20, remain Fermi board members. Als...