The financial news that actually matters
Sixty days. That is all it took for the world to burn through its oil safety net faster than at any point in recorded history. Between March and April 2026, global observed inventories fell by roughly 246 million barrels, according to the International Energy Agency’s May Oil Market Report. The agency called the pace unprecedented….
Chinese President Xi Jinping warned President Donald Trump during their May 2026 meeting in Beijing that Taiwan is “the most important issue” in U.S.-China relations and that mishandling it will produce “clashes and even conflicts.” That language appeared in official Chinese government summaries published within hours of the sit-down. The White House released its own…
Cisco Systems just turned in the best quarter in its 41-year history, reporting $15.8 billion in revenue for fiscal Q3 2026. Within days, the company informed more than 4,000 employees that their jobs were being eliminated. The cuts, roughly 5% of Cisco’s global workforce, were disclosed alongside the earnings report in May 2026. On the…
Wholesale prices haven’t jumped this fast in a single month since March 2022, when the Federal Reserve was still scrambling to contain post-pandemic inflation. Four years later, the Producer Price Index just matched that spike, and the broader inflation picture is deteriorating in ways that have prediction markets flashing warnings, the Fed boxed in, and…
A parent who borrowed $40,000 in federal PLUS loans and earns $55,000 a year could be paying roughly $500 a month under the only income-driven repayment plan that will remain available to them after June 30. Under a more generous plan they can still access today, that same parent might pay closer to $150. The…
When Jerome Powell walks out of the Eccles Building for the last time as Federal Reserve chair on May 15, 2026, he will leave behind the same problem he spent his final two years trying to solve. Inflation is still running at nearly twice the level he was charged with controlling, borrowing costs remain punishing…
The ground beef for your Memorial Day cookout costs $6.70 a pound. The gas to get to the store runs about $4.53 a gallon. And if you bought a home in the past year, your 30-year fixed mortgage rate is sitting near 6.46%, more than double the sub-3% deals lenders were handing out in early…
The price Americans pay for a pound of steak has never been higher, and it keeps climbing. Federal data shows the national average for uncooked beefsteak reached $13.02 per pound in April 2026, the most expensive single month on record. That follows a February reading of $12.74 and a March reading of $12.73, meaning shoppers…
When Cerebras Systems priced its IPO at $185 a share on the evening of May 13, 2026, the company’s co-founders, CEO Andrew Feldman and chief hardware architect Gary Lauterbach, had spent nearly a decade arguing that the future of AI computing required a chip the size of a dinner plate. On May 14, Wall Street…
Fill up a mid-size sedan once a week for five months and skip the federal gas tax every time, and you would pocket roughly $35. That is the real-world value of President Trump’s proposal to suspend the 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal gasoline tax, based on consumption figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It works out to…