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The U.S. stock market had another solid year in 2025. The S&P 500 gained about 18% in total — the third straight year of double-digit returns, thanks mostly to the AI hype.

But dig a little deeper, and things look a lot messier for anyone trying to pick individual stocks. The gains weren’t spread around evenly. A few superstar stocks crushed it, while tons of others barely moved or even tanked. Finder.com examines what the sector splits from last year show.

Finder.com

Even inside the same industries, results were all over the map — some companies soared while others in the same group fell hard. And the whole rally? It was carried by just a handful of big names, not a wide crowd of winners.

As if picking stocks wasn’t tough enough already.

A small group of AI-related winners — think data storage, memory chips and semiconductors — carried much of the market, while many otherwise good companies got left behind or took big hits.

Picking the right ones was brutal. Stocks were moving way more independently than usual — monthly single-stock dispersion averaged 27.4% annualized, the third-highest reading since 2008. This means stocks’ returns varied greatly from one another, even when the overall market looked positive.

Data on sector averages, top and bottom performers and company-level breadth — the percentage of stocks up versus down within each sector — underscores just how uneven the year truly was.

Overall market and sector performance: Polarization beneath the surface

The broad market’s respectable return hid dramatic differences across the 11 major sectors.

Information Technology led with an average gain of 32.9%, fueled by the ongoing AI boom — especially semiconductors, memory and data infrastructure.

Communication Services followed at 18.9%, while Industrials, Utilities, Financials, Consumer Discretionary and others posted mid-teens to single-digit gains.

Rate-sensitive and defen

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For millennials and Gen X, the internet was once a place to build a personal brand using real names, consistent usernames, and polished profiles. These would often serve as signs of credibility and ambition. Gen Z, however, has taken a different approach. As true digital natives, this generation is reshaping how online personas work, opting to reject visibility, permanence, and a polished front in favor of flexibility, privacy and aesthetic control.

Across various platforms, Gen Z has begun to treat names, handles, and even email addresses as design choices rather than fixed identifiers. AnyWho has gathered data from leading sources including McKinsey, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and more in order to highlight how Gen Z has shifted the concept of digital identity.

1. The return to anonymity: Pseudonyms and username privacy

Whereas older generators leaned into recognizability, Gen Z is moving in the opposite direction. Pseudonyms, abstract usernames, and handles that have no obvious link to a real name are increasingly common, even on platforms that once encouraged real name usage. This is less about hiding and more about controlling exposure. Education data gathered by Fluid Focus, a firm focused on helping people reduce screentime, now estimates that members of Gen Z will spend 25 years of their life glued to their phones.

Growing up in an era rife with data breaches, doxxing and algorithmic surveillance, Gen Z sees anonymity as a form of digital literacy. Privacy itself has become a kind of personal branding, signaling awareness, boundaries and autonomy rather than secrecy.

2. Lowercase everything: The anti-capitalization movement

From usernames to display names to bios, another emerging trend is Gen Z’s preference for lowercase text. The reasons are both aesthetic and ideological. Lowercase reads as casual, unpolished and emotionally neutral. A report by The Guardian in early 2025 posits that a calm and friendly tone resonates more with Gen Z, as opposed to the loud and assertive feelings that capital letters can often convey.

3. Aesthetic username construction: Dots, underscores and visual flow

Gen Z usernames are often designed less for readability and more for visual rhythm. Dots, underscores, repeated letters, and more can all turn handles into graphic elements rather than simple identifiers like a first and last name. This reflects that a username isn’t just your name but is rather a part of the visual texture of many social media platforms. Influenced heavily by TikTok aesthetics and design-first platforms, many members of Gen Z treat naming as a form of micro-branding.

4. Email address simplicity: The “How did you get that?” phenomenon

If millennials accepted that their name plus numbers was the price of adulthood, Gen Z took a different approach. Younger users are in

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When seeking medical care, patients expect to be heard, understood, and treated with respect. However, some individuals may experience a phenomenon known as medical gaslighting, where healthcare professionals seem to invalidate or ignore their concerns. This dismissive behavior can lead to missed diagnoses, delayed treatment, and poor health outcomes. In this article, Doctronic explores what medical gaslighting is, how it can impact patient care, and what you can do to advocate for yourself in such situations.

Key Takeaways

• Healthcare providers dismiss women’s pain complaints 16%-25% more often than men’s, with Black women facing three times higher maternal mortality rates, partly due to symptom invalidation.
• Common dismissive phrases include “it’s just stress,” “lose weight first,” or “try antidepressants” without proper examination—red flags that warrant seeking another opinion immediately.
• Bringing a witness to appointments increases the likelihood of appropriate testing, , as providers tend to take concerns more seriously with an advocate present.
• Document exact quotes, dates, and refused tests in writing—this evidence proves invaluable when filing complaints with state medical boards or insurance appeals.
• Patients who prepare three to five specific questions and request test results in writing see better follow-through on diagnostic workups compared to unprepared visits.

What is Medical Gaslighting?

The term “gaslighting” is typically used to describe manipulative behavior in personal relationships that causes someone to doubt their own thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. In recent years, this concept has been recognized in medical settings as well. Medical gaslighting occurs when healthcare professionals dismiss, minimize, or ignore a patient’s symptoms, concerns, or experiences, causing them to question the validity of their own health issues.

