The author's kids (not pictured) don't see their grandparents regularly, but they FaceTime often.
Bonfanti Diego/Getty Images/Image Source
We live about 1,000 miles from my in-laws and don't see them often.
My two kids, 6 and 8, still have close relationships with their grandparents.
They talk regularly over FaceTime and make the most of the visits we do have.
Most mornings, my 6-year-old is the first one awake; we chat while I get coffee, and I ask if he wants to call his Meme — my mother-in-law, and his grandmother. This is one of the only times of the day he can catch her, so if he's up early enough, he almost always takes the opportunity.
He eats his oatmeal and FaceTimes her until she arrives at work or is needed by an employee. Then it's time for him to call Pops, who arrives at work slightly later in the morning. More often than not, he's on his commute and chats during his drive.
My 8-year-old prefers to sleep in and is continually grumpy that he doesn't get the same talking time with breakfast.
They do the same after school or in the evenings, depending on schedules. They love to take their grandparents around the house or out in the yard while they play. No doubt they are dizzy with the poor camera work. The boys share about their day, including what they had for lunch or what they played during recess. They show what they've been working on in the backyard.
They don't live close by, so these phone calls are important
If Meme and Pops can't answer or pick up, I hear about it. We don't see them in person often, and this time is precious. Although we are in the same time zone, we are in north-central Kansas, and they are in southern Mississippi — about 1,000 miles away. Driving takes 16 hours; by plane, it's four and a half.
These regular calls allow my kids to have close relationships with their grandparents. A few times a year, the boys also get gifts in the mail — a box of goodies my in-laws have purchased over the last few months. Occasionally, I'll also get a Venmo from Meme, saying to take the boys for ice cream or let them pick a treat. There is a dual excitement of first spending the money and then getting to tell her and Pops about it afterward.
Meanwhile, my husband and I both call them fairly frequently as well. He's an avid FaceTime user, while I prefer to chat on the phone while I fold laundry or do dishes. I send pictures almost daily, giving updates of what the boys have been up to that day. Last week, I sent pictures of our son's artwork and journal entries for school, a headband my youngest son made, and photos from "Dude's Day," when my husband and our boys dressed up to go out for lunch.
We don't see them in person often but we make the most of it when we do
Planning our visits is a constant juggling of budgets and schedules. Due to limited PTO and money, we aren't able to visit often. We've flown previously but prefer the freedom of driving because we can stop and eat along the way, and it's easier to take all our luggage; however, driving does take more time, so we have to factor that in when considering a trip.
This summer, we met up in Branson, Missouri, which is about halfway between our respective homes. It was great for everyone — plenty of family time, and larger digs, as we split the cost. Plus, we had Meme and Pops as built-in babysitters. And yes, the boys got super spoiled the entire time — they said it was the best trip ever, over and over again.
This Christmas, we'll make the 16-hour drive to their home. It's the first time we'll be making the trip in two years, and my kids (and husband) have been counting down for six months. There's a running list of where we will go, restaurants to visit, and dishes that need to be tried. There have also been a few in-depth conversations about how Santa will know how to find them.
Last year, they flew to us for the week of Christmas. We picked them up in Kansas City, where we spent a few nights exploring before heading to our house.
We never get to spend enough time in person, but at these stages in our lives, it's what we are able to make work. Thankfully, with technology, we can communicate regularly, even when we can't be together in person.
The author (left) is enjoying her time with her aging mother.
Courtesy of Wendy Woolfork
My mother and I weren't close when I was a kid because I thought she was too strict.
Now she's 90, and I've learned to forgive and accept her.
With this new phase of our relationship, I'm cherishing the small moments together.
I grew up in Guyana, where cultural norms set the tone for my mother's parenting and led to plenty of friction in my teen and young adult years — friction that needed time and perspective to soften.
Back then, the rule was simple: children were to be seen and not heard.That didn't sit well with me. I came out of the womb a free spirit who prized autonomy and wanted an empowered voice. Clashes were inevitable. My orientation was incompatible with what I saw as heavy-handed, authoritarian parenting.
Fortunately, reason and time eased my anger. What I couldn't see then was that Mom was doing her best to parent from the only framework she knew — from her own lived experience.
Now that Mom is 90, my days with her feel like borrowed time I don't dare take for granted. I find myself more aware, wanting to slow time down, eager to savor and absorb everything.
I've found grace in forgiveness
As I matured and became exposed to travel, literature, and new ways of seeing people and their choices, I began to understand how cultural conditioning and limited education had shaped Mom. She had simply imitated what had been modeled for her.
My own education and exposure helped me look past my early judgments and see how profoundly environment shapes behavior. Mom had lived within strictly paternalistic rhythms, armed with only a fifth-grade education.
That realization softened me. What used to be disappointment became a gentler understanding. I saw that in her place, I might have made the same choices. This thought alone lifted something heavy. It gave me space to replace resentment with compassion and finally see my mother fully without holding the examples she repeated against her.
I now hold onto our rituals
Mom lives with me now, and we've developed rituals that are deeply satisfying and sustaining.
We have a nightly date to watch "Jeopardy." We also make time to share warm plates of delicious curry and rice or my famed mac and cheese. I also enjoy revisiting old recipes that prompt me to call on Mom for guidance.
The author and her aging mother.
Courtesy of Wendy Woolfork
It seems I taste the history in every bite, as I remember all the meals she once stretched to feed us when there was little to go around.
We also connect over music now. Our long drives through winding country roads — with Bob Marley or Marc Anthony's "Si Te Vas" playing — are gifts I get to unwrap twice: once in the moment and again later, as a memory.
A few months ago, my mom and I saw singer Lauren Daigle in concert — an experience Mom still talks about with delight. I won't soon forget it either.
I'm holding onto these last moments with my mother
I often wake up to the sound of my mother praying out loud. It's the sweetest alarm clock I could ever ask for. I cherish these moments, knowing there will come a day when I'd give anything to hear such a sound.
So I'm savoring it all greedily: the shared moments, the music, the quiet companionship, the chance to rub lotion on her feet or massage arthritic shoulders when the pain is overwhelming, the gratitude for my ability to outgrow old resentments and take a more expansive and empathetic view of our lives.
After everything we've gone through, it feels like a wondrous miracle to simply love my mother and be loved by her — freely and without reservations.
Since OpenAI shook Google awake, the search giant has made a big turnaround.
