On 26 August 2025, SpaceX launched the world's largest rocket, successfully performing all parts of its planned mission, including "soft" splashdown landings of both its heavy booster in the Gulf of America/Mexico and the Starship spacecraft in the Indian Ocean after a one-hour, six-minute flight.

The following video covers the entire launch and presents about 50 minutes of background information before showing the launch. We recommend skipping ahead to a little past the 45-minute mark to get to the portion of the coverage that focuses on the launch and flight.

Watch Starship's tenth flight test → https://t.co/UIwbeGoo2B https://t.co/BFrpQPQFUw

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 26, 2025

The soft splashdown of the Starship vehicle is remarkable because it traveled over halfway around the world in little more than an hour, landing exactly where intended. The following video of its landing was captured by a camera SpaceX placed on a buoy at the target zone in the Indian Ocean:

If you're trying to get any spot on Earth, you usually won't ever need to fly more than halfway around the planet to get there. SpaceX just proved its Starship spacecraft can make that kind of trip in about an hour. That's a revolutionary capability in transportation.

But that's not all. The Starship spacecraft has the capability of carrying significant quantities of cargo, which will greatly reduce the cost of accessing space. Visual Capitalist's "Cost of Space Flight Before and After SpaceX" chart shows how Starship is expected to affect the cost to launch a satellite into Earth orbit:

Those reduced costs mean more than less expensive satellites, they also open the door to much wider space exploration, including interplanetary travel within the solar system.

SpaceX' tenth attempted mission of its prototype Starship vehicle is greatly expanding what's possible for transportation. After SpaceX' nine previous attempts, it's exciting to watch all the engineering it will take to make so much more possible finally starting to click together.

Political Calculations' initial estimate of the total valuation of U.S. new home sales in July 2025 is $29.68 billion.

This estimate is up about one percent from Political Calculations' initial estimate of $29.37 billion for June 2025. That month's estimate however has been revised upward to $29.41 billion this month. The initial estimate for July 2025 is 0.9% above this revised level.

These figures are time-shifted, partial trailing twelve month averages. The initial estimate for any given month is based on the U.S. Census Bureau's estimated annualized number of new home sales multiplied by their average price for that month, which is averaged with the data for the preceding six months. These total valuation (or new home market capitalization) estimates are then updated as each new month's data is added to it, until it covers a full twelve months worth of data, and as older data is revised, which continues until that data is finalized some 10 months after the month for which the data applies.

The benefit of this approach is that it 'centers' the trailing average in something closer to real time, which makes it easier to tell when changes in trend take place. The following charts present the U.S. new home market capitalization, the number of new home sales, and their sale prices as measured by their time-shifted, trailing twelve month averages from January 1976 through July 2025. The data through July 2025 indicates the new home market cap is rising mainly due to average sale prices being elevated in recent months even as the number of sales has trended downward during this period.

New home sales in downward trend:

Flat trend for prices at elevated level:

Reuters reports the number of new homes sold in July 2025 fell after the previous month's sales numbers were revised sharply upward:

Sales of new U.S. single-family homes fell in July following a sharp upward revision to the prior month's sales pace, and the overall trend remained consistent with a housing market struggling in an environment of high mortgage rates.

The report from the Commerce Department on Monday bolstered economists' expectations that the housing market slump could persist through the end of the year. Though mortgage rates have eased on expectations that the Federal Reserve would resume cutting interest rates in September, they continue to outpace wage growth, pushing home ownership beyond the reach of many.

That's not quite correct, as new home prices in recent months have been moving toward becoming affordable for the first time in more than three years. At this time, they remain out of reach for the typical American household, which we'll explore in more detail in a separate analysis in upcoming weeks.

References

U.S. Census Bureau. New Residential Sales Historical Data. Houses Sold. [Excel Spreadsheet]. Accessed 26 August 2025. 

U.S. Census Bureau. New Residential Sales Historical Data. Median and Average Sale Price of Houses Sold. [Excel Spreadsheet]. Accessed 26 August 2025. 

Image credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "A newly constructed two-story suburban house with beige siding and a dark gray gabled roof. The house features white trim, a large arched window on the second floor, a white double garage door, and a black front door with a small porch. The front yard has a neatly manicured green lawn with small shrubs near the foundation. A concrete driveway extends from the garage all the way to the street. In the foreground, a red and white "NEW HOME FOR SALE" sign is staked into the grass of the front yard, supported by a white wooden post. The sky is bright blue with scattered white clouds, and a line of trees is visible in the background." Note: This image went through multiple iterations. So many, in fact, we asked Copilot to write a prompt for generating the final result.