The Impact of Medical Gaslighting

When patients face medical gaslighting, it can have serious consequences for their health and well-being. Some potential effects include:

• Missed or delayed diagnoses.
• Inadequate or inappropriate treatment.
• Worsening of symptoms or overall health.
• Diminished trust in healthcare professionals and the medical system.
• Reluctance to seek further medical care.

These consequences can be particularly severe for individuals with chronic illnesses, rare conditions, or those from marginalized communities who may already face barriers to accessing quality healthcare.

Recognizing Medical Gaslighting

To protect yourself from the negative effects of medical gaslighting, it’s essential to recognize the signs. Some common examples of dismissive or invalidating behavior from healthcare prof

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The fiscal landscape of 2025 was defined by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). It solidifies a number of the tax cuts introduced in 2017, in addition to including a number of previously absent provisions that have wide-ranging implications for organizations and individuals.

Building on this statutory baseline, changes to the tax code and enforcement for 2026 have their own significance. Standard deductions for single filers are up to $16,100 or $32,200 for married couples filing jointly. From a business perspective, the ending of the clean energy tax credit incentive, which expired at the end of 2025, is equally relevant. There are also various other granular rule changes and requirements being introduced and phased out in the wake of OBBA, creating further complexity.

Concurrently, the IRS faces having its enforcement funding cut by 34% in 2026, while the number of staff committed to this process is also down by 31%. The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center argues that cutting the enforcement budget increases the likelihood of errors in returns due to the lack of clarity provided prior to filing deadlines.

In this article, Tax Law Offices examines the common pitfalls and costs of noncompliance for small businesses in 2026

Tackling the Tax Gap

According to the Federal Tax Compliance Research data released by the IRS, the agency is combating a widening “tax gap,” the fiscal variance between true tax liability and the amount paid on time.

Gross tax gap data for the most recently available year comes from 2022 and was reported as $696 billion. This figure is derived from the true tax liability of $4.635 trillion. The net tax gap in this report is $606 billion, the portion that the IRS accepts will never be recovered. That leaves $90 billion, which gets recouped via various methods, whether voluntary repayment after the deadline or active enforcement.

Exploring Audit Triggers

The IRS may audit individuals and organizations to determine whether their tax liability has been correctly calculated and reported or whether there are discrepancies that need addressing.

Audit selection criteria remain opaque, and officially, it can be carried out entirely at random, as well as due to algorithmic analysis determining that a tax return falls outside “normal” boundaries. If a return is flagged as out of the ordinary, it will likely subject the business that filed it to increased regulatory scrutiny.

Commonly recognized audit triggers include the mixing up of personal and business expenses, leading to inaccuracies in a return, as well as payroll tax errors, which are more likely in small businesses that rely on hiring external contractors to fill interna

Hyundai

These days, you’re more likely to encounter six-cylinder engines in SUVs, as turbocharging, hybridization and electrification have reduced the use of traditional V8 engines. If you crave the power and smoothness of a big six-cylinder SUV, you should have plenty of choices as a result. Edmunds has narrowed down its favorite six-cylinder SUVs to, fittingly, six entrants. The list includes SUVs across a variety of sizes and price tags, and you’ll also find a few hybrids to help negate one of the traditional weaknesses of the six-cylinder engine: fuel economy.

Every year, the Edmunds team drives, tests, and rates hundreds of vehicles on the road, on the trail, and at their private test track. Their 227-point vehicle testing process uses professional-grade satellite equipment to track every move a car makes with pinpoint accuracy.

Based on this testing, Edmunds shares six of the best six-cylinder SUVs you can buy in 2025.

1. Hyundai Palisade

The Hyundai Palisade is fully redesigned for 2026. The Palisade brings new styling and an updated and significantly more luxurious interior to the table. Other changes include better tech and a new off-road-ready XRT Pro trim. That updated cabin brims with luxurious top-of-the-line materials and lots of room. Headroom and legroom abound, and there’s more than enough space for passengers, even in the third row. Hyundai’s updated Palisade is also supremely quiet, lending itself well to its new, more luxury-focused approach.

Unlike the closely related Telluride, the Palisade offers a more powerful hybrid four-cylinder setup in addition to its stout-feeling V6. The nonturbocharged V6 produces 287 horsepower and drives either the front wheels or all four wheels through an automatic transmission. Like the Telluride, this V6’s acceleration is a little lackluster, especially considering the 329 horsepower offered by the optional Palisade Hybrid, but the gas-only mill is more than sufficient for around-town driving.

2. Kia Telluride

The Kia Telluride isn’t merely one of the cheapest V6 SUVs on sale today; it’s also one of the best. Rivaled only by the Hyundai Palisade (read more on that below), the Telluride took the SUV market by storm when it debuted in 2020, and for good reason. The six-cylinder SUV still outperforms segment staples like the Honda Pilot thanks to its plentiful cargo capacity, cushy cabin and pleasing aesthetics. The Telluride is also a standout thanks to its seriously high-quality interior, which rivals luxury SUVs on this list thanks to durable switchgear and top-tier materials selection. The Telluride is quiet, and its V6 engine hardly rises above noticeable even under hard acceleration. Meanwhile, its seats are supportive and offer some good adjust