The Split's finance columnists debate the stories shaping your portfolio, paycheck, and financial future. Two perspectives, one topic, every day.
Social Security won't stop paying in 2032. But benefits could get cut 24% automatically if Congress keeps doing nothing. For a middle-income couple, that's $18,400 a year gone. Here's what that actually means for your retirement math.
By Sadie Park · 3 min read
Small-business importers paid an average of $306,000 more in tariffs over the past year. Manufacturing lost 100,000 jobs in the same period. The administration says the benefits are coming. The bills are already here.
By Ray Vega · 3 min read
Most 30-somethings treat debt payoff and investing as a binary choice. The actual decision is about sequence. Get the order wrong and you leave guaranteed returns on the table while paying compound interest on the other side.
By Marcus Cole · 3 min read
Blue Owl halted redemptions and its stock lost 60% in a year. Trinity Capital investors are getting paid less as Fed rate cuts compress yields. If BDCs are funding your retirement income, this is not a macro story to follow from a distance.
By Sadie Park · 4 min read
Ten companies now control a third of the S&P 500's value. That's not a diversified index anymore. It's a concentrated bet on a narrative that requires a very specific chain of events to hold.
By Ray Vega · 3 min read
Fitch's 9.2% default rate across middle-market private credit firms is the number investors keep citing without understanding what it actually selects for. The difference between a fund you should hold and one you should exit comes down to a single EBITDA threshold most managers are not volunteering.
By Marcus Cole · 3 min read
Oil dropped $10 in a single day after a diplomatic pause, not a resolution. The spike was real, the reversal was fast, and neither should change how you handle your money. But if gas has quietly been eating your budget, this is the moment to check.
By Sadie Park · 3 min read
Everyone waiting on a Fed chair swap to rescue their mortgage rate is waiting on the wrong thing. The forces keeping borrowing costs high don't respond to personnel changes. One number tells the whole story.
By Sadie Park · 3 min read
Social Security's trust fund runs dry around 2033, and Congress will act before checks stop. But 'acting' can mean a 20% benefit cut disguised as a retirement age increase. The plan you have built around the full promise needs a stress test.
By Ray Vega · 3 min read
PSLF has forgiven $90.6 billion for 1.2 million borrowers, and the headline number is real. So is the 88,000-application backlog. The gap between those 2 facts is where career plans go to die.
By Marcus Cole · 3 min read
Money market funds pay a little more than high-yield savings accounts right now. On $10,000, we're talking $50 to $80 a year. That's real money, but it's not the right thing to optimize when your emergency fund's whole job is to be there when everything goes wrong.
By Sadie Park · 4 min read
The discount window was open during the SVB collapse. Nobody used it because doing so would have confirmed the panic. Three years later, regulators have the right fix and no binding timeline to implement it.
By Ray Vega · 3 min read
BlackRock gated $1.2 billion in withdrawal requests from a fund any investor with $70,000 in income could access. The numbers on HLEND's gate are not alarming because of their size. They are alarming because of what they reveal about who was sold the fund.
By Marcus Cole · 3 min read
A MrBeast employee bet on his boss's unreleased videos and won. A California politician bet on his own campaign. Both got caught, eventually. The insider trading problem in prediction markets is real, the regulations aren't finished, and regular people have no edge here.
By Sadie Park · 3 min read
The effective U.S. tariff rate quadrupled in 14 months and durable goods prices are up 4.5% in 2026. Forecasters who expected this to fade by year-end are quietly moving their goalposts. Your budget needs to account for that.
By Sadie Park · 4 min read
Secondary market bids for private credit funds are landing at 65 cents on the dollar. Institutional investors are leaving in record numbers. And an executive order is opening your 401(k) to fill the gap they leave behind.
By Ray Vega · 3 min read
Oil crossing $100 a barrel sent markets reaching for the dotcom comparison. The framing is wrong, and getting it wrong leads to the wrong response. This is a cost-shock story, not a valuation story, and those require different analysis.
By Marcus Cole · 3 min read
Kalshi calls its sports wagers commodity event contracts. Ninety percent of its trading volume is still sports bets. The legal fight between federal regulators and state gaming commissions is real, but the practical question for you is simpler: are you gambling with fewer consumer protections than you think?
By Sadie Park · 3 min read
The VIX crossed 25 this week, and the standard response is to call it temporary noise tied to Middle East headlines. Institutional traders disagree: they stopped buying the dip and started hedging aggressively before most retail investors checked their portfolios. The window closed quietly.
By Ray Vega · 3 min read
Energy stocks led the entire S&P 500 today. Occidental was up 4.63%, BP is up nearly 10% this month, and crude prices rose sharply on supply concerns. The investors asking whether to sell after a crash should first confirm there is one.
By Marcus Cole · 3 min read