Whenever you hear about historic carbon emissions by nations in the media, there's usually a huge omission in the information being transmitted. You'll often hear about the total CO₂ emissions that nations have emitted throughout history, but not necessarily how much of those emissions are still in the air.

That matters because carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is part of a global carbon cycle. One that begins reducing the emissions generated in any particular year from the very outset from when they were emitted. The following diagram illustrates major parts of the modern Earth's carbon cycle.

Not shown in the image are other natural sources of carbon dioxide emissions, like volcanoes, and natural sinks that absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, like oceans.

We've updated our estimate of how much CO₂ emissions produced within the modern world's largest national producers of carbon dioxide emissions since 1850 are still in the air. The following chart updates that data through the end of 2023.

This chart illustrates both total historic emissions and the amount estimated to still be in the atmosphere today, which is the more meaningful value with respect to the modern political debates over climate change.

The chart shows the largest share for any single nation is that for the United States, to which a little over one-fifth of the CO₂ is attributed, where our estimate using this data through 2023 is 21.8%, about a half percent lower than our estimate from two years ago.

China still ranks second by that measure at over 18.1% of the global total, and the combined nations of the European Union come in third at 14.5%. We also find India's 4.1% share outranks the United Kingdom's 3.3%, which is remarkable because the U.K. was once the world's largest producer of carbon dioxide emissions. The "Rest of the World" combines for nearly two-fifth's of the excess fossil-fuel based carbon dioxide emissions present in the atmosphere as of 2023, which exceeds the United States' total historic CO₂ emissions.

These relative shares have changed over time, with China and India's relative contributions to global CO₂ emissions increasing as the relative share of emissions of the United Kingdom, United States, and European Union have declined.

Looking forward, assuming no change in national carbon dioxide emissions from their 2023 levels, we estimate China will become the largest national historical contributor of human-generated carbon dioxide emissions still in the Earth's air in 2030.

References

Friedlingstein et al. National Fossil CO2 Emissions by Country (Territorial). 2024 v1.0. [Excel Spreadsheet]. 13 November 2024.

Political Calculations. How Long Does Carbon Dioxide Stay in the Atmosphere? [Online Article, Tool]. 19 July 2023.

Image credit: An Interactive Introduction to Organismal and Molecular Biology, 2nd ed. Copyright © 2021 by Andrea M.-K. Bierema is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

About two-thirds of 2025 has come and gone. If your projected income for the year will push you into a higher tax bracket before it ends, you still have time to act to avoid that outcome.

As tax-related problems go, this is a good one to have. In this situation, your goal is to maximize the amount of money that you will keep under your control. If your income is on track to exceed a threshold that will put you into a higher tax bracket, Uncle Sam will take a bigger bite out of what you earn and that's what you want to avoid.

The first step to see if you'll even have this as a potential problem is to estimate what your total income for the year will be. After you've done that, you'll want to estimate your taxable income, which is really easy. If you will be filing a single return, just subtract 2025's standard deduction of $15,000 from your total projected income. If you will file a joint return, subtract the standard deduction of $30,000 from your combined income.

Have your number? See how your taxable income fits within the following ordinary income tax brackets for single and joint filers:

The thing you're looking for is whether your taxable income is above the entry level taxable income for a given tax bracket. If it is, all income you earn will above that number will be taxed at a higher rate. Unless you act to reduce your taxable income to put it into the next lower tax bracket.

Charles Schwab's Hayden Adams has some suggestions to do that, using a hypothetical taxpaying scenario:

Let's say Ben, a single filer, is on track to make $242,000 in 2025. After factoring in the $15,000 standard deduction and a $19,360 contribution to a pre-tax 401(k), Ben's taxable ordinary income is $207,640 for the year ($242,000 minus $19,360 minus $15,000). At that level of income, $10,340 of taxable income would fall into the 32% ordinary income tax bracket (which kicks in after $197,300 of income). Here are some ways Ben could reduce his income:

• Boost 401(k) contribution. The limit for 2025 is $23,500 for those under 50, so Ben contribute an additional $4,140 his 401(k). Plus…
• Maximize contributions to an HSA. The limit for 2025 is $4,300, so making the max contribution would reduce Ben's income even further (assuming he is eligible). Plus…
• Tax loss harvesting. Up to $3,000 of net capital losses can be used to offset ordinary income, so if Ben harvesting at least $1,900 in losses he would wipe out the income that falls into the 32% tax bracket.

