The financial news that actually matters
An investor who stayed fully invested in the S&P 500 over the past two decades captured cumulative price gains north of 200 percent. Pull out just the ten strongest single-day rallies during that stretch and the total drops to roughly half that level. The gap is not a thought experiment reserved for textbooks. It is…
West Marine, the largest boating retailer in the United States, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and is shutting down 59 stores across 23 states. The closures, detailed in a court document filed in June, come as multi-state retail bankruptcies reach levels not seen in over a decade. With roughly $55 million in annual lease obligations…
Papa John’s is closing roughly 50 restaurants spread across 17 states and cutting about 7 percent of its corporate workforce, according to the pizza chain’s latest financial disclosures. The reductions, detailed in the company’s first-quarter 2026 and full-year 2025 earnings releases, mark the sharpest contraction in the chain’s domestic footprint in recent memory. For employees,…
Investors who held U.S. equities over the past century earned roughly 10 percent a year on average, a figure that includes reinvested dividends. That long-run average, however, conceals drawdowns severe enough to cut portfolios in half and test the resolve of even disciplined savers. With stock price records stretching back to the 1870s and academic…
Consumers who pay their credit card bills in full every month can still see their scores dip if the balance reported to credit bureaus climbs too high relative to their limit. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau advises keeping usage below 30 percent of available credit, and federal research confirms that utilization-style variables rank among the…
Bank of America Global Research has abandoned its forecast of no change to the federal funds rate this year and now projects three 25-basis-point hikes totaling 75 basis points in 2026, with increases expected in September, October, and December. The reversal, which came roughly a week after the bank’s prior call, follows the first Federal…
Charles Cole, a 57-year-old from Mooresville, North Carolina, told executives at a technology company he could deliver $55 billion in funding. Federal prosecutors say none of that money existed. Before the deception collapsed, Cole had already collected at least 239 million shares of Infinite Reality, a firm now known as Napster, and used those shares…
Two factors alone account for roughly 65 percent of what determines a consumer’s credit score, and millions of borrowers are making decisions about which one to fix first without clear evidence on sequencing. Fair Isaac has reported that payment history characteristics carry about 35 percent of predictive accuracy, while consumer indebtedness accounts for about 30…
An ex-spouse who was removed from a will can still collect a six-figure payout from a retirement account or life insurance policy if the account holder never updated the beneficiary form. Two Supreme Court decisions, Egelhoff v. Egelhoff in 2001 and Sveen v. Melin in 2018, define where state divorce laws end and federal rules…
Cardholders and merchants who did business with American Express face a fast-approaching deadline to file claims in a settlement tied to the company’s antitrust violations and separate fraud resolutions. The filing window reportedly closes July 15, and eligible claimants who miss it risk forfeiting their share of the payout. The case draws from years of…