Google has spent three years reshaping itself and leaning into its advantages over rivals.
Existential questions about the future of the web linger, however.
It made for an irresistible narrative.
The large, slow incumbent — in this case, Google — was caught flat-footed by a more nimble upstart by the name of OpenAI. It was the type of story Silicon Valley built its legend on.
In Sundar Pichai's first letter to shareholders in 2016 after becoming CEO, he said Google would shift to an "AI-first world." Yet, in late 2022, a relatively unknown company suddenly pulled the rug from under Google's feet. ChatGPT was an overnight sensation, and Google, which had long seen itself as the leader in AI, appeared to be lagging behind.
In the years since, the search giant has acted fast to turn things around. It quickly reshaped key parts of its business internally and made an aggressive push to inject generative AI into its core products.
Its latest AI model, Gemini 3, launched this month to dazzling reviews. Crucially, Gemini 3 launched within Search — Google's most prized business — on day one, a strong signal that after three years the company had gotten its ducks in a row.
However, there are big questions that Google is still grappling with as it rebuilds its image in the age of AI. OpenAI's first-mover advantage meant that ChatGPT has become the "Kleenex" of AI — the name that everyone associates with it — and it will be tough for Google to change that.
There are also more existential questions. Chiefly, how can Google preserve a healthy web ecosystem once AI has eaten the internet? To keep pace with rivals, Google is reimagining search not as a directory, but a conversation that removes the hassle of scrolling and clicking. What that means for the future of the internet is a lingering question. Still, Google's business may not only survive its self-disruption, but thrive.
"It has the users, and as long as it continues to rush out new products, no one can match its distribution tentacles," a former Google executive said. "They will come out as winners no matter the scenario."
Google told Business Insider in a statement, "We've been through platform shifts before, and every time it's been an expansionary moment for Google and for Search. We move quickly, innovate, and create new opportunities for our products, partners, and users — and that's what we're doing with AI."
Gemini rising
Did Google see it coming? That depends on who you ask.
When OpenAI's ChatGPT rolled out, Googlers experienced a mix of frustration and relief. Some employees had worked on similar projects that had never made it outside Google's walls, and seeing a much smaller competitor take the glory was frustrating. Others saw it as the starting pistol in the AI race and the green light for Google to finally unleash its own AI on the world.
Google has never lacked brains or technology. Employees at DeepMind, an AI research lab within Google's parent company, had been toying with large language models by the time ChatGPT appeared, but leaders worried that releasing a chatbot prone to bias or errors would spark backlash.
"It was not intended as a public thing yet," a former DeepMind employee who worked on Google's own LLM technology said. "We saw shortcomings and saw it start to be interesting, but it was unclear how to get it to be completely useful."
What surprised some leaders inside the company — and where Google ultimately miscalculated, insiders say — was that users largely didn't seem to care about ChatGPT's shortcomings.
In 2023, Google fused together two of its AI labs to focus on building Gemini.
GLENN CHAPMAN/AFP via Getty Images
Inside DeepMind, teams scrambled to launch their answer to ChatGPT, a chatbot named Sparrow, which would have had more safety guardrails than ChatGPT, according to people who worked on it. That project soon died once Google merged DeepMind with its internal AI lab Brain, and the company then put all its focus on Gemini.
At the same time, Google made an internal push to infuse generative AI into all its most crucial products, including Search, YouTube, and Android. It launched multiple iterations of the Gemini chatbot, the latest of which is Gemini 3.
Searching for Google's future
Over the past three years, Google has made disrupting itself look fairly easy. The company just reported its first $100 billion quarter. Its cloud business, which has long been second-fiddle to Amazon's and Microsoft's, is whirring into overdrive. Its specialized AI chips, for years an internal and slow-moving effort, are suddenly seeing blockbuster demand from companies vying for more computing power.
Current and former employees say Google's greatest advantage is that it owns the full technology stack needed to meet the AI boom. It offers numerous products, including Gemini, Search, and Maps, which are already used by billions of people. It has a fleet of researchers building frontier AI models. And it has a cloud infrastructure that is not just powering all these internal efforts, but that its biggest competitors are paying to use.
Search, however, remains Google's core business and the boat it spent decades trying not to rock. When cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google, it had no clear business model beyond building a world-beating search engine, but the founders were eventually swayed into putting ads into search results. It became one of the most scalable businesses ever imagined in the digital era, and to this day, it continues to provide the largest chunk of Google's revenue.
Google Search head Liz Reid
SAJJAD HUSSAIN/Getty Images
Now, Google must figure out whether AI Overviews — its generated summaries that give users instant answers to their questions — and the more dramatic reimagining of search in AI Mode have as much juice when it comes to search advertising.
Google can't afford to stand still. Industry analysts at EMARKETER, Business Insider's sister company, predict Google's share of the search ads market will drop below 50% for the first time next year (a revision to their earlier prediction that it would happen in 2025). By the end of 2026, EMARKETER predicts Google will have a 48.9% share.
EMARKETER senior forecast analyst Oscar Orozco said that the sustained high performance of Google's search business suggests advertiser caution around AI Overviews has been "overblown" by the market.
"However, this does remain a long-term threat for their search business, and we believe as LLMs monetize their search capabilities, Google will continue to lose share, albeit at a slower rate than we had expected at this same time last year," he said.
Google is reshaping the web as we know it
Google, at least publicly, doesn't appear to be worried.
In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Google Search boss Liz Reid said that while changes to search resulted in reduced traffic to some websites, the overall number of search queries was increasing because Google made it easier for people to get to answers, either through AI Overviews or tools like Lens.
"The increase in searches sort of compensates for the impact on ads clicks such that we end up roughly at the same point," Reid said. She also made a point that chatbots can't replace products users are looking to buy, hinting at a top priority for Google: transactional searches that are more likely to produce ad revenue for the platform.
Even that is changing for Google. The search funnel — the time between someone beginning to research a product to hitting "buy" — is shrinking, as generative AI gets people to what they want sooner.
Google has begun to show the world how it's adapting to protect its core moneymaker. However, it's unclear what the generative AI boom means for the long-term health of the web, and how it will impact websites that supply information as opposed to products.
Google says that its new AI search features can help users find more relevant content, and that queries continue to grow year-over-year. Yet many publishers already see search traffic declining, and there are growing anxieties that even if overall searches go up with AI summaries, they will not translate into website clicks.
