They’re still worried

Stocks killed it again Friday, closing out a big week for investors with another sizeable jump. But all of that equity ebullience doesn’t mean everyone is happy. Despite a recent uptick in consumer sentiment, a record share of US households are uncertain about the economic outlook, and most expect inflation to take a bigger chunk of their incomes. Plus the likelihood of a comfortable retirement is the lowest in a decade, according to the latest data from the University of Michigan.

While the pace of inflation is cooling, prices remain much higher than before the pandemic. The consumer price index has surged 21.5% from the end of 2019. And while incomes have also increased, consumers still say they’re not getting ahead. As stock prices approach a record, the odds Americans see of a comfortable retirement are nevertheless at their lowest level since 2013. After all, not everyone is an investor or has a 401(k) that’s benefited from surging equity prices. —David E. Rovella

If things can get worse for Boeing, they seem to do so—or at least of late. Forget about the defective Starlliner and marooning astronauts on the International Space Station. Now there’s a huge strike, yet another blow to an embattled planemaker that’s spent years dealing with defects, mishaps and deadly crashes. Little more than a month since its new chief executive took over with a mandate to pull the company out of crisis, things are moving in the opposite direction. Kelly Ortberg now faces the dual challenge of negotiating an acceptable labor accord after the company’s first overture was rejected and 33,000 workers decided to strike. Just hours after they walked out, Boeing’s credit rating risked being cut to junk.

A new poll following Vice President Kamala Harris’s debate with Donald Trump reportedly shows the 59-year-old Democrat widening her lead over the 78-year-old Republican, whose unbalanced performance including repeated falsehoods, meandering answers and something about eating pets didn’t seem to help. Trump declined a second chance to face Harris as the two hit the campaign trail. On Friday, Trump spent time defending his connection to a far-right follower by the name of Laura Loomer.

China suspended the operations of PricewaterhouseCoopers for six months and imposed a record penalty over lapses in its auditing of China Evergrande Group. The accounting firm was fined 441 million yuan ($62 million) for its work on Evergrande’s inflated financial reports from 2018 to 2020. Regulators also ordered the closure of PwC’s branch in Guangzhou. PwC has been under scrutiny since China launched one of the biggest investigations of financial fraud in history. Authorities have said developer Evergrande’s main onshore unit Hengda overstated its revenue by 564 billion yuan in the two years through 2020. PwC “turned a blind eye” to Evergrande’s fraud, securities regulators said.

China will raise the retirement age for the first time since 1978, a move that could stem a decline in the labor force but risks angering workers already wrestling with a slowing economy. Top lawmakers endorsed a plan to delay retirement for employees by as long as five years. Men will retire at 63 instead of 60. Women will retire at 55 instead of 50 for ordinary workers, and 58 instead of 55 for those in management positions. “The timeline of raising the retirement age is pretty gradual. Policymakers probably have taken into account the potential negative impact,” said Michelle Lam, an economist at Societe Generale.

The top utility in Vienna finally kicked its Russian natural gas habit, one of the Kremlin’s last big customers to do so. Wien Energie, which provides energy to two million people in and around the Austrian capital, said it won’t need Russian fuel as of next year for the first time in decades. It’s sourced 10 terawatt-hours of alternatives, equivalent to about 12% of national consumption, from North Africa, the North Sea and other global liquefied natural gas suppliers. “Because of Russia’s war of aggression, independence from Russian gas is critical for security of supply,” said Vienna’s finance chief Peter Hanke at a press conference Friday. “All households, commercial customers and power plants will be running on non-Russian gas in 2025.”

Zambia’s biggest mines are turning to a surprising power source as the copper-producing nation battles an unprecedented energy crisis: South African electricity company Eskom Holdings, which until March faced its own severe deficit. An historic drought has stifled hydropower turbines that Zambia relies on for about 85% of supplies. Households have power for just three hours a day. And firms like First Quantum Minerals have had to look beyond the nation’s borders for electricity to keep their mines and smelters running.

An Indian tycoon behind an apparel empire has just paid £21 million ($27 million) for a home in London’s Notting Hill district, marking one of this year’s biggest UK residential deals that defied a wider slowdown in luxury sales. Harish Ahuja, who owns and runs Shahi Exports, bought the eight-story residential convent in July, according to a UK filing. His son Anand Ahuja and daughter-in-law Sonam Kapoor—a Bollywood star—plan to use part of the sprawling property as the couple’s home.

The art world’s 2024 fall season is one where contradictory outlooks can simultaneously be true. But one thing is universal: Narratives like art’s allure as an alternative asset have been mostly abandoned. “People were pitching art as an investment in terms of long-term capital allocation” says Paul Leong, a collector and the CFO of Galaxy Capital Partners. “The argument was that the stock market can go up and down, but art is uncorrelated to that,” he explains. “Now the stock market is up and people are saying “but why is the art market down?”

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