BUSINESS

A fundamental shift in the 1990s transformed liability insurance into a shareholder-driven system — and understanding that change is critical for leaders who want to avoid costly surprises when a claim hits.

A Nevada court issued a 14-day ban on a wide range of contracts from prediction market firm Kalshi as the firm continues battling with state regulators.

Indiana Pacers newly-acquired trade acquisition Ivica Zubac will miss the rest of the 2025-26 season with a rib injury.

Some want to work to keep busy. Others can’t afford to stop.

Bond markets across the globe are under pressure, but the U.K. government bond market is under attack like no other.

Fuel prices, fertilizer costs, and corn feed are converging on the ground beef case in a way that could push the price past $7.50 a pound we haven’t seen the worst yet.

Transcript:Caroline WoodsForget the headlines for a minute, because what matters right now is where the money is actually going. Joining me to break that down is Mo Haghbin, managing director at Proshares. Mo, great to have you back at the desk.Mo HaghbinThanks for having me.Caroline WoodsSo stocks are lower this week. We’ve had a lot of volatility tied to the war in Iran and also the spike in oil prices that we’ve been seeing. You know, when you take a look at flows, do you think that real fear is getting priced in or is this just repositioning?Mo HaghbinYeah, sure. I mean, I think we start by thinking about where the economy was pre-war. Right. And my view is we were actually in a pretty good place fundamentally. The labor market was softer but not really stressed. If you think about inflation, it was largely under control. Core inflation, maybe services were a bit sticky, but overall break evens and expectations were that inflation was coming down.Fast forward to, the conflict. And really I think what’s happened is investors looking at that situation and trying to assess whether this is going to be a prolonged issue or not. And to your point, I think it has had some effect on flows. So when I look at pre-war flows and postwar flows, what I see is much more defensiveness in the flows into ETFs.So, for example, equity ETFs had had a record start to the year. More recently we see fixed income ETFs actually leading the charge. And within fixed income the shorter duration products getting more flows than the intermediate. And the long. The one thing that’s surprising, Carolyn, is commodities. You would expect, given the price of oil and what’s going on, that there be a significant amount of interest or flows into that category.We’ve actually seen the opposite commodities lead all of 2025 and to start the year. But they’ve actually had outflows since the since the conflict broke out.Caroline WoodsEven despite oil being up pretty I mean it’s down technically 3% this week, but it’s still trading just below $100 a barrel. So why do you think that is?Mo HaghbinWell, I think it’s because there’s not clarity around whether these elevated prices will persist. And I think that’s a really important factor for investors. Right now. Think about the short term versus the long term. The short term obviously there’s supply disruption. The Strait of Hormuz is effectively blocked or at least very difficult to go through. We have to understand that’s mostly supply to Asia, mostly supply to China, South Korea, Japan.It’s not really a U.S. issue, but it will put pressure on global energy prices. The longer term story, I think is a little bit more interesting. And I don’t hear a lot of people talking about it. If Iran resolves itself in a shorter period of time and reintegrate back into the global economy, that actually is going to have the opposite effect on energy prices.That will bring energy prices down. Iran has roughly 10% of the world reserves in oil, 18% and national natural gas. If that supply comes back online, you could see energy prices go the other way. So I think that’s a little bit of the conflict here. Are you bullish energy at this level or are you actually thinking about the longer term and saying this level of energy prices is probably not sustainable and it’s going to come down?Caroline WoodsSo it doesn’t seem like people are chasing the energy trade. That’s correct. Well, but they’re still invested. They’re just turning more cautious. So I mean, I guess what’s the takeaway then? It’s not that it seems like every day that the headlines are downbeat, but then