From Xfinity star to Cup rookie, Connor Zilisch is learning the hard way that the top level of NASCAR isn’t high school—it’s graduate school on steroids.
BUSINESS
Nobel prize-winning economist warns that America is on the brink of stagflation
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Home buyers beware: HOA fees are topping $500 a month in these hot spots
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Amazon is selling a ‘soft and comfortable’ sofa for just $150
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 dealA versatile piece of furniture can be a game-changer, especially if you have limited space. We love a great deal on a convertible sofa bed that can be used for sleeping, as a loveseat for sitting, or as a reclined lounger for relaxing. The holidays are right around the corner, and if you need some extra seating, consider this adjustable sofa bed. Right now, the Pipishell 66-Inch Futon is just $150 at Amazon. That’s 12% off its regular price of $170. It’s a popular pick, with over 700 purchased in the past month. Add some comfort and style to your home – order your new futon now while this deal lasts. Pipishell 66-Inch Futon, $150 (was $170) at Amazon
Courtesy of Amazon
Why do shoppers love it?This futon comes in three colors: gray, green, and white. They’re all on sale right now, but you’ll save the most when you choose the gray one. The back adjusts into three different positions so it can be used as a loveseat, a recliner, or a bed, and the couch arms can also be adjusted from zero to 90 degrees for customized comfort. It is made of easy-to-clean corduroy fabric, with highly elastic foam and soft cushions. The upholstery is breathable and durable, adding extra comfort when you sit or sleep on it. It resists pilling and fading, so it’s built to last even with everyday use. This mid-century modern sofa bed adds style and functionality to any home. One reviewer who loves the design said, “It’s adorable! Instructions were easy, setup was simple, and I’m very pleased with the look. Smart design.” If you need a slightly longer version, it’s also available in a 73-inch model. Related: Walmart’s dreamy cloud couch sectional is on sale for 41% off, and it comes in 8 colorsMany reviewers say this futon is an awesome piece to have in the event of unexpected guests, because you’re already prepared with an extra spot for someone to sleep. One customer called it an “excellent futon with soft, comfortable material.” They also said it “makes a nice-sized extra bed for unexpected guests.” It is simple to switch it back and forth from a couch to a bed, too. Another described this versatile couch as the perfect size for a dorm room, a small apartment, or a tiny home office. Details to knowDimensions: 66.1 inches long with a seat height of 18.9 inches and a seat depth of 20.8 inches when set up as a couch. Item weight: 83.6 pounds. Weight capacity: 500 pounds. Warranty: Includes a limited warranty. Assembly is required, but it includes clear instructions and all the tools you’ll need. The manufacturer says it can be completed within 30 minutes. The cushions come vacuum-sealed, but will expand to their full size within 72 hours. Shop more deals Hanxin 78-Inch Convertible Sleeper Sofa Bed, $260 (was $370) at AmazonHomall Futon Sofa Bed, $145 (was $160) at AmazonDreamDashio 69-Inch Futon Sofa Bed, $180 at AmazonGet the Pipishell 66-Inch Futon while it’s just $150 at Amazon for a limited time. This deal won’t last long, so add one to your cart and save.
Highlights from the SOA Retirement Risk Survey
Broadcast Retirement Network’s Jeffrey Snyder discusses the top retirement concerns with the Society of Actuaries’ Anna M. Rappoport, FSA.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkJoining me now, Anna Rappaport with the Society of Actuaries. Anna, so great to see you. Thanks for joining us this morning.Thank you. And I’m very excited to talk to you because we’re going to be talking about the risk survey. But in talking with you, this survey has been conducted for over 20 years.I bet you have seen a lot of changes in how people think about retirement in the 20 years.Anna M. Rappoport, FSA, Society of ActuariesWe have, we’ve seen a lot of things that have changed and a lot of things that have not changed. And of course, the retirement system has changed with a big shift away from DB and more DC, a lot of dependence in Social Security. The whole time, some of the key things we found the whole time are that pre-retirees are more concerned about risks than retirees.They seem to have settled down. We’ve also found that people plan to retire at a certain age, but very often they retire earlier. And those things don’t change at all.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkSo, you know, and what’s interesting, Anna, I don’t want to get sidetracked from the survey, is that, you know, the world has kind of shifted to DC, to 401k type programs. But now we’re talking about things like retirement income, which I think is right in the Society of Actuaries wheelhouse. I mean, you all have been doing so much work around income in retirement with defined benefit plans.So that’s something that has changed a little bit, but just in a different way.Anna M. Rappoport, FSA, Society of ActuariesWell, what actually the start of the survey is related to that shift. We found in the 1990s, around 1995, we came to realize that all of the focus on retirement savings was about getting the money, not using the money. And we started an effort there to focus on how the money is used in retirement.And subsequent to that, we focused on what changes during retirement. And I spend a lot of my time today on very late in life issues. But in focusing on that, we began to focus on what’s the best way to use the money after retirement.The survey grew out of that focus because we found out we knew what advisors thought. We knew what we thought as professionals, but we didn’t know what people thought. And surprise, we didn’t always, not knowing what people thought, we didn’t understand.And a lot of what we have learned since then has shaped the way we think about retirement issues and what should be included in planning.