The 2025 WNBA season is upon us, and its already making waves. From Caitlin Clark draining logo threes to Paige Bueckers debuting for the Dallas Wings, and the Golden State Valkyries hitting the court for the first time, pre-season coverage has been electric. For those of us whove spent years advocating for womens sports, the buzz surrounding this season isnt just exciting, its a powerful reflection of the leagues progress and promise.
Rising viewership. New sponsorships. Sold-out arenas. Long-overdue increases in minimum salaries making their way into collective bargaining agreements. These are signs that the tide is turning. But lets not mistake momentum for a final destination. The truth is, were still playing catch-up inside systems that were never built with equity in mind.
Earlier this year, I sat on a panel during NBA All-Star Weekend titled, Its Not Womens Sports, Its Sports, Stupid. I loved the sentiment of this framing. If youre into professional sports, it doesn’t matter whether you’re watching men or women playthe competition has the same power to captivate and inspire. It’s why some of us dare to dream of a future where the label “women’s sports” is no longer needed. But while we may aspire to treat all sports equally, pretending the playing field is already level overlooks decades of systemic inequity built into the longer-running, more prominent sports structures.
Build equity into the foundation
Take the WNBA. While the league continues to break new ground, it operates within a framework borrowed from a time before it existed. Revenue sharing, salary caps, travel accommodations, facilities, and even All-Star Game bonusesnone were designed with parity in mind. Even the most groundbreaking updates to collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) represent incremental fixes within outdated architecture.
A stark example: The NBAs salary cap is orders of magnitude higher than the WNBAs, despite surging fan engagement with the womens game. These legacy constraints hamper growth, no matter how bold the vision.
But what if it didnt have to be this way?
At Parity, we work with a community of 1,100+ professional women athletes across 85 sports, from alpine skiing to American football, wheelchair basketball to windsurfing. From our broad vantage point we see what happens when emerging sports properties reimagine structures, athlete resources, and rewards to build equity into the foundation from day one.
Consider Grand Slam Track. Born from the minds of Olympians, it offers equal prize money and visibility for men and women in every meet. Or CrossFit Games, which has featured equal prize money since its earliest days. Premier Rugby Sevens goes even further, with mens and womens teams competing for the same club, their scores aggregated to decide the championship, and all athletes paid equally. Then theres TST (The Soccer Tournament), where both mens and womens brackets offer a $1 million winner-take-all prize. When the womens tournament launched, organizers didnt scale the prize downthey matched it.
These arent just feel-good stories. Theyre working models.
Transparency as a baseline
Many up-and-coming leagues didnt inherit inequity; they sidestepped it. They launched with transparent pay, athlete revenue shares, integrated maternity leave policies, and athlete ownership stakes. Sponsorship and content rights are structured to empower players, not just teams. Media distribution is increasingly direct-to-consumer, giving fans deeper access and athletes greater control.
And guess what? Brands are noticing. These properties are fast becoming hidden gems of sports marketing, attracting culturally relevant sponsors and a younger, values-driven fan base hungry for authenticity.
Now imagine if all sports leagues had started this way.
Picture revenue-sharing models that prioritize athletes. Governance that centers the athlete voice. Pay transparency as a baseline. Media rights split equitably. Built-in support for mental health, parenting, and career transition. Fan experiences designed for an inclusive, digitally native audience. This isnt wishful thinking. Its a blueprint for sustainable growth.
The opportunity is clear
For brands and media companies, the opportunity is clear. The next generation of sports fans is demanding more than entertainment. They want alignment with their values. They want to invest in systems that elevate, not exclude. The organizations that recognize this shift and act now will be the ones who define the future of sports marketing.
Of course, we should celebrate the WNBA and NWSL for pushing forward. Their recent CBAs matter. And yes, tennis has made strides too, with equal prize money at Grand Slams, even as disparities persist in smaller tournaments. But we cant limit our ambitions to what can be retrofitted into the past.
The real question is: What could we create if we built it right from the start?
