Finance

In another attempt to make homebuying more affordable, President Donald Trump floated the idea of a 50-year mortgage in a social media post. In response, Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, who oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, posted that they are “working on it,” and that it would be, “a complete game-changer.”
The purpose of a longer-term mortgage would be to lower the monthly payment for homeowners. The longer the term of the loan, the smaller the principal needed each month to pay it off in full. But such a plan has other trade-offs.

Using the latest median sale price of a home from September, $415,200, according to the National Association of Realtors, and the current interest rate of about 6.3%, according to Mortgage News Daily, on a 30-year fixed loan with a 20% down payment, the monthly payment of just principal and interest would be $2,056. If you raise the length to 50 years, at the same interest rate, that payment would be $1,823, a savings of $233 per month.
Homeowners, however, would not build equity as quickly because their principal payments would be smaller. The amount of interest paid to lenders would be 40% higher.

How it might work

The real question is can Fannie and Freddie do this. Analysts say it is possible, but a 50-year mortgage does not currently meet the definition of a qualified mortgage under the Dodd-Frank Act, which provides investors with a backup from Fannie and Freddie if a loan goes bad. But regulators were given the authority to change that in order to insure mortgage affordability. That, however, could take up to a year, given the need for congressional approval, according to Jaret Seiberg, a financial services and housing policy analyst at TD Cowen.
“Fannie and Freddie could establish a secondary market for 50-year mortgages in advance of policy changes. They even could buy mortgages for their retained portfolios. Yet this would not alter the legal liability for lenders. It is why we believe lenders will not originate 50-year mortgages absent QM [qualified mortgage] policy changes,” wrote Seiberg in a note to clients.

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How it would impact rates

Then there is the question of the mortgage rate. The average rate on the 15-year fixed mortgage is currently 66 basis points lower than the rate on the 30-year fixed, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. This would imply that the rate on the 50-year fixed would be higher. It all depends on investor demand for the product.

“There is not currently a secondary market for such loans, nor would a robust secondary market be cultivated any time soon,” said Matthew Graham, chief operating officer at Mortgage News Daily. “That means that, in addition to the extremely low amount of principal paid down in earlier years of the loan, the interest rates would also be quite a bit higher than 30-year loans — a double whammy for those with any hope of building equity.”
Graham said that for all practical purposes, the loan would be more akin to an interest-only loan, because very few people would keep a home for 50 years. Homeowners could still gain equity through home price appreciation, but prices have been softening swiftly across the nation this year, with nowhere near the appreciation seen in the years previous.

How it impacts affordability

Even realtors agree that the savings to homeowners would be minimal.
“This is not the best way to solve housing affordability. The administration would do better to reverse tariff-induced inflation, which is keeping the rates on existing mortgages high,” wrote Joel Berner, senior economist at Realtor.com in a release.
Others note that this new mortgage product would likely depend on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac remaining under government conservatorship. The Trump administration has said that the two will be taken private and then have an initial public offering sometime in the near future.
“Adoption of a 50-year mortgage product might complicate the path to privatization for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” analysts at Evercore ISI wrote in a note to clients. “That said, we understand that the Administration is expecting the GSEs to remain under conservatorship after it sells roughly a 5% stake to the public. This would allow the Administration to maintain control of the GSEs for the foreseeable future.”
Home affordability has been a major pressure point for the Trump administration. Historically low interest rates resulting from pandemic-driven economic policy caused an historic run on housing that catapulted home prices more than 50% higher in just five years. As a result, home sales have weakened dramatically, as has mortgage demand.
The average age of a typical first-time buyer in 1991 was 28. By 2024, it had reached 38, according to a report from the National Association of Realtors, whose deputy chief economist called the number, “shocking.”
The Trump administration has been pressuring builders to put up more homes in order to ease prices, claiming they are sitting on an oversupply of empty lots. Builders contest that claim and continue to cite high costs for land, labor and materials.
On the company’s latest earnings call, PulteGroup CEO Ryan Marshall said he agreed with the president’s perspectives as it pertains to an undersupply of roughly 4 million homes for sale, but added, “While this supply deficit certainly has an impact on affordability generally, the complexities of the new home construction industry dictate that tackling a problem of this scale requires a coordinated and comprehensive approach that brings together federal, state, and local leaders working in partnership with the new home construction industry.” More

From 1300 to 1800, economic historians estimate that England and then Britain were in recession almost half the time. The economy was volatile, with storming recoveries following crashing downturns. As capitalism matured and policymaking improved, recessions became less frequent. In the 19th century the country was in recession only a quarter of the time, a share that fell lower still in Britain and other rich countries in the 20th century. Today things are even more placid: recessions have become an endangered species. More

Stephen Miran, governor of the US Federal Reserve, at the Nomura Research Forum during the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Fall meetings in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025.
Samuel Corum | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran on Monday advocated for further interest rate cuts as a way stave off a potential economic softening ahead.
In a CNBC interview, the central bank official held to his belief that the Fed should be moving at an even more rapid pace than its traditional quarter percentage point reductions.

