Financial markets are steady at the moment, despite geopolitical tensions
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Financial markets are steady at the moment despite geopolitical tensions. I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. Let's start with financial markets. Strangely calm so far this morning given, among other things, continued military action between Israel and Iran. In early trading, the Dow is up 66 points, a tenth of a percent. The S&P also up a tenth percent. The Nasdaq is up two-tenths percent. So not a lot, but up for the indicators. And the Dow is up a tenth of a percent.

As the trading day opens, there's been no sign from the White House whether the U.S. would take the watershed step of military action against nuclear facilities in Iran. Let's turn to London, where we find Ben Kumar, head of equity strategy at Seven Investment Management.

Hey, Ben. Hello, how are you doing? You know how they say when it comes to this investment thing, you should stay calm and not react to every headline? I guess people are doing what we're taught. It does feel like that. And, you know, I absolutely think most of the time, most news does not need you to go and mess around with your portfolio.

But of all the things not to react to, this feels like actually one that I would have expected people to be more concerned about when it comes to Iran and Israel. I am very surprised to see that markets have been taking it so calmly. We also have the U.S. Central Bank, considering some of the same factors, they're expected to...

brief the media later this afternoon U.S. time, you're not expecting interest rates to actually move here.

No, I don't think so. I suspect what we'll probably see is the return to the phrase data dependent and acting cautiously. Yes, the oil price has risen a lot in the last couple of days. But what, back to a level that we've been at really for the past two or three years? It's not going to be impacting inflation in the way that we've seen big oil prices move in the past. And I don't think it is the...

Federal Reserve's job to really play much of a part in geopolitics. It will be interesting to see how they assess the economy, because we're at this possible inflection point, yet there's still resilience in the U.S. economy. And, you know, they supposedly have state-of-the-art information on how we're doing.

The number of times the resilience of the U.S. economy has surprised economists, right? The U.S. is far more resilient than I think people give it credit for. Lots of people are constantly waiting for things to fall apart. But you know what? The U.S. is an entrepreneurial system in which lots of people go out each day, go to work, make money, survive.

spend the money. And it doesn't matter who's the president. It doesn't matter what's going on in Iran or Israel. It doesn't mean the U.S. equity market is always going to be a good investment. But that engine of growth the U.S. delivers is just so, so solid. It's very difficult to knock off course. All right. Getting a sense of the market zeitgeist from Ben Kumar, head of equity strategy at Seven Investment Management. He's based in London. Ben, always good to catch up. Thank you.

And the ChatGPT CEO Sam Altman of OpenAI says one of his rivals, MetaFacebook, is trying to poach his elite AI experts big time. Altman says $100 million bonuses are on offer, but that none of his people have gone for it.

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A marketplace we cast the net of our beat widely. What subject does money not touch? Someone once suggested to me religion. Well, au contraire.

The Marketplace podcast called This Is Uncomfortable has been talking to nuns about personal finance. This includes Monica Clare, who is Sister Superior at the Community of St. John the Baptist, an Episcopal convent in New Jersey. Sister Clare was required to pay off over $100,000 in debt before she could enter that vocation. Our host, Rima Kreis, joins us. Hey. Hey.

Hey, David. Owing money, debt can get in the way of a person following a religious calling. Yeah. Many Catholic and Episcopal convents have strict policies. If you have debt, you can't join. And it comes down to the fact that it is hard to make timely debt payments when you've taken a vow of poverty. Sister Monica Clare, she told me that she spent more than a decade paying off her debt before she could take the first steps towards becoming a nun. And she said,

And this is holding back a lot of people. There is this study from a few years back that found that the number of nuns in America has declined 76% over the last 50 years. And student debt is one of the biggest barriers.

Student debt. Now, Catholic Church has tens of billions of dollars. The Episcopal Church has at least a couple billion. The wider hierarchies can't help out with this debt. That brings me to another interesting fact about convents. They are actually financially independent from the larger church. Sister Monica Clare explained it to me this way. There's this misconception that we're supported by the church, but we're not. We're totally independent.

And that becomes very difficult sometimes because nonprofits are always struggling to break even. It's really, as you know, it's very difficult. All right. Now, at a personal level, vow of poverty. How does Sister Monica process that? When I talked with her about it, she explained it to me like this. Poverty doesn't mean deprivation. I thought it did, but it just means deprivation.

You take really good care of what you have, and you only buy what you absolutely need. So in practice, that means giving up personal ownership. They give away material belongings. Any savings go to the church. They give over their car, donate their clothes, and everything becomes shared. But that doesn't mean they live with nothing. The sisters do get a small monthly allowance, about $50.

Now, my wife has two aunts who are Catholic nuns, Franciscans, who've taken vows of poverty, and their order is caring for them now that they're elderly. What about the golden years for Sister Monica? You know, I asked her, and it turns out nuns don't really retire. Their work might change based on their physical ability, but most of them entered religious life with the intention of spending all of their days in this community. And most convents will care for them with the help of donations and the support of the broader religious community. All right.

All right. Fascinating. Rima Kreis is host of the Marketplace podcast, This Is Uncomfortable. The episode we've been talking about, New Nun Syndrome, is out now and available wherever you get your podcasts. Rima, always good to catch up. So great. Thanks, David. And in Los Angeles, I'm David Brancaccio. It's the Marketplace Morning Report from APM, American Public Media.

Hey there, it's Ryan, co-host of Million Bazillion, a podcast that answers your kids' big questions about money. From slam dunks to home runs, some professional athletes make a lot of money. Because it turns out, if you have a star player, everyone wants to pay you more. This week on the podcast, we keep score of how pay works in the world of sports. Listen to Million Bazillion wherever you get your podcasts.