Lets stop thinking about womens sports as the undercard. Lets stop asking athletes to work twice as hard for half as much. Instead, lets imagineand builda future where equity isnt an afterthought. Its the foundation.
To the investors, brands, and media companies: The future of sports wont wait. The blueprint is here. The audience is ready. The question is, are you bold enough to build it?
Leela Srinivasan is CEO of Parity.
Since its last major redesign in 2022, Airbnb has been all about the destination: staying in homes so unique or glamorousfrom McMansions with amazing pools to surrealist homes in a shoethat they might be worth a trip unto itself.
But starting today, Airbnb is expanding its purview beyond homes . . . again. Its launching a new product called Airbnb Services, and redoubling on Airbnb Experiences (first launched in 2016).
[Photo: Damien Maloney/courtesy Airbnb]
What is Airbnb Services?
Services considers everything that you might want to accompany that home youre renting. Photography. A manicure. A massage or spa treatment. A personal trainer. A private chef or fully catered experience. Its basically everything you could imagine around a wedding, weekend get-together with friends, or even a corporate retreat.
Meanwhile, Experiences falls under the greater umbrella of stuff for tourists. These outings hosted by locals include walking tours of local landmarks, cooking classes, and shopping experiences. (They can also include something Airbnb is dubbing Airbnb Originals, which are higher-profile events like getting glammed up with Sabrina Carpenter for a day.)
[Photo: Karla Ximena Ceron/courtesy Airbnb]
Redesigning an app to do more stuff
To offer these new features, Services and Experiences will both get their own tab right on top of the app, alongside Homes. For anyone who has booked a home on Airbnb, the biggest update will be a complete trip timeline that includes both your rental and anything else youve signed up to do. (Airbnb also intends to sell you on services and experiences after youve booked a place to stay.)
Summarized, these updates might seem pretty smalland in line with Airbnbs own experimentation for the past decade. The company has hit a mature era of its business, growing 6% year over year. Rental prices have been flat for Airbnb recently, but a bright spot pushing those earnings has been Experiences.
By pushing Experiences to a more front-and-center position in the app, and accompanying them with Services, Airbnb is pushing the pedal down on all the stuff they can make money on thats not housing. And in doing so, it becomes as much an event planner as a vacation tool, arguably capable of upping what it can charge by tenfold.
Consider that the average vacation costs Americans about $2,800, but the average wedding costs Americans $33,000. Before this update, it would have been inconceivable to book a wedding (complete with hair, food, and entertainment) on Airbnb. After this update, it seems downright simple.
Time will tell how deeply Airbnb can seep into our major events and, in turn, the deepest crevices of our wallets. But with a few tweaks to its existing formula, Airbnb is banking on being a lot more than another vacation app.
Everyone has their individual bad memories of the pandemic, but one collective nightmare of the early days of that miserable period is the struggle to find toilet paper at your local store. Now, tariffs are bringing concerns about a toilet paper shortage back to the forefront.
Suzano SA is the world’s largest exporter of pulp, the raw material used for making products like toilet paper. And the company tells Bloomberg it has seen shipments decline from Brazil to the U.S. due to tariffs, and worries that the shipping disruptions could get worse.
It is, to be clear, much too early to know what the impact of pulp shipping disruptions will be. The company said shipments were down 20% in April and that stores, at present, are well stocked.
But tariffs could result in higher prices for consumers, which could lead to a rush by some people to stock up. A similar scenario happened last October when a strike by dockworkers on the East Coast sent shoppers flocking to stores, emptying shelves of necessities, including toilet paper.
Toilet paper and paper towels are largely produced in the U.S. (just 10% of the countrys toilet paper is imported). But the pulp used to make them is imported from countries like Brazil and Canada (which sends northern bleached softwood kraft pulp our way).
It doesn’t take an actual shortage to empty store shelves. Just growing talk of one can cause short-term disruptions to the supply chain. Put another way: Theres a snowball effect. If a small number of people panic-shop, that drives others to do so as well. So if shoppers notice there is less toilet paper on the shelves than usual, they’re more likely to stock up just in case, due to recent talk of empty ports and looming product shortages.
