It was a shoot ’em up week for America’s tariff sheriff. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump slapped import duties on Canada and Mexico, kicking off a full-fledged economic war.

The leader of Canada’s most populous province, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, then threatened to cut off power to 1.5 million Americans “with a smile on my face.” On Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ridiculed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a “numbskull.” On markets, it was a week of selloffs coupled with revised forecasts and earnings guidance from companies, suggesting investors are officially pricing in a lower-growth future after weeks of possibly misguided optimism.

Blame the “Globalists”

The stock market rallied after Trump’s November election, thanks to his promises to cut red tape and slash corporate taxes to 15% from 21%. But investors didn’t take his threats to start a global trade war seriously, presuming they were bluffs designed to extract concessions from trading partners.

So when the trade wars kicked off this week, those investors were dealt a cold dose of reality that would chill even the sturdiest Canadian. Even as the US administration said Thursday that it would delay some tariffs on its neighbors for a month, investors resumed a steep selloff that first rocked markets on Monday and Tuesday, pricing in a future of higher import costs, potential inflation and the disruption of once-integrated supply chains. On Thursday, the S&P 500 dipped 2%, the Dow Jones 1.2% and the Nasdaq fell 2.9%, closing in correction territory — Trump, by the way, blamed the selloffs on “globalists.”

There have also been signs from Wall Street’s smartest observers that a reset is in the cards:

• FactSet last week reported that analysts, worried about tariffs and inflation, had lowered their earnings per share estimates for S&P 500 companies more than usual in the first two months of this quarter. It’s normal for analysts to revise estimates down to kick off a quarter, but in the last five years, or 20 quarters, the average revision down in the first two months of a quarter has been 2.6%. In the first two months of Q1 2025, it was 3.5%.
• Companies themselves have also begun to issue caution. For the first quarter, 58 S&P 500 companies have issued negative EPS guidance, compared with 40 S&P firms that have issued positive guidance. But amid the deluge, a safe haven of sorts has emerged.

Port in a Storm: While the S&P 500 Index is down 2.2% this year and 4.9% from its record high, low-volatility stocks have proved their worth. That means companies with a history of moving higher or lower at a slower pace, sort of like the tortoises of the market — think conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, up 9.8% this year, or telecom business Verizon, up 10%, or consumer goods-maker Procter & Gamble, up 4.2%. In fact, low-volatility exchange-traded funds have been one of the soundest investments of 2025: Invesco’s S&P 500 Low-Volatility ETF is up 5.3% and the iShares’ MSCI USA Min-Vol Factor ETF is up 5.5%. They’re easily beating the S&P 500, which outperformed both by nearly double digits last year.

Texas wants you to think it’s all pump jacks and drilling rigs, but the truth is that it’s every bit as much Greta Thunberg in a cowboy hat.

That’s right. The Lone Star State has emerged, by a long shot, as the nation’s leader in renewable energy generation, according to new data providing a 2024 year-in-review snapshot for the renewables industry released by the US Energy Information Administration. Yeehaw.

Hook ’Em (Up to the Solar Grid)

Big picture: 2024 was a pretty big year for the expansion of utility-scale renewables in the US. Wind power, the leading renewable source, saw an almost 8% increase in generation last year, while solar power was up a remarkable 32%. All told, renewables now count for some 22% of the country’s total electricity, up about 1%, while coal power fell about 1% in the mix to just 15% (natural gas still powers the country, providing around 43% of all electricity, roughly flat from the year before).

And surprising as it may be for a self-proclaimed MAGA playpen, Texas is leading the way in renewables expansion and implementation:

• Last year, Texas generated a remarkable 169,000 gigawatt-hours through wind, utility-scale solar, and small-scale solar power.
• That’s way more than runner-up California’s 92,316 gigawatt-hours generated through renewables (it may be time to rethink that “Don’t California my Texas” phrase that keeps getting thrown around). Iowa ranks a distant third, as no other states in the union can compete with the prowess of California and Texas in renewable generation.

Free Markets: Likely driving some of Texas’s success? The owners of power plants are required to compete on price. That’s in contrast to the rest of the country, where state regulations guarantee profits for power plant operators. The system drew national attention when a catastrophic winter storm crippled the power grid in 2021. But it’s been disaster-free since and has been great for incentivizing players to develop renewables infrastructure. “Texas is the most innovative, most interesting market, and clean energy is thriving because it makes sense economically,” Ric O’Connell, executive director of renewables-focused non-profit GridLab, recently told Inside Climate News.

The mega-rich may or may not be, as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, different from you and me. But one thing’s for sure: There are a lot more of them today.

That’s according to the latest annual global wealth report from international real estate consulting firm Knight Frank, which found that the number of ultra-high net worth individuals (or those with a net worth of more than $100 million) increased by 7% last year. The really, really rich got really, really richer.

Tech vs. Everyone Else

The US is still the global powerhouse of wealth creation — home to around 905,000, or nearly 37%, of the world’s population of individuals with a net worth of at least $10 million, which is roughly double the amount of second-place China. A full 30% of the world’s billionaires are in the US, more than any other nation, and the group owns a decade-high 40% of all billionaire wealth, the report says. Still, the club of affluence is getting more and more international; last year, Africa saw a nearly 18% spike in high-net worth individuals.

So how is everyone making their money?

• According to the report, it’s manufacturing — not tech — that has created the most billionaires in the past decade. Since 2014, manufacturing has created 509 billionaires, tech has created 443, finance 353, and fashion and retail 318.
• But tech billionaires hold $2.6 trillion in wealth, more than any other industry. That group includes eight people with at least $50 billion in net worth, also more than any other industry.

Just a Number: Baby boomers remain the custodians of most of the world’s wealth. And the age of the average billionaire is now 65.7 years old, higher than the 10-year average, according to the report. Meanwhile, tech billionaires represent the youngest cohort of the bunch, averaging a spry age of… 57.2 years old. Check that out: Our little software engineers in Silicon Valley are all grown up. Hey, maybe that’s why they seem to have taken such a sudden interest in conservative politics.