He advocated, as he has at the previous two Federal Open Market Committee meetings, for a 50 basis point, or half percentage point, reduction, though he said there at least should be a quarter-point easing.
“Nothing is certain. We could get data that would make me change my mind between now and then,” Miran said. “But failing new information that’s made me update my forecasts, looking out in time, yeah, I would think that 50 is appropriate, as I have in the past, but at a minimum 25.”
Despite Miran’s urging for bigger moves, the FOMC in both September and October opted for quarter-point cuts. Miran voted against both those moves but was not joined by any of his colleagues. Kansas City Fed President Jeffrey Schmid voted “no” in October, but only because he wanted to no cuts.
Though there were only two votes against the October cut, public statements from multiple officials have indicated a wide dispersion of opinion among officials.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell alluded to the disagreements at his most recent news conference, in which he indicated that another cut in December is not a foregone conclusion. Some policymakers have expressed hesitancy to but based on data showing inflation remains well above the Fed’s 2% target, while others in favor of lowering rates fear further labor market deterioration.

Miran said not continuing to ease would be short-sighted.
“If you’re making data for what, if you’re making policy for what the data are now, you are backward looking, because it will take 12 to 18 months for that to hit the economy. So you need to make policy now based on where you think the economy is going to be a year to a year and a half from now.”
Policymakers have been handcuffed by a lack of official economic data during the government lockdown. Miran said the data that is available has showed softening in both inflation and the labor market, which itself should make the Fed at least incrementally more dovish than its collective forecast in September indicating a total three cuts this year.
Markets are pricing in about a 63% chance of a third reduction in December, though that has been falling gradually since the October Fed meeting, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch. More

In a Thanksgiving letter that will become an annual tradition, Buffett said he needs to accelerate the disbursement of his Berkshire stock to his three children’s foundations.
He also intends to keep a significant amount of shares for a short window until shareholders gain confidence in incoming CEO Greg Abel.
In one of the most personal passages of the letter, Buffett gave a rare update on his health.

Warren Buffett laid out a plan to “step up” the pace of giving away his $149 billion estate to his children’s foundations, while still allowing for a short period that lets Berkshire Hathaway shareholders gain confidence in incoming CEO Greg Abel.
Buffett, in a Thanksgiving letter that will become an annual tradition, said he needs to accelerate the disbursement of his Berkshire stock to his three children’s foundations because of their own advanced ages and that by doing so it will “improve the probability that they will dispose of what will essentially be my entire estate before alternate trustees replace them.”

Abel, 63, is set to take over for Buffett, 95, as Berkshire CEO at the start of the new year with the “Oracle of Omaha” remaining chairman.
“I would like to keep a significant amount of ‘A’ shares until Berkshire shareholders develop the comfort with Greg that Charlie and I long enjoyed,” wrote Buffett, referring to longtime Berkshire vice chairman and his cherished business partner, Charlie Munger, who died two years ago.  
“That level of confidence shouldn’t take long. My children are already 100% behind Greg as are the Berkshire directors,” said Buffett.
Buffett owns about $149 billion worth of Berkshire based on shares held at the end of the second quarter, making him far and away the largest shareholder. Most of his wealth is in the original A shares which trade for around $751,480 a share.
He said 1,800 of those Berkshire A shares were converted into 2.7 million B shares and given Monday to four family foundations: The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, The Sherwood Foundation, The Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the NoVo Foundation. This donation is worth more than $1.3 billion.