"401(k)" refers to the popular retirement investment account many Americans have available through their employers, in which they set aside a "pre-tax" percentage of their income. "HSA" is a reference to a tax-exempt Health Savings Account that you would most likely also have through your employer.

Tax loss harvesting however is a whole different thing. It requires you to have investments outside of your 401(k) or HSA accounts. And if the name of the concept doesn't give it away, it requires you to lose money on at least part of your investments in that account to claim as losses on your income tax return to offset your taxable income.

Finally, Adams' hypothetical taxpayer is pretty well to do, but engaging in this kind of lawful taxable income management can pay off for people with much lower incomes. If Ben's projected taxable income for 2025 were just above the $48,476 threshold for the 22% threshold, then Ben would have a very powerful incentive to reduce his taxable income. The jump in tax rate from the 12% bracket to the 22% bracket is the largest in the tax tables, so if Ben's taxable income is within striking distance of $48,476 for the options available to him, anything he can do to reduce his taxable income below that level would be very beneficial in avoiding Uncle Sam taking too big a bite out of the income he earns.

Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a taxpayer trying to prevent Uncle Sam from taking too much of their income". Which we followed up with "Make it more colorful".

The week's biggest market moving news came on Friday, 22 August 2025, when Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell opened the door to the Fed resuming interest rate cuts. Investors were buoyed by the news, which boosted the S&P 500 (Index: SPX) to 6,466.91 by the close of trading that day, ending the week almost 0.3% higher than it closed out the preceding week.

But to put the news into closer focus, the S&P 500 jumped 1.5% on Friday, having fallen throughout the week, primarily between Tuesday, 19 August and Thursday, 21 August.

The latest update suggests investors reset their forward-looking focus during the week to the more distant future quarter of 2026-Q2 in setting current day stock prices. We find the trajectory of the index is at the lower end of the typical range the dividend futures-based model behind the chart would place it.

The heightened focus on Powell's speech at the Fed's annual retreat to Jackson Hole, Wyoming accounts for the market's sharp reaction on Friday, 22 August 2025. The CME Group's FedWatch Tool indicates investors now anticipate the Fed will cut the Federal Funds Rate by a quarter percent at its 17 September (2025-Q3) meeting. Going forward, the FedWatch tool forecasts additional quarter point rate cuts will take place on 29 October (2025-Q4), 10 December (2025-Q4), and 28 January (2026-Q1).

Should investors shift their time horizon inward to the nearer term, the rally in stock prices could continue. How high stock prices might rise in that event would be determined by how far into the future they might shift their focus. If that doesn't happen and investors stay focused on 2026-Q2, then stock prices will mostly move sideways within a relatively narrow range.

For a significant continued rally, something will need to happen to reset investors' time horizon. That, in turn, will depend on the random onset of new information which the market moving news of the week will document. Speaking of which, here are the past week's headlines:

Monday, 18 August 2025

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• Oil prices edge higher ahead of Trump-Zelenskiy meeting
• Chief Fed minion has some problems before leaving for Fed summer camp:
• Powell caught between inflation and unemployment as Jackson Hole approaches
• Bigger stimulus, trouble developing in China:
• China to continue stimulating consumption, premier says
• China July aluminium imports surge 38% from prior year
• China’s half-cooked growth plan is going cold
• BOJ minions see positives in US-Japan trade deal:
• Japan says US is not pressuring BOJ for rate hikes, markets not so sure
• Wall Street finished flat ahead of Powell's Jackson Hole speech and retail earnings
• Wall Street ends on muted note ahead of Jackson Hole summit, retailers' earnings
• Trump administration in talks to take 10% stake in Intel, Bloomberg News reports
• Trump eyes US government stakes in other chip makers that received CHIPS Act funds, sources say

Tuesday, 19 August 2025

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• Oil prices fall on talks to end Russian invasion of Ukraine
• US housing starts tick higher in July, led by apartment construction
• US hikes steel, aluminum tariffs on imported appliances, railcars, EV parts
• Trump's interest rate demands put 'fiscal dominance' in market spotlight
• Fed minions thinking about getting into crypto:
• Fed's Bowman suggests allowing central bank staff to own small amounts of crypto products
• Bigger trouble developing in China:
• China expected to keep benchmark lending rates unchanged
• China's overcapacity crackdown faces litmus test in solar sector
• BOJ minions get message from politician who wants higher interest rates in Japan:
• Japan must raise rates, get fiscal house in order, says veteran lawmaker Kono
• Nasdaq tumbles as Jackson Hole jitters hit tech stocks
• Wall Street ended lower as retail earnings and the Jackson Hole symposium loom

