“Sometimes you might make the ‘right’ decision for the wrong reason.” That’s what I told Nieves, a listener who’s deciding whether to sell rental property she bought back in 2021, a St. Louis duplex that’s gotten a lot harder to manage since she moved to Madrid for her MBA. Her tenants have started paying late….
Nine days after catastrophic floods, two men trapped 557 feet underground in a hydropower tunnel were found alive — one of the rescuers wasn’t even wearing shoes. That’s the story we open with today, but it’s not the only headline. The August jobs report tripled expectations, and the stock market dropped anyway. Meanwhile, in the…
Joseph Moore is a crypto billionaire. That’s technically true, and it means almost nothing. He printed over a billion tokens of his own currency, bought a sliver of the supply for a few hundred dollars, watched the exchange multiply that price by every token in existence, and became a “billionaire” on paper. He hollered up…
Why did I just buy my first bond ever, after years of being 100% invested in stocks? It comes down to a single number: 5.2%. That’s the highest 30-year Treasury yield we’ve seen since 2007, and it’s reshaping the calculus for every other investment out there. In this month’s First Friday economic update, I break…
The stock market is near record highs. Unemployment is low. So why does it feel like young people have never been more pessimistic about money? Beth Kobliner has been writing about personal finance for over 30 years, and she says today’s 20- and 30-somethings have it harder than any generation she’s covered. She has the…
Why did New York City just freeze rent for a million apartments — and who’s actually going to pay for it? This month’s economic landscape is anything but simple: a job market that’s cooling faster than expected, a brand-new Fed chair rewriting the rulebook, and a policy fight in New York City that reveals exactly…
The US economy showed surprisingly robust job growth in May, adding 172,000 new jobs and signaling a broadening recovery that extends far beyond essential services. But underneath the strong labor market, headlines are flashing mixed signals: treasury yields are climbing on inflation worries, real estate markets are seeing regional corrections, and consumer sentiment is beginning…
The U.S. economy added 115,000 new jobs in April, far exceeding general expectations. But beneath that headline number lies a tale of two economies. While sectors like healthcare, transportation, and retail are surging, the information technology sector is experiencing what can only be described as a “bloodbath.” In this special bonus episode, we’re diving into…
The jobs report that dropped today sent shockwaves through the markets, the US lost 92,000 jobs in February, completely defying expectations of a 60,000 job gain. How do we make sense of data that seems to contradict itself? In this First Friday episode, I break down the confusing signals coming from different employment reports (BLS…
In this First Friday episode, we take a comprehensive look at the economic and market developments from January 2026. From market volatility and a surprising new Fed chair nominee to a groundbreaking “baby bonds” program and major housing policy changes, there’s a lot to unpack. I start with what the stock market pullback means for…