A recent Pew Research study based on the search history of 900 users concluded that when an AI Overview appeared, users clicked a traditional link 8% of the time, compared to 15% when an AI summary didn't appear. Google said the research was flawed and not representative of overall search traffic.
Lily Ray, vice president of SEO research firm Amsive, said that a shift to an AI-first Google would make it harder for publishers and content creators who build much of the web to make money. If people stop publishing, where will Google get the information it needs to construct its AI Overviews?
"I'm not sure how they plan to solve that; their current excuses are not cutting it," she said.
One idea she suggested is that Google and other AI companies that build large language models pay commissions to the sites they train on or reference, as an incentive for them to keep creating.
She's not alone in feeling something needs to shift.
"The business model of the web can't survive unless there's some change," Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said in an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations earlier this year. Prince, whose business acts as a gateway between websites and the internet, has called AI answerbots an "existential threat" to the internet.
"If content creators can't derive value from what they're doing, then they're not going to create original content," Prince said.
Business Insider has interviewed recruiters and investors at top hedge fund managers like Citadel, Millennium, and Point72 about how they attract and evaluate talent, and what advice they'd give to anyone hoping to break in.
Here's everything we know about getting a job at a large hedge fund.
Internships
Years ago, the opaque and secretive world of hedge funds might not have been an obvious career choice for most college graduates on their path to Wall Street. However, these investing behemoths are now investing in getting young, diverse wunderkinder, especially mathletes, familiar with their brands as early as high school.
Internships are another talent pipeline for some of the biggest multi-strategy hedge funds, which employ armies of traders and engineers. Programs can be uber-competitive and harder to get into than many top Ivy League schools.
Bhavya Kethireddipalli (right) during her Citadel summer internship in 2022.
Citadel
Citadel's summer internship program, for example, has become increasingly competitive. This year, the hedge fund accepted around 300 interns to spend 11 weeks at Griffin's hedge fund or his market maker, working with stock-pickers, quants, engineers, and more. The firm told BI that there were more than 108,000 applicants for the programs, with an acceptance rate of roughly 0.4%.
Citadel's associate program is a separate internship that puts rising college seniors on track to land a full-time investing role at the $66 billion fund.
$25 billion hedge fund Balyasny runs a contest that serves as an early application pool for the firm's internship program.
We also spoke to Point72 and D.E. Shaw about what they looked for in interns and how to stand out for a potential job offer down the line.
Point72's summer internship is a precursor to the hedge fund's Academy, a 10-month training program for college graduates and early-career professionals looking to become investment analysts.
In the past, hedge funds acquired investment talent from investment banks. Increasingly, however, the industry's top players are recruiting college students through intensive training programs that can lead to jobs straight out of college.
Creating a pipeline of portfolio managers has been an increasingly popular strategy for hedge funds locked in an increasingly expensive battle for top talent.
Hedge funds have long been competing with the finance industry and top tech companies for top technologists. Engineers and algorithm developers are key to helping researchers, data scientists, and traders develop cutting-edge investment strategies and platforms. Quant shop D.E. Shaw also has a unique approach to finding talent.
The "business development" role is one of the most important at hedge funds, as it specializes in scouting and evaluating investment hires. Knowing these in-house talent scouts and external recruiters is crucial.
Lileth Greenwood, a recruiter for Fort Lauderdale Behavior Health Center, speaks to job seekers at a job fair Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025, in Sunrise, Florida
Marta Lavandier/Associated Press
This post originally appeared in the BI Today newsletter.
Welcome back to our Sunday edition, where we round up some of our top stories and take you inside our newsroom. People often talk about the Great Wealth Transfer, where trillions of dollars will be passed down from Baby Boomers to the next generation. Our elders are also giving us a whole lot of junk.
On the agenda today:
From homebuilding to trucking, these parts of America's economy are already in deep trouble.
This small-town sheriff's feats inspired Hollywood movies and made him a legend. What if it was all a lie?
Microsoft is going to "rethink" the company's business for the AI era, internal memo shows.
But first: Can I have your attention?
If this was forwarded to you, sign up here. Download Business Insider's app here.
This week's dispatch
More than a résumé
blackCAT/ Getty Images
In today's tight job market, the traditional résumé-and-cover-letter playbook for finding work just won't cut it anymore.
We've written a lot about the "Great Freeze" — companies and employees staying put with few large-scale layoffs, but also little hiring. Employers' reluctance to add staff means job seekers have to get creative in their job search.
In the past week, Business Insider wrote about two people and the lengths they went to secure their dream opportunities.
My colleague Tess Martinelli interviewed a guy who, in his second-to-last semester of college, sent his future boss 50 cents through Venmo along with a link to his résumé. Not the most conventional way to get noticed, but it worked.
"I felt regret the moment I sent the message, but it ultimately launched my film career," said Darshan Patel, a 28-year-old film and marketing professional in Brooklyn, New York. "It taught me that you have to do something unique to get attention in this job market."
The second example is Felix Wallis, a 23-year-old research engineer for an AI startup. Right after graduating from college, he bypassed traditional applications and focused on one startup whose product he had used and liked.
He coded a fix for its interface and posted it publicly in the company's Facebook group. That got him noticed and ultimately led to a summer internship.
"You can't fake interest or passion — and proving you have them is, in my experience, the best way to get hired," Wallis told my colleague Joshua Nelken-Zitser.
For job seekers, the takeaway here isn't simply to do something weird to get a job. Instead, both people showed genuine and deliberate interest in their roles. They were bold enough to do something memorable to stand out from the pack.
Did you get hired using a unique hack, strategy, or tactic? Business Insider wants to hear from people who've cracked the job market with a bold or unconventional approach. Please fill out this quick form.
Are we already in a recession?
Getty Images; Tyler Le/BI
The US economy seems OK on the surface. GDP growth has been north of 3% for the last two quarters, and conditions in the labor market appear to be gradually cooling. A broad view of the economy can overlook the significant developments unfolding beneath the surface.
Major employers in industries like homebuilding and restaurants are looking shaky, offering ominous signs about the direction of the overall economy, Neil Dutta, head of economics at Renaissance Macro Research, writes for BI.
In the early morning of August 12, 1967, in Adamsville, Tennessee, Sheriff Buford Pusser said his wife, Pauline Pusser, was fatally shot while on a police call with him. Buford, who had a bullet wound on his jaw, said the assailants peeled off.
