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The U.S. stock market is rising again on Monday, ahead of a week with shortened trading because of the Thanksgiving holiday. The S&P 500 climbed 1.4% and added to its jump from Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 221 points, or 0.5%, as of 12:30 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 2.4% higher. Stocks got a lift from rising hopes that the Federal Reserve will cut its main interest rate again at its next meeting in December, a move that could boost the economy and investment prices. The market also benefited from strength for stocks caught up in the artificial-intelligence frenzy. Alphabet, which has been getting praise for its newest Gemini AI model, rallied 5.2% and was one of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500. Nvidia rose 2.1%. But Monday’s gains were hesitant, and the S&P 500 rallied to a gain of 1% only to halve it within the first 15 minutes of trading, before picking up momentum again. Stocks have been swinging sharply, not just day to day but also hour to hour, in recent weeks as worries weigh about what the Fed will do with interest rates and whether too much money is pouring into AI and creating a bubble. All the uncertainty is creating the biggest test for investors since an April sell-off, when President Donald Trump shocked the world with his Liberation Day tariffs. Still, despite all the recent fear, the S&P 500 remains within 2.8% of its record set last month. Several more tests lie ahead this week for the market, though none loom quite as large as last weeks profit report from Nvidia or the delayed jobs report from the U.S. government for September. One of the biggest tests will arrive Tuesday, when the U.S. government will deliver data showing how bad inflation was at the wholesale level in September. Economists expect it to show a 2.6% rise from a year earlier, the same inflation rate as August. A higher-than-expected reading could deter the Fed from cutting its main interest rate in December for a third time this year, because lower rates can worsen inflation. Some Fed officials have already argued against a December cut in part because inflation has stubbornly remained above their 2% target. Traders are nevertheless betting on a 77% probability that the Fed will cut rates next month, up from 71% on Friday and from less than a coin flips chance a week ago, according to data from CME Group. U.S. markets will be closed on Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday. A day later, its on to the rush of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. On Wall Street, U.S.-listed shares of Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk fell 5.8% Monday after it reported that its Alzheimers drug failed to slow progression of the disease in a trial. Grindr dropped 9.9% after saying it’s breaking off talks with a couple of investors who had offered to buy the company, which helps its gay users connect with each other. A special committee of the company’s board of directors said it had questions about the financing for the deal by the investors, who collectively own more than 60% of Grindr’s stock. Bitcoin, meanwhile, continued it sharp swings. It was sitting near $87,600 after bouncing between $82,000 and $94,000 over the last week. It was near $125,000 last month. In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe following a mixed finish in Asia. Hong Kongs Hang Seng jumped 2% for one of the worlds biggest moves. It got a boost from a 4.7% leap for Alibaba, which has reported strong demand for its updated Qwen AI app. Alibaba is due to report earnings on Tuesday. In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady. The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.04% from 4.06% late Friday. Elaine Kurtenbach and Matt Ott AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. A modest rise in negative equity is emerging across parts of the U.S. housing market, but the overall picture remains far more stable than anything resembling the Global Financial Crisis. Having negative equitycommonly known as being underwatermeans a homeowner owes more on their mortgage than the homes current market value. According to ICE Mortgage Technology, just 1.0% of U.S. mortgages were underwater in April 2025. By October 2025, that share rose to 1.6%. Thats an uptick, but still extremely low by historical standards. For comparison, during the worst of the foreclosure crisis in September 2009, 23.0% of homeowner mortgages were underwater, per CoreLogic/First American. Where the pressure is building The recent rise in underwater mortgages is concentrated in three areas: VA and FHA loans: These programs typically involve lower down payments, which means borrowers start with thinner equity cushions. When home prices slip even modestly, these homeowners can move underwater more quickly than conventional borrowers. Recent vintages: Borrowers who purchased in 2023, 2024, or 2025often at elevated price levels and still-tight affordabilityhave had limited time to pay down their balances. If their local markets have cooled, theyre more exposed to negative equity. Metros with post-boom corrections: The markets seeing the most underwater pressure tend to be in the Southwest, Southeast, and Westregions that experienced some of the sharpest run-ups during the Pandemic Housing Boom and then the clearest price reversals. Metros with elevated underwater shares include places like Cape Coral, Lakeland, North Port, Palm Bay, Jacksonville, and Tampa in Florida; Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio in Texas; and Colorado Springs. Why negative equity remains rare nationally Despite localized corrections, underwater mortgages remain scarce nationwide. Three major factors explain why. National home prices are still near record highs. While certain Sun Belt and Western markets have given back some of their pandemic gains, national home price indices remain close to peak levels. Those broad gains continue to cushion the national equity picture, even as some metros soften. The amortization benefit of ultra-low pandemic mortgage rates. Millions of homeowners locked in 2%3% fixed rates in 2020 and 2021. Because lower rates allocate more of each payment toward principal from day one, these borrowers have built equity unusually quickly. As of late 2024, more than half of outstanding mortgage holders had rates below 4%, accelerating their debt paydown and widening their equity buffers. Few buyers purchased at the exact peak. Even in markets that have corrected, such as Austin or Cape Coral, only a small slice of homeowners bought at the absolute top in early 2022. Most owners purchased earlierand at lower pricesleaving them well above water today.
