The financial news that actually matters
Millions of Americans who parked retirement savings in bond funds for stability are watching those holdings lose value as interest rates climb. The reason is a bedrock rule of fixed-income investing: when market yields rise, prices of existing bonds fall. That inverse relationship, well documented by federal regulators and visible in Treasury auction data, is…
The Securities and Exchange Commission reported $17.9 billion in monetary relief for fiscal year 2025, a figure that on its surface suggests a banner year for investor protection. But a single legacy case, the Robert Allen Stanford Ponzi scheme first charged in 2009, accounts for roughly $8 billion of that total. Remove it, along with…
Apple closed three U.S. retail stores on June 20, pulling out of malls in Escondido, California; Towson, Maryland; and Trumbull, Connecticut. The company has pointed to weakening mall environments around the locations, while one of the three was its first unionized U.S. store, raising questions about what really drove the exits. Local records and officials…
Any taxpayer with a Social Security number or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number can stop a thief from filing a fraudulent federal return in their name, at no cost, by requesting a six-digit Identity Protection PIN from the IRS. The tool works by requiring that code on every electronically filed return tied to that taxpayer’s identification…
Credit-card holders who pay every dollar on their statement before the due date owe nothing in interest, a protection written directly into federal law. That zero-interest window, known as the grace period, hinges on a single condition: the cardholder cannot already be carrying a revolving balance from a prior cycle. The rule sounds simple, but…
Consumers who receive a phone call, text, or email demanding that they settle a debt, tax bill, or legal threat by purchasing gift cards and reading off the numbers are being targeted by one of the most persistent fraud schemes in the country. The Federal Trade Commission, the IRS, and the FBI have each stated…
Workers who hold large shares of their employer’s stock inside a 401(k) are staking both their paycheck and their retirement savings on a single company’s performance. A Government Accountability Office analysis of Form 5500 filings found that participants in plans offering employer securities often failed to diversify, concentrating risk in the very firm that also…
Hundreds of thousands of U.S. importers now face a scramble for refunds after the Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s emergency tariffs in a 6-3 decision. The ruling in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, docket number 24-1287, invalidated the reciprocal duties imposed through Executive Order 14257, which was issued on April 2, 2025. A Customs…
Oracle cut more than 20,000 jobs over the past fiscal year and warned that additional workforce reductions tied to artificial intelligence could follow, even as the company disclosed plans to raise as much as $50 billion in 2026 to build out AI data centers. The company’s annual filing, submitted to regulators on June 22, 2026,…
Millions of Americans who hold retirement savings in broad index funds watched their balances drop on Friday after a sharp selloff in technology and semiconductor stocks wiped out roughly $1.4 trillion in market value in a single session. The damage was concentrated in the same AI-exposed chip names that dominate the S&P 500 and popular…