Buford's survival became an instant fascination. Books and songs were written, and the "Walking Tall" movie franchise gave him the Hollywood hero treatment. But questions swirled if someone else killed Pauline. When her body was exhumed in February 2024, one question remained: Could it have all been a lie?
Bill Ackman has expressed support for Alpha School's unique model.
PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images
When Bill Ackman tweeted his dating advice — using the opener, "May I meet you?" — he was both mocked and praised. While the line itself is awkward, the implicit advice about confidence is worth heeding.
BI's Katie Notopoulos studied pickup artists and compared their approaches to Ackman's. She thinks the pros would agree: Have the courage to start a conversation.
There's a new AI advisor in town at Microsoft. CEO Satya Nadella has tapped Rolf Harms to "rethink the economics of AI," according to a memo obtained by BI's Ashley Stewart.
Harms is the author of a 2010 white paper that forced a cultural reckoning on Microsoft's cloud computing. Nadella said in his memo that the company needs an AI reset, just as it did with cloud.
"You should've seen the memes that are on the internet. Have you guys seen some of them? We're basically holding the planet together — and it's not untrue."
— Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on the chip giant being in a no-win situation amid AI bubble chatter in an all-hands meeting Business Insider listened to.
BI
How military name tapes are made
The AAFES Name Tape Plant in Fort Knox manufactures nearly every name tag worn by service members across the US Armed Forces. With only 17 employees, the plant produces up to 3,000 name tapes each day, and as many as 60,000 a month.
Investor Tom Russo said he's more concerned about US debt and a weaker dollar than a crash in AI stocks.
Gardner Russo & Quinn
Tom Russo says resilience is vital, debt is dangerous, and investing is both a young and old person's game.
The veteran fund manager warned against excessive gambling and ruled out retiring anytime soon.
Young investors might have more energy, but older ones can be more patient and disciplined, Russo said.
Veteran investor Tom Russo says children need to build resilience, debt can be devastating, and older people have some advantages when it comes to beating the market.
Russo is the managing member of Gardner Russo & Quinn, an investment firm with a $9.3 billion US stock portfolio as of September 30, per its latest 13F filing.
The father of two told Business Insider that teaching resilience to kids starts with letting them fall on the playground, so they can learn to get back up and keep going.
They have to experience pain and discomfort as "those moments happen all the time in life," he said. "The greatest lessons are learned when trying to work yourself out of something that doesn't go well. And the worst thing to do is to avoid those from happening when they naturally would."
Asked how young people can get ahead at a time when AI threatens to take jobs and many feel priced out of the lives they want, Russo cited Warren Buffett's warnings about credit-card debt as a "chain across your back" that gets tighter and tighter until it chokes you. Russo added that "buy now, pay later" options pose a fresh threat, as they tempt people into spending money they don't have.
Russo also cautioned against gambling too much, saying it's a "loser's game to begin with" and "probably isn't going to develop your thinking and wisdom and reason."
The market veteran, who turned 70 this year, ruled out retiring anytime soon. While young investors might have more time and energy to travel and dig deeper into prospective investments, older ones "develop judgment, and you're a little less impetuous, and a little more patient, and probably a little bit more asleep," he quipped.
Russo is far from the first investor to continue working past retirement age. Buffett, 95, will step down as Berkshire Hathaway's CEO before the new year, but intends to continue writing Thanksgiving letters to his shareholders and remain involved in the company as its chairman.
Slack cofounder Stewart Butterfield said, for many employees, "really direct criticism is actually motivational."
Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for WIRED
Slack cofounder Stewart Butterfield said that employees should have a "perpetual desire to improve."
He shared a story from 2014 on "Lenny's Podcast," where he called an early version of Slack "terrible" in an interview.
Employees printed out the interview quote and pasted it on the office walls the next day — but Butterfield stands by it.
For Slack cofounder Stewart Butterfield, embarrassment can be a useful and motivating tool.
Butterfield led Slack, which is now owned by Salesforce, from 2009 to 2023 as CEO. In 2014, he gave an interview where he called the early product "terrible." Employees responded by putting posters up around the office, he said on "Lenny's Podcast" — but he stands by it.
"I try to instill this into the rest of the team, but certainly I feel that what we have right now is just a giant piece of shit," he told the MIT Technology Review in 2014. "Like, it's just terrible, and we should be humiliated that we offer this to the public. Not everyone finds that motivational, though."
On the podcast, Butterfield described the aftermath.
"I came into the office the next day and people had printed out on 40 pieces of 8.5-by-11 paper that quote and pasted it up on the wall," he said.
Butterfield defended what he had said in the 2014 interview: "To me, that was like: you should be embarrassed by it. It should be a perpetual desire to improve. You should never be like, 'Oh, this is great.'"
He could be proud of "individual pieces," Butterfield said, but in the aggregate, leaders should only see the "almost limitless opportunities to improve."
Butterfield gave two examples of the endless search for improvements.
First, he pointed to Toyota's principle of "kaizen," or continuous improvement. The philosophy ensures "maximum quality, the elimination of waste, and improvements in efficiency," per Toyota's UK magazine.
Second, he pointed to Bridgewater founder and billionaire investor Ray Dalio. Michael Jordan's ski instructor once told Dalio that he "reveled in his mistakes" and saw them as "little puzzles that, when you solve them, give you a gem."
How to be critical — and when — is an art that all leaders approach differently. Netflix's CTO said that the company uses "continuous, timely, candid feedback."
Meta CFO Susan Li said that Mark Zuckerberg has refined his ability to give feedback over the years. Now, he's "world-class," Li said.
On the podcast, Butterfield said that "trying to be critical" and "trying to find improvements" can be helpful tools.
"Not always, not with every person," he said. "But most of the time, with most people, you can get them to the point where that really direct criticism is actually motivational."
Butterfield would go on to lead Slack to become one of the most popular workplace messaging platforms in the world, eventually selling it to Salesforce for $27.7 billion.
Donna Morris is the Chief People Officer at Walmart.
Melyssa St. Michael for BI
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Donna Morris, the Chief People Officer at Walmart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Over time, I have become very intentional about how I structure my time. I've navigated busy days for years, so very little truly derails me.
If something unexpected comes up, I try to take a moment and move forward. There is truth to the analogy: "I would rather look like a swan on the surface, even if my feet are flapping under the water."
Here's a day in my life:
I wake up to U2's "Beautiful Day"
Donna Morris sets her alarm for 6:05 a.m. on most work days.
