Update: Doesn’t seem to be any limit.
Direct link to offer (our affiliate link here and below)
$5.95 discount applies at checkout. Some have the 5% Amazon card or possibly other cards with offers for spending at Amazon. A reader says they were able to stack a previous version of this deal with one of the Shop With Points deals as well.
Hat tip to Dans Deals
RBC’s mortgage portfolio grew 5% year over year as quarterly growth accelerated, though loan-to-value ratios and delinquencies moved higher.
If you look closely at the last 150 years of stock market history, you’ll see a clear pattern: Periods of extremely high valuations are often followed by disappointing returns, some of which lead to outright crashes.
Right now, we’re living through one of the most expensive markets in history — the second most expensive, as measured by the Shiller cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio. Since the 1880s, the Shiller CAPE ratio has averaged about 18. At the time of writing, it had exceeded 41. Only once has the market been this expensive, and that was during the dot-com era.
Data by YCharts
The Shiller CAPE ratio is a handy way of evaluating the S&P 500 (^GSPC -0.25%) based on the last decade of inflation-adjusted earnings. “Inflation-adjusted” is just a technical way of saying those earnings are converted into today’s dollars; it makes the comparison more apples-to-apples. Likewise, using a decade of data helps smooth out unusually strong or weak years, which offers a much clearer picture of the market’s underlying value.
Today’s Change
(-0.25%) -19.23
Index Level
7,711.76
Day’s Range
7,700.91 – 7,771.48
52wk Range
6,316.91 – 7,816.70
Typically, a higher-than-average CAPE ratio is a strong signal that the market is expensive. Over the last 30 years, for instance, the average CAPE ratio has been about 29; today’s reading of about 41 is exceptionally high.
Image source: Getty Images.
An expensive market isn’t necessarily bad, nor does it imply that every stock within it is overpriced.
At the same time, high valuations often coincide with overly speculative periods. The speculative nature, which can detach concrete earnings from expectations, is what makes these markets particularly fearsome. Investors expect growth far into the future, leaving little breathing room for disappointment, and any threat to future profits can give the market the jitters, possibly even triggering a crash.
The dot-com crash is an example of this phenomenon. In the mid-to-late 1990s, investors were pouring money into little-known tech companies that had hardly any revenue or profits. At about the same time, the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates — three times in 1999, followed by three more in 2000.
The Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC -0.52%) peaked in March 2000. Then, a combination of higher interest rates and companies selling their own stock triggered panic. By October 2002, the tech-heavy Nasdaq index had fallen 78% from its peak.
History suggests that the market could crash, but it’s impossible to predict when it could occur or how long the damage could last.
On the flip side, the stock market might not crash at all. It might correct itself, which is defined as a 10% drop from recent highs. There’s simply no telling what the market will do in the future. You might think you’re timing the market by selling now, only to miss the market’s best days.
If you’re worried about a stock market crash, it might be worth reviewing your portfolio to see if it’s properly diversified. A market pullback could hurt some industries more than others, and diversification could help limit the overall damage. You might also want to have some cash on hand in case a correction opens up buying opportunities.
Artificial intelligence is incredibly useful during the hiring process. But should you let it decide salaries, too?
A new targeted Amex Offer is available for Allegiant Air, giving eligible cardholders $50 back after spending $250 or more on qualifying flights.
The offer is valid on one or more eligible Allegiant purchases made directly through Allegiant by September 30, 2026. Flights must originate in the U.S. and be charged in U.S. dollars.
The offer is popping up on consumer and business credit cards. Let’s look at the details below.
Earn a one-time $50 statement credit after using your enrolled eligible Card to spend a minimum of $250 in one or more qualifying purchases of flights booked with Allegiant Air online at allegiantair.com, by phone, or at an Allegiant Air ticket counter by 9/30/2026. Flights must originate in the US & be charged in USD.
Offer details and availability may vary by cardholder. Just login to your American Express account(s) to see if you are eligible to add this offer to your card(s).
