BlackRock's Aguirre on Potential for Solana ETF
BlackRock head of US iShares product Rachel Aguirre gives her take on the idea of launching a Solana ETF. (Source: Bloomberg)
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Digital Trends
an hour ago
- Digital Trends
Apple has no plans for a flip-style foldable iPhone and that's a shame
Apple loyalists will finally get a taste of what a foldable iPhone feels like, in 2026. Or at least that's what sources like Bloomberg and analyst Ming-Chi Kuo have been hyping up for a while now. Of course, Apple is late to the party — roughly seven years — but the hype is insanely high for a couple of reasons. Apple has reportedly managed to eliminate the crease on the inner folding screen, achieving a near-seamless flat look. Second, Apple is said to have fortified the hinge mechanism, a crucial weakness of foldable phones that leads to nasty unfolding problems and expensive repairs. Recommended Videos On the flip side, reports suggest it will be quite pricey and might hit the shelves with a two-thousand-dollar premium. Samsung's foldables aren't exactly budget-centric, but the industry has also carved a niche where flip-style phones serve the foldable enthusiasts with a much more palatable price tag. The likes of Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Moto Razr have cultivated a solid following of their own, but it seems Apple is not particularly psyched by that idea. For now, at least. 'That's not something currently on the table for Apple,' says a Bloomberg report. Apple knows software Not experimenting with a clamshell-style foldable smartphone is a missed opportunity, especially when you look at Apple's strengths and recent software developments. I often come across posts that discuss Apple's attention to detail, from corner radius to color transitions. Everything looks immaculate, and a quick peek at Apple's design guidelines will give you an idea of just what Apple expects from the software running on its hardware. If there's a company that can nail UI interactions on a small cover display, it's Apple, or at least do better than the rest. Samsung continues to restrict what you do with apps on the Galaxy Z Flip 6's smaller external display. If you really want to get the full experience, you must download the Good Lock module, or pick one of the cover screen apps. Then there are a handful of system-level restrictions when it comes to app interactions, such as handling 2FA prompts on the cover screen or making payments. Motorola takes a much more liberal approach here, but Android's native app-scaling woes ruin the experience for a handful of apps, especially social media. There is no perfect cover screen on the current crop of clamshell foldable phones out there. Apple, given its focus on design uniformity and tight conformity to scaling rules, could have done a much better job. Just take a look at the dissonance between Android on phones and the wearOS experience on smartwatches. Now, compare it with the familiar feel as you switch from watchOS on an Apple Watch to the iPhone in your hand. In 2025, Apple's Liquid Glass design makeover further unified the look of its operating systems across screens of all sizes. Even on the 'mobile side,' Apple's new windowing system on iPadOS 26 has fully embraced the ethos of freely resizable app windows. I can't imagine iOS interactions on a 4-inch external display struggling with natural app interactions. Even if Apple didn't go as immersive as the Moto Razr or the upcoming Galaxy Z Fold 7 — and adopted a smaller cover display — I am fairly confident that Apple would offer a more thoughtful cover screen experience. Apple must break the monotony — at scale Ask any industry watcher (or even fan) about Apple's biggest missed opportunities in the past few years and you will predominantly get two answers. Foldable phones and AI. The latter is slowly making progress, but a foldable device will be absent from Apple's portfolio until next year. Samsung introduced its first foldable phone back in 2019. It was a botched start, but the company has come a long way since, both in terms of hardware stability as well as functionality. Soon, rivals from China caught up. As of 2025, the race is no longer about making foldable phones, but making the best one. The race is so hot that Samsung has lost the lead on multiple fronts. The likes of Honor are making foldable phones that are nearly as thick as an average iPhone. Oppo's Find N5 has nearly eliminated the crease problem, allows 80W charging, and even throws a remote Mac facility into the mix. The iPhone has remained more or less the same over the past few generations, save for minor tweaks to the design and incremental camera upgrades. The lack of exciting upgrades runs so deep that I often find myself recommending a generation older — or two — iPhones to my acquaintances, and save some money while at it. In hindsight, that's just how boringly good iPhones have been in the past few years. Even the most notable year-over-year changes in the past few years have focused more on creative professionals than the average user. Tricks like LOG capture, ProRAW image, cinematic recording, and multi-cam video capture are more tailored towards creative folks, and not an average user. Apple is expected