Suzano is still shipping products to the U.S.but not only is it shipping less; it’s charging more. The company says it is passing on the cost of tariffs to U.S. buyers, which could be part of the reason for the smaller orders.
“Since customers are still struggling to forecast how tariffs can affect their production plants, either directly or indirectly, both pulp buyers and sellers are on a price discovery mode as we speak,” Leo Grimaldi, executive vice president at Suzano, said on a recent call with analysts. “There is not clarity yet of what is this price point needed for a full establishment of market confidence and dynamics.”
Like the dockworkers’ strike last year, the trade war was something that was clearly telegraphed by the White House. That gave manufacturers like Kimberly-Clark and Georgia-Pacific time to stockpile pulp in order to keep retail prices level. Should a herd mentality lead to product shortages, however, that could lead to store managers putting buying limits on popular items. (The danger is that by limiting what you can buy, it could drive people who were not planning on buying any to join in on the hoarding.)
Americans certainly love their toilet paper (which is somewhat ironic, as it didn’t become a household staple until the 1940s). At the start of the pandemic, when panic-buying was in full effect, Americans spent $1.4 billion on toilet paper over a four-week period in March and April of 2020, according to retail sales tracker IRI. That was a 102% increase from the same period a year before, which led to a widespread toilet paper shortage.
We’re not alone. After the pandemic got underway, armed robbers in Hong Kong held up a supermarket. They weren’t interested in the cash registers. They did, however, take 600 rolls of toilet paper.
On Tuesday, Microsoft said it is cutting less than 3% of its global workforce, including LinkedIn. The company which an estimated 228,000 employees as of last June, meaning the layoffs will affect approximately 6,000 employees. The tech giant, which makes popular software products Windows and Word, will make cuts across various locations, teams, and roles.
We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace, a Microsoft spokesperson told Fast Company.
The news comes less than two weeks after the Redmond, Washington-based company beat first quarter earnings expectations, driven by its Azure cloud business. It also issued strong guidance going forward, despite President’s Trump’s tariffs and overall economic uncertainty. Microsoft also said it invested heavily in AI infrastructure during the first quarter of 2025.
Microsoft said that it regularly adjusts its workforce to meet the strategic demands of the business, and that by reducing layers with fewer managers, the company hopes to increase agility and enhance efficiency by minimizing redundancy and streamlining processes, procedures, and roles. It also said the cuts will let employees spend more time leveraging new technologies and capabilities.
On Tuesday, a number of LinkedIn employees posted about the reported layoffs on LinkedIn. The layoffs would be the largest at the company since 2023, when Microsoft eliminated 10,000 jobs, and follows a small round of performance-based layoffs at the beginning of 2025. However, a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC the upcoming layoffs are not performance based.
CEO Satya Nadella previously said Microsoft planned to spend $80 billion on data centers for artificial intelligence workloads in 2025, which could be even more costly with tariffs.
Microsoft isn’t the only tech company to make cuts since the beginning of this year. A number of high-profile technology giants have been trimming their ranks, including Amazon, Meta, and Salesforce. Facebook parent company Meta Platforms cut about 5% of its workforceroughly 3,600 employeesin February, and Amazon announced it was laying off dozens at the end of January.