you take a look at the S&P 500 and it’s still pretty close to all time highs, you know, despite seeing some red on the screen.Caroline WoodsSo what is the takeaway. Is this a market that you think potentially should be lower given given the headlines.Mo HaghbinIt’s a you know, it’s a good question. And I think we’re all watching the developments and thinking about whether this is a regional issue that’s short horizon or is it going to be more of a global issue that’s longer duration? I think the base case right now is this is a regional issue and probably does not have a long length to it.I think the conflicts potentially escalates and, energy prices cannot sustain these levels. Just just sticking on that for a second. You know, this $100 oil price is a psychological threshold. I think it’s a macro threshold, but it’s not really the level that I think creates a recessionary environment. So if it’s short lived, I think of the growth picture globally started at a really, really strong place.And this this could just be another wall of worry that investors need to climb, as they have several other things like we saw with the tariff announcements, like we saw with the Venezuela situation. This could be another one of those.Caroline WoodsOkay. And on that note, one thing that also could be surprising, but maybe not if this is short lived, is just the fact that the safety trade doesn’t seem to be trading like you would expect on a week, that the fed rate cut expectations are getting pushed out and oil is still higher, and an inflationary print came in hot.Caroline WoodsRight? We’re not seeing money pile into gold. In fact, gold’s down 10% this week.Mo HaghbinThat’s right.Caroline WoodsIs the safety trade broken? What’s going on?Mo HaghbinWell, I think the safety trade might have moved. Right. So where gold historically was, maybe somewhere people went for safety or even longer duration bonds like think about TLT or some of these other longer duration products. I think diversification means something different now. And it’s good for investors to start thinking about alternatives to those safety trades. So real assets I think about infrastructure.Infrastructure is up 10% on the year right. The markets are down slightly but infrastructure is up. So how do you actually build diversification. It hasn’t been a popular word for a while. You know people have always looked at that as maybe a penalty because markets were doing so well. And if I wasn’t invested in the S&P 500 while it was going to underperform, I think people are rethinking that.People are saying with what’s going on around the world, how can I be more tactical? How can I be more nimble? And are there other ways to diversify outside of just long duration bonds? And boom, there you go.Caroline WoodsWhere is the real money going right now? You mentioned fixed income, but within equities it’s not going into energy. We know that certainly doesn’t seem like it’s going into the AI trade right now. Although maybe your data shows something different. Where is it going.Mo HaghbinSo equity flows are about 80% off of the monthly pace we were seeing before the conflict started. And what I see is actually very small amount of that is going in the broad based indices. And a lot is going into a more narrow sector and subsector strategies more thematic and smart data strategies. And I think it’s actually reflective of the environment.Broad based exposure has concentration. You obviously have sector bias is there. And people are becoming a bit more discerning and a bit more precise about what exposures they want in their portfolio, and looking for ways to move away from the broad based index.Caroline WoodsSo talk about some of those themes and some of the sectors that you’re in favor. Yeah.Mo HaghbinNow some cyclical, companies and some cyclical, factor exposures. So I think, mid-cap and value, they were actually starting to get a little bit of a run even before this. And I think that’s continuing. I still, still actually attractive, but it depends on how within the eight I trade, I think now there’s winners and losers.So people are thinking about it more granularly.Caroline WoodsAnything surprising that you’re seeing?Mo HaghbinI think the commodity piece is surprising, right? You know, you would expect that given the year that commodities had inflows and even the way it started the year with some of the energy shock that we’ve seen, wouldn’t you expect