The financial news that actually matters
The S&P 500 is up roughly 3% in 2026, and virtually every point of that advance traces back to five semiconductor stocks: Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD, Taiwan Semiconductor (via its U.S.-listed ADR), and Marvell Technology. The other 495 names in the index have, collectively, contributed almost nothing. That is the takeaway from market-attribution data tracked by…
Meet Carla, a composite but representative worker: a medical billing clerk in suburban Ohio earning $19.50 an hour, up from $18.80 a year ago. Her 3.7% raise looked solid on paper until gasoline crossed $4.00 a gallon in February and never came back down. By April she was spending $68 more a month on fuel…
When Maria Gonzalez rings up a $48 lunch tab at her taqueria on Chicago’s West Side, roughly $1.20 disappears before she can count the drawer. That cut, called an interchange fee, goes to the bank that issued the customer’s credit card. “I budget for rent, I budget for produce, but I can’t budget for a…
Homes across the country kept getting more expensive in April 2026, stretching an unbroken streak of year-over-year price gains to 34 months. The national median sales price rose 1.5 percent compared with a year earlier, according to RE/MAX’s April 2026 National Housing Report. That streak now reaches back to mid-2023, having survived a mortgage rate…
Somewhere between $81 and $87 a month. That’s the gap separating two early forecasts for the 2027 Social Security cost-of-living adjustment. Based on the current average retired-worker benefit of about $2,081 per month, 3.9 percent yields roughly $81 per month and 4.2 percent yields roughly $87 per month. The variable driving the disagreement is one…
A rival plan to save Social Security would tax every dollar earned above $250,000 – closing most of the shortfall without cutting a single check Social Security’s clock is ticking. The program’s combined trust funds are on track to run dry by 2035, according to the 2024 Trustees Report, the most recent available projection as…
A 52-year-old worker paying $1,800 a year for long-term care insurance just got a new way to cover that bill: pull the money straight from a 401(k), skip the usual 10 percent early-withdrawal penalty, and keep the policy in force. The catch is that the annual limit is $2,500, the withdrawal is still taxed as…
If you are one of the roughly 8 million borrowers still enrolled in the federal SAVE repayment plan, according to the U.S. Department of Education, a clock is already ticking. On July 1, loan servicers will begin sending notices that the program is officially dead and that every SAVE enrollee must choose a replacement plan….
For the average retired worker, the 2026 Social Security cost-of-living adjustment adds roughly $56 a month to their check. That sounds like breathing room until you look at what Medicare is expected to take back. The 2025 Medicare Trustees Report projects the standard Part B premium will rise to $218.60 per month in 2027, a…
A gun shop owner who loses his business checking account. A religious nonprofit that gets a terse closure letter with no explanation. A crypto startup that watches three banking partners walk away in a single quarter. For years, these stories have circulated through industries that sit on the political margins of American finance, always with…