Data-based fast fashion

Edikted, a fast-fashion company known for hyper-trendy clothes that teenagers and 20-somethings find irresistible. “We’re more like a data company than a fashion company,” says its CEO Dedy Shwartzberg. The Edikted customer — or “babe,” as the company calls her — shapes the store’s merchandise based on her internet searches, her social media activity, and whatever Hailey Bieber wears, among other data points. “If she likes something, we make more of it, which is why you see all these polka dots,” said Shwartzberg, motioning at the dotted halter tops around him. “If she doesn’t like something, it goes away. Last year’s barrel jeans? Bye bye.” Tons of brands follow Edikted’s strategy of low prices, trending styles, and aggressive social media marketing. Edikted drops 300 new styles a month and produces new designs in two to three weeks. A 2025 survey by investment bank Piper Sandler ranked it among the top five websites for upper-income teenage girls.

(Adapted from “How Edikted Built a Teen Sensation on Crop Tops and Miniskirts,” by Chavie Lieber, published on June 14, 2026, by the Wall Street Journal)

Parenting in old age

More people are becoming parents at older ages, and they are confronting a new and often surprising financial reality. Some are shouldering the costs of raising children while trying to turbocharge their retirement savings or manage age-related health problems. Others are weighing whether to step back from their careers just as they reach peak earning years. Women 40 and older accounted for about 4.3pc of US births in 2025, up from 1.2pc in 1990, according to provisional data from the National Centre for Health Statistics. The average first-time mother was 27.5 years old, a record high, according to 2023 data, the most recent available. Older parents tend to be more educated, federal data show, and many describe having more patience, flexibility and financial stability than they would have had a decade earlier. Research has found that children of older mothers score higher on early assessments, a result of the education, income and stability those parents tend to bring.

(Adapted from “Here’s What It’s Like to Have Kids in America After Age 40,” by Dalvin Brown, published on June 6, 2026, by the Wall Street Journal)

Stalled mid-career

No promotion. No notable raises. Not yet 40. You aren’t alone. Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers before their peak earning years, going at least five years without a real boost in pay or position. That is the central finding of a new study tracking the careers of 1.3m midcareer professionals across a range of industries since 2000. It suggests that even in an economy with high employment, many workers run into an invisible barrier to upward mobility just when their careers are supposed to gain momentum. Midcareer stalls often start as early-career slumps and can ripple across a lifetime of earnings. That makes those first working years after college especially critical. Now, hiring has slowed to a trickle, with the upshot that there are fewer opportunities to move up or jump to better-paying jobs.

(“No Raise, No Promotion: 1 in 4 White-Collar Workers Are Stalling Out,” by Lindsay Ellis, published on May 31, 2026, by the Wall Street Journal)

Insurance challenges

When disaster strikes, many Americans face a near flip-of-the-coin chance that their home insurer will pay a claim. And the problem is getting worse. The five biggest home-insurers as a group didn’t pay out on more than 44pc of claims resolved last year, forcing homeowners and renters to fund repairs out of their own pockets, an analysis by The Wall Street Journal found. The risk that a claim will result in no payment among the group shot up from 36pc a decade earlier, according to the analysis. Several factors are driving nonpayment rates higher, according to industry analysts and executives. Prime among them: Insurers are responding to a years-long run of post-pandemic losses in their home-insurance businesses by getting tougher on claims. One way they have done this is to raise deductibles, or the amount the customer has to pay before the insurer kicks in. They have also set tighter criteria for claims involving expensive items, such as roof replacements.

(Adapted from “The Home-Insurance Coin Flip: Nearly Half Of Claims Result In Zero Payout,” by Jean Eaglesham and Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky, published on May 30, 2026, by the Wall Street Journal)

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, June 22nd, 2026