more flows to go there? We’ve seen the opposite. It’s actually outflows in the broader commodity. Products.Caroline WoodsWill end if oil stays high and there’s recession implications. You wouldn’t expect to see money going into small cap and mid-cap because that area would be hit harder. So would you say that sentiment is actually still okay?Mo HaghbinI think so. I think if you look at where the market has had the most reaction, it’s been in the treasury market, it’s been in commodities. It’s been in the dollar. But credit spreads and equities have been fairly calm. To your point, the broad based index is still off maybe 5% from an all time high. We aren’t seeing the market pricing in a prolonged conflict or a situation where this shock would lead to a growth shock, which would lead to a recession.Caroline WoodsBut is the market right or wrong? Is the big question mark.Mo HaghbinMy my view is that at the current moment that we’re talking, there is a pretty good chance that this becomes something the economy can absorb, right? Assuming it doesn’t escalate from here and become more of a global issue, this is something the economy can absorb. It was on a very, very strong footing before the war broke out. And globally, there’s a lot of good developments as it relates to production and productivity gains.Labor market. I think this is, priced correctly by the market, where credit spreads and equities are looking past the short term conflict and thinking about the long term trend that we’re seeing in growth.Caroline WoodsSo then where does the market go from here? Let’s make the case that it can move higher from here.Mo HaghbinI think we can make the case that it moves higher from here. It depends on your horizon right. If you ask me.Caroline WoodsLet’s see this year.Mo HaghbinThis year Ken, can the market and higher this year from where it started. Absolutely.Caroline WoodsIs that your base case.Mo HaghbinThat’s my base case okay.Caroline WoodsAll right. We like to speed things up for the end of our interviews before we get to our rapid fire, this or that. I would love to give you one word and you give us one word to characterize that theme.Mo HaghbinOkay? Sentiment, mixed.Caroline WoodsEconomy, healthy markets.Mo HaghbinNervous.Caroline WoodsRisk.Mo HaghbinGood defensive.Caroline WoodsPositioning.Mo HaghbinOn the defensive.Caroline WoodsAll right. Time for our rapid fire game of this or that your first time playing. Are you ready?Mo HaghbinI’m ready.Caroline WoodsFlows real de-risking or just rotation.Mo HaghbinRotation.Caroline WoodsRetail. Still buying dips or starting to pull back.Mo HaghbinBuying dips.Caroline WoodsDip buyers still in control or getting more selective?Mo HaghbinStill in control.Caroline WoodsVolatility? Buy it or avoid it.Mo HaghbinSo volatility.Caroline WoodsCredit markets calm are starting to crack.Mo HaghbinPublic credit markets fairly calm. Pockets of private credit not so much. That wasn’t a word by the way.Caroline WoodsSafety trade broken or paused.Mo HaghbinMoving.Caroline WoodsBitcoin or gold. Bitcoin Bitcoin or cash?Mo HaghbinCash.Caroline WoodsLeadership still big tech or broadening out.Mo HaghbinBroadening out.Caroline WoodsAI trade reloading or rolling over. Reloading small caps. Catch up. Trade or value. Trap.Mo HaghbinValue. Trap.Caroline WoodsFed. Done cutting or more on the way?Mo HaghbinMore on the way.Caroline WoodsEven despite your strong economic projections.Mo HaghbinI think we still have at least one cut this year. Okay.Caroline WoodsI guess the fed did say that oil back to 80 or pushing toward 150.Mo HaghbinBack to 80.Caroline WoodsSentiment max pessimism are secretly bullish.Mo HaghbinSecretly bullish.Caroline WoodsRisk broad market problem or just pockets of weakness.Mo HaghbinPockets of weakness.Caroline WoodsInflation a real comeback or just an energy spike? Energy spike and not this or that, but quick answers one asset class sending a misleading signal right now.Mo HaghbinOne more energy miners.Caroline WoodsWhat’s quietly seeing inflows but no one is talking about yet.Mo HaghbinDividend growers.Caroline WoodsAnd finally, something we didn’t talk about. Election risk. Is it priced in or are we not seeing anything yet priced in. All right. We’ll leave it there. Mo I always appreciate your insights. Thanks so much for playing.Mo HaghbinGreat to.Caroline WoodsBe here. I appreciate it. That’s Mo Haghbin managing director at Proshares AG.