Eleven years after Google first announced its grand unifying theory of designMaterial Designits introducing its third major revision to the system.Called Material 3 Expressive, the company will tell you that it is its most researched update ever, promising to help people find what theyre looking for on the screen faster than before. But its also the companys most maximalist design system to date. Still enabling quieter minimalist designs, sure, but embracing bolder colors, more playful animations, and all around more overt approaches to interface. Theres a new roundness to almost every component, right down to the tips of Googles new default typeface, Google Sans Flex Rounded, which replaces the hard-edged terminals on letterforms with smooth tips.[Image: Google]But mostly, Google is using more of everything to accentuate contrast, like between headers and bodies. Button shapes can now be anything from giant pills to stars. Perkier animations rekindle techs old favorite words, joy and delight, with a bit more springiness in them across the board. And UI elements on your screen often react to othersdial a phone number, and each digit you press bounces the others out of the way like cartoony bubble tape.Its kind of like the next evolution, says Vanessa Cho, VP of Google Design. Its design with the soul. What I mean by that is its [still] driven with deep purpose but it also connects with you on the emotional level.[Image: Google]The history of Material DesignMaterial Design was born over a decade ago, as Google designers developed a grounding metaphor to codify its otherwise fragmented approach to design. Inspired by light and paper, Material Design was like a stretchy piece of wonder paper that could reshape to do anything, and it brought a sense of tactile physics to search, Android, and other Google services.In the years since, Material Design veered from its ambitious roots. It imagined eventually breaking out of screens and becoming the interface for our liveswhat would be a better interface for an internet of things than literal matter that would reshape itself in front of you? Material Design was built for a path toward that smart infrastructure that seemed so inevitable in the 2010s. But a decade later, and the world didnt play out that way. Instead, most things stayed dumb as we got sucked deeper and deeper into our phones. The stoic minimalism that Material Design version 1 celebrated got washed out by the pixel onslaughts of TikTok and other social media platforms. The emoji of 2014 seem quaint in comparison to just about everything on Instagram, where even AI characters are attempting to be my BFF.So in 2021, Material Design pivoted. It became more about personalizationallowing your phone to have a color palette and typefaces more reflective of you. And now? Material Design is trending more maximal, with an overt approach to design thats willing to call attention to itself as a moment of celebration, rather than disappear into the background.[Image: Google]Were in an era of expression thinking about TikTok and whatever youre on, says Mindy Brooks, VP of Product & UX for Android Platform. So this design system allows us to, even as developers and creators of it, to express what we want to in the product.Testing and manifestingAcross Googles products, these new design standards play out in different ways. On Android, it means we see apps presented in a greater array of typefaces (pushing expressiveness and information hierarchy at the same time), while apps like Photos trend toward the Canva create-a-card vibes we get on iOS today. On Wear OS, the colors from your phone can be mirrored on your wrist, and buttons now wrap all the way into the curves of the display through a lovely marriage of device and UI.[Image: Google]But what Googles design team most wants to highlight is that Material 3 Expressive isnt style over substance. Validated by 46 studies that tested hundreds of designs across more than 18,000 participants, they found that the expressive end of the Material Design system was preferred across all age groups, though especially by Gen Z, which preferred the more maximalist screens 87% of the time.[Image: Google]The team also found that Material 3 Expressive was faster to navigate. Certain actions were spotted up to four times faster than before. And while older adults are typically slower at finding certain buttons on the screen, the larger buttons inside Material 3 Expressive proved faster to find for everyonewhile eliminating the age gap. Google claims older adults can use this design system with the same rapidity of youth. (And who woulda thunk that a big red send button would be easier to spot than that old little paper airplane in the corner?)As a design solution, its hard to argue with Googles own validating data or the joy of bringing in more color and motion into the mix. But Im more interested in Material 3 Expression for what it reveals about this era of design. For the last decade and a half minimalism has taken over everything from blanded branding to interface (the world of interior design notwithstanding, which has been waffling on the idea for some time). But celebratory expression used to be in! Animations like Apples genie effectwhich shrunk apps into your task bar like a genie into the lampembodied playfulness before minimalism conquered tech. They were invented way back in 2004 during a more optimistic time in tech, right beside Bondi blue iMacs with handles on them. This was the hope of a world that didnt end after Y2K. Now, screen time debates have been decimated by the For You Page and AI everything, while your Grazas and Manischewitzes of the world prioritize a bit of funk over subdued Swissness. Were back in expressive times again.
Minnesota farmer Dan Glessing isnt ready to get too upset over President Donald Trumps trade wars.
Farm country voted heavily for Trump last November. Now Glessing and many other farmers are taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the Republican president’s disputes with China and other international markets.