to step out of its comfort zone, somewhat, with the rumoured iPhone 17 Air slated to arrive in the fall season. That phone appears to be nothing more than a slimmer iPhone, and with its own set of inherent compromises, such as a smaller battery and only a single camera at the back. Moreover, Apple won't be the only player in the game. Samsung has already done the 'ultra slim phone' trend with its revived Edge family, and Chinese smartphone labels have knocked on those doors, as well. More are expected to follow the trend, including much smaller players such as Tecno. The right kind of foldable What Apple needs is a flip-style foldable phone, one that would blend freshness as well as affordability in the same package. Look no further than the Motorola Razr 2025, which blends plenty of aesthetic pizzaz and a near-seamless external display with a $700 price tag. Even if you factor in the 'expected' Apple brand premium, a clamshell folding iPhone shouldn't cost more than $1,200, the same as a flagship 'Pro Max' iPhone. For comparison, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 goes for $1,100 in the US market. But more than just bragging rights and catching up with the competition, a flip-style iPhone would have injected some serious innovative energy into the iPhone portfolio without pushing it beyond the reach of an average iPhone buyer. A book-style foldable iPhone serves as a great showcase of Apple's engineering chops — just like the Vision Pro — but it's far from a mainstream success recipe. A flip-style folding iPhone that costs nearly half as much sounds a lot more soul-stirring, and pocket-friendly, too.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Kerry's notebook: Larry Fink wants your 401(k), investors are squeamish, what's Social Security hiding?
Every week or so, I bank some personal finance nuggets that don't make it into my Yahoo Finance columns. So now — and in weeks to come — I'll be clearing out my notebook. Here we go: Private equity comes to your 401(k)? BlackRock (BLK) announced this week that it's launching a target-date fund that will consist of private credit, private equity, and other investments, aiming to increase the annual return an extra 0.5% — and roughly 15% more money in your 401(k) over a 40-year lifecycle of a target date solution. The fund will be offered by Great Gray Trust, which offers retirement investment options and manages over $210 billion in assets. Empower, the second-largest retirement services provider in the US, has aligned with top-tier private investment fund managers and custodians, including Apollo Global Management (APO), Yahoo Finance's owner, and Goldman Sachs (GS). BlackRock Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink proposed this idea a few months ago. Instead of a traditional 60/40 split between stocks and bonds, he wants everyday investors to branch out and diversify into private market assets. 'The future standard portfolio may look more like 50/30/20 — stocks, bonds, and private assets like real estate, infrastructure, and private credit,' Fink wrote in his annual letter to clients in April. Sounds good on the surface, but there's a big red flag in all this: more risk. That's a big concern for me and many experts I spoke with this week. There are trade-offs. These investments are riskier than the run-of-the-mill index funds most target-date retirement funds hold, have higher fees, and are less liquid. That makes it a scramble to pull funds out if the markets drop, so a long investment horizon is critical. The US Securities and Exchange Commission's Office of the Investor Advocate announced this week that it will look into the use of private equity and other alternative investments in retirement accounts. Shuttering the blinds. Social Security has gone dark on reporting its processing times for benefits and help on its website. The SSA took down six webpages that contained a collection of performance statistics about live phone and claims data around June 6, according to a memo written by researchers with the Strategic Organizing Center, a nonprofit labor alliance, provided to Yahoo Finance. For 10 days, the page was offline. If you went to the site, it read: 'Under Maintenance. This section is currently being improved. Sorry for the inconvenience.' The page remained offline until the SSA put up an altered page on June 16th. Most previous statistics and charts were deleted, and all data was consolidated into a single page with three sections. That new page offers a, shall we say, streamlined view of the agency's customer service performance. I will boil this down for you. The main message for seniors is — don't come see us. 'Very few services require you to visit a field office,' according to the website. 'We encourage you to go online to reduce your wait time and avoid a trip to the office.' Well, that's easier said than done for older Americans who don't have access to internet services or lack computer skills. A note on the site says that the average time to wait for a field office appointment after contacting the agency is 34 days. Phone help can require a three-hour wait time or more. But hold on. Wait time to access online services — 0 minutes is shown at the top of the page. Also: The page does not provide the Social Security 800 number. Not a bad way to discourage callers. In April, as I wrote, the agency faced backlash about limiting customer service for millions of seniors and backed off its plan to cut phone service. Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told me this is the latest move Commissioner Frank Bisignano has made to pull back data previously available to the public. She added that SSA also pulled videos of operational meetings, data on staff losses this year, and even most of the organization chart (which now only names Bisignano). Read more: When will I get my Social Security check? Payment schedule for 2025. Many Americans need more personal help figuring out Social Security questions, not less. The reality is that most Americans are clueless about basic concepts of how Social Security and other retirement topics work, according to a recent report from the TIAA Institute and the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center at the George Washington University School of Business. Curious about your retirement know-how? Take the abbreviated quiz below. This is not a Jeopardy question. Nearly half of workers who estimate how much they need to have saved for retirement are just guessing, according to a new report by the nonprofit Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies. A large portion of workers in each generation imagine they will need to save a cool million or more. Possibly, they're on target. But hello. Stop dart tossing and at least check out calculators on sites such as AARP, Bogleheads, Fidelity, or Vanguard to get a better handle on this calculation. Also troubling, according to the Transamerica report, more than 6 in 10 workers admit they do not know as much as they should about investing for retirement. Lack of retirement literacy is a reality for most Americans, as I mentioned above. Experts, me included, surmise that it's not so much that people are stupid as that they just haven't or don't want to think about how they would like their retirement years to play out — what types of things they will want and need to spend their money on so they can enjoy life. By subscribing, you are agreeing to Yahoo's Terms and Privacy Policy Feeling squeamish? Nearly half of Americans are too nervous to invest right now, up from 4 in 10 in the first quarter of this year. They are worried about their retirement savings more than they have in the last six years, according to a study out this week from Allianz Life that was fielded in May. That's the highest since 2019.'In general, people feel the pain of losing money more than they feel joy in gaining money,' Kelly LaVigne, vice president of Consumer Insights at Allianz Life, told me. 'For people who are still many years away from retirement, staying the course is the best option,' LaVigne said. 'But recent market volatility highlights the need to incorporate risk management into a retirement strategy.' Precisely what I wrote about in this column about how to protect your money. Everyday folks, especially those approaching retirement, are unnerved by all the drama that has gone down so far this year. There is a feeling that we are always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Lindsay Theodore, a senior manager and certified financial planner at T. Rowe Price, told me her best advice in these times: Ride out those uneasy feelings by staying patiently invested in a diversified and age-appropriate mix of stocks, bonds, and cash. Read more: How to start investing: A 6-step guide All you target-date fund investors can take a breath. Kerry Hannon is a Senior Columnist at Yahoo Finance. She is a career and retirement strategist and the author of 14 books, including the forthcoming "Retirement Bites: A Gen X Guide to Securing Your Financial Future," "In Control at 50+: How to Succeed in the New World of Work," and "Never Too Old to Get Rich." Follow her on Bluesky. Sign up for the Mind Your Money newsletter
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
DGRO Is a Popular Dividend ETF for Passive Income, but Is It the Best?
The iShares Core Dividend Growth ETF is a solid dividend-focused ETF. It offers investors both yield and a track record of growth. But some other ETFs offer higher yields and/or average growth rates. 10 stocks we like better than iShares Trust - iShares Core Dividend Growth ETF › Many, if not most, of us would do well to include a bunch of dividend payers in our portfolio. Naturally, if we're retired, we can use that regular income to pay for living expenses. But even if we're much younger and still working, dividends can be extremely useful. For example, at times when you don't have any extra cash with which to invest, you'll still be collecting dividend money, which can be used to buy more shares of stock for your long-term portfolio. A particularly easy way to invest in dividend payers is via exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which are funds that trade like stocks. And a particularly popular one is the iShares Core Dividend Growth ETF (NYSEMKT: DGRO). Here's a look at that ETF and other dividend-focused ETFs so that you might find one(s) best-suited for you. First, let's establish why someone might be interested in investing in dividend payers. Sure, there's the dividend income. Check out