The fraying of the ceasefire in the US-Israel war against Iran reflects grim patterns of history. Truces are often doomed because they focus on stopping battle-related violence and rarely begin to address the underlying struggles that ignited hostilities. A pause without a shared common endgame often resets the battlefield as reasons harden for prolonging warfare. Viable political solutions seldom...
The fraying of the ceasefire in the US-Israel war against Iran reflects grim patterns of history. Truces are often doomed because they focus on stopping battle-related violence and rarely begin to address the underlying struggles that ignited hostilities. A pause without a shared common endgame often resets the battlefield as reasons harden for prolonging warfare. Viable political solutions seldom follow and take hold for peace to endure. Over the past decade, we’ve seen the perils. The Minsk...
Jonathan Kitchen/DigitalVision via Getty Images Arguably the two most popular dividend ETFs are the Vanguard High Dividend Yield Index Fund ETF ( VYM ) and the Schwab US Dividend Equity ETF ( SCHD ), and I own both of them. The assets under management for SCHD are $86.37 billion, while VYM has amassed $72.63 billion in AUM. SCHD offers a concentrated basket of high-quality dividend payers with a y...
Jonathan Kitchen/DigitalVision via Getty Images Arguably the two most popular dividend ETFs are the Vanguard High Dividend Yield Index Fund ETF ( VYM ) and the Schwab US Dividend Equity ETF ( SCHD ), and I own both of them. The assets under management for SCHD are $86.37 billion, while VYM has amassed $72.63 billion in AUM. SCHD offers a concentrated basket of high-quality dividend payers with a yield that exceeds 3%, but popularity is not the same thing as superiority. I think that the obsession over SCHD has caused a lot of investors to overlook VYM, which has generated a larger return over the past 3 years. In this environment I am favoring a broad ETF such as VYM that holds 568 positions across every major sector of the U.S. economy because it provides a breadth of diversification that helps mitigate downside risk in volatile markets. I believe VYM is the better core holding for anyone building a dividend-oriented equity allocation in 2026, and the current environment has strengthened my conviction if you're not interested in utilizing a covered call income strategy to increase the dividend income being generated. When I look at the chart of VYM and what is happening on the geopolitical front, I think VYM can break out to the upside as Q1 earnings roll in since I am of the opinion that we are closer to a deal that will cause the price per barrel to decline than others believe we are. Seeking Alpha Following Up on My Previous Article About VYM Back in August of 2025, I downgraded my investment thesis from bullish to neutral on VYM ( can be read here ), and that wasn’t the correct call. VYM has appreciated by 10% compared to the S&P 500 climbing 7.37% over the same period. When the dividend is factored in, the total return increases to 12.05%. I felt that most of the appreciation was priced into the investment thesis and that the current income and growth prospects for VYM lagged other opportunities in the market. I felt the lack of technology would be its Achille...
Geneva, Switzerland, April 15, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SEALSQ Corp (NASDAQ: LAES) ("SEALSQ" or "Company"), a company that focuses on developing and selling Semiconductors, PKI, and Post-Quantum technology hardware and software products, today highlights a major milestone achieved by its Quantum Fund portfolio company EeroQ, which has successfully demonstrated the future of autonomous quantum comp...
Geneva, Switzerland, April 15, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SEALSQ Corp (NASDAQ: LAES) ("SEALSQ" or "Company"), a company that focuses on developing and selling Semiconductors, PKI, and Post-Quantum technology hardware and software products, today highlights a major milestone achieved by its Quantum Fund portfolio company EeroQ, which has successfully demonstrated the future of autonomous quantum computing laboratories in collaboration with Conductor Quantum and NVIDIA. The breakthrough, announced t
First-quarter earnings season kicks off this week, and it promises to be an interesting one, as the third month of the quarter, March, saw oil prices rise from about $72 a barrel to over $100 a barrel. Most companies can be negatively affected by a spike in energy prices, either directly because energy is a significant input to their operations, or indirectly because higher energy prices can reduc...