China normally would buy about one row out of every four of the Minnesota soybean crop and took in nearly $13 billion worth of soybeans from the U.S. as a whole last year. More than half of U.S. soybeans are exported internationally, with roughly half of those going to China, so it’s a critical market.
Trump last month raised U.S. tariffs on products from China to 145%, and China retaliated with 125%. But Monday’s announcement of a 90-day truce between the two countries backed up the reluctance of many farmers to hit the panic button.
More good news came in an updated forecast from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Monday that projected higher corn exports and only slightly lower corn prices. The report also predicted somewhat lower soybean exports but higher domestic consumption, resulting in higher prices. Soybean futures surged.
After he finished planting his soybean crop on Monday, Glessing said he was excited by the news and hopes to see more progress. But he said he wasn’t really surprised.
Tariffs, weather, and other uncertainty
On a bright, sunny day last week, as he began planting soybeans, Glessing said tariffs were only one of the things he’s worried aboutand not necessarily the biggest. Farming, after all, is an enterprise built on loose soil, the whims of weather, and other uncontrollable factors.
Am I concerned about tariffs? Yeah. I mean, theres uncertainty that comes with that,” Glessing said. “Is that the number one driving factor in these poor commodity prices the last two years? No.
As he steered his 25-year-old Case IH tractor over a gently rolling field near the town of Waverly, he towed a planter that inserted his seeds through the stubble of last years corn crop. As he laid down the long rows, he rumbled past a pond where wild swans paddled about.
Riding shotgun was Georgie the corgi, who alternated between roaming around his cab and half-dozing at his feet.
Perhaps more skeptical than Glessing is Matt Griggs, one of many soybean farmers in Tennessee paying close attention to the trade war. On Monday, he said the ripple effects on farmers might still be coming.
Were only on a 90-day pause, Griggs said. Who knows what is going to come after that?
Joe Janzen, an agricultural economist at the University of Illinois, said the commodity markets have largely shaken off the initial shock of the trade war, including Trumps declaration of April 2 as Liberation Day, when he announced stiff worldwide tariffs.
Our markets have largely rebounded and are back where we were around April 2, Janzen said. Tariffs have not had a major impact on prices yet.
Even something that might seem like good newsideal planting conditions across much of the Midwesthas its downside. The potential for bigger crops sent prices downward, Glessing noted. High interest rates, and seed and fertilizer costs pose additional challenges.
Theres so many other factors besides just tariffs and my market price, Glessing said.
Looking for signs of progress
But Glessing said he was encouraged by that mornings news of a trade deal with the United Kingdom, and said he hopes the current uncertainty in talks with China and other countries ultimately leads to better trade deals going forward.
Glessing had finished planting his corn the day before on the other half of a field that he rents from his fathers cousin, split between 45 acres of corn and 45 acres of beans. It’s at the farm where his grandfather grew up, and it’s part of the approximately 700 acres he plants on average. He locked in those planting decisions months earlier as he made deals for seeds, fertilizer, and other supplies.
Back on his home farm closer to Waverlywhere his late grandfathers house, made of local brick, still stands and a cacophony of house sparrow songs filled the airGlessing was pleased to spot the first signs of corn he had planted there about 10 days earlier poking above the soil.
Waverly is about an hour west of Minneapolis. Its most famous resident was Democratic former Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Its in the congressional district represented by Republican House Majority Whip Tom Emmer.
Glessings post as president of the Minnesota Farm Bureau puts him in close touch with other influential politicians, too. He and his wife, Seena, were Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchars guests at the Capitol for Trumps inauguration in January. Glessing declined to say who he voted for.
The Glessings have three kids, milk about 75 dairy cows, and grow corn, soybeans, and alfalfa on a combination of parcels they own or rent. He uses the alfalfa and corn primarily to feed his cows. He sells his soybeans to a processing plant in Mankato, where some of them become soybean meal he adds to his animal feed. The milk from his cows goes to a co-op cheese plant in Litchfield that sells internationally.