Amex Offers are an extra perk on all American Express credit cards, charge cards, and even prepaid cards. You can see these offers in your accounts either as a statement credit or extra Membership Rewards points for spending a certain amount at eligible merchants. You will need to add the offer to a specific card first, and then use that card to get the credit. Here are a few things you should know:
This is a straightforward Allegiant Amex Offer that works out to 20% back when spending exactly $250.
The offer applies to qualifying Allegiant-marketed flights booked directly with the airline, but excludes things like Allianz travel insurance, Trip Flex, merchandise and third-party bookings. The travel itself can take place after September 30, as long as the qualifying purchase is made by the deadline.
If you have an Allegiant trip coming up, this is an easy offer to use. Just make sure it’s added to your Amex card before booking.
Remember that you can use the search bar within the “Amex Offers” section in the app to find this offer quickly, instead of scrolling through 100+ deals.
Most people think you need an accounting degree to make or read a balance sheet, but that’s simply not true.
In this video, I’ll show you how to create a complete Profit & Loss statement and Balance Sheet from scratch, even if you’ve never studied accounting.
Through a simple story and a few logical steps, you’ll understand how every business transaction can be classified into just four categories – Expense, Income, Liability, or Asset – and how these are all you need to make financial statements.
By the end, you’ll be able to prepare a balance sheet in minutes and truly understand what’s happening inside any business.
Watch till the end, this one video might change how you look at business finance forever.
#finance #financialtips #business #financialknowledge #balancesheet #profit #trending #accounting #charatedaccount
source
A market for weather risk has existed for more than two decades: CME listed its first weather futures in 1999, and volumes surged more than 260% in 2023.Utilities are natural users because temperature affects demand, output, and revenue.These markets incorporate forecasts and expectations about temperature. But this signal lives in a different corner of finance. Temperature risk may be tradable in derivatives markets, but it is still not routinely translated into company forecasts, credit ratings, and valuation models. The market can price a weather index. It still struggles to translate that signal into a company’s risk.
For some sectors, this is a live problem, not general anxiety. Utilities, grid operators, insurers, agriculture, data centers, and heavy industry all depend on physical conditions that heat can disrupt: water, peak-demand patterns, safe outdoor work, or cooling systems that become more expensive when electricity demand is highest.
The exposure is not the same for every company. That is why it should be priced differently across them, the same way markets already differentiate on debt maturity, commodity exposure, and refinancing risk.
Boards cannot control river temperatures, but they can oversee how companies measure and adapt to the resulting exposure. A river becoming too warm to cool a reactor is not a managerial failure. No board caused the heatwave, and no executive chose the river’s temperature. The financial impact still lands on the company, through lower output, higher adaptation spending, and possibly a higher cost of capital.
The newly formed Real REMAX Group will no longer be investing in the growth of its Motto Mortgage franchise system, with its sights set on a more unified mortgage platform, the company confirmed with National Mortgage News.
Processing Content
The move threatens independent mortgage banks and outside loan originators who rely on real estate agents for referrals, as the company aims to keep borrowers within its platform from the initial home search through funding and closing. The news comes after HomeServices of America announced earlier this week the expansion of its
The Real REMAX platform will likely be similar to what competitors like Zillow, with its mortgage business Zillow Home Loans, and Rocket Cos., following the acquisitions of
Vic Lombardo has also stepped down as president of mortgage services, and Kate Gurevich, CEO of One Real Mortgage, is now leading the mortgage business, a company spokesperson said.
When The Real Brokerage and REMAX initially
The company echoed that sentiment in an email sent to Motto broker owners and loan originators the same day, which said support from headquarters remained unchanged and the brand will be maintained and continue to operate as a dedicated franchise model even after the transaction closes, according to a United States Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The April email also said, “By bringing more ancillary services together, it’s designed to give agents and their clients more control over each transaction with fewer handoffs, and a better experience end-to-end.”
But the company’s tone has changed. It will no longer offer the sale of new franchises and existing branches will have flexibility in determining the future of their business, including ending their franchise agreements. For owners who chose not to terminate it, Real REMAX will honor the obligations under existing contracts, a company spokesperson said.
