Kalshi, a leading prediction market platform, says women make up two-thirds of ‘Love Island’ traders.
Welp, I’ve been saying the conflict in the Middle East could have another twist in the tale.
And here we are, with a fragile ceasefire effectively broken and a possible ratcheting up in tensions.
In the meantime, oil prices are back on the rise and mortgage rates are climbing too.
What seemed impossible a week ago may now be possible again.
A 30-year fixed mortgage rate that starts with a 7 could be back on the table.
Mortgage rates appeared to be a pretty good place just a few days ago.
They had already stopped their rise thanks to a peace deal in the Middle East and a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Then they avoided a possible setback after a big jobs data week and were slowly drifting back toward their pre-war levels.
Still elevated, sure, but the trend seemed to be becoming their friend again.
Back toward 6.50%, they seemed destined to fall back toward 6% as the year went on.
And it appeared the threat of seeing rates climb back to 7% and beyond was gone.
But that was a few days ago…
Today, it’s a different story with news of escalating tensions in the Middle East and President Trump saying the ceasefire was effectively “over.”
Not only that, but that the United States launched attacks last night and would launch more strikes on Iran tonight.
Trump reportedly said, “we’re going to hit them hard again tonight.”
That’s not great news for oil prices, inflation, the bond market, or mortgage rates.
Something we seemed to work out over the past few weeks is now back to square one, or even worse.
Of course, Trump also took the time to say he didn’t think the war would “start again.”
Whether true or not, it means the recent return to pre-war prices for oil is in doubt.
And the recent drop in bond yields is also being reversed, with the 10-year yield now up about 20 basis points since the end of June and Brent futures up roughly 5% today.
Long story short, we are moving backwards again and any chance of seeing continued improvement and a return to a low-6% or even a sub-6% 30-year fixed seems to be gone again.
There had been hope that we could slowly recover this year and possibly get back to those levels with the war behind us.
But now it appears that it’s back on and prospects of real negotiation seem to be dimming by the moment.
And just like that, the odds of a 25-bp rate hike at the September meeting are back to being the odds-on favorite.
As of today, the odds of a hike are 51.3%, per CME FedWatch, up from 49.1% yesterday and 36.3% a month ago.
Mortgage rates and the federal funds rate are very different rates (one long and one short), but Fed rate expectations can push mortgage rates higher or lower over time.
And if there’s the expectation that the Fed is going to get into hiking mode again, it could push 30-year fixed rates higher (before the actual hike).
So if you’re hoping mortgage rates would begin falling along with oil (and gas) prices, you might have to be even more patient.
The longer this goes on, the higher our national debt as it costs something like $2 billion per day to fund military operations.
We already have a major debt problem so this just exacerbates it. More government debt must be issued to fund the war, and that higher supply of Treasuries means investors will demand a higher yield.
The result is higher interest rates on everything including home loans. Not great news for prospective home buyers already grappling with a lack of affordability.
Our best-case scenario here is hoping Iran and the U.S. somehow get peace talks back on track.
But it seems clear that this saga with Iran is far from over, and could even get worse before it gets better.
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The high school class of 2026 completed the FAFSA at a record 59.1% rate through June 26, according to the National College Attainment Network (NCAN). That shatters the previous June 30 record of 54.4%, set by the class of 2018, by nearly five percentage points.
The milestone caps a remarkable two-year recovery from the botched FAFSA rollout, and it suggests the simplified form is finally delivering on its promise.
FAFSA completion is one of the strongest predictors of whether a high school senior enrolls in college. More than 200,000 additional seniors completed the form this cycle compared to the class of 2025 (a 9% increase) meaning hundreds of thousands more students are positioned to receive Pell Grants, federal loans, and state financial aid this fall.
Tennessee led all states at 72.7%, followed by Illinois (71.6%), Texas (69.3%), New Jersey (67.5%), and Mississippi (66.3%). Alaska posted the largest year-over-year gain at 20.7%, with New Mexico, Florida, Montana, and Arizona rounding out the top five gainers.
NCAN points to three factors:
1. The 2026-27 FAFSA opened early on September 24, after two straight cycles that launched late in December — giving families two extra months.
2. The Office of Federal Student Aid also streamlined the process itself, including instant identity verification for most users with a Social Security number, replacing a multi-day wait. And this is the third year under the new form, so counselors and college access groups have built familiarity with the process.
3. Universal FAFSA policies are also showing up in the results. Nine states now require or expect FAFSA completion for high school graduation, and those states account for three of the top five and six of the top 10 completion rates.
“FAFSA simplification shows what is possible when bipartisan policy, tireless advocacy and sustained practice improvements align,” said Kim Cook, NCAN’s CEO, in a statement.
The record confirms a trend we’ve been tracking all year. In May, the class of 2026 had already set an all-time completion record at 54.7% with two months still left before the June 30 benchmark.
And the gains go beyond completion counts: a GAO report found FAFSA simplification added 1.9 million students to Pell Grant eligibility rolls.
The simpler form isn’t just getting more students to finish — it’s qualifying more of them for financial aid.
Don’t Miss These Other Stories:
Editor: Colin Graves
The post Class Of 2026 Sets FAFSA Completion Record At 59.1%, NCAN Reports appeared first on The College Investor.
The building at the center of this week’s Midtown scare is the former Pfizer world headquarters at 235 East 42nd Street: a 33-story tower built in 1960 that, alongside its neighbor at 219 East 42nd, is being converted by Metro Loft and David Werner Real Estate Investments into roughly 1,600 apartments, the largest office-to-residential conversion in U.S. history.