Because Glessing has local buyers locked in and doesnt directly export his crops, he’s partially cushioned from the volatility of world markets. But hes quick to point out that everything in the agricultural economy is interconnected.
Lessons learned during Trump’s first trade war
On his farm near Humboldt, Tennessee, roughly midway between Memphis and Nashville, Griggs weathered the 2018 trade war during Trumps first term and said he feels more prepared this time around.
Back in 2018, prices were about the same as what they are now, and due to the trade war with China, prices dropped around 15%, he said. They dropped significantly lower, and they dropped in a hurry, and due to that, we lost a lot of demand from China.
p>Griggs said exports to China never fully rebounded. But he doesn’t think the impact of the current dispute will be nearly as drastic.
Griggswho raises approximately 1,600 acres of cotton, corn, soybeans, and wheatsaid tariffs were just one consideration as he planned out this years crops. Growing a variety of crops helps him minimize the risk that comes with weather, volatile prices, and now the prospect of a trade war.
Griggs said hes going to be watching for opportunities to sell when market volatility causes upticks in prices.
The main thing I learned in 2018 was that if you do have a price period where prices have risen some, go ahead and take advantage of it instead of waiting for it to go higher, he said. Because when it comes to the tariffs and everything, the markets can be very unpredictable. So my lesson learned was, Dont hold out for a home run, be satisfied with a double.
Griggs said a temporary subsidy called the Market Facilitation Program that helped soybean farmers withstand some of the losses last time could help if something similar is revived this year. But he said no farmer wants to make a living off government subsidies.
We just want fair access to markets, Griggs said. And a fair price for the products we produce.
Steve Karnowski and Kristin M. Hall, Associated Press
AP videographer Mark Vancleave also contributed to this report.
Destination weddings are out, and virtual weddings are in.
Rather than traveling to the Amalfi Coast or Provence, Wired recently interviewed a couple who chose to host their nuptials in the place they first met and fell in love: Minecraft.
Sarah Nguyen, 24, from Portland, Oregon, and Jamie Patel, 25, from Leicester, England, met at 13 years old on a Minecraft role-play server. Its the closest thing we have to a shared home, Nguyen told Wired.
Most of their relationship was long-distance, lived out in the virtual world (the couple now resides together in Portland). Even Patels proposal took place atop a scenic mountain in Minecraft, delivered via in-game dialog.
Nguyen and Patel arent alone. Wired reported that more couples are choosing digital ceremonies hosted in the virtual spaces where their relationships first blossomed.
The pandemic marked a turning point for the wedding-industrial complex. With many weddings postponed or canceled, frustrated couples turned to the only option leftonline. Digital ceremonies became a lifeline for those unable to host in-person gatherings due to restrictions. Others fully embraced the virtual, including a 2020 Animal Crossing wedding and metaverse nuptials in 2021.
Now, even without restrictions, the demand for digital nuptials hasnt slowed. In fact, an entire cottage industry has emerged to meet it. Companies like Wedfuly offer virtual wedding services starting at $800, which includes equipment and a remote production team for the day of. Even traditional event planning firms are introducing digital packages.
The appeal is clearespecially as the national average cost of a wedding in the U.S. hits $33,000, according to The Knot. The global wedding industry is valued at $899.64 billion, and the average cost for a guest to attend a U.S. wedding is $610, according to Bankrate.
Virtual weddings, on the other hand, let friends and family attend from the comfort of their homes. Nguyen and Patels celebration cost just $300 (including custom skins, server hosting, and a designer to script NPCs and quests) and welcomed 50 guests from eight different countries.
Wired also spoke with Jessica Hu, an ordained officiant and digital celebrant based in Chicago. Hu specializes in ceremonies across Twitch, Discord, and VRChat, and has officiated more than 40 weddings in online spaces since launching her services in 2020.
Its easy to dismiss it as novelty, Hu says. But these weddings are deeply sacred. Ive had couples exchange vows using emoji reactions. Ive had Discord bots cue the processional music. Ive seen Twitch chats cry in real time.
Cue the heart-eyes and crying emojis.