First-quarter earnings season kicks off this week, and it promises to be an interesting one, as the third month of the quarter, March, saw oil prices rise from about $72 a barrel to over $100 a barrel. Most companies can be negatively affected by a spike in energy prices, either directly because energy is a significant input to their operations, or indirectly because higher energy prices can reduce consumer spending elsewhere in the economy. So, it wouldn't be surprising to see some growing pessimism about first-quarter earnings. Yet, CEOs of large companies seem relatively optimistic about their companies' financial performance. That's according to FactSet, which tracks S&P earnings reports. Overall, 110 of the 500 large U.S.-listed firms in the S&P 500 index have issued quarterly EPS guidance for the first quarter (that guidance is a sort of pre-earnings announcement issued in advance of a company's actual earnings report). Continue reading
Tap five stocks with increasing P/E ratios to try out an out-of-the-box approach. These stocks include Keurig Dr Pepper, Purple Innovation, H&R Block, Peloton Interactive and Allbirds.
Tap five stocks with increasing P/E ratios to try out an out-of-the-box approach. These stocks include Keurig Dr Pepper, Purple Innovation, H&R Block, Peloton Interactive and Allbirds.
Bank of America Corp. saw its customers’ spending on gas soar 16% in March as the war in Iran led to a jump in oil prices. For the quarter, spending on gas was up 3%, according to a presentation on the company’s website. BofA offered the breakdown as investors grow increasingly concerned that as consumers spend more on gas, they’ll pull back on discretionary items such as entertainment, travel and...
Bank of America Corp. saw its customers’ spending on gas soar 16% in March as the war in Iran led to a jump in oil prices. For the quarter, spending on gas was up 3%, according to a presentation on the company’s website. BofA offered the breakdown as investors grow increasingly concerned that as consumers spend more on gas, they’ll pull back on discretionary items such as entertainment, travel and retail. Those latter categories all grew at healthy levels in the first quarter for BofA customers, with entertainment outlays up 12%. For now, gas spending hasn’t changed the underlying strength consumers are exhibiting, BofA Chief Financial Officer Alastair Borthwick said Wednesday on a conference call with reporters. If the war in Iran drags on, elevated gas prices are likely to continue to weigh on consumers’ budgets. BofA joined firms including Chime Financial Inc. in disclosing gas-cost impacts on their customers, with Chime Chief Executive Officer Chris Britt saying earlier this month that his firm’s clients spent 25% more on fuel in March compared with the previous month. “That is definitely something consumers are feeling a real pinch in,” he said. Retail gasoline and diesel prices in the US are at their highest seasonal levels ever, with gasoline averaging $4.12 a gallon on Monday, according to the American Automobile Association . That’s a record for the date, up from the previous high of $4.07 on the same day in 2022, following a price spike driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Read More: US Gasoline, Diesel Pump Prices Reach All-Time Seasonal Highs Other consumer-finance companies, including Ally Financial Inc. , Capital One Financial Corp. and American Express Co. , are scheduled to report results this week and next, with more information about the impact on spending from higher gas prices likely to be disclosed. For more on Bank of America first-quarter earnings, click here for our TOPLive blog.
OpenAI has abandoned plans to rent compute capacity directly from a Norwegian data center, days after confirming it paused a similar project in the U.K. Microsoft is taking the extra compute previously earmarked for OpenAI at a planned 230MW "Stargate Norway" facility in Narvik. OpenAI is now in discussions to rent capacity from Microsoft instead, a spokesperson for the company told CNBC. The AI c...
OpenAI has abandoned plans to rent compute capacity directly from a Norwegian data center, days after confirming it paused a similar project in the U.K. Microsoft is taking the extra compute previously earmarked for OpenAI at a planned 230MW "Stargate Norway" facility in Narvik. OpenAI is now in discussions to rent capacity from Microsoft instead, a spokesperson for the company told CNBC. The AI company said in 2025 it had the opportunity to be an "initial offtaker" at the data center, which OpenAI positioned under the umbrella of its "Stargate" infrastructure project and was being built by UK AI cloud startup Nscale. OpenAI was in discussions to rent around half of the facility's capacity, a source with firsthand knowledge of the matter told CNBC. The source said that Nscale and OpenAI ultimately did not agree on an offtake deal, with Microsoft stepping in to take up the capacity. Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that OpenAI didn't conclude its offtake talks at the data center with Nscale. An OpenAI spokesperson declined to comment on the amount of capacity it discussed renting as part of a potential offtake deal. The company told CNBC that it was in discussions to rent capacity from Microsoft, adding that this made more financial sense for the company, falling under existing contracted spending. "We are moving ahead with our plans in Norway," an OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC. "Microsoft is an important partner in our network and we will work with them to access compute in Norway just as we already do in other parts of the world." They referred CNBC to its October announcement that it had contracted to purchase $250 billion of services from Azure, Microsoft's cloud-computing division. Nscale announced on Tuesday that Microsoft was expanding its agreement at the Narvik campus, adding more than 30,000 Nvidia Rubin GPUs in deployment. In March, Nscale said it would support Microsoft with its deployment of Nvidia's Vera Rubin platform across sites in the UK, Norway and be...