Motto operates independently owned mortgage brokerages in more than 40 states, while Real runs One Real Mortgage, a brokerage built on the back of its acquisition of LemonBrew Lending in 2022. The company has not clarified how mortgage opportunities will be distributed.
The acquisition officially closed Monday, creating a platform with more than 180,000 agents worldwide, including over 100,000 in the United States and Canada. Shares of the combined company began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market Tuesday under the ticker symbol “REAX.” The stock began trading at $24.11, and has since declined to $20.77 as of 2 p.m. Friday. BTIG gave the company a buy rating with a $35 price target Thursday.
When Hady Kfoury opened his first restaurant in Manhattan in 2008, he was already out of money. He had raised cash from friends and family to bring the Lebanese food he grew up eating to New York, but construction had cost more than he expected. He still owed money to his general contractor and resorted to buying equipment on eBay just to get the 54-seat restaurant open.
“It was a nightmare,” Kfoury told Fortune.
The nightmare eventually turned into 48 restaurants and counting. NAYA now employs more than 1,000 people, with average annual sales of roughly $3 million per restaurant and same-store sales growth above 10% yearly. Its footprint has grown more than 40% in each of the past four years, just as Mediterranean bowls have become a fast-casual lunch staple. Kfoury’s next target is 200 NAYAs by 2030.
Kfoury was born in Lebanon in 1981, during the country’s civil war. He remembers some days going to school and other days having to take shelter in basements as bombs fell nearby. After studying hospitality in Switzerland and working in New York with chef Daniel Boulud, Kfoury returned to Lebanon, only to live through another war in 2006.
“I’m like, all right, that’s not going to work,” he recalled. “I have to move to the U.S., start a restaurant, and take the flavors that I was raised on and do it over there.”
By 2007, he was back in New York looking for space for a fast-casual Lebanese concept in the city’s office-heavy neighborhoods. But landlords wouldn’t lease to him.
Kfoury had no track record as a restaurant owner, and after months of searching Midtown and Wall Street, he took a space on East 56th Street and Second Avenue. It happened to sit across the street from the aunt he’d stayed with during childhood trips to New York. The location wasn’t busy enough for the high-volume concept he envisioned, so Kfoury opened NAYA as a fine-dining Lebanese restaurant instead.
His mother and aunt became what he calls the “culinary mastermind” behind it. His mother was a talented cook who didn’t measure ingredients, so Kfoury convinced her to turn the food he had grown up eating—chicken kebabs, falafel, rice with vermicelli, baba ghanoush and hummus—into written recipes.
The restaurant attracted attention, but Kfoury hadn’t abandoned his original idea. In 2010, he finally shifted NAYA to fast casual. The challenge was figuring out how to reproduce his family’s food quickly and cheaply enough to serve hundreds of customers without stripping away what made it Lebanese.
“The most difficult part is how do you do it at scale,” Kfoury said.
Ingredients weren’t necessarily the problem. Lebanese cooking is labor intensive, he said, so NAYA introduced equipment, preparation techniques and systems designed to make that labor more efficient. The fast-casual model also depended on higher volumes at smaller margins.
But being early didn’t mean customers immediately understood the concept.
“The first two years were very hard at the fast casual,” Kfoury said. “People didn’t get it.”
Kfoury spent nearly a decade refining the model. By 2019, NAYA had just seven restaurants. Since then, the category around it has changed dramatically. Mediterranean and Middle Eastern flavors have become increasingly common across grocery stores and restaurant menus, while the customizable bowl has become a fixture of the American workday lunch.
Fast-casual Mediterranean chains generated just under $2.5 billion in sales last year, according to Technomic data provided to Fortune. Sales across the category jumped 16% in 2025, significantly outpacing the 6% growth of the broader fast-casual segment. Technomic tracks about 30 leading Mediterranean fast-casual chains with a combined footprint of roughly 1,500 restaurants.