Apple is partnering with brain-computer interface company Synchron to develop technology that lets users control devices using neural signals.
Still in the early stages, the technology could significantly expand accessibility for users who are unable to operate devices with their hands, Synchron said in a press release. The partnership was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
“This marks a defining moment for human-device interaction,” Synchron CEO Tom Oxley said in a statement. “Apple is helping to pioneer a new interface paradigm, where brain signals are formally recognized alongside touch, voice and typing.”
Historically, users have interacted with tech devices through keyboards, mice, and more recently, touch and voice. But these interfaces remain limiting for people with certain impairments.
Apple and Synchron are now working to translate specific brain signals into actions like selecting icons on a screen. Synchrons implantable device, called the Stentrode, uses electrodes to read brain activity. It integrates with Apples Switch Control feature, which allows users to operate devices via alternative input methods.
When we ask our clinical trial participants what they want to do, its always about communication and creativity, Synchron chief commercial officer Kurt Haggstrom said in a statement. And to most people, that means using their Apple devices. For Apple to recognize that need, and respond to it, demonstrates how much they value accessibility for their users.”
The technology likely remains years away from FDA approval and widespread use. Synchron said limited trials with patients are expected to begin later this year.
As you sift among the various options for your short-term investments, keep these key items on your dashboard: yield, guarantees, liquidity and your individual situation.
The short-term investments that promise the highest yields often come with at least some risk and/or constraints on your daily access to funds. It may be that youre just looking for the highest safe yield and dont care that much about liquidity. Or maybe having ready access to your funds is the name of the game.
Also think through whether you value an ironclad guarantee or are willing to go without in exchange for a potentially higher yield. Some cash instruments are fully FDIC-insured, while others are not. On the short list of FDIC-insured investments are checking and savings accounts, CDs, money market accounts (not to be confused with money market mutual funds), and online savings accounts.
Certificates of deposit
CDs will typically offer the most compelling yields of all cash instruments, and theyre also FDIC-insured.
Yet there are a couple of caveats. One is that minimum deposits for the highest-yielding CDs might be $25,000 or even higher. Theres also a trade-off on the liquidity front: Youll usually pay a penalty if you need to crack into your holdings before the maturity date. The longer the term of the CD, the bigger the penalty for cashing out early.
Online savings accounts
If you want daily liquidity, a decent yield, and FDIC protection, your best bet will tend to be a high-yield savings account through an online bank or a savings account through a credit union. The former offers FDIC protection, up to the limits, whereas credit union accounts are insured by another entity, the National Credit Union Administration.
Money market mutual funds
Money market mutual funds also offer daily liquidity and the convenience of having those funds live side by side with your long-term investments. But money market fund yields are still generally below those of online savings accounts today. Additionally, money market mutual funds arent FDIC-insured, though in practice most funds have done an excellent job of maintaining stable net asset values.
Dont confuse money market mutual funds with brokerage sweep accounts, though both are offered by investment providers. Interest rates on brokerage sweep accounts, which hold investors cash that hasnt yet been invested, have ticked up a bit recently but are still well below other cash options.
Stable-value funds
Stable-value funds are another example of an investment that offers an often-decent yield in exchange for not checking the liquidity and guarantee boxes.
Stable-value funds are only accessible inside of company retirement plans. They invest in bonds, so theyre not FDIC-insured; to protect investors principal, they employ insurance wrappers to help maintain a stable net asset value. Just bear in mind that stable-value funds carry drawbacks. Because you can only own such a fund within a 401(k), youll pay taxes and penalties to withdraw your money before retirement unless you meet certain criteria. So dont think of a stable-value fund as an emergency fund unless youre already retired or close to it.
Honorable mention: I Bonds
In contrast with the preceding investment types, I bonds are the only safe investment vehicles that will guarantee to make investors whole with respect to inflation. I bonds are Treasury bonds that pay a fixed rate of interest as well as another layer of interest that varies with the current inflation rate, as measured by the Consumer Price Index.
