US Politics & Business News
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China’s factory activity shrank for a second straight month in August, though the contraction was smaller than economists had anticipated, adding pressure on Beijing to shore up the slowing economy. The official purchasing managers’ index came in at 49.8 in August, an improvement from 49.2 recorded in July, according to data released Monday by the…
Freedom Fuel gas stations, promoted by the Trump administration for their low prices, allegedly sold fuel their supplier never received payment for, according to a newly filed lawsuit. Mansfield Oil Company filed the suit on August 19 in U.S. District Court in Eastern Pennsylvania, targeting KRSM, a foreign corporation linked to the Freedom Fuel Network….
After months of brutal losses, the software sector is staging a dramatic comeback that analysts say could have significant room left to run. The Morningstar US Software Application Index shed roughly 27% between October 2025 and mid-July 2026, even as the broader market gained nearly 15% over the same stretch. Stocks including Salesforce (CRM), ServiceNow…
U.S. margin debt has surged to a record $1.4 trillion in May, rising 54% from a year earlier, according to data from FINRA. The staggering rise in borrowed money reflects a broader cultural shift among both retail and institutional investors who are increasingly comfortable taking on significant financial risk. Leveraged exchange-traded funds, which produce double…
The escalating conflict involving Iran is sending shockwaves through global supply chains far beyond oil markets, hitting helium supplies hard and fast. Helium, used to fill party balloons but also critical to semiconductor manufacturing and medical imaging, is tightening in supply and surging in price as fighting disrupts energy production in the Persian Gulf. Roughly…
RTX (RTX) has reached a record backlog of $289 billion, climbing 22% year-over-year and 6% sequentially, a milestone that signals more than simple growth. The real story behind the backlog is its composition, with commercial aerospace accounting for the larger share in a roughly 60/40 split over defense contracts. That split has benefited RTX significantly,…
Despite a powerful rally in quantum computing stocks, IonQ (IONQ) continues to attract serious skepticism from analysts and investors focused on its financial fundamentals. The company posted an operating loss of $633.7 million in 2025, a figure that underscores the vast gap between its market enthusiasm and underlying business performance. IonQ’s revenue grew an impressive…
D-Wave Quantum (NASDAQ: QBTS) occupies a genuinely rare position in the technology sector, operating as a pure-play quantum computing company with real paying customers. Unlike many of its competitors still locked in laboratory phases, D-Wave’s annealing systems are already running production workloads at major corporations including AT&T. That commercial milestone, which no other quantum computing…
When Tim Cook announced his retirement in April 2026, the business world began reckoning with one of the most consequential leadership tenures in corporate history. Steve Jobs himself once noted that Cook was “not a product person, per se,” a characterization that could have defined Cook’s tenure as a liability from the very start. Instead,…
The letters K, C, and E are not initials or fraternity symbols — they are the terms economists, executives, and politicians now use to describe the U.S. economy. Since the pandemic recovery, economists largely agreed the economy was “K-shaped,” meaning different income groups were moving in opposite directions with growing inequality between them. That consensus…