$16.5 billion. That is what JPMorgan Chase earned in net income during the first three months of 2026. It is a record quarter, with all-time trading revenue, a sixth consecutive double-digit earnings growth print for the S&P 500, and the kind of Wall Street earnings that look bulletproof on paper. Read more »
Three point three percent. After a Middle East oil shock and a US-China tariff truce, the IMF World Economic Outlook just pinned its 2026 global growth number to that single digit. It is a 0.2 percentage point upgrade from the October 2025 baseline, released this morning in Washington. Read more »
Three hundred billion dollars. That is the sum global venture capitalists poured into AI investment during the first quarter of 2026 — the largest single-quarter total in the history of startup financing. The figure represents 70% of all venture spending in 2025, compressed into just 90 days. Read more »
Three-point-five to three-point-seven-five. That is the federal funds target range the Federal Reserve has not touched for two straight meetings. The March minutes just told investors that number could move higher instead of lower. Read more »
$225 billion. That is how much the United States spends on imported pharmaceuticals each year. On April 2, President Trump signed an executive order slapping tariffs of up to 100% on every patented drug crossing American borders. Read more »
53.3 — that is where American consumer sentiment now stands. The University of Michigan’s final March reading landed below the starting level of every single recession since the survey’s inception. Consumers are more pessimistic now than they were at the onset of any downturn in the past half century. Read more »
One hundred and sixty billion dollars. That is how much Trump tariffs extracted from American importers before the Supreme Court pulled the plug. Liberation Day was supposed to shrink the trade deficit and resurrect manufacturing. Read more »
$141.36. That is the price of a barrel of Brent crude in the spot market — the highest oil prices have reached since the 2008 financial crisis. The Strait of Hormuz blockade has cut off roughly 20% of the world’s daily oil supply, and the shockwaves are now rippling from gas stations to grocery aisles to Wall Street trading floors. Read more »
Forty-nine percent. That is where Moody’s AI-driven recession model now stands — one percentage point from a threshold that has preceded every U.S. recession in eight decades of backtested data. The last three times it crossed 50%, the economy was in recession within a year. Read more »
252,760 miles. That is now the farthest any human has traveled from Earth. NASA’s Artemis II crew reached that mark on April 6 while flying behind the far side of the Moon aboard the Orion spacecraft, christened “Integrity.” Read more »