Good morning.

It’s Tuesday, March 10. Spring has officially decided to flirt with New York. The sun is out, people are suddenly walking slower, cafés are full again, and half the city is pretending they didn’t spend the entire winter emotionally attached to their couch.

Today in history, March 10, 1862, the United States issued its first paper money. Right in the middle of the Civil War. The government needed cash fast, so they did what governments eventually always do… they printed it. The idea was simple: fund the war, keep the country running, and hope everyone politely agrees the paper is worth something. 

Grab your coffee, enjoy the fake spring confidence, and let’s get into the news.

Today’s stories:

Stocks staged a late-day comeback Monday. The S&P 500 rose 0.83% to close at 6,795.95. The Dow Jones added 239 points, up 0.5%, after coming off its worst weekly slide in nearly a year. The Nasdaq led the rebound, jumping 1.38%.

The turnaround was dramatic. Earlier in the session, the Dow had been down nearly 900 points, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq each dropped as much as 1.5%. Then came the geopolitical plot twist.

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The U.S. is having a property tax rebellion. At least 13 states are now exploring ways to eliminate or slash property taxes, which sounds great for homeowners and slightly terrifying for the cities that use those taxes to pay for schools, roads, police, and basically everything else. States including Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Texas are all testing different versions of the same idea. In Oklahoma, lawmakers want to immediately eliminate property taxes for homeowners over 65. In Pennsylvania, a new bill is framed around letting people “truly own their homes,” instead of paying taxes forever. South Dakota is looking at replacing part of property taxes with a small sales tax. And Texas leaders are openly talking about eliminating school property taxes altogether. The catch is simple: property taxes are the backbone of local government budgets. So if they disappear, the money has to come from somewhere else, which means Americans may soon discover the classic economic magic trick where one tax disappears and another one quietly appears.

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The market’s biggest movers today. Wall Street had a busy day with a few stocks flying, a few crashing, and oil prices causing the usual chaos. Oil briefly surged above $110 a barrel as tensions with Iran continued, pushing energy stocks like Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Talos Energy higher before prices cooled down again. Hims & Hers exploded 39% after reports it struck a deal with Novo Nordisk to sell its popular weight-loss drugs on the platform, ending a legal fight over copycat versions of Wegovy. Xenon Pharmaceuticals jumped more than 47% after its seizure drug showed strong results in a key trial and the company said it will seek FDA approval later this year. Meanwhile Vertiv, Lumentum, and Coherent rose after learning they will soon join the S&P 500, which is basically Wall Street’s version of getting invited to the popular table. Not everyone had a good day. Mining companies slipped as the dollar strengthened, airline stocks fell as oil prices pushed fuel costs higher, and Olema Pharmaceuticals dropped 20% after disappointing cancer drug trial results. In other words, a pretty normal day on Wall Street where some companies gained billions in value while others quietly wished the market would close early.

Cheap used cars are disappearing. Used car inventory is finally improving, which sounds like good news until you start looking for an actually affordable car. Experts say vehicles under $20,000 are becoming harder to find because the cars entering the used market are simply more expensive models. The average price for a used car up to eight years old hit about $30,000 in 2025, nearly 28% higher than in 2020. A few years ago more than half of used cars were under $20,000. Now it’s closer to 30%. Financing doesn’t help either. The average used car loan rate is around 10.5%, and for buyers with weaker credit it can reach about 19%, which means a typical used car can easily cost nearly $40,000 by the time the loan is finished. In short, more used cars are arriving on the market this year, but the dream of the cheap used car is slowly turning into something you mostly remember from 2019.

Top lawyers now charge $3,400 an hour. Top lawyers have entered a new pricing universe. Elite partners at major law firms are now charging as much as $3,400 an hour, up from about $2,500 just a year ago, which means one stressful afternoon call with the right lawyer can now cost roughly the same as a used car payment. Some specialists are pushing it even further. One telecom lawyer recently raised his consulting rate to $6,000 an hour, which sounds less like legal advice and more like private jet pricing. Clients, surprisingly, are still paying. Companies say certain lawyers are worth it because they can jump into a crisis, solve a problem quickly, and make expensive disasters quietly disappear. Meanwhile, for more routine work, companies are increasingly using AI tools instead of armies of associates, which means the middle of the legal industry may get squeezed. But at the very top, the logic seems simple: if you’re the lawyer who can save a billion-dollar deal, apparently $3,400 an hour suddenly feels… reasonable.