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkSo, Anna, do you think based on some of the survey results, both before and this particular survey, that people have a better, I’m talking about regular mom and pop Americana, that they have a better understanding of retirement, that they understand their needs? And how does that compare to when you first started the survey?Anna M. Rappoport, FSA, Society of ActuariesSadly, there’s an awful lot that they don’t understand, but you can really think about people in different tiers. The people who have a lot of money, a lot of them do understand, do a good job of planning, understand a lot, even other things they may leave out. The people who have middle amounts of money, one of the things we found out along the way is that most of their money, in many cases, is in their house.And the planning didn’t think about that adequately. We focused on that, and that’s something we’re still focusing on today. And people with little money, they didn’t have much understanding of retirement planning, but retirement planning wasn’t really relevant for them until they stabilized.If you’re trying to pay off student loan debt, or worse still, if you’re trying to pay the this week and buy drugs for your children, and you’re scrambling to meet budget-to-budget, retirement planning is not relevant. What’s relevant there is getting you stabilized so you can save and retirement plan. That hasn’t really changed.And the financial fragility remains a major issue today. And in fact, for some people, it’s getting worse rather than better. Financial wellness programs are helping to deal with that.And much of the focus has shifted from retirement planning to more general financial planning and financial wellness programs. Within the framework of those who plan, a problem that has not gone away that we’ve uncovered in the survey and various focus groups, and I should say the Society of Actuaries in its consumer research program, the post-retirement risk survey, which looks at pre-retirees and retirees, has been the foundation for over 20 years. But we are also now doing a generation survey, and we’re about to do the third round of that.And we’ve done various focus groups to help us, one, understand, and two, do a better job on the survey. So that consumer education program is broad, and I’ve been involved in all of it. So I have a pretty good understanding.But the biggest problem there, and that has not gone away, is that people, there are a lot of people who are short-term. They’re like, oh, I can pay my bills for the next three years or two years or sometimes one year. I’m okay.They’re not like, oh, retirement, I might live till 95 or 100 or at least 80, and I need to plan for the long term. So that’s, there are a lot of issues that haven’t changed a bit. There also are some cultural groups where retirement planning is not the system.The system is the parents take care of the children and the grandchildren, and the children take care of the parents and the grandparents. And that’s the certain ethnic groups. So there’s a lot more to this than you start out working, and you got to save, and if you save that money, you’ll have money for retirement.It’s a lot more complicated than that. And the survey has tended to do that. We have, I said we had about 20 years, over 20 years of research.We also have some summary reports. One of them is the journey through retirement, which takes people through before they retire, they retire up to about age 85, and now we’re working on the even longer.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkAnd if I could just jump in, I think as an industry, we’ve tried to educate people, but you can’t educate for experience, and everyone is different. You’re different, I’m different. People, everyone in America is different, and so they have different experiences.How does technology, like artificial intelligence, you mentioned financial wellness programs, is that, and they may be in their infancy. AI deployment may be in its infancy in this respect. But can that help bridge the gap, or are we always going to have the challenges you’re talking about, which is the volatility, the concern about paying the bills for so many of our fellow citizens?Anna M. Rappoport, FSA, Society of ActuariesOkay, I think that AI has a definite place and technology has a definite place. It’s not going to wipe out the problems. And I want to say that in this year’s survey, and this is, we’re at 12 now in terms of the number of surveys that we’ve done.And in this survey, we’ve had technology as a special topic for the first time, which is interesting. The surveys, by the way, have some basic questions that are in all the surveys, some areas of focus that are in some of the surveys, because we’re trying for this not to be the same thing over and over again 12 times. But our entire program of research and consumer education, we try to build layers so that you get new stuff.You get new stuff for each, out of each thing you do. And the summary reports bring you up to where you are. So we have, we’ve got this journey through retirement is the one that I particularly recommend.And these are all downloadable from the Society of Actuaries website. The last survey, the 2024 survey, the one that the report will be coming out very shortly, that survey has three new topics in it. One on technology and AI, one on family, and one on inflation.And it repeats the topics on the basic things. Watch for that survey. The technology material is particularly significant today.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkWell, Anna, we’re going to have to leave it there. Thanks so much for joining us. And look, we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon.Anna M. Rappoport, FSA, Society of ActuariesThank you very much. And I’ll be happy to join you again.