As attractive as that is, it comes with a few asterisks. If you redeem an I bond within five years of buying it, youll forfeit three months worth of interest. Purchase constraints are another drawback for large investors.
Christine Benz, director of personal finance and retirement planning at Morningstar
This article was provided to The Associated Press by Morningstar.
China is moving to strengthen its alliances with other countries as a counterweight to President Donald Trump’s trade war, presenting a united front with Latin American leaders a day after China and the U.S. agreed to a 90-day truce in their tariffs stalemate.China’s leaders have positioned the world’s second-largest economy as a reliable trade and development partner, in contrast to the uncertainty and instability from Trump’s tariff hikes and other policies.On Monday, Beijing and Washington announced their breakthrough on tariffs after weekend talks in Geneva, Switzerland, where they agreed to cut sky-high import duties on both sides for 90 days to allow for negotiations.Still, Beijing’s ire over the trade war remains apparent. Speaking to officials from China and Latin America on Tuesday, Chinese leader Xi Jinping reiterated Beijing’s stance that nobody wins a trade war and that “bullying or hegemonism only leads to self-isolation.”Having moved to defuse antagonisms with the U.S., Xi said China stands ready to “join hands” with Latin countries “in the face of seething undercurrents of pure political and bloc confrontation and the surging tide of unilateralism and protectionism.”“There are no winners in tariff wars or trade wars,” Xi said, reiterating a phrase China has used repeatedly when referring to Trump’s policies.When Trump began raising tariffs on Chinese products during his first term in office, China retaliated by diversifying its purchases of key farm products, such as soybeans and beef, away from U.S. suppliers. Brazil and other Latin American countries have benefited from that strategy.Also Tuesday, the head of the World Trade Organization appealed to Japan to fight disruptions to world commerce from Trump’s fast-changing tariffs and other policies.“Trade is facing very challenging times right now and it is quite difficult,” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director-general of the Geneva-based WTO, told Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba while on a visit to Tokyo.Japan, as “a champion of the multilateral trading system” must help maintain, strengthen and reform the WTO, the Japanese Foreign Ministry cited her as saying.Japan is among many countries yet to reach a deal with the Trump administration on hikes to U.S. tariffs, including those on autos, steel and aluminum.The WTO played a pivotal role in past decades as the U.S. and other major economies crusaded for the more open markets that facilitated the growth of global supply chains, many of which are anchored in China.By dismantling many protectionist barriers to trade, it has aided the ascent of Japan and China, and many other countries, as export manufacturing hubs.Since taking office for a second time, Trump has prioritized higher tariffs to try to reduce U.S. imports and compel companies to locate factories in the United States, doubling down on a trade war that he launched during his first term.The realities of Trump’s global trade offensive overshadowed an initial burst of optimism over the China-U.S. deal among investors, as rallies in stocks and oil prices faded on Tuesday.Speaking to the China-CELAC, or Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, Forum, Xi, the Chinese leader, announced plans to build closer ties with Latin America through political, economic, academic and security exchanges.He promised to boost imports from the region, to encourage Chinese companies to increase their investments, and said Beijing plans to expand cooperation in clean energy, 5G telecommunications and artificial intelligence. He also announced a new 66 billion yuan ($9.2 billion) credit line to support Latin American and Caribbean financing.China’s trade with the region has been growing rapidly, exceeding $500 billion for the first time last year, as it imported more farm products such as soybeans and beef, energy resources such as crude oil, iron ore, and critical minerals.Beijing’s investments in the region through Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, have included installing 5G networks and building ports and hydropower plants.Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced Monday that his country would formally join the BRIin a vote of confidence after several Chinese projects in Latin America hit snags in recent months.In other pledges, Beijing plans to invite 300 members from Latin American political parties to China annually for the next three years and facilitate 3,500 government scholarships and various other types of exchanges.Five Latin American countries will receive visa exemptions for travel to China, with more to follow, Xi said. It was not immediately clear which countries would become visa exempt.
Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi contributed from Tokyo.
Simina Mistreanu, Associated Press
