Indian households are rushing to buy electric induction stoves, draining stocks online and in stores, amid fears of a potential cooking gas shortage tied to the Middle East conflict India , the world’s second-largest importer of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), has invoked emergency powers to boost supplies for households even as availability tightens for commercial users including canteens, host...
Indian households are rushing to buy electric induction stoves, draining stocks online and in stores, amid fears of a potential cooking gas shortage tied to the Middle East conflict India , the world’s second-largest importer of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), has invoked emergency powers to boost supplies for households even as availability tightens for commercial users including canteens, hostels and restaurants. Meanwhile, consumers are buying electric cooking appliances as a precaution, with some households worried about refill delays and higher prices. Advertisement Checks by Reuters on Thursday showed several induction stove models were unavailable on Amazon, Walmart-backed Flipkart, Eternal’s Blinkit and Zepto, while some offline chains said fresh supplies were still days away. Induction stove sales on Amazon India have jumped more than 30-fold, while rice cookers and electric pressure cookers are up fourfold, a company spokesperson said. People surround a vehicle loaded with LPG cylinders in Ahmedabad, India, on Thursday. Photo: Reuters Kitchen appliances maker TTK Prestige said demand for induction stoves had surged far beyond supply.
A 102-year-old woman from eastern China has won hearts online with her optimistic attitude and unique lifestyle. Jin Baoling, a centenarian from a rural area in Taizhou, Zhejiang province, is frequently visited by her son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter. Known for her longevity and cheerful personality, fellow villagers affectionately call her “Old Baby.” Advertisement According to the Taizhou ...
A 102-year-old woman from eastern China has won hearts online with her optimistic attitude and unique lifestyle. Jin Baoling, a centenarian from a rural area in Taizhou, Zhejiang province, is frequently visited by her son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter. Known for her longevity and cheerful personality, fellow villagers affectionately call her “Old Baby.” Advertisement According to the Taizhou Evening News, Jin is mentally sharp and physically healthy, having not visited a hospital in the past 50 years. Centenarian Jin Baoling tucks into one the dishes she loves which have helped her live a long life. Photo: Douyin She wakes up around 9am, washes up, and enjoys the sunshine in her garden. By 7pm, she is in bed, after taking naps throughout the day.
Kirpal Kooner/iStock via Getty Images By Jennifer Nash Housing starts jumped 7.2% in January to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.487 million, exceeding the forecast of 1.340 million. This is the highest level in eleven months and marks the third consecutive monthly increase. Housing starts are up 9.5% compared to one year ago. Background on Housing Starts Housing starts track how many reside...
Kirpal Kooner/iStock via Getty Images By Jennifer Nash Housing starts jumped 7.2% in January to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.487 million, exceeding the forecast of 1.340 million. This is the highest level in eleven months and marks the third consecutive monthly increase. Housing starts are up 9.5% compared to one year ago. Background on Housing Starts Housing starts track how many residential buildings began construction in the preceding month. The data is divided into three types of structures: single-family homes, residences with 2-4 units (condos or townhouses), and structures with 5+ units (apartment complexes). A critical aspect of the home-building industry is the powerful influence it has on the rest of the economy. Here is the historical series for total privately owned housing starts, which dates from 1959. Because of the extreme volatility of the monthly data points, a six-month moving average has been included. Housing Starts: Structure Breakdown In January, single-family housing starts were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 0.935 million. This represents a 2.8% decline from December and a 6.5% drop from one year ago. Multi-family building housing starts were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 0.524 million, their highest level since May 2023. This represents a 29.1% increase from December and a 56.9% rise from one year ago. Note: Buildings with 2-4 units only have N.S.A. data available because tests for identifiable and stable seasonality do not meet reliability standards. Housing Starts: The Population-Adjusted Reality Here is the data with a simple population adjustment. The Census Bureau's mid-month population estimates show substantial growth in the US population since 1959. Here is a chart of housing starts as a percent of the population. We've added a linear regression through the monthly data to highlight the trend. Housing Starts: A Footnote on Volatility The extreme volatility of this monthly indicator is the rationale for p...