The biggest player offers a glimpse of just how large the category can get. Publicly traded Cava ended its latest quarter with 476 restaurants, nearly 10 times NAYA’s total, yet the two chains generate similar sales per location. Cava reported average unit volume of $3.1 million in the second quarter, compared with roughly $3 million at NAYA. Cava’s same-store sales rose 9% during the quarter, driven in part by a 5.3% increase in traffic.
That growth has come alongside a broader familiarity with foods that Kfoury once had to introduce to customers.
“Ten years ago, you would say shawarma to someone, maybe you would get three out of 10 people who would know what it is,” he said. “Today, eight, nine out of 10 would know what shawarma is.”
Kfoury thinks Americans are also becoming more discerning about what “Mediterranean” actually means. As the label can encompass cuisines from Lebanon and Turkey to Greece, Italy and Morocco, he compares it to the way Americans once broadly categorized distinct cuisines as “Asian food.” Over time, diners learned to distinguish Japanese food from Korean, Taiwanese or Sichuan cuisine. Kfoury expects something similar to happen with Mediterranean food.
“I think the same thing is about to happen in the Mediterranean,” he said. For now, he doesn’t mind NAYA falling under the broader umbrella, even as the company emphasizes its Lebanese roots.
By 2019, Kfoury believed he’d finally refined NAYA’s model enough to scale. After years without institutional backing, he brought on restaurant-focused private equity firm TriSpan in 2020.
Then COVID hit.
NAYA’s seven restaurants were concentrated in Midtown and the Financial District, leaving the company particularly exposed when office workers disappeared. The restaurants shut down for months before gradually reopening, and Kfoury said TriSpan’s arrival helped give NAYA the financial backing to survive the disruption.
What followed was a dramatically faster period of expansion. NAYA’s unit count grew 55.6% in 2022, 42.9% in 2023, 45% in 2024 and 44.8% in 2025, according to the company. It ended last year with 42 restaurants after opening 14 and now operates 48, all company-owned. Its 50th is expected to open in September.
NAYA came roaring back, helped by Manhattan’s rebound. Office leasing across the borough totaled 22.8 million square feet in the first half of 2026, the strongest first half since 2002, according to Colliers. By July, Manhattan’s office availability rate had fallen to 12.7%, its lowest level since September 2020. Tech has helped fuel the demand: Manhattan tech leasing reached a record for the first half of the year as AI companies expanded.
New stores aren’t the only source of growth. Same-store sales are up more than 10%, while catering accounts for roughly 10% of total sales. NAYA has also had to adapt as it pushes beyond the Manhattan office districts where its model was born. City restaurants remain heavily weighted toward lunch, while suburban locations can approach an even lunch-dinner split and draw more families, prompting NAYA to add kids’ meals and develop family meals.
That expansion is coming as restaurants contend with higher labor and food costs without unlimited room to raise prices. Kfoury said NAYA won’t respond by shrinking portions or compromising ingredient quality. Instead, he is willing to let margins tighten during periods of higher costs rather than immediately pass every increase on to customers.
“If there’s a few months or a period or a quarter that we don’t perform as well as the bottom line, it’s totally fine,” he said. “It’s part of running a business.”
The bigger concern for Kfoury is whether NAYA can find enough good real estate while maintaining the food, service and consistency of a much smaller chain as it races toward 200 locations by 2030.
And 200, he insists, isn’t a ceiling. His ultimate goal is to put NAYA “in every neighborhood.” And the ambitions extend beyond store count.
“If all goes well,” he said, “an IPO could be an option.”
Singapore is overhauling its landmark baby bonus scheme, first introduced in 2001, as the city’s fertility rate and number of births fall to record lows.
In 2025, births in the Southeast Asian country fell below 30,000 for the first time in its post-independence history, while the fertility rate dropped to just 0.87 per woman, a record low. That’s a dangerous prospect for any country, but especially for Singapore, crammed into a space smaller than New York City.