Wednesday, 20 August 2025

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• Oil prices climb 2% on drop in US crude inventories as investors focus on Ukraine peace push
• Fed minutes show divide within Fed over direction for setting interest rates, President Trump targets two minions he wants to replace sooner rather than later:
• Fed dissenters appeared alone in favoring rate cut at July meeting, minutes show
• Fed minutes highlight split over effects of Trump’s tariffs on inflation
• Trump again attacks Fed chair, says Powell 'hurting' the housing industry
• Trump calls on Fed Governor Cook to resign over mortgage allegations
• China policymakers thinking about getting into crypto:
• Exclusive: China considering yuan-backed stablecoins to boost global currency usage, sources say
• BOJ minion to join Fed minions at their policy summer camp getaway:
• BOJ governor Ueda to travel to Jackson Hole for Fed conference
• ECB minions say US-Eurozone trade deal close to their plan:
• US-EU trade deal not far from ECB's baseline forecast, Lagarde says
• Nasdaq, S&P 500 end lower as investors sell tech, buy less pricey sectors
• Wall Street concluded mostly lower as investors digested retail earnings and Fed minutes
• Nasdaq drops for 2nd day as AI jitters rattle tech investors

Thursday, 21 August 2025

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• Oil rises 1% on stalled Russia-Ukraine peace talks, strong US demand
• US existing home sales tick up unexpectedly in July
• Fed minions claim no need to rush to cut rates, Fed minions rethinking what they're doing, legal problems developing for Fed minion:
• Fed officials lukewarm on September rate cut as markets await Powell speech
• Fed's Schmid says no urgency to cut interest rates but more data to come
• Fed's expansive experiment in strategy to get a reboot at Jackson Hole
• US DOJ to probe Fed's Cook, urging removal, Bloomberg News reports
• Fed governor Lisa Cook says she will not be ‘bullied’ into resigning
• Justice department calls on Fed to sack governor Lisa Cook
• Bigger trouble developing in China:
• China faces pivotal welfare reform test as court ruling hits jobs, small firms
• Chief BOJ minion not wanting to rush interest rate hikes in Japan:
• BOJ chief's dogged caution tempers board's hawkish instincts
• Signs of recovery in the Eurozone, ECB minions get reason to hold off on more rate cuts:
• Euro zone business activity accelerates in August as new orders grow, PMI shows
• German manufacturing drives modest growth in August, PMI shows
• Surprise uptick in Eurozone activity bolsters case for ECB to hold rates
• Wall Street finished in the red as Walmart weighed on markets and eyes turn to Jackson Hole
• Walmart results show consumer resilience; shares down after recent rally
• Wall Street closes down as investors brace for Powell's speech

Friday, 22 August 2025

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• Oil prices set to end losing streak as Ukraine peace process stalls
• Canada to remove many retaliatory tariffs on US, Carney says
• Chief Fed minion opens door for Fed to resume interest rate cuts:
• Powell says rates may need to be cut, but Fed to proceed carefully
• Fed rate cut odds rise after Powell's Jackson Hole speech
• Yields drop in response to Powell speech at Jackson Hole
• Powell, citing jobs risk, opens door to cuts but doesn't commit
• Fed's Powell announces policy framework tweaks for changed economic landscape
• Trump 'Will Fire Cook' If She Doesn't Resign After Pulte Drops New Receipts
• Bigger trouble developing in China:
• China's imports of US rare earth ore surge in July
• China tightens grip over rare earth supply quotas
• Bigger trouble developing in the Eurozone:
• Germany falls back into ‘recessionary territory’ as second-quarter GDP revised down
• Dow notched a record close as Wall Street rallied on Powell’s Jackson Hole remarks
• Nasdaq, S&P, Dow rise on Powell's speech at Jackson Hole

There is one potential concern that can upset the future we've described. Should the S&P 500 run into a new market regime, all bets would be off. Changes in market regime is something the dividend futures-based model can identify, but cannot anticipate in advance, even though it can explain upwards of 90% of how stock prices behave otherwise. In terms of modeling how stock prices work, it's the remaining frontier.

The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tool projection of real GDP growth in the U.S. during the current quarter of 2025-Q2 dipped to +2.3% after clocking in at +2.5% in the preceding week.

Image credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a Federal Reserve official speaking to a group at a summer camp. There is a magical door with a sign that says 'INTEREST RATE CUTS' onstage that the official has opened."