Donna Morris
My alarm goes off at 6:05 a.m. every day to U2's "Beautiful Day." I like U2, and I like to start every day thinking it's going to be a great one. If I have a meeting, it's set even earlier.
My problem is, I hit the snooze button once or twice. It is not good if I hit it three times, which means I won't be up until around 6:30.
I'm online as soon as I get out of bed
The enemy might be that I have two phones. I have a personal device and a work device. By the time I've gotten up out of bed, I have already looked at both to see if anything was urgent from the night before.
It can become the enemy when I become distracted and lose focus. I try to be disciplined about setting both aside at times and frankly shutting down all screens, but I am a work in progress.
I plan my outfits in advance
Morris said she likes to figure out what she's wearing in advance.
Walmart
I'm pretty organized. The night before work, sometimes even as early as Sunday night, I'll figure out what I'm going to wear during the week.
I know there are certain individuals who probably wear the exact same thing, but I'm not one of those people.
If I'm going out to a store or a club, I'm going to wear denim of some sort, probably a T-shirt and a jacket, and always my Walmart badge and running shoes or really comfortable sneakers. That's different from how I dress when I come into our office, where I'll probably be a bit more formal.
I listen to CNN's podcast and the 'Today' show while getting ready
Male leaders can probably get ready in 15 minutes. They can probably get up, wash their hair, and away they go. Female leaders take longer to get ready. So, rightly or wrongly, it takes me longer to get ready, and it depends on whether it's a wash-your-hair day or not.
I do my own hair every other day. I've never been the type to not do that. I budget about 45 minutes to an hour to get ready in the morning.
As I get ready, I listen to the "CNN 5 Things" podcast, and I always have the "Today" show on, because I also want to hear about what's happening there.
It takes me five minutes to get to the office
I'm not sure it even takes me five minutes to get to the office. That was very deliberate. I try to arrive at the office between 8:15 and 8:30 a.m., and then I start my day.
I have back-to-back meetings starting at 8:35 a.m.
Morris figures out what she's going to wear ahead of time.
Walmart
My day is typically spent meeting great associates — whether they work for us or might be interested in working for us — as well as leaders.
During a typical day, I have a back-to-back schedule, and my meetings tend to start at five minutes past the half hour. My first meeting of the day is at 8:35 a.m., unless I'm meeting with some of my peers who start earlier.
I've never tried coffee or tea — but I drink Diet Coke every day
When I was five years old, I burned my mouth so badly that I was afraid to drink anything hot for years. I've just never been a hot drink type of girl, I guess.
I try to limit myself to two Diet Cokes a day, although every once in a while, I sneak in a third. I typically don't drink it before 10 a.m.
I don't have big meals during the day
I don't have big meals in the morning or at lunch, but I am a believer in having something in the morning.
I was on a routine of doing overnight oats in the morning, and then I'd have two hard-boiled eggs every lunch. But I recently received feedback that I should do my protein in the morning and overnight oats at noon.
I stay at the office until 6:30 p.m.
Morris said she stays at work until about 6:30 p.m.
Walmart
I tend to stay at the office and work until around 6 or 6:30 p.m., when there are fewer people around and I can have some quiet time.
Then I go home, and if I'm really fortunate, my husband is home. He's a fantastic cook, so I benefit when he's in Bentonville with me. When he's not with me, it means I need to be more organized, because I have to cook for myself.
I have fantastic cookbooks because buying cookbooks is something I'm passionate about. However, I'm not as good at cooking, so I end up on the same rinse-and-repeat meal plan.
My evening routine includes work, calling my father, and getting ready for the next day
I call my father almost every night. He lives in Canada.
During the evening, I also go down the social rabbit hole and spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, as well as other social channels.
I travel a lot
Morris said unannounced visits are sometimes the most valuable.
Walmart
My schedule looks largely the same when I'm traveling. If I'm traveling domestically, it usually involves visiting Walmart stores or Sam's Clubs.
Sometimes we announce them, and sometimes we don't. Unannounced visits are sometimes the most valuable because you can really see in real time how the facility works and how people interact.
I check out the ability for our associates to learn. I see if there's a private room where moms can nurse. It really gives us a good sense of our work environment for our associates, and those days are great days.
One of many photos of Buford Pusser on display at the Buford Pusser Home & Museum.
Ray Di Pietro for BI
Pauline Pusser was the wife of a sheriff, so her chores were a bit unusual. She cooked meals for prisoners and cleaned the jailhouse between raising her children and sending Christmas cards. But on the early morning of August 12, 1967, Pauline did something she'd never done before. She went on a police call with her husband.
Sheriff Buford Pusser was famous in Tennessee for busting the moonshine stills and prostitution rings forged by the "State Line Mob," a collection of gangsters who operated at the Mississippi border. The sheriff would later tell law enforcement that an anonymous person called his Adamsville home just before 5 a.m. and insisted he drive to the state line, about 25 minutes away. Buford said Pauline was suspicious about the call — with reason. Since cleaning up McNairy County, the sheriff had survived multiple gunshot and stab wounds. He said she thought it was best to go with him.
Buford Pusser and Pauline Pusser.
McNairy County Archives
Just before dawn, they got in Buford's squad car and started down the quiet two-way street to State Line Road. Buford would later tell investigators that about 20 miles later, on New Hope Road, a car with no headlights sped up beside the Pussers and began shooting. Pauline was hit. He floored the accelerator, pulled off to one side, and frantically searched for where his wife had been shot.
The speeding driver reappeared, pulled up on the other side of the road, and fired again, he said — this time fatally shooting Pauline in the forehead. Buford, who ended up with a bullet wound on his left jaw, said the assailants peeled off.
Headlines chronicled the shocking incident: One blared, "MCNAIRY SHERIFF SHOT, WIFE SLAIN;" another "CRIME-BUSTING SHERIFF'S WIFE MURDERED," with a photo of Buford covered in blood on a stretcher. He survived and became an instant fascination: Books and songs were written about him, and the "Walking Tall" movie franchise gave him the Hollywood hero treatment. Today, he's immortalized in his hometown as a legend akin to Wyatt Earp or Davey Crockett.
Buford Pusser's legacy lives on at the McNairy County Courthouse.
Ray Di Pietro for BI
And Pauline? She lies in a grave at Adamsville Cemetery, marked by a small tombstone that barely pokes out of the ground, engraved with the wrong birth date and her August 12 death date. No murder weapon was ever found, and no one was charged. She was 36.