On Tuesday morning, the FDNY received reports of bricks falling from the building; inspectors found two support columns buckling on the 21st floor and floors sagging up through the 26th. Nine surrounding buildings were evacuated, a “frozen zone” was established from First to Third Avenues, and by Tuesday night, crews had begun installing emergency shoring. No injuries were reported. Metro Loft’s Nathan Berman attributed the buckling to added weight from new floors; while the site had racked up seven DOB violations and roughly $15,000 in fines over the past year for falling debris.
Forensic and structural engineer Joseph Di Pompeo, who has more than 25 years of experience in structural engineering and forensic investigation and has testified as an expert witness before planning and zoning boards, and in New Jersey and New York state and federal courts, said the type of failure visible in photos and video doesn’t support a steel-quality explanation—which is what the FDNY first said at a press conference yesterday.
“There is no material strength number in the formula” for column buckling, he said. “It could be good, it could be bad, it could be terrible, but it still wouldn’t affect what happened here.” Buckling, he said, is governed entirely by two things: how long a column runs between braces, and how much load it’s carrying.
That distinction, Di Pompeo said, points instead toward a loading error: Either the engineering didn’t properly account for the weight being added during the conversion, or construction sequencing put more load on a column than it was ever meant to carry.
“It’s got to be one of those two things,” he said.
Metro Loft’s own account lines up with that framing. Founder Nathan Berman told The Wall Street Journal additional weight added during construction on top of the building likely caused the two columns to buckle, calling the incident “nothing more than a typical construction mishap” and, later, a “freak accident.” He told reporters the project overall was “well engineered, well thought through, and well executed, with the exception of those two columns that could not tak[e the load],” and said the affected area was limited to a small section of one building.
There’s also a lot of conversion work happening across the city all at once. In 2023, nearly 80 office buildings in New York had already been converted to residences over the prior two decades, with roughly 200 more potentially in play. That pipeline has grown substantially since: Developers are now on track to start 9.5 million square feet of new office-to-residential conversions in 2026 alone, more than double last year’s pace and nearly twice the city’s previous peak in 2008, with New York leading every U.S. metro at more than 16,000 units currently in conversion.
Goldman Sachs estimated in 2024 office prices would need to fall nearly 50% for conversions to be financially viable at scale, and one commercial real estate veteran told Fortune 30% of office buildings are “basically worth nothing” and will simply need to be torn down rather than converted.
With that volume, Di Pompeo said, minor structural issues during construction are common, but they just don’t typically make news.
“A lot of failures happen during construction,” he said. “There’s a lot of failures that happen during construction that nobody hears about, because it’s not a collapse. It gets fixed, and everybody moves on.”
He was skeptical the building’s prior violations tell the real story, either.
“Every building in New York has one,” he said, noting that most citations—like the loose debris incidents on this site—have little bearing on the type of column failure reported this week.
Most leaders believe they see the whole picture. The trouble is, we all have blind spots. In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch talks with international leadership expert Cornelia Choe, co-author with Marshall Goldsmith of The Panoramic Leader: How Great Leaders See Differently. Choe unpacks what she calls perspective blindness.
The conversation covers how AI has made data cheap but judgment scarce, why more than half of employees using AI never verify what it gives them, and the reasons senior teams often disagree on how ready their own companies are for change.
Choe introduces her GEM framework (Get up close, Establish meaningful bonds, Map your evolving perspective) to help leaders close these gaps before they cause damage. She also shares her personal history of moving from Minnesota to Seoul at age 10, and how that experience has shaped her thinking with regard to mental maps and blind spots.
This episode is for small business owners, agency leaders, and consultants managing teams through constant change. If you’ve ever assumed your customers, employees, or leadership team see the business the way you do, this conversation will challenge that assumption and give you a framework to address it.
Choe is an international leadership expert, global keynote speaker, and Thinkers50 Radar honoree. She is the founder of The Leaders Alliance and has advised leaders at organizations including the United Nations and the White House. She is the co-author, with Marshall Goldsmith, of The Panoramic Leader: How Great Leaders See Differently. Choe grew up across eleven different places on three continents by age eighteen, an experience that informs her work on mental maps, cultural blind spots, and perspective in leadership.
Cornelia Choe, perspective blindness, Small Business Leadership, Thought leadership
OnePay has launched a summer promotion that lets users earn $1 or more per gallon back on eligible gas purchases every Wednesday through September 15, 2026. The offer is available at more than 18,000 gas stations nationwide when you activate a gas offer in the OnePay app.
The Wednesday bonus stacks with the standard cash back available through OnePay gas offers and any rewards earned from selecting Gas as your monthly cash back category. Rewards are earned as OnePay Points.
I checked around my bnehgborhood and I see a few BP gas stations that are offering a total of $1.45/gal back today (Wednesday).
If you don’t already have OnePay, it’s also worth noting that the app currently offers a $50 sign-up bonus, and existing users can earn up to $200 per referral through its referral program.
Earning over $1 per gallon back (or closer to $1.50) is an outstanding return if you have eligible stations nearby. Combined with the current sign-up bonus and referral offers, this is a good time to give OnePay a look if you haven’t already.
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A new RBC poll finds most Canadians believe there is no perfect time to buy, as economic uncertainty, affordability pressures and rate expectations complicate purchase decisions.