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media, before boarding Air Force One on his way to Virginia, at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, U.S., April 10, 2026. Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters President Donald Trump on Wednesday again threatened to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and said the probe into the renovation of the central bank's headquarters needs to continue. If Powell stays on as a...
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media, before boarding Air Force One on his way to Virginia, at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, U.S., April 10, 2026. Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters President Donald Trump on Wednesday again threatened to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and said the probe into the renovation of the central bank's headquarters needs to continue. If Powell stays on as a Fed governor after his successor is confirmed, Trump said he'll have him removed from office. "Then I'll have to fire him," the president said during an interview on Fox Business. "If he's not leaving on time — I've held back firing him. I've wanted to fire him, but I hate to be controversial. I want to be uncontroversial." Powell's term as chair expires May 15, and Trump has nominated former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh as his replacement. Though Powell's time as chair is nearly finished, he has two years remaining on his term as governor. Though most Fed chairs in the past have left the central bank after being replaced, Powell has demurred under repeated questions on what he plans to do. Powell's exit as chair has been complicated by an investigation into the Fed headquarters renovation. Washington, D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro tried issuing a subpoena to Powell for information regarding the project but was rebuffed by a judge , a decision she is appealing. At the same time, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he will block Warsh's nomination from leaving the Senate Banking Committee until the probe is finished. Trump said the investigation must continue. "What they've done to that so it is probably corrupt, but what it really is is incompetent, and we have to show the incompetence of that," he said. Last year, Trump tried to replace Governor Lisa Cook following accusations of mortgage improprieties, but has been unsuccessful this far. The case has been argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and is awaiting a decision. The president also repeated his calls for lower interest r...
Jonathan Kitchen/DigitalVision via Getty Images I covered Uber ( UBER ) last week, where I communicated a positive outlook on the e-hailing stock. Today's article discusses a similar name, Marti Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: MRT ), which is an emerging market e-hailing company situated in Turkey. Although not as established as Uber, Marti shares similar features while providing concentrated emerging m...
Jonathan Kitchen/DigitalVision via Getty Images I covered Uber ( UBER ) last week, where I communicated a positive outlook on the e-hailing stock. Today's article discusses a similar name, Marti Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: MRT ), which is an emerging market e-hailing company situated in Turkey. Although not as established as Uber, Marti shares similar features while providing concentrated emerging market exposure. I've decided to add Marti to my watchlist and will likely consider a position when my portfolio's cash position has settled high by enough; here's why I'm bullish. Marti: An Overview I think the easiest way to describe the business is by quoting its own statement, which reads as : "Marti is Türkiye’s leading mobility app, offering a wide variety of transportation services. Marti operates a ride-hailing service that matches riders with car, motorcycle and taxi drivers; delivery services; and a large fleet of rental e-mopeds, e-bikes and e-scooters. All of Marti’s offerings are serviced by proprietary software systems and IoT infrastructure." In essence, the company is an early-stage version of Uber with the add-on of self-use services. In addition, it has emerging market focus (Turkey). Don't forget that Turkey has a population of over 86 million people (this excludes travellers) and that technological transfer (such as e-hailing apps) from developed markets remains in an early-stage (explained later in the article). Marti operates in 20 of Turkey's largest cities, covering 80% of national GDP and it's the most downloaded urban mobility app in the region, illustrating successful market targeting and capture. Figure 1 (Marti Technologies) As previously mentioned the company is multi-service. Notably the company has grown its tips and revenue per customer at scale due to core offerings and the synergies provided by motorcycle offerings – as shown by the following figure, 82% of Marti's motorcycle users have used another Marti service. Figure 2 (Marti Technologi...