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This years U.N. climate conference in Brazil had many unique aspects that could have been part of a historic outcome. COP30, as its called, was hosted in Belem, a city on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, a crucial regulator of climate and home to many Indigenous peoples who are both hit hard by climate change and are part of the solution. It had the heft of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, an influential and charismatic leader on the international stage known for his ability to bring people together. And encouraged by Lulas rousing speeches in the summits beginning days, more than 80 nations called for a detailed road map for the world to sharply reduce the use of gas, oil, and coal, the main drivers of climate change. In the end, none of that mattered. The final decision announced Saturday, which included some tangible things like an increase in money to help developing nations adapt to climate change, was overall watered-down compared to many conferences in the past decade and fell far short of many delegates’ expectations. It didn’t mention the words fossil fuels, much less include a timeline to reduce their use. Instead of being remembered as historic, the conference will likely further erode confidence in a process that many environmentalists and even some world leaders have argued isnt up to the challenge of confronting global temperature rise, which is leading to more frequent and intense extreme weather events like floods, storms, and heat waves. The criticism was withering and came from many corners. A climate decision that cannot even say fossil fuels is not neutrality, it is complicity, said Panama negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez. Science has been deleted from COP30 because it offends the polluters. Even those who saw some positives were quick to say they were looking toward the future. Climate action is across many areas, so on the whole it is a mixed bag. They could have done much, much more, said Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of the Asian Peoples Movement on Debt and Development. All eyes are already turning to COP31, added Nacpil, referring to next year’s conference, which will be held in Turkey. High expectations for COP30 Saturday’s final resolution was the culmination of three years of talk, from measured optimism to hoopla, about a Conference of the Parties, as the summit is known, that could restore confidence in the ability of multilateral negotiations to tackle climate change. It was even called a COP of truth. From the time Lula was reelected in October 2022, he began pitching his vision of hosting a climate summit for the first time in the Amazon. By 2023, the U.N. had confirmed Brazil’s bid to host it in Belem. The choice of Belem, a coastal city in northeast Brazil, raised many questions, both in Brazil and in many countries, because Belem doesn’t have the infrastructure of other Brazilian cities such as Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo. For Lula, that was the point: This was a chance for the world to get a taste of the Amazon, truly understand what was at stake, and a chance for thousands of Indigenous peoples, who live across the vast territory shared by many South American nations, to participate. By the time the conference began Nov. 6 with two days of world leaders’ speeches, Lula was able to change the subject from Belem, in large part by laying out a vision of what the conference could be. Earth can no longer sustain the development model based on the intensive use of fossil fuels that has prevailed over the past 200 years, Lula said Nov. 7, adding: The fossil fuel era is drawing to a close.” Words like those, coming from the leader who has both curbed deforestation in the Amazon and unabashedly supported oil exploration in it, raised hopes among many delegates, scientists, and activists. Here was Lula, the ultimate pragmatist from a major oil-producing country, which gets most of its energy for domestic uses from renewables like hydropower, pushing a major change. Previous naming of fossil fuels In late 2023, during COP28 in Dubai, the final resolution declared the world needed to transition away from fossil fuels. The past two years, though, nothing had been done to advance that. Indeed, instead of phasing away, greenhouse gas emissions worldwide continue to rise. Now at COP30, there was talk of a road map to fundamentally changing world energy systems. A few days before the talks concluded, there were signs that even Lula, arguably Brazil’s most dominating political figure of the past 25 years, was tempering his expectations. In a speech Wednesday night, he made the case that climate change was an urgent threat that all people needed to pay attention to. But he was also careful to say that nations should be able to transition to renewable energies at their own pace, in line with their own capacities, and there was no intention to impose anything on anybody.” Negotiators would lose much of Thursday, as a fire at the venue forced evacuations. An outcome that many nations blasted By Friday, the European Union, along with several Latin American and Pacific Island nations and others, were flatly rejecting the first draft of a resolution that didn’t identify fossil fuels as the cause of climate change or have any timeline to move away from them. After 10 years, this process is still failing, Maina Vakafua Talia, minister of environment for the small Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, said in a speech Friday, talking about the decade since the 2015 Paris Agreement, which set international goals to limit temperature rise. After an all-nighter from Friday into Saturday, the revised resolution, which U.N. officials called the final, did not include a mention of fossil fuels. Environmental activists decried the influence of major oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia, which historically have fought against proposals that put a timeline on reducing oil. When delegates met Saturday afternoon for the final plenary, COP30 President André Corra do Lago gaveled in the text while also promising to continue the discussion of fossil fuels and work with Colombia on a road map that could be shared with other countries. Technically, Brazil holds the presidency of the climate talks until the summit in Turkey next year. That was little consolation for several dozen nations that complained, including some, such as Colombia, that flatly rejected the outcome. Thank you for your statement,” do Lago would say after each one. “It will be noted in the report. ___ The Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find APs standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Peter Prengaman, Associated Press Associated Press reporters Seth Borenstein, Melina Walling, and Anton Delgado contributed to this report.
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