Finance
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The Midwest is leading America’s spring housing rebound because of ‘buyers who are actually showing up,’ Realtor.com says
Spring housing season is here, and after years of stagnation, it’s finally a hot one. Contract signings rose 4.5% year-over-year in April—its strongest reading in three years—and new listings hit their highest level since 2022, according to Realtor.com’s Spring 2026 Housing Market Progress Report published Thursday. For three straight springs, mortgage rates, a housing affordability…
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A Nobel economist figured out 60 years ago that people learn best on the job. The Atlanta Fed says AI is making that almost impossible
Sixty years ago, an economist named Kenneth Arrow sat down and worked out something that seemed almost too obvious to say: workers get better at their jobs by doing them. The insight was simple, but Arrow, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize, formalized it into a theory with sweeping implications. Learning, he…
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Current price of oil as of May 21, 2026
By 9 a.m. Eastern Time today, oil had reached $108.76 per barrel, measured using the Brent benchmark. That’s $1.58 less than it cost yesterday morning and about $44 above its price a year earlier. Oil price per barrel % Change Price of oil yesterday $110.34 -1.43% Price of oil 1 month ago $94.75 +14.78% Price…
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‘We do not want humans to have the same fate as dinosaurs’: SpaceX IPO reads like Hollywood fantasy version of the future
Elon Musk announced plans Wednesday for one of the biggest stock sales ever by taking public a space company that is currently losing billions of dollars a year. A filing shows that his SpaceX lost $2.6 billion from operations last year on $18.7 billion in revenue, and the losses kept piling up at the start…
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Europe is considering price caps to control inflation. CEOs are shaking their heads in despair
When the supply of toilet paper started running out back in 2013, the Venezuelan authorities came up with a novel explanation. “95% of people eat three or more meals a day,” the president of the National Statistics Institute, Elias Eljuri, said at the time. The suggestion appeared to be that if only Venezuelans ate less,…
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With bond yields surging to 4.7%, T-notes are looking like a better deal than the pricey S&P, says the Research Affiliates’ formula
This reporter’s go-to source for divining the investment categories, from all around the globe, that promise the best future returns is a feature on the Research Affiliates website called Asset Allocation Interactive. Research Affiliates oversees $188 billion in investment strategies, chiefly for mutual funds and ETFs, and provides the methodologies for its RAFI funds offered…
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Harvard admits it was too easy to get A grades, vows crackdown
At Harvard University, earning straight A’s is about to get harder. Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences announced Wednesday that it would limit the number of A grades awarded to undergraduates, adopting one of the most ambitious efforts by a major university to curb grade inflation. The decision was made by faculty vote earlier this month.…
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Jeff Bezos on Zohran Mamdani’s big mistake: ‘When you don’t know how to solve a problem, create a villain, blame them’
Jeff Bezos has a message for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani: The villain strategy won’t work. In an interview with CNBC‘s Andrew Ross Sorkin on Wednesday, the Amazon founder weighed in on the viral Tax Day video that Mamdani filmed outside Citadel CEO Ken Griffin’s $238 million Manhattan penthouse—a stunt designed to build public…
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The one number that will actually move Nvidia’s stock Wednesday night
Nvidia has another blockbuster earnings report after the bell Wednesday, and Wall Street, as per usual, is readying the fireworks. Analysts expect revenue of $78.8 billion, almost 80% higher than just a year earlier. Earnings per share are projected at $1.77, nearly double last year. There’s ample reason to believe Nvidia will meet those lofty…
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Prices at the pump hit $4 a gallon in all 50 states—just as summer driving season begins
This week marked a discouraging milestone for American motorists. The average gas price is now on the wrong side of the $4 mark in every state in the country, an increase that coincides with the start of the busy summer driving season, which kicks off on Memorial Day weekend. GasBuddy, which tracks fuel pricing, said…