How to Successfully Invest in Semiliquid Funds
A semiliquid fund may align with an investor’s objectives, but not everyone is equipped to invest in private, illiquid assets. Investors should carefully consider some additional factors before adding a semiliquid fund to a portfolio. Successful investing in private assets depends on meeting three key preconditions, or “P’s”: patience, premium, and proficiency. Download the Role of Semiliquid Funds in Portfolios report for a deeper dive.Patience: A Long Horizon and the Capacity to Bear RiskMaintaining a long-term investment horizon is the name of the game in private assets. These securities trade far less frequently than in public markets, and this unreliable liquidity can put investors looking for a quick exit in a crunch.Investors should thus only consider semiliquid funds if they have a long investment horizon of at least seven to 10 years. By design, semiliquid fund structures provide limited liquidity windows to get in or out of the fund. Redemptions are often only offered quarterly and limited to up to 5% of the fund’s value. This means that investors should only consider investing capital in semiliquid vehicles that they are comfortable having locked up for years at a time.But a patient mindset is a powerful advantage in financial markets—both private and public. Access to long-term capital enables investors to look past short-term noise and invest with a longer time horizon than the market. Morningstar’s Mind the Gap study regularly concludes that investors can be their own worst enemies because of poor timing decisions, such as buying a hot fund after a strong run at its peak or selling a loser at the worst possible moment before a strong rebound. The 2025 study found that the more investors transacted, the wider the gaps between investor returns and total returns grew. The chart below shows how the investor return gaps evolved across “cash flow volatility” quintiles, which group funds based on investors’ trading activity (flows in and out of funds). The “gap” represents the portion of funds’ total returns forgone because of the timing and magnitude of transactions investors made over a period. The inability to transact can represent a behavioral safeguard for the more trigger-happy investors. The virtue of patience applies to public markets, too, but it ultimately hinges not just on the investors’ willingness to stay invested, but also on their capacity to bear risks over long time frames.Premium: Private Assets Need to Deliver Higher Returns Investors should demand an increased return for giving up liquidity and dealing with the complexities of private assets investing; otherwise, what’s the point? Without superior returns, semiliquid funds are not worth the additional hassle. Requiring additional compensation for the risks borne makes sense in theory, and the literature on the so-called illiquidity premium is vast. Historical data suggests a premium can exist at times, but, like all investment premiums, it can ebb and flow in different market conditions. Additionally, skeptics point out that the premium is at least in part explained by the typical characteristics of the market, such as leverage, sector, and size. Sometimes, the premium is more an illusion than an asset class trait, reflecting a feature of the vehicle rather than evidence of skill or premium. Private credit semiliquid funds in the US have delivered superior returns over funds investing in broadly syndicated bank loans, for example, but this is mainly an effect of leverage, as we show in our State of Semiliquid Funds report.While many market participants tout the benefits of adding private markets to a portfolio, the illiquidity premium is not guaranteed, and the high fees charged by semiliquid funds require substantial premiums to deliver net returns in excess of public markets. Investors need to balance the allure of a superior but nonetheless highly uncertain outcome with the challenging realities of private market investments, such as their complexities, costs, lower transparency, and illiquidity. Proficiency: Fund Selection Is KeyThe last ingredient is fund selection; in other words, the proficiency or skill required to navigate private markets and semiliquid funds. There is no such thing as low-cost, passive exposure to private markets. Unlike traditional markets, there is no standardized benchmark or “beta” strategy to lean on, making fund selection a decisive and inescapable factor for success. Private assets are notoriously expensive to access, and there is a wide dispersion of returns across strategies, especially in private equity, reflecting both the potential payoffs and the penalties of manager selection. The implication is that strong selection capabilities are a requirement, not an option. This realization highlights an important decision that is intertwined with portfolio construction: whether to pursue targeted, niche strategies that can be combined, or opt for a single, multi-asset diversified solution. For most investors, a broadly diversified approach is likely more practical.Ultimately, investing in semiliquid funds isn’t for everyone. By carefully considering how patient they can afford to be, how much of a premium they desire, and where they have the proficiency to select the right funds, investors can better position themselves for success. Once investors figure out why semiliquid funds can help them meet their investment objectives and what it takes to succeed in this space, the next step is to explore how they fit into a portfolio.
BlackRock debuts staked ether ETF as demand grows for yield in crypto funds
The BlackRock’s iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHB) lets investors earn staking rewards alongside spot ETH exposure.