Spirit Airlines and Frontier Group are merging in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $6.6 billion.

The world’s biggest shipping lines, flush with cash, are buying their own fleets of cargo planes and adding airlifts for big clients willing to pay extra to get around supply-chain snarls at sea resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. Airfreight accounts for less than 1% of global trade by volume but 35% by value.

The S&P 500 Energy Sector is up almost 19% so far this year while the broader S&P 500 is down about 5%. Over the last 12 months, shares of the largest western oil companies have all risen dramatically.

The VIX hit its highest level in a year on Wednesday, buffeted by concerns about central-bank policy around interest rates, inflation and geopolitical tensions over Russia.

Ninety-five percent of people surveyed want flexible hours with 78% of workers wanting location flexibility.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq shed 1.15% and finished the day 10.5% below its all-time closing high from last November. A decline of greater than 10% is considered a correction for a stock index.

Federal receipts in the first fiscal quarter, October to December, increased by a remarkable 31%. That’s a cool $248 billion increase to $1.05 trillion for the quarter. Individual income taxes revenue soared by 55% in the quarter, or $189 billion, to $536 billion. Corporate income taxes rose 44%, or $30 billion, to $99 billion.

Of the 335 equity ETFs launched in 2021, the average number of holdings was just 156 positions, down from an average of 450 in 2009. This may indicate a shift to less widely-held, concentrated ETFs, compared with more diversified, core ETFs that typically hold a large number of positions.

Hedge funds betting on and against stocks, gained an average of 11.9% in 2021. That compares with the S&P 500’s total return of 28.7% and the Nasdaq Composite’s total return of 22.2%.

The Labor Department’s consumer-price index rose 7.1% in December from the same month a year earlier, up from 6.8% in November. That would mark the fastest pace since 1982 and the third straight month in which inflation exceeded 6%.