“The acceleration of my lifetime gifts to my children’s foundations in no way reflects any change in my views about Berkshire’s prospects,” added Buffett.
The note marks Buffett’s first major communication since announcing plans to step down as CEO, signaling the close of a six-decade run that made him a household name and one of the most successful investors in history.
“As the British would say, I’m ‘going quiet.’… sort of,” Buffett wrote in the letter.
‘I Generally Feel Good’
Abel, currently vice chairman of noninsurance operations, will take over writing Berkshire’s annual shareholder letters — a tradition that Buffett began in 1965 and that has become essential reading across Wall Street — while Buffett said he will continue this Thanksgiving message.
In one of the most personal passages of the letter, Buffett gave a rare update on his health.
“To my surprise, I generally feel good. Though I move slowly and read with increasing difficulty, I am at the office five days a week where I work with wonderful people,” he wrote. “I was late in becoming old … but once it appears, it is not to be denied.”
The Berkshire Fortress
Since taking control of Berkshire in 1965, Buffett has transformed a struggling textile mill into a $1 trillion conglomerate spanning insurance, railroads, utilities and consumer brands.
He devoted part of his letter to reaffirming Berkshire’s durability, saying it is designed to withstand nearly any economic environment.
“Berkshire has less chance of a devastating disaster than any business I know,” he said.
Berkshire held a record $381.6 billion in cash at the end of September, underscoring its unmatched balance sheet and cautious investing approach. It has also been selling equities for 12 straight quarters, reflecting Buffett’s caution in a richly valued market.
The company’s underlying businesses remain strong with operating profit jumping 34% in the third quarter. Still, Buffett acknowledged that Berkshire’s sheer scale has become both its strength and its limitation.
“In aggregate, Berkshire’s businesses have moderately better-than-average prospects, led by a few non-correlated and sizable gems. However, a decade or two from now, there will be many companies that have done better than Berkshire; our size takes its toll,” he wrote.
Berkshire’s stock has risen roughly 10% in 2025, outpacing many defensive names but lagging the S&P 500 amid a tech-driven rally.
“Our stock price will move capriciously, occasionally falling 50% or so as has happened three times in 60 years under present management,” Buffett said. “Don’t despair; America will come back and so will Berkshire shares.”
— With reporting by Becky Quick. More

Imagine, for a moment, America without the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS). To some wonks, few scenarios are more terrifying. After President Donald Trump threw a tantrum over weak job figures and sacked the head of the largely apolitical body in August, putting forward E.J. Antoni, a partisan figure, to replace her, such a scenario also looked worryingly plausible. More

State Street is reiterating its bullish stance on the artificial intelligence trade despite the Nasdaq’s worst week since April.
Chief Business Officer Anna Paglia said momentum stocks still have legs because investors are reluctant to step away from the growth story that’s driven gains all year.

“How would you not want to participate in the growth of AI technology? Everybody has been waiting for the cycle to change from growth to value. I don’t think it’s happening just yet because of the momentum,” Paglia told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” earlier this week. “I don’t think the rebalancing trade is going to happen until we see a signal from the market indicating a slowdown in these big trends.”
Paglia, who has spent 25 years in the exchange-traded funds industry, sees a higher likelihood that the space will cool off early next year.
“There will be much more focus about the diversification,” she said.
Her firm manages several ETFs with exposure to the technology sector, including the SPDR NYSE Technology ETF, which has gained 38% so far this year as of Friday’s close.
The fund, however, pulled back more than 4% over the past week as investors took profits in AI-linked names. The fund’s second top holding as of Friday’s close is Palantir Technologies, according to State Street’s website. Its stock tumbled more than 11% this week after the company’s earnings report on Monday.

Despite the decline, Paglia reaffirmed her bullish tech view in a statement to CNBC later in the week.
Meanwhile, Todd Rosenbluth suggests a rotation is already starting to grip the market. He points to a renewed appetite for health-care stocks.
“The Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund… which has been out of favor for much of the year, started a return to favor in October,” the firm’s head of research said in the same interview. “Health care tends to be a more defensive sector, so we’re watching to see if people continue to gravitate towards that as a way of diversifying away from some of those sectors like technology.”
The Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund, which has been underperforming technology sector this year, is up 5% since Oct. 1. It was also the second-best performing S&P 500 group this week.

Disclaimer More

State Street, which manages roughly $1.7 trillion in ETFs, is planning to offer traditional mutual fund versions of its exchange-traded funds in the retirement plan market, including 401(k) and 403(b) plans.
Its ETFs include the oldest and most-traded S&P 500 product, SPY, and the world’s biggest gold ETF, GLD, which combined have close to $850 billion in assets, as well as the Select Sector SPDRs.
ETFs are typically not available in 401(k) plans, but a recent Securities and Exchange Commission decision to allow mutual fund companies to create ETF shares classes of their portfolios is one that Street Street Investment Management is planning to adopt in reverse.

