High energy prices are kryptonite for the housing market. Affordability, especially for those first-time home buyers, is now an elusive dream until oil prices come down and interest rates come down.
According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the global average price of jet fuel jumped 58.4% week-on-week to $157.41 a barrel, far above the $88 average the industry had expected for 2026.
Remember that moment when you check your bank account and wonder where all your money went? Last month, I had one of those wake-up calls. After getting laid off and freelancing for four months, I thought I'd gotten pretty good at budgeting. But there I was, staring at my statement, realizing I'd somehow spent $847 on things I couldn't even remember buying. That's when it hit me: The problem was all those "normal" expenses that everyone just accepts as part of life.
When you work in the operating world, you are in the weeds of your business. For example, at SoFi I knew all the nuances of different types of student loan forbearance programs and at Brex I knew the minutiae of the Mastercard transaction chargeback rules. This contrasts with my experience as a private equity investor where I look at purchasing a business ranging from a chain of laundromats to Ancestry.com within the same month.
The idea echoes a policy implemented during his first term, when Trump suggested that requiring hospitals to post their charges online could ease one of the most common gripes about the health care system the lack of upfront prices. To anyone who's gotten a bill three months after treatment only to find mysterious charges, the idea seemed intuitive. "You're able to go online and compare all of the hospitals and the doctors and the prices,"
The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index cratered 9.7 points to 84.5 in January, falling below even the lowest readings during the COVID-19 pandemic. A measure of Americans' short-term expectations for their income, business conditions and the job market tumbled 9.5 points to 65.1, well below 80, the marker that can signal a recession ahead. It's the 12th consecutive month that reading has come in under 80. Consumers' assessments of their current economic situation slid by 9.9 points to 113.7.
When analyzing the operational costs of a healthcare facility, the debate between In-House vs Outsourced Billing Services always comes up. Many business owners find that managing billing internally requires constant training and expensive software, whereas the best medical billing companies often provide a more streamlined, result-oriented approach for a percentage of the collections.
CVS Health ( NYSE: CVS) delivered a solid revenue beat in Q4 2025, though adjusted earnings declined year-over-year despite exceeding Wall Street expectations. The 8.2% revenue increase to $105.69 billion marked the company's strongest quarterly top-line growth of the year. However, adjusted EPS of $1.09 declined from $1.19 in Q4 2024, pressured by Medicare Part D headwinds from Inflation Reduction Act seasonality changes.