For decades, rumors swirled that Buford, who died in 1974, was involved in the murder. It took more than half a century for law enforcement to investigate them: On February 8, 2024, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation visited Pauline's grave. Trying not to disturb Buford's towering tombstone beside her, they exhumed her body in the hopes of finally putting the rumors to rest.
Pauline Pusser's grave was exhumed in 2024 as part of the TBI's investigation.
McNairy County Archives/Tennessee Bureau of Investigation
For many, it was a seminal moment in a Southern tale that has been handed down through generations. Could it all have been a lie?
The answer to that question wouldn't come for another year and a half — and when it did, it would shatter a legend.
The first thing you see when driving into town is a massive sign: "Welcome to Adamsville: Home of Sheriff Buford Pusser."
I came to town in March, on the heels of buzz that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation's findings would soon be revealed. The soil at Pauline's gravesite was still fresh.
There had been no autopsy performed in 1967, one reason some in McNairy County question whether that night went down exactly as Buford described. It's also why the TBI took another look at Pauline's cold case.
Still, some in town stand by the Buford legend.
"There's a lot of garbage out there written. It needs to be piled up and burned," Steve Sweat, 70, told me from his body shop just outside Adamsville.
Steve Sweat, a self-described Pusser historian, drives a replica of the patrol car from the "Walking Tall" movie every Memorial Day during the Buford Pusser festival.
Ray Di Pietro for BI
Sweat has lived his entire life in McNairy County and considers himself a historian on all things Pusser. His shop is home to a collection of photographs and memorabilia that he has compiled over decades.
Ever since Buford busted Sweat's older brother's moonshine still in 1963, he's been fascinated by the man.
"I was 6 or 7 years old and would see this young chief of police, 6-foot-6 with a flattop haircut, all over town. There was a picture of him in the paper every week," Sweat said, pausing for a moment as he choked up. "He was bigger than life."
Sweat used to lead tours of key Pusser sites around town. Every Memorial Day during the Buford Pusser Festival, he drives a replica of the patrol car Joe Don Baker drove when he portrayed the sheriff in the 1973 movie, "Walking Tall."
Tina Mullis, 60, called the TBI investigation "just silly."
"How are they going to prove something 57 years later?" she said in March.
Mullis, a distant relative of Pusser, is the curator of Adamsville's Buford Pusser Home & Museum. Tucked away in a quiet neighborhood next to a baseball field on Pusser Street, the modest ranch home is a destination for travel vloggers, true crime fans, and awe-struck law enforcement officials.
Tina Mullis, the curator of the Buford Pusser Home & Museum, called the TBI investigation "just silly."
Ray Di Pietro for BI
Mullis sits me down in Buford and Pauline's living room to play me a video titled "Liars & Legends," an eight-minute history of the sheriff and his battles with the State Line Mob. She walks me through the home, lined with memorabilia and newspaper clippings of Pusser's moonshine busts, and points out a carefully preserved bedroom she says Elvis stayed in on the day of Buford's funeral.
"In a time before the internet and cable TV, he was a world-class promoter. Whether his stories were true or not, people ran with them."McNairy County sheriff Guy Buck
Buford died seven years after Pauline in a fiery car wreck on Highway 64. Eyewitnesses told law enforcement at the time they saw him driving at a high speed before the crash; others said they smelled alcohol on his breath before he got behind the wheel. The charred remains of his 1974 Corvette sit on display in the museum's garage.
Walking through the museum is akin to visiting Graceland with a dash of Ripley's Believe It or Not! I'm filled with fascination, but also skeptical.
Buford Pusser's home has been preserved to look as it did when he lived there.
Ray Di Pietro for BI
The current McNairy County sheriff, Guy Buck, 58, who has held the post for 15 years, described Pusser's appeal thusly: "In a time before the internet and cable TV, he was a world-class promoter. Whether his stories were true or not, people ran with them."
Pusser was a master of self-promotion. He got his start as a professional wrestler, "Buford the Bull," in the 1950s in Chicago, where he met Pauline, a divorcée with two kids. They married in 1959, had a child, and in 1962 moved back to Adamsville, where he succeeded his father as chief of police.
Buford Pusser became famous throughout the South in the 1960s for busting moonshine stills and battling the State Line Mob.
McNairy County Archives
Pusser quickly began busting moonshine stills, and at 26, he was elected sheriff — a position he helped secure thanks to the media coverage of his exploits, which he had organized as press officer. Pusser broke up over 140 stills in his career, according to the museum.
After the 1967 shooting, Pusser's lore grew. In 1971, W.R. Morris wrote the book "The Twelfth of August," which introduced people outside the Southeast to him and his battles with the State Line Mob. Around the same time, Eddie Bond released the song "Legend of Buford Pusser," a twangy tune that played throughout the South.
That attention found its way to Hollywood and crooner Bing Crosby, whose production company bought Pusser's life rights for $10,000 and made "Walking Tall." The filmmakers ran with backwoods stories that Pusser once raided a moonshine still with just a fence pole. (Sheriff Buck debunks that myth: "That's the farthest thing from the truth.")
Buford Pusser's story inspired the "Walking Tall" movie franchise and a TV series.
Ray Di Pietro for BI
In the era of vigilante blockbusters like "Dirty Harry" and "Billy Jack," "Walking Tall" earned $40 million on a $500,000 budget. Variety reported that in some regions of the South, "Walking Tall" did better than "The Godfather."
After stepping down as sheriff in 1970, Pusser hobnobbed with the likes of Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton, made money off speaking tours, and entertained the idea of running for governor. In 1974, he attended the press conference where it was announced he would play himself in the "Walking Tall" sequel.
The next day, he died in a car wreck at 36.
The Pusser franchise lived on: Actor Bo Svenson took over the role, starring in "Walking Tall Part 2" (1975) and "Walking Tall: Final Chapter" (1977), as well as a short-lived "Walking Tall" TV series (1981).
In the decades that followed, Pusser's daughter, Dwana, built her father's myth into a business. She sold her parents' house to the state of Tennessee in 1987 for Adamsville to use as a for-profit museum and helped turn the jailhouse in nearby Selmer, where Pusser had his office, into a tourist attraction. When Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson starred in the 2004 remake of "Walking Tall," Dwana posed for press photos with him. (Dwana died in 2018.)