Paging Nostradamus: You Have A Margin Call Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog, If conditions change beneath the surface, the folks behind the curtain will be powerless to do anything but make it worse. This just in: predicting is hard, especially about the future. One solution is ambiguity: couch predictions in poetic allusions that are open to interpretation. What's hard is making...
Paging Nostradamus: You Have A Margin Call Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog, If conditions change beneath the surface, the folks behind the curtain will be powerless to do anything but make it worse. This just in: predicting is hard, especially about the future. One solution is ambiguity: couch predictions in poetic allusions that are open to interpretation. What's hard is making an unambiguous prediction that turn out to be correct. Recency bias often trips us up, as making predictions based on projecting the recent past seems to work well until trends and dynamics change. But due to recency bias, we tend to ignore these signals and focus on whatever supports our belief that the future will be a continuation of the recent past. If we live long enough to experience several epochal transitions, we start noticing longer-term patterns. One such pattern that attracts little attention is that recessions tend not to replicate the previous recession; they tend to follow the recession before. So the recession we're now entering won't track the 2008-09 recession, it will likely track either The 1991 recession--shallow and brief--or the previous "real recessions" of 1980-83 or 1973-75. The recession of 2008-09 was characterized by these dynamics: 1. The price of oil spiked, but fell rapidly back to its previous range. 2. Low inflation generated by the massive deflationary impact of China's expansion of low-cost manufacturing and credit expansion enabled the Federal Reserve to flood the financial system with trillions of dollars, pinning interest rates to zero (ZIRP--zero interest rate policy). 3. Low inflation enabled authorities to "run the economy hot" with cheap, abundant credit that inflated credit-asset bubbles in real estate, stocks and other assets, generating a "wealth effect" in the top 10% who own the majority of the assets. 4. The Fed's balance sheet and federal debt were both modest when measured by GDP, and so these could be expanded with little...
China’s consumer spending may have booked the worst start to any year outside the pandemic, highlighting the challenge to a government that has targeted a bigger role for domestic demand. Retail sales for the first two months of the year likely rose 2.1% compared with the same period of 2025, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg ahead of the official release on Mond...
China’s consumer spending may have booked the worst start to any year outside the pandemic, highlighting the challenge to a government that has targeted a bigger role for domestic demand. Retail sales for the first two months of the year likely rose 2.1% compared with the same period of 2025, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg ahead of the official release on Monday. That would be the lowest reading on record, outside of January-February 2020, when the economy was reeling from the Covid shock. Industrial production likely expanded 5% in the past two months, a notable slowdown from the 5.9% pace recorded at the start of 2025 — though still a relative bright spot, reflecting robust foreign demand. The third key indicator due Monday is fixed asset investment , where economists see the unprecedented slump of 2025 extending into this year. Outlays are forecast to be down 4.2% from a year before, with property investment contracting some 19.3%. If the forecasts are realized, the first detailed 2026 snapshot of the world’s second-largest economy would depict a further weakening in domestic demand, in the face of official pledges to make its revival a priority. The figures represent a bigger challenge challenge in light of risks to the surprisingly strong export side of the economy — stemming from the Iran war. “Beijing needs export growth to offset the crashing property market, but the resulting staggering trade imbalance is unlikely to be sustained,” Nomura Holdings Inc. economists led by Ting Lu wrote in a Thursday note. “It’s a dilemma that Beijing will have to resolve.” So far, the Chinese government hasn’t suggested it’s about to change course amid the fast-changing international geopolitical environment. The leadership unveiled its annual economic goals just last week — plans likely made months ahead the current upheavals in the Middle East. What Bloomberg Economics Says... “High-frequency data suggest weakness in China’s economic ac...
(RTTNews) - The China stock market has moved higher in two straight sessions, advancing more than 60 points or 1.7 percent along the way. The Shanghai Composite Index now sits just beneath the 3,730-point plateau although it may had back those gains on Tuesday. The global forecast for the Asian markets is murky as investors wait for developments in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The Euro...