the table below: Dividend-Paying Status Average Annual Total Return, 1973-2024 Dividend growers and initiators 10.24% Dividend payers 9.20% No change in dividend policy 6.75% Dividend non-payers 4.31% Dividend shrinkers and eliminators (0.89%) Equal-weighted S&P 500 index 7.65% Data source: Ned Davis Research and Hartford Funds. It shouldn't be too surprising that dividend payers perform so well. After all, to become one, a company typically has to be generating sufficiently reliable income so that management feels comfortable committing to a payout. Of course, you might not get a 10% average annual return in the years that you're invested -- there are few guarantees in the stock market. Here's how your money might grow over time at different rates if you sock away $12,000 annually. Investing $12,000 Annually for Growing at 8% Annually Growing at 10% Annually Growing at 12% Annually 5 years $76,032 $80,587 $85,382 10 years $187,746 $210,374 $235,855 15 years $351,892 $419,397 $501,039 20 years $593,076 $756,030 $968,385 25 years $947,452 $1,298,181 $1,792,007 30 years $1,468,150 $2,171,321 $3,243,511 35 years $2,233,226 $3,577,522 $5,801,557 40 years $3,357,372 $5,842,222 $10,309,707 Data source: Calculations by author. Now, let's take a closer look at the iShares Core Dividend Growth ETF. We'll start with performance. Here's how the ETF has performed in recent years: Over the Past... Average Annual Gain 3 years 11.87% 5 years 13.94% 10 years 11.75% Data source: The iShares Core Dividend Growth ETF recently comprised 398 holdings, with its top 10 holdings accounting for about 27% of its total value. Here are those recent top 10 stocks: Stock Percent of ETF ExxonMobil 3.16% JPMorgan Chase 3.09% Microsoft 3.06% Apple 2.97% Johnson & Johnson 2.89% Broadcom 2.67% AbbVie 2.66% Procter & Gamble 2.32% The Home Depot 2.11% Merck 1.96% Data source: as of June 24, 2025. ETF = exchange-traded fund. The dividend should be of interest, too, right? Well, the ETF recently sported a dividend yield of 2.23%. That may not be huge, but it's well above the S&P 500's recent dividend yield of around 1.25%. Know, too, that healthy and growing dividend payers tend to increase their payouts over time, so that dividend income you receive should grow from year to year. Indeed, the quarterly payout for June 2025 was $0.324 per share, up from $0.249 in June of 2020 and $0.169 in June of 2015. The iShares ETF is not the only game in town when it comes to ETFs with meaningful dividend yields. Below are some others to consider. I'll compare their numbers to an S&P 500 index fund, too: ETF Recent Yield 5-Year Avg. Annual Return 10-Year Avg. Annual Return JPMorgan Equity Premium Income ETF 8.01% 11.73% N/A iShares Preferred & Income Securities ETF 6.68% 3.22% 3.21% Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF 3.97% 13.34% 10.92% Fidelity High Dividend ETF 3.02% 17.91% N/A Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF 2.86% 14.60% 10.08% SPDR S&P Dividend ETF 2.59% 11.77% 9.29% iShares US Real Estate ETF 2.55% 7.26% 6.09% iShares Core Dividend Growth ETF 2.23% 13.94% 11.75% Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF 1.79% 14.07% 11.83% First Trust Rising Dividend Achievers ETF 1.67% 17.61% 12.68% Vanguard S&P 500 ETF 1.25% 16.54% 13.15% Source: Yahoo! Finance and as of June 24, 2025. ETF = exchange-traded fund. You can see that to some degree, the greater growth rate you pursue, the lower yield you may have to accept. But some of the funds above could be more compelling than the iShares Core Dividend Growth ETF, offering greater yields and impressive average annual gains. Think through what's most important to you and dig deeper into any ETF of interest, as there's usually more to know. For example, the JPMorgan Equity Premium Income ETF is a different beast, not simply investing in dividend-paying stocks. And the iShares Preferred & Income Securities ETF focuses on preferred stock, which tends to appreciate in value more slowly. You'll likely do very well investing in the iShares Core Dividend Growth ETF, but you might do a bit better with some of the other ETFs above. Before you buy stock in iShares Trust - iShares Core Dividend Growth ETF, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and iShares Trust - iShares Core Dividend Growth ETF wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $713,547!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $966,931!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,062% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 177% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 23, 2025 JPMorgan Chase is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Selena Maranjian has positions in AbbVie, Apple, Broadcom, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, and Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends AbbVie, Apple, Home Depot, JPMorgan Chase, Merck, Microsoft, Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF, Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, and Vanguard Whitehall Funds-Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom and Johnson & Johnson and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. DGRO Is a Popular Dividend ETF for Passive Income, but Is It the Best? was originally published by The Motley Fool