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson with Dwana Pusser promoting the 2004 "Walking Tall" remake at the Pusser Museum.
R. Diamond/WireImage
As the years passed, whispers about the 1967 shooting spread.
Svenson told me that in the 1970s, he was approached by people who told him that Buford's gunshot wound was self-inflicted.
"I even saw photos of Buford on the operating table, photos that showed powder burn on his face, which meant that whatever gun was used was held very close to his head" — which didn't align with the sheriff's story, the actor said.
While making the "Walking Tall" sequels, did Svenson think Pusser could have killed his wife?
"I felt sometimes public people have skeletons in their closets," Svenson said. "But what he represented I felt, at the time, was important."
Dennis Hathcock's family name has been intertwined with Pusser's mythology for most of his life.
His aunt, Louise Hathcock, ran the Shamrock Motel, a restaurant and motel known for bootlegging, gambling, and nightly fights. In February 1966, Sheriff Pusser arrived to question Louise about two patrons who accused her of stealing. The two were speaking in a back room when, according to Pusser, Louise pulled out a gun and shot at him. She missed, and Pusser said he shot and killed Louise in self-defense. A grand jury agreed.
The faceoff would cement the Pusser vs. State Line Mob lore that would be reported in newspapers and chronicled in Morris' book "The Twelfth of August." A character bearing a strong resemblance to Louise Hathcock was later made the main villain in the first "Walking Tall" movie: Callie Hacker, a madam who ran a moonshine, gambling, and prostitution operation out of her establishment.
Dennis Hathcock, 75, claims Pusser killed his aunt in cold blood.
Dennis Hathcock's aunt Louise was killed by Pusser in the 1960s in a standoff at the Shamrock Motel, which once stood here.
Ray Di Pietro for BI
"My family has borne the brunt of many lies," he told me.
He had his own run-ins with Pusser. Hathcock was 16 the night of August 11, 1967, when he and a friend were riding around on Hathcock's CB450 Honda motorcycle. After playing some pool in Selmer, they got bored and decided to do what they always did: tail Pusser while he patrolled the county.
Hathcock said he knew a girl Pusser was seeing on the side, Ann Henderson. They found him banging on the door of her friend's house, yelling for Henderson to come out. After he and Henderson were done talking, Hathcock heard Pusser yell out after her, "You'll be putting flowers on my grave tomorrow!" (Henderson confirmed this in her interview with the TBI.)
Hathcock said they stopped following Pusser around 2:30 a.m. on the 12th. When he heard about the shooting the next morning, Hathcock raced to New Hope Road, where a police officer told him to leave. Hathcock left and passed the second ambush site, which was littered with shell casings. He said he saw bloody remains of what looked like a scalp on the side of the road and went back to the officer to show him.
Dennis Hathcock and a friend photographed talking to authorities at the shooting site on the morning of August 12, 1967.
McNairy County Archives
Later, when Hathcock read news reports where Buford described how Pauline was killed, he felt a pit in his stomach. Something wasn't right. He decided to go to the FBI.
"I was afraid to go to the TBI at the time," Hathcock said. "I knew they were overlooking things."
Hathcock said he didn't get a better reception at the FBI.
"They laughed me out of the office," Hathcock recalled. "They just made fun of me, that Pusser would be involved at all."
Mike Elam knows how hard it is to find the shooting site on New Hope Road, so he offered to drive me there — on the exact route Buford drove with Pauline.
Mike Elam, pictured here at the shooting site, went from Pusser believer to the sheriff's biggest critic.
Ray Di Pietro for BI
I'm chatting with Elam's wife, Connie, who's sitting in the back seat, when Elam pulls over and begins digging under his seat. Suddenly, he pulls out a handgun and swiftly holsters it.
"I wasn't kidding when I told you he gets death threats," Connie said when she notices my shell-shocked expression.
Pusser became a hero to Elam, a 74-year-old former deputy sheriff in Benton County, Arkansas, after he read "The Twelfth of August" in the early 1970s. However, by the 2000s, Elam had begun to think differently about Pusser and started posting about it online. That's when he said the death threats started coming.
"I'm really cautious around people I don't know," he told me.
Elam began questioning the official accounts of the shooting after he got hold of Louise Hathcock's autopsy report. Pusser maintained that Louise was facing him when he shot her at the Shamrock, but the autopsy concluded that she was shot twice in the back and once in the back of the head. Elam tracked down the pathologist who performed the autopsy to make sure the report was accurate and discovered the autopsy was never presented to the grand jury that cleared Pusser.
"Buford had put up a smoke screen," Elam said.
He wondered: Was Pusser untruthful about anything else?
Buford Pusser's car after the ambush.
McNairy County Archives
In 2005, Elam launched a Yahoo page and began posting his discoveries. A decade later, he started the Facebook page, "Buford Pusser: The Other Story," which now has over 23,000 followers. His main questions: Why was Pauline never autopsied? Why didn't Buford take a polygraph? Why was there more blood outside Buford's car than inside, where he said Pauline was shot?
In March 2020, while recovering from colon cancer surgery, he began writing a book, "Buford Pusser: The Other Story," and self-published it later that year. His Facebook and YouTube pages exploded with reactions from Pusser loyalists appalled that Elam would tarnish his name.
At the same time, a relative of Pauline in North Carolina had also begun investigating her death.
Oakley Dean Baldwin is a 35-year veteran of law enforcement. After retiring, he began self-publishing books with colorful stories from his family tree. He wanted to write about Pauline, a distant cousin.
Baldwin, 67, and his side of the family had largely believed Pusser's story, but he began to see holes during his research. The more he and his son Roy, who is a crime scene investigator, read, the more flabbergasted they got at how the details, including the ballistics, didn't match up.
"We would say, 'That couldn't have happened, it's not possible.' And the more we dug, the worse it got," Baldwin said.
To Baldwin, Pauline seemed like an afterthought in Buford's narrative. No one noticed that the birth date on her gravestone and in the TBI report is incorrect.
"She was born February 27, 1931, and they have it as 1934," Baldwin said.
Pauline Pusser's tombstone has the wrong birth date.
Ray Di Pietro for BI
By 2022, both Elam and Baldwin had independently sent their findings to the TBI in hopes that the agency would reexamine the cold case. The TBI decided to take a closer look. This time, they listened to Dennis Hathcock's recollections, and they dug up Pauline.