A recent decision by the Securities and Exchange Commission to begin allowing fund companies to create ETF share classes of traditional mutual funds is expected to lead to a flood of new ETFs on the market, but State Street’s fund management arm, State Street Investment Management, has other ideas.
The ETF giant, which manages roughly $1.7 trillion in its SPDRs ETF family — including the oldest and most-widely traded S&P 500 exchange-traded fund, SPY, and the biggest gold ETF, GLD — sees the SEC greenlight as an opportunity to bring a new ETF challenge to the retirement plan market.

It’s planning to adopt the SEC decision, in reverse, offering mutual fund share classes of its ETF strategies in the massive U.S. retirement plan market, which has typically been closed to ETFs.
Anna Paglia, State Street Investment Management’s chief business officer, said on CNBC’s “ETF Edge” on Monday that retirement plan markets where ETFs have not to date been represented as core index fund options, including the 401(k) and 403(b) market, are an opportunity she estimated at a size of $4 trillion, and will be a focus.
Some of the benefits of ETFs, such as more efficient tax trading, may not be important to investors in tax-deferred retirement plans. ETFs’ intraday valuation — they trade in real time throughout the day like stocks, as opposed to traditional mutual funds’ once-a-day valuation — has also been an issue for some plan sponsors. But the low fees and massive scale of State Street’s assets under management give it an advantage in offering investors and retirement plan sponsors competitive portfolio offerings.
“We now have $1.7 trillion in ETF assets,” Paglia said, explaining that the company can use its existing scale to create a more competitive offering regardless of share class. “The enemy of efficiency is fragmentation,” Paglia said.
In a Barron’s op-ed recently penned by Paglia to explain the company’s thinking, she noted that while the tax efficiency that attracts many investors to ETFs can’t be replicated in the retirement plan market, what are called the “in-kind flows” used in ETF management can lead to lower costs and better performance over time for retirement investors.

“That is because when large institutions redeem ETF shares, ETFs aren’t forced to sell investments to raise cash like mutual funds. Instead, ETF issuers can transfer securities directly to these large institutions, typically market makers or broker-dealers, through ‘in-kind’ redemptions. By avoiding selling in the open market, this process helps lower turnover and associated trading costs in the underlying portfolio — efficiencies that benefit investors in all share classes,” Paglia wrote.
State Street’s largest ETFs

SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY)Assets: $698 billionExpense ratio: 0.0945%
SPDR Gold Shares (GLD)Assets: $132 billionExpense ratio: 0.40%
State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 ETF (SPYM)Assets: $95 billionExpense ratio: 0.02%
Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLK)Assets: $95 billionExpense ratio: 0.08%
Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLF)Assets: $52 billionExpense ratio: 0.08%