TheStreet aims to feature only the best products and services. If you buy something via one of our links, we may earn a commission.Why we love this dealThere’s no such thing as too much storage, especially now that spring is on its way and spring cleaning is drawing closer. Whether you need a bit of extra room in the pantry for dry goods, your bathroom needs a little tidying up, or you need a hobby cart that can move around the house, we’ve found a super affordable option at Amazon.The Asgolion Slim 4-Tier Rolling Storage Cart is a simple and convenient way to add some more storage space without taking up too much room. At just $27, it’s a great option for anyone looking to use their vertical space smartly, and shoppers can save 23% on this cart at Amazon.Asgolion Slim 4-Tier Rolling Storage Cart, $27 (was $35) at Amazon

Courtesy of Amazon

Shop at AmazonWhy do shoppers love it?This slim rolling cart is perfect for any narrow vertical storage space or just to easily move ingredients around the kitchen. It’s great for coffee items, dry goods, bathroom items, or even cleaning supplies, as it works great as a cleaning cart that wheels around the house with you as you clean. The four tiers offer open space, allowing you to see the items you have stocked, while featuring a metal bar that wraps around each tier to keep items from falling out. The metal frame features two handles at the top, allowing you to roll the cart around more easily, and the wheels swivel 360 degrees and feature a locking mechanism for safety.Related: Amazon’s bestselling 5-piece set of stackable storage drawers is on sale for just $44The cart measures 5.9 inches deep, 15.6 inches wide, and 33.6 inches tall, with the bottom two shelves measuring 8.2 inches tall and the third shelf measuring 7 inches tall. This offers plenty of room for cleaning bottles, tall dry goods items like canned food and rice bags, or bathroom items like lotion, toilet paper, and more. The whole cart only weighs 9.2 pounds, making it easy for anyone to maneuver, and it is recommended to hold up to 22 pounds. Amazon offers this cart in three colors and four sizes, but the best deal is the Rustic Brown color in the standard four-tier sizing. Details to knowSizes: They offer standard, medium, large, and extra large.Color: Rustic Brown is the best price, but black and white are also available for a few dollars more. Maneuverability: The wheels swivel 360 degrees, and the cart has handles at the top to easily maneuver it around. One reviewer said, “This cart is narrow, but very sturdy, handsome, and functional. It fits perfectly between the bathroom vanity and the wall. It’s nice quality all around, all the pieces fit, and it’s square to the floor and solid, not shaky.” Another person boasted about the storage space, saying, “After it was put together, it fit everything. I actually didn’t think it would hold all the treats, the cat food container, wet cat food, wet dog food, kitty poo bags, dog and cat toothbrush and toothpaste, both brushes, toy accessories, but there is still room.”Shop more dealsYasonic 3-Tier Rolling Cart, $27 (was $35) at AmazonVasagle Lilea 3-Tier Rolling Basket, $34 (was $40) at AmazonThreeHio 6-Tier Slim Rolling Cart, $45 (was $53) at AmazonWhether you’re looking to fill that small amount of space by the fridge or just need something that can easily move about the house, the Asgolion Slim 4-Tier Rolling Storage Cart is an affordable, sturdy choice. The locking, 360-degree swivel wheels offer stability and ease of movement, and the slim profile allows the cart to maneuver around the house seamlessly while also being easy to store in small places. The shelf sizing is ideal for bottles, beauty supplies, or dry and canned goods, and the best part is that this cart is under $30. Shoppers can save 23%, scoring this cart for just $27 at Amazon.