“The country does not have the natural resources to finance the costs of supporting an aged society, including both care and medical expenditures,” Tan Poh Lin, a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore (NUS)’s Institute for Policy Studies explains. Immigration, in his view, won’t be enough to solve the problem: “Boosting the fertility rate is crucial to slow down the rate of change and allow society to adjust economically as well as institutionally.”
At the country’s National Day Rally on Aug. 23, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong unveiled the “SG Child Support Package,” boasting measures like expanded childcare leave, strong financial support for parents, more affordable caregiving options, and extra chances to get subsidized housing. In total, the support is equal to almost 70,000 Singapore dollars ($55,000) by the time a child is 17.
Demographic experts are cautiously optimistic about the new scheme, which appears to offer more sustained and holistic support for families.
“Singapore’s family policies had become increasingly complicated, with benefits varying by birth order and across different schemes,” says Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, a social demographer and sociologist from NUS. With the new package, “support is attached more clearly to each child and is provided over a longer period of childhood rather than being concentrated primarily around birth.”
But previous policies to give parents more money, both in Singapore and elsewhere in Asia, haven’t been able to reverse falling birth rates.
“Singapore has progressively expanded financial support for marriage and parenthood over many years, yet fertility has continued to decline,” Teerawichitchainan admits. “Concerns voiced by parents increasingly involve not just money but time, work-family pressures, childcare, housing and other demands associated with raising children.”
Persistently low birth rates could threaten a country’s ability to sustain its economy. “Smaller younger cohorts enter the workforce while the older population continues to grow…over time, that places greater pressure on labor supply and the tax base,” says Chua Yeow Hwee, an economist at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU). “For businesses, an aging and shrinking workforce also makes labor constraints more acute.”
Singapore has long turned to foreign workers to make up for a dwindling domestic workforce. As of 2025, Singapore is home to nearly 1.6 million foreign workers, making up 40% of the country’s total labor force, the highest in Asia outside of countries in the Middle East, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a U.S. think tank.
The country is also placing its hopes on automation, with the government committing 1 billion Singapore dollars ($787 million) to public AI research from 2026 to 2030.
“The relationship between demography and economic growth is complicated,” Teerawichitchainan explains. “Economies can adapt through productivity growth, technology, longer and healthier working lives, higher labor force participation and immigration.”
Singapore’s new scheme shifts from merely encouraging births to focus on family well-being over the long term, which might help change how potential parents think about children.
“Cash gifts have a positive impact on births, but the effect tends to be short-lived as many beneficiaries do not increase their final family size,” Tan of NUS explains. “Tangible change can only be achieved by adjusting parenting expectations, including the notion that parenthood involves sacrificing personal wellbeing.”
Some of the responsibility for changing these expectations lies with companies. “There is a limit to what government policy can do directly, and employers have an important role,” Chua says. “A generous leave entitlement has less value if employees believe that using it will make them appear less committed or affect their advancement.” (Singaporeans get 16 weeks of paid maternity leave and four weeks of paternity leave, as well as 10 weeks of parental leave, shared between both parents, that must be used within a year of birth).
But there may be little anyone–government or corporate–can do to persuade people to have children amid greater economic uncertainty.
“These days, folks will have children only if they are confident that they could ease their children’s journey ahead and help them access a good life in the future,” says Tan Ern Ser, an adjunct principal research fellow at Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. “Unfortunately, the world we live in today does not leave much room for optimism, notwithstanding the government’s relentless efforts.”
Singapore’s government, too, acknowledges that there are limits to its ability to influence its populace to have kids. “The decision to have children is a deeply personal one. Policies alone cannot make this happen,” Wong, Singapore’s Prime Minister, said during his speech. “But what we can do is make it easier for Singaporeans who want children to start and raise a family.”
Ultimately, Singapore may just need to accept that it’ll have to live with fewer people.
“The economic challenge is not simply to restore some particular fertility level,” Teerawichitchainan concludes. “It is also to build institutions, labor markets, and technologies that allow Singapore to prosper under a demographic reality that may remain one of low fertility and population aging.”