Source: State Street
The SEC recently began the greenlighting of ETF share classes of traditional mutual funds with an application from Dimensional Fund Advisors. The mutual fund industry is expected to move in droves to adopt this new ETF provision. More than 70 fund providers have applications pending and the ICI, the main fund industry trade group, recently told “ETF Edge” it has been working with hundreds of fund companies to be prepared to take advantage of the SEC exemptive relief.
However, the current government shutdown has put a hold on any further actions, including State Street’s plans for ETFs to be made available as mutual funds in the retirement market. When State Street Investment Management is able to move forward, there will be a question of which ETFs in particular can stand out in the 401(k) market. While greater trading and cost efficiencies can be gained by trading across more than one share class, many core strategies in the ETF lineup are already offered by State Street to retirement investors in traditional fund portfolio shares.
And in an asset management industry where ETFs and index funds from giants like Fidelity Investments and Vanguard Group have pushed fees literally down to zero, economies of scale across portfolios are already critical to competing for investor assets. Fidelity already offers four zero-fee core index mutual funds. The expense ratio on Vanguard’s record-breaking S&P 500 ETF (VOO), which has set an all-time high in annual flows for an ETF, is three basis points (0.03%). State Street’s SPYM, a new version of SPY, has an expense ratio of two basis points (0.02%).
But ETFs have become the go-to way for many investors to access any kind of market strategy, from core equity to thematic equity to ever-narrower slices of the bond market, as well as alternatives including precious metals and crypto.
“Mutual funds are the way for ETF-oriented companies to … meet investors where they are,” said Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, on “ETF Edge.”
He noted that State Street isn’t the only asset manager planning to create mutual fund share classes of ETFs, with F/M Investments planning a similar approach to benefit from the SEC decision.
Making the world’s biggest gold fund more widely available at a potentially lower cost in 401(k) plans comes at a time when many more investors are adding gold as a bigger allocation in a traditional portfolio, often at the expense of bond funds. But given the existing low-cost stock and bond options across the major fund companies and retirement plan providers, Rosenbluth said State Street’s biggest opportunities to stand out in the 401(k) market at an individual portfolio level beyond GLD may be with its Select Sector SPDRs like XLK and XLF, and newer alternative ETFs it has launched like SPDR Bridgewater ALL Weather ETF (ALLW) and SPDR SSGA IG Public & Private Credit ETF (PRIV) that provide retail investors access to portfolio strategies typically only available to institutional investors.
ALLW, a global multi-asset allocation fund, includes billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates as a sub-advisor. PRIV was the first ETF with significant private credit exposure approved by the SEC, though not without some controversy. 
Paglia described the plans as being less about marketing any particular strategy and more in terms of creating a structure for State Street’s fund business that can bring the best of the ETF structure into more markets. “The ETF technology is the most efficient technology in this market but the ETF technology is not the appropriate wrapper for everybody,” Paglia said on CNBC’s “ETF Edge.”
“In my view, the retirement industry is not benefitting from the innovation that the ETF industry is bringing to the market and is benefiting from,” she added.
To be sure, State Street is already a huge player in the retirement market, third overall in assets under management in “defined contribution investment only” assets (those gathered through other third-party managed retirement platforms). State Street does not have its own defined contribution recordkeeping business similar to those offered by Fidelity, Vanguard, and Empower. But in assets within strategies across retirement plans, State Street is behind only Vanguard and BlackRock (which runs the iShares ETF family), according to Cerulli Associates, with over $800 billion and annual growth of 19% in 2024.
State Street historically has had more collective investment trust offerings than traditional mutual funds for the retirement market, and depending on the ETF strategies they are adapting to mutual funds, there is an opportunity for growth in the small and mid market plan segments, which historically have had limited access to CITs due to their size, according to Cerulli.
The fragmentation Paglia cited stems from the fact that there are many legal wrappers for portfolio strategies used across retirement plans, including collective investment trusts, target date funds, mutual funds, and ETFs.
“My IRA is invested in ETFs, but my 401(k) plan is not,” she said. “It’s not a conversation about ETFs vs. mutual funds,” Paglia said. But she added that with the SEC giving the ability, when the government reopens, to asset managers to have different share classes, State Street can take advantage of the size and scale of its ETF business. “We do have the power of scale,” she said. “We also have the power of content because we have hundreds of strategies. … and once you combine content and cost you have something investors may benefit from in the end.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article included incorrect assets under management data for the top State Street SPDR ETFs due to an editing error. More

Fed Governor Stephen Miran on Friday suggested that surging demand for dollar-denominated stablecoins could help push U.S. interest rates lower.
“Stablecoins may become a multitrillion-dollar elephant in the room for central bankers,” Miran said during a speech in New York.

Fed Governor Stephen Miran on Friday suggested that surging demand for dollar-denominated stablecoins could help push U.S. interest rates lower.
In a speech delivered for an audience of economists in New York, the central bank official and appointee of President Donald Trump said the flood of crypto tokens pegged to the dollar could tamp down what economists refer to as “r-star,” or the “neutral” rate of interest that neither pushes nor impedes growth.

If that happens, he said, the Fed might need to lower its own policy rate to avoid unintentionally slowing the economy.
“Stablecoins may become a multitrillion-dollar elephant in the room for central bankers,” Miran said. “Stablecoins are already increasing demand for U.S. Treasury bills and other dollar-denominated liquid assets by purchasers outside the United States, and this demand will continue growing.”
Citing prior research, Miran said stablecoin growth could push the Fed’s benchmark rate down by 0.4 percentage point.
During his short time on the Fed board, Miran has advocated aggressive rate cuts, in part because he thinks the neutral rate is considerably lower than most of his colleagues assume. His latest remarks extend that argument into the world of digital finance, suggesting that the rise of stablecoins could structurally lower borrowing costs for years to come.
Previously, his arguments have been focused largely on moderating inflation and the importance of the Fed not impeding economic growth with higher rates. The stablecoin dissertation adds another wrinkle to the case for easier policy.

“Even relatively conservative estimates of stablecoin growth imply an increase in the net supply of loanable funds in the economy that pushes down” the neutral rate, he said. If neutral is lower, he added, “policy rates should also be lower than they would otherwise be to support a healthy economy. A failure of the central bank to cut rates in response to a reduction in [r-star] is contractionary.”
Miran is expected to leave the Fed in January, when the unexpired term he is filling runs out. More