Just a minor crash out – The stock market’s fear gauge, the Cboe VIX, is up 80% from the start of the year. However, while higher off last year's mellow readings, the Index isn’t that far (hovering in the mid-20s) over its long-term average of 20 despite elevated oil prices and uncertainty in the Middle East. After 2025’s Liberation Day announcement, which caused a sharp yet brief VIX spike, the Index spent the rest of 2025 and very early 2026 in the mid-teens. (Source: Yahoo Finance)

Lifestyles of the rich but not famous – The number of US households worth $30 million or more has surged, fueled by decades of stock-market gains, rising business valuations, and long-held assets such as homes and equities. This growing group of low-profile multimillionaires is reshaping spending patterns—boosting demand for luxury travel, high-end real estate, and premium goods, even as broader consumer demand cools. (Source: The Wall Street Journal)

In my best Willy Wonka voice: "No, stop, don't ..." – To cope with soaring fuel costs and energy shortages, countries including Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Pakistan have moved to four-day workweeks, initially as a temporary measure. Experts say that, as with hybrid work, what begins as a crisis response could permanently reshape how and when people work. (Source: Yahoo)

Torschlusspanik is German for FOMO – In an effort to compete more with the US and China, Germany hopes to quadruple its AI computing power by 2030. Under a new policy, German towns that host future data centers will get to collect municipal business taxes instead of the local jurisdictions where the company is headquartered. (Source: Reuters)

Someone’s loss is always another’s gain – The recent sharp rise in the price of gasoline is sparking a new wave of interest in electrified vehicles. In the week starting March 2, shopper consideration of hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and battery electrics accounted for 22.4% of all vehicle research activity on Edmunds, up from 20.7% the previous week. (Source: Edmunds)

How ‘bout them demographics – Job growth in the US healthcare sector will soon outpace growth in the AI-heavy professional and technical-services sector because the 85-and-over population, the most care-intensive cohort, is expected to double by 2035. Healthcare and social-assistance sectors are expected to add about two million jobs, with an 8.4% growth rate that tops the 7.5% rate projected for professional and technical jobs. (Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics)

First it was the baby boom, now it's the retirement boom – More Americans than ever will age into retirement over the next 20 years. The peak-65 wave will continue through 2027 for baby boomers and then repeat in about 20 years when Millennials hit retirement, shaping workforce and financial planning for decades. (Source: PR Newswire)

Finding Nemo was on to something – Long portrayed as solitary predators, sharks may be more social than we thought. A new study finds that bull sharks don’t just mingle at random—they form preferred social relationships, repeatedly choosing to swim and interact with specific “friends,” revealing surprisingly complex social lives beneath the surface. (Source: MSN)

In our vinyl era – US vinyl sales topped $1 billion in 2023 for the first time since 1983, marking a major milestone for physical music formats. Taylor Swift's "The Life of A Showgirl" shifted ~1.6 million units on vinyl alone in 2025, more than five times more than any other release. Industry data show vinyl revenues now exceed both CDs and digital downloads. (Source: Sherwood News)

More like Bam Scored-a-bunch, yo – Miami Heat center, Bam Adebayo, scored 83 points in a single game, the second-highest total in NBA history. The performance surpassed Kobe Bryant’s 81-point night from 2006 and now trails only Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game from 1962, marking one of the most unexpected scoring outbursts the league has ever seen. (Source: The Wall Street Journal)