For over a decade, Americans' top fear has remained the same: corrupt government officials. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Team Fear is at it again. For the past 11 years, this dedicated group of researchers with a very cool nickname has conducted the annual Chapman University Survey of American Fears . This year, they surveyed 1,015 adult Americans on what they fear most, from sharks to heights to identity theft .

This study presents a three-step machine learning framework to predict bubbles in the S&P 500 stock market by combining financial news sentiment with macroeconomic indicators. Building on traditional econometric approaches, the proposed approach predicts bubble formation by integrating textual and quantitative data sources. In the first step, bubble periods in the S&P 500 index are identified using a right-tailed unit root test, a widely recognized real-time bubble detection method. The second step extracts sentiment features from large-scale financial news articles using natural language processing (NLP) techniques, which capture investor's expectations and behavioral patterns. In the final step, ensemble learning methods are applied to predict bubble occurrences based on both sentiment-based and macroeconomic predictors. Model performance is evaluated through k-fold cross-validation and compared against benchmark machine learning algorithms. Empirical results indicate that the proposed three-step ensemble approach significantly improves predictive accuracy and robustness, providing valuable early warning insights for investors, regulators, and policymakers in mitigating systemic financial risks.

Ford CEO Mark Fields has "retired," pushed out by the board of directors after 28 years with the company. The surprise announcement of Jim Hackett as his replacement offers a clearest indication that while investors and car companies alike obsess over "mobility," they still have no idea what precisely that means. Fields, 56, devoted half his life to trying to make Ford successful. He started his career in the company's marketing arm in California, before moving to help manage their South American operations. He served a stint in Japan, too, helming Mazda while it was under Ford's control.