(RTTNews) - The China stock market has moved higher in two straight sessions, advancing more than 60 points or 1.7 percent along the way. The Shanghai Composite Index now sits just beneath the 3,730-point plateau although it may had back those gains on Tuesday. The global forecast for the Asian markets is murky as investors wait for developments in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The European and U.S. markets were mixed and flat and the Asian bourses figure to follow suit. The SCI finished modestly higher on Monday following mixed performances from the financial shares, resource stocks and energy companies, while the property sector was soft. For the day, the index gained 31.26 points or 0.85 percent to finish at 3,728.03 after trading between 3,702.38 and 3,745.94. The Shenzhen Composite Index jumped 40.40 points or 1.76 percent to end at 2,341.17. Among the actives, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China slumped 0.26 percent, while Agricultural Bank of China climbed 1.17 percent, China Merchants Bank added 0.48 percent, Bank of Communications collected 0.13 percent, China Life Insurance jumped 1.42 percent, Jiangxi Copper stumbled 1.82 percent, Aluminum Corp of China (Chalco) plunged 3.02 percent, Yankuang Energy dropped 0.92 percent, PetroChina lost 0.58 percent, Huaneng Power perked 0.14 percent, China Shenhua Energy surged 4.45 percent, Gemdale tumbled 1.75 percent, Poly Developments retreated 1.47 percent, China Vanke shed 0.46 percent and China Petroleum and Chemical (Sinopec) and Bank of China were unchanged. The lead from Wall Street offers little guidance as the major averages opened mixed but moved little, hugging the line all day and ending on opposite sides. The Dow shed 34.30 points or 0.08 percent to finish at 44,911.82, while the NASDAQ rose 6.80 points or 0.03 percent to close at 21,629.77 and the S&P 500 eased 0.65 points or 0.01 percent to end at 6,449.15. The choppy trading on Wall Street came as traders kept an eye on the White House, ...
Image source: The Motley Fool. March 12, 2026, at 5 p.m. ET CALL PARTICIPANTS President and Chief Executive Officer — Brian Daniel Murphy Chief Financial Officer — H. Andrew Fulmer Vice President, Investor Relations — Elizabeth A. Sharp TAKEAWAYS Net Sales -- $56.6 million, a 3.3% decrease year over year, attributed to an ongoing inventory reset at the largest e-commerce retailer and softness in t...
Image source: The Motley Fool. March 12, 2026, at 5 p.m. ET CALL PARTICIPANTS President and Chief Executive Officer — Brian Daniel Murphy Chief Financial Officer — H. Andrew Fulmer Vice President, Investor Relations — Elizabeth A. Sharp TAKEAWAYS Net Sales -- $56.6 million, a 3.3% decrease year over year, attributed to an ongoing inventory reset at the largest e-commerce retailer and softness in the aiming solutions category. -- $56.6 million, a 3.3% decrease year over year, attributed to an ongoing inventory reset at the largest e-commerce retailer and softness in the aiming solutions category. Outdoor Lifestyle Category Sales -- $35.3 million with 5.4% growth year over year, driven by BOG and MEAT! Your Maker brands, and representing over 62% of total company net sales. -- $35.3 million with 5.4% growth year over year, driven by BOG and MEAT! Your Maker brands, and representing over 62% of total company net sales. Shooting Sports Category Sales -- Down 15% year over year, mainly due to decreased demand for aiming solutions; Caldwell brand registered "solid growth" on the new Claycopter platform. -- Down 15% year over year, mainly due to decreased demand for aiming solutions; Caldwell brand registered "solid growth" on the new Claycopter platform. Point of Sale (POS) Growth -- 5% increase year over year, marking a third consecutive quarter of positive POS results, led by the outdoor lifestyle category. -- 5% increase year over year, marking a third consecutive quarter of positive POS results, led by the outdoor lifestyle category. Traditional Channel Sales -- Down 2.1% year over year; E-Commerce Channel Sales -- Down 4.6% year over year, with inventory reset and tariff pressures impacting channel performance. -- Down 2.1% year over year; -- Down 4.6% year over year, with inventory reset and tariff pressures impacting channel performance. Gross Margin -- 41%, down 370 basis points from prior year; the decrease driven by new tariffs and a $1.2 million inventory reser...