Audi showed the Concept C last year and everyone did what people always do with concept cars, admire it, take photos, and assume it will never exist again outside an auto show stage. Now Audi says it’s actually coming. The company’s CEO said the electric sports car could hit the market within two years, which is bold considering the EV market is currently having a bit of an identity crisis. The car was supposed to share a platform with the electric Porsche 718, which may or may not happen either, so the plan still feels slightly… theoretical. Still, Audi insists the Concept C is proof of its big transformation into a company that makes cars, software, and apparently very confident promises.

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Apple moves deeper into the $2,000 zone. Apple is reportedly preparing several new “Ultra” devices this year, which is corporate language for: the gadgets are about to get even more expensive. According to Bloomberg, Apple may launch three high-end products including a foldable iPhone Ultra that could cost around $2,000 and feature a large inner display, an AirPods Ultra model that may include tiny cameras to help Siri understand the world around you, and a MacBook Ultra with a touch OLED display that could push laptop prices up another 20%. Apple already sells things like the Apple Watch Ultra and Ultra chips, so the company clearly likes the word, even if it sometimes pretends it doesn’t. The bigger idea is simple: Apple thinks the future isn’t cheaper gadgets, it’s more premium ones, which means if you thought Apple devices were expensive before, congratulations, you were just warming up.

NASA tested a planet saving move. NASA decided a few years ago to run a little experiment: crash a spacecraft into an asteroid and see if it moves. Turns out, it does. Scientists say the DART mission successfully changed the asteroid’s orbit around the sun, making this the first time humans deliberately altered the path of a celestial object in space, which is either incredibly impressive or the beginning of a sci-fi movie. The change was tiny. The asteroid’s two-year orbit shortened by about one-tenth of a second and shifted by roughly half a mile. But scientists say that’s the whole point. The strategy for saving Earth from a future killer asteroid isn’t smashing it at the last minute like in the movies, it’s giving it a small nudge decades earlier so it slowly drifts away from Earth. In other words, humanity just tested its planetary defense plan, and step one appears to be gently bumping space rocks and hoping physics does the rest.

The $40 smartphone is coming. Tech companies are trying to build the ultimate budget gadget: a $40 smartphone. At Mobile World Congress, the GSMA announced it is working with major telecom companies and phone makers to launch ultra-cheap 4G smartphones across several African countries including Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda. The goal is simple. Tens of millions of people already live in areas with internet coverage but still don’t go online because smartphones are too expensive. The plan is to create devices priced around $30–$40, which could bring roughly 20 million more people online. The only small challenge is actually building a decent smartphone for the price of a casual dinner, especially while parts like memory keep getting more expensive. In other words, the tech industry is now attempting something bold: making a smartphone cheaper than most phone cases.

United Airlines has officially had enough of people blasting videos and music on their phones like the entire plane signed up to hear their playlist. A new rule in United’s “Contract of Carriage” says passengers who refuse to use headphones while watching or listening to something can be removed from the flight or even banned from flying with the airline. Yes, banned. For being that person. The rule was quietly added on February 27, and the airline is serious about it. If you forgot headphones, they’ll even give you free earbuds on board, which means the excuse “I didn’t bring any” will no longer work.

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The grey hair myth explained. The old myth says that if you pluck one grey hair, two grow back in its place. Sounds dramatic, but dermatologists say it’s simply not true. Each hair grows from its own follicle, which is basically a tiny hair factory that produces just one hair. Pulling one out doesn’t suddenly create extra factories. In fact, overplucking can do the opposite. Repeatedly pulling hairs can damage the follicle so badly that the hair never grows back at all, which explains why many people who followed the ultra-thin eyebrow trend in the early 2000s are still waiting for those brows to return. As for preventing grey hair, genetics is the main factor. Stress, poor sleep, and nutrition can play a role, but your family tree usually tells the real story. The good news is that grey hair isn’t necessarily weaker. In many cases it actually grows faster and stronger, which means the only real problem might be that it shows up a little more confidently than the rest.

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TikTok of the day: watch here

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