Since mid-March 2026, Walmart has required owners of select new Vizio televisions to sign in with a Walmart account before they can finish setting up the television or use its smart features. The retailer announced the change on March 23, 2026, at the IAB NewFronts, the annual event where media companies pitch advertisers on the coming year’s inventory. The requirement...
August 8, 2026
LATEST NEWS
The Canary in the Coal Mine: Retail Margin Debt Hits a Record $1.5 Trillion
American investors now owe their brokers a record $1.5 trillion. That figure comes from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s margin statistics, which reported $1,502,072 million in debit balances in customers’ securities margin accounts for June 2026. It was a 6.1% increase from May and a 49.0% increase from a year earlier, and the highest reading in a series that runs...
14.5 Million Empty Homes, Fewer Than 800,000 for Sale: What LendingTree’s Vacancy Report Actually Says About Prices
Intro LendingTree released a national housing vacancy study on July 7, 2026, finding that roughly 14.5 million U.S. homes — about one in ten housing units — sit vacant. Florida alone accounts for approximately 1.5 million of them, nearly as many as the other nine states in the top-ten vacancy ranking combined. The headline number arrived at a moment when...
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Five Months In: Walmart’s Vizio Account Requirement and the Race to Buy Consumer Data
Since mid-March 2026, Walmart has required owners of select new Vizio televisions to sign in with a Walmart account before...
The Canary in the Coal Mine: Retail Margin Debt Hits a Record $1.5 Trillion
American investors now owe their brokers a record $1.5 trillion. That figure comes from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s margin...
14.5 Million Empty Homes, Fewer Than 800,000 for Sale: What LendingTree’s Vacancy Report Actually Says About Prices
Intro LendingTree released a national housing vacancy study on July 7, 2026, finding that roughly 14.5 million U.S. homes —...
Fauci Invoked the Fifth More Than 100 Times. The Real Fight Is Over Whether His Pardon Let Him.
Dr. Anthony Fauci sat before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday, July 29, delivered an opening...
A Rate-Hike Call, a Margin Call, and a $16 Billion Block Trade: What the Citadel–Situational Awareness Timeline Does and Does Not Show
Within a span of four trading days at the end of July, three things happened in sequence. A senior strategist...
Musk’s Quiet $1 Billion Bet on Power
Introduction Elon Musk has acquired the assets of APR Energy, a Jacksonville, Florida company that deploys trailer-mounted gas turbines on...
The Idea Congress Killed in 2003 Is Now a Private Market Worth Billions
Introduction On July 29, 2003, two U.S. senators walked into a press conference and ended a Pentagon research program in...
97 Days to the Midterms: The Senate and House Primaries That Haven’t Happened Yet
Introduction Ninety-nine days remain before the November 3 general election, and the ballot voters will see in most of the...