Dear Quentin,

This is

my second time writing to you. It seems my previous plans to retire and move to the Philippines with my wife have been destroyed and I am now medically disabled/retired and can’t work. This throws my retirement plans off course, and I sure could use some help navigating my next financial moves. 

I am now 52, my wife is 57, and we still reside in Maryland. My father-in-law would now like to move back to the States and live full time, so we all would like to move somewhere warmer and are thinking it will be South Carolina or Texas. It will need to be near a VA hospital for my ongoing medical care and we are hoping to be near a beach.

As reflected in the stock market’s three-year bull run, Americans appear to be broadly optimistic, even as

polls suggest otherwise.

This has gone some way in fueling the postwar economic boom. Notwithstanding the occasional recession, financial crisis and market correction — by the dozen — along the way, the market has, for the most part, proven a trustworthy long-term bet for investors and retirees. Even a global pandemic, during which more than 1 million Americans died, proved to be a mere blip for stocks. And yet the warnings keep coming about the specter of 1929, a time before the Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. existed.

As Target Corp. prepares for a new era with Michael Fiddelke at the helm, the retailer is reportedly cutting jobs in an effort to reduce the “complexity” that its new chief executive says slowed down the company.

The Wall Street Journal on Thursday

reported that Target TGT plans to lay off some 1,000 global corporate employees and eliminate 800 open positions, or around 8% of its corporate ranks.

President Trump’s Thursday pardon of Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance who was convicted in 2023 of

failing to prevent money laundering, may pave the way for the world’s largest crypto exchange to return to the U.S., some industry participants said.

Binance was banned from operating in the U.S. two years ago after the company pleaded guilty to violating U.S. anti-money-laundering laws and paid a large penalty of $4.3 billion. Zhao stepped aside as chief executive at the company in the same year, paid a fine of $50 million and served nearly four months in prison in 2024, after pleading guilty to related charges.

This earnings season, companies’ financial results aren’t just numbers — they are tea leaves, tarot cards and macro signals all rolled into one. 

With a dearth of fresh government economic data to chew on, investors are treating this week’s wave of corporate earnings as a macro mood check. Every report — especially after recent blowups from

two auto-related companies — has been scrutinized as a readout on the U.S. economy and carries extra weight in the stock market.