Voice AI is moving faster than the tools we use to measure it. Every major AI lab — OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, xAI — is racing to ship voice models capable of natural, real-time conversation. But the benchmarks used to evaluate those models are largely still running on synthetic speech, English-only prompts, and scripted test sets that bear little resemblance to how people actually talk.Scale AI, the large data annotation startup whose founder was poached by Meta last year to lead its Superintelligence Lab, is still going strong and tackling the problem head on: today it launches Voice Showdown, what it calls the first global preference-based arena designed to benchmark voice AI through the lens of real human interaction. This product offers a unique strategic value to users: free access to the world’s leading frontier models. Through Scale’s ChatLab platform, users can interact with high-tier models—which typically require multiple $20-per-month subscriptions—at no cost. In exchange, users participate in occasional blind, head-to-head “battles” to choose which of two anonymized leading voice models offers a better experience, providing data for the industry’s most authentic, human-preference leaderboard of voice AI models.”Voice AI is really the fastest moving frontier in AI right now,” said Janie Gu, product manager for Showdown at Scale AI. “But the way that we evaluate voice models hasn’t kept up.”The results, drawn from thousands of spontaneous voice conversations across more than 60 languages, reveal capability gaps that other benchmarks have consistently missed.How Scale’s Voice Showdown worksVoice Showdown is built on ChatLab, Scale’s model-agnostic chat platform where users can freely interact with whichever frontier AI model they choose — for free — within a single app. The platform has been available to Scale’s global community of over 500,000 annotators, with roughly 300,000 having submitted at least one prompt. Scale is opening the platform to a public waitlist today.The evaluation mechanism is elegant in its simplicity: while a user is having a natural voice conversation with a model, the system occasionally — on fewer than 5% of all voice prompts — surfaces a blind side-by-side comparison. The same prompt is sent to a second, anonymous model, and the user picks which response they prefer.This design solves three problems that plague existing voice benchmarks.First, every prompt comes from real human speech — with accents, background noise, half-finished sentences, and conversational filler — rather than synthesized audio generated from text. Second, the platform spans more than 60 languages across 6 continents, with over a third of battles occurring in non-English languages including Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, Portuguese, Hindi, and French. Third, because battles occur within users’ actual daily conversations, 81% of prompts are conversational or open-ended — questions without a single correct answer. That rules out automated scoring and makes human preference the only credible signal.Voice Showdown currently runs two evaluation modes: Dictate (users speak, models respond with text) and Speech-to-Speech, or S2S (Speech-to-Speech, users speak, models talk back). A third mode — Full Duplex, which captures real-time, interruptible conversation — is in development.Incentive-aligned votingOne design detail sets Voice Showdown apart from Chatbot Arena (LM Arena), the text benchmark it most closely resembles. In LM Arena, critics have noted that users sometimes cast throwaway votes with little stake in the outcome. Voice Showdown addresses this directly: after a user votes for the model they preferred, the app switches them to that model for the rest of their conversation. If you voted for GPT-4o Audio over Gemini, you’re now talking to GPT-4o Audio. That alignment of consequence with preference discourages casual or dishonest voting.The system also controls for confounds that could corrupt comparisons: both model responses begin streaming simultaneously (eliminating speed bias), voice gender is matched across both options (eliminating gender preference bias), and neither model is identified by name during voting.The new Voice AI leaderboard every enterprise decision-maker should pay attention toVoice Showdown launches with 11 frontier models evaluated across 52 model-voice pairs as of March 18, 2026. Not all models support both evaluation modes — the Dictate leaderboard includes 8 models, while S2S includes 6.Dictate Leaderboard (Speech-In, Text-Out)In this mode, users provide a spoken prompt and evaluate two side-by-side text responses. Here are the baseline scores:Gemini 3 Pro (1073) Gemini 3 Flash (1068) GPT-4o Audio (1019) Qwen 3 Omni (1000) Voxtral Small (925) Gemma 3n (918) GPT Realtime (875) Phi-4 Multimodal (729) Note: Gemini 3 Pro and Gemini 3 Flash are statistically tied for the top rank.Speech-to-Speech (S2S) LeaderboardIn this mode, users speak to the model and evaluate two competing audio responses. Also baselines:Gemini 2.5 Flash Audio (1060) GPT-4o Audio (1059) Grok Voice (1024) Qwen 3 Omni (1000) GPT Realtime (962) GPT Realtime 1.5 (920) Note: Gemini 2.5 Flash Audio and GPT-4o Audio are statistically tied for the top rank in baseline evaluations.Dictate rankings are led by Google’s Gemini 3 Pro and Gemini 3 Flash, which are statistically tied at #1 with Elo scores around 1,043-1,044 after style controls. GPT-4o Audio holds a clear third place. Open-weight models including Gemma3n, Voxtral Small, and Phi-4 Multimodal trail significantly.Speech-to-Speech (S2S) rankings show a tighter race at the top, with Gemini 2.5 Flash Audio and GPT-4o Audio statistically tied at #1 in the baseline rankings. After adjusting for response length and formatting — factors that can inflate perceived quality — GPT-4o Audio pulls ahead (1,102 Elo vs. 1,075 for Gemini 2.5 Flash Audio). Grok Voice jumps to a close second at 1,093 under style controls, suggesting its raw #3 ranking undersells its actual performance quality.Qwen 3 Omni, the open-weight model from Alibaba’s Qwen team, performs better on pure preference than its popularity would suggest — ranking fourth in both modes, ahead of several higher-profile names. “When people come in, they go for the big names,” Gu noted. “But for preference, lesser-known models like Qwen actually pull ahead.”Surprised revealed by real-world preference dataBeyond rankings, Voice Showdown’s real value is in the failure diagnostics — and those paint a more complicated picture of voice AI than most leaderboards reveal.The multilingual gap is worse than you thinkLanguage robustness is the starkest differentiator across models. In Dictate, Gemini 3 models lead across essentially every language tested. In S2S, the winner depends heavily on which language is being spoken: GPT-4o Audio leads in Arabic and Turkish; Gemini 2.5 Flash Audio is strongest in French; Grok Voice is competitive in Japanese and Portuguese.But the more alarming finding is how frequently some models simply stop responding in the user’s language at all.GPT Realtime 1.5 — OpenAI’s newer real-time voice model — responds in English to non-English prompts roughly 20% of the time, even on high-resource, officially supported languages like Hindi, Spanish, and Turkish. Its predecessor, GPT Realtime, mismatches at about half that rate (~10%). Gemini 2.5 Flash Audio and GPT-4o Audio sit at ~7%.The phenomenon runs both directions: some models carry non-English context from earlier in a conversation into an English turn, or simply mishear a prompt and generate an unrelated response in the wrong language entirely.User verbatims from the platform capture the frustration bluntly: “I said I have an interview today with Quest Management and instead of answering, it gave me information about ‘Risk Management.'””GPT Realtime 1.5 thought I was speaking incoherently and recommended mental health assistance, while Qwen 3 Omni correctly identified I was speaking a Nigerian local language.”The reason existing benchmarks miss this: they’re built on synthetic speech optimized for clean acoustic conditions, and they’re rarely multilingual. Real speakers in real environments — with background noise, short utterances, and regional accents — break speech understanding in ways lab conditions don’t anticipate.Voice selection is more than aestheticsVoice Showdown evaluates models not just at the model level but at the individual voice level — and the variance within a single model’s voice catalog is striking.For one unnamed model in the study, the best-performing voice won 30 percentage points more often than the worst-performing voice from the same underlying model. Both voices share the same reasoning and generation backend. The difference is purely in audio presentation.The top-performing voices tend to win or lose on audio understanding and content completeness — whether the model heard you correctly and answered fully. But speech quality remains a deciding factor at the voice selection level, particularly when models are otherwise comparable. “Voice directly shapes how users evaluate the interaction,” Gu said.Models degrade in conversationMost benchmarks test a single turn. Voice Showdown tests how models hold up across extended conversations — and the results aren’t flattering.On Turn 1, content quality accounts for 23% of model failures. By Turn 11 and beyond, it becomes the primary failure mode at 43%. Most models see their win rates decline as conversations extend, struggling to maintain coherence across multiple exchanges.GPT Realtime variants are an exception, marginally improving on later turns — consistent with their known strengths on longer contexts, and their documented weakness on the brief, noisy utterances that dominate early interactions.Prompt length shows a complementary pattern: short prompts (under 10 seconds) are dominated by audio understanding failures (38%), while long prompts (over 40 seconds) shift the primary failure toward content quality (31%). Shorter audio gives models less acoustic context to parse; longer requests are understood but harder to answer well.Why some voice AI models loseAfter every S2S comparison, users tag why they preferred one response over the other across three axes: audio understanding, content quality, and speech output. The failure signatures differ meaningfully by model.Qwen 3 Omni’s losses cluster around speech generation — its reasoning is competitive, but users are put off by how it sounds. GPT Realtime 1.5’s losses are dominated by audio understanding failures (51%), consistent with its language-switching behavior on challenging prompts. Grok Voice’s failures are more balanced across all three axes, indicating no single dominant weakness but no particular strength either.What’s nextThe current leaderboard covers turn-based interaction — you speak, the model responds, repeat. But real voice conversations don’t work that way. People interrupt, change direction mid-sentence, and talk over each other.Scale says Full Duplex evaluation — designed to capture these real-time dynamics through human preference rather than scripted scenarios or automated metrics — is coming to Showdown next. No existing benchmark captures full-duplex interaction through organic human preference data.The leaderboard is live at scale.com/showdown. A public waitlist to join ChatLab and vote on comparisons is open today, with users receiving free access to frontier voice models including GPT-4o, Gemini, and Grok in exchange for occasional preference votes.

Nasdaq’s structure the SEC approved opens door to bring blockchain benefits to equities, while preserving the same-old intermediaries and market structure, industry insiders say.