On August 29, 2025, Sweat, Hathcock, and Elam joined local press and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation officials in a packed room at the University of Tennessee at Martin. The TBI was ready to reveal its findings.
Poster-size photos of Pauline sat on easels and flashed across the two flat-screen TVs. A piano rendition of the Mötley Crüe ballad "Home Sweet Home" played in the background, giving the press conference the feel of a wake.
"It's been said that the dead cannot cry out for justice; it's the duty of the living to do so," said McNairy County District Attorney Mark E. Davidson. "In this case, that duty's been carried out 58 years later."
Buford Pusser's car after the ambush.
McNairy County Archives
Davidson explained that with the help of modern investigative techniques and forensic science, they could now confidently close Pauline's cold case with a 2,000-plus-page report.
The report, which Business Insider has read, highlights major inconsistencies in Buford's account. The biggest contradiction: Buford said he was looking at Pauline when she was shot in the forehead; the forensic report from her autopsy found she was shot in the back of the head.
Through ballistic tests and reenactments, the report concludes that Pauline was likely shot outside the car, then placed inside it. The report also suggests that Buford's facial wound was made at close range and likely self-inflicted. Davidson described the crime scene as "staged" and said Pauline's death was "not an accident."
Pauline beside Buford Pusser after he survived a gunshot wound in January 1967.
McNairy County Archives
The report also revealed that the couple's relationship was far from the happy marriage depicted in "Walking Tall." The autopsy showed that Pauline had a nasal fracture before her death, and the report concludes that Buford physically abused Pauline throughout their marriage. Pauline knew about Buford's infidelity and payoffs he was getting from bootleggers. She was taking steps toward a divorce and was going to alert the FBI, according to Buford's chief deputy Jim Moffett.
"Our office, after review of the case file, believes that the TBI has produced evidence sufficient to create probable cause that would allow us, if he were alive today, to present an indictment to the McNairy County grand jury for their consideration against Buford Pusser for the murder of his wife, Pauline," Davidson said.
The words reverberated back to Adamsville.
Tina Mullis closed the museum as news trucks began to surround the Pusser home. By the next day, all the historical landmark signs by the shooting site had mysteriously disappeared. Rumors percolated that Buford Pusser's name could be erased from everything from the Memorial Day parade to the town's water tower.
But not everyone was ready to turn on him.
Madison Garrison Bush, Dwana's only living daughter and Buford and Pauline's granddaughter, decried the report in a statement. "A dead man, who cannot defend himself, is being accused of an unspeakable crime. I don't understand what justice can be accomplished by pursuing this theory of my grandmother's death," she said.
The street Buford Pusser lived on in Adamsville, Tennessee, is now named after him.
Ray Di Pietro for BI
Sweat, the self-described historian, was unmoved by the report. "At the end of the day, I felt like they more or less just gave an opinion," he told me after the press conference. "It didn't appear to me that they presented enough evidence to make you believe that, without a shadow of a doubt, that they have proven that Sheriff Pusser did this."
Sweat believes Pusser did a lot of good in McNairy County and that this news could be a blessing in disguise for Adamsville tourism.
"This all isn't going to kill the story; the story is only going to get bigger," Sweat said.
By September, the museum reopened. At a town hall meeting, the overwhelming consensus from residents was that nothing Pusser should be changed.
"We have been overwhelmed with the support that we've received from all over the world and here in our hometown, especially," Mullis said, adding that business at the museum has doubled since the August press conference. "That was nothing but free advertisement for us."
That's not to say the museum will ignore the TBI's findings. Mullis told me the town is condensing the report into one volume, which will be made available for visitors to view.
Mullis said business at the Buford Pusser Home & Museum has doubled since the August press conference: "That was nothing but free advertisement for us."
Ray Di Pietro for BI
"We're just going to keep telling Buford's story here, and Pauline's," Mullis said. "We will continue to tell their story and let people come to their own conclusions."
Since the press conference, Baldwin has self-published an updated version of "Murder of Mrs. Buford Pusser." Elam, who feels vindicated after years of being harassed online for his views, is working on a follow-up to his book. He runs a Pusser-themed bus tour with Hathcock called "The Truth Has No Agenda Tour."
Though he hopes that his aunt Louise's death will be reexamined one day, Hathcock is happy Pauline can finally rest in peace.
"I have prayed for this day to come," Hathcock told me. "For the truth to be told about Buford Pusser — because I've known it since I was 16 years old — I couldn't be happier."
Shaun Maguire, a prominent VC, said most people don't understand the chemicals industry.
He said that specialty chemicals are especially important, since certain companies rely on them.
The chemicals industry is in a downturn, but specialty chemicals might offer a bright spot.
Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia Capital and early investor in several of Elon Musk's companies, says people aren't focusing on niche chemicals enough.
On an episode of the "Relentless" podcast that aired on November 17, Maguire said that he might invest in the chemicals industry if he had $10 billion to start a business.
"The chemicals industry is one of the most underrated industries in the world for many reasons," Maguire said. He added that most people don't think about the industry, which supports production for nearly all commercial and household goods, according to a 2022 report from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
And those who do know about the industry don't fully understand it, thinking of it as strictly a commodity industry, Maguire said.
"But a large fraction of the industry, I'd say at least 25%, is hardcore specialty chemicals that are actually very rare. A lot of times, there's only one company in the world that will make some specialty chemical," he said. (Specialty chemicals accounted for about 23% of the industry, according to CISA's report).
Maguire said that those chemicals can be crucial for another company's production, as he said is true of one of Musk's businesses, and that losing access to a key chemical can severely delay or upend projects. Specialty chemicals include "adhesives, sealants, flavors and fragrances, food additives, and explosives," according to CISA.
The chemical industry is in a downcycle, and production volumes are expected to contract by 0.2% next year, according to Deloitte's 2026 Chemical Industry Outlook. Though the report predicts continued overcapacity in basic chemicals, it found that specialty chemicals are earning higher margins.
"Specialty chemicals tend to be less commoditized and avoid the hyper-competitiveness of the commodity chemicals markets," the report reads.
Although chemical demand in the construction, automotive, and consumer goods industries is likely to continue suffering, the semiconductor market may offer a bright spot, according to Deloitte's report. The boom in AI data centers is helping to fuel growth, per Deloitte.
So far in 2025, the chemical industry has badly lagged the overall market. The S&P 500 Chemical Industry index was down 5% for the year through Thursday, while the S&P 500 was up more than 11%.
