The financial news that actually matters
Americans checking their brokerage accounts on Monday, May 19, saw the S&P 500 close at an all-time high of 7,412.84, according to market data from S&P Global. Americans filling their gas tanks saw something very different: a national average of $4.52 per gallon, the highest pump price since fuel briefly topped $5 in the summer…
President Donald Trump blew up what remained of U.S.-Iran ceasefire talks in early May 2026, posting on Truth Social that Tehran’s latest counter-proposal was “TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!” Oil markets reacted within hours. Brent crude, the global benchmark, surged roughly 4% to around $105 a barrel, and the national average price of regular gasoline climbed above $4.52…
When your homeowners insurance renewal arrives and the number has jumped by $800, something else in the family budget has to give. For millions of Americans, that something has been a vacation, a roof repair, or the savings account they were trying not to touch. A Pew Research Center survey conducted March 16 to 22,…
Social Security payments up to $5,181 land this week – May 14 for birthdays 1st–10th, May 21 for 11th–20th, May 28 for 21st–31st The first of three Social Security payment rounds for May 2026 hits bank accounts on Wednesday, May 14, delivering checks as large as $5,181 to retirees who delayed claiming until age 70….
Between early April and mid-May 2026, the S&P 500 climbed roughly 10%, a surge that in calmer times would have felt like vindication for the bulls. Instead it landed like a headline from a parallel universe. At the same moment, the national average price of gasoline sat at $4.52 a gallon according to AAA as…
Cloudflare was not struggling when it eliminated roughly 1,100 jobs in May 2026. The company had just posted record quarterly revenue of $639.8 million, a 34% jump from the same period a year earlier. But according to CEO Matthew Prince and co-founder Michelle Zatlyn, the internet security giant’s own AI tools had become so capable,…
Three pounds of ground beef for taco night, weeknight burgers, and a pot of pasta sauce. That weekly shopping list now runs about $20, up from roughly $15 two years ago, because a pound of regular ground beef has hit a price never recorded in more than four decades of federal tracking. The Bureau of…
The U.S. economy added 115,000 jobs in April 2026, enough to beat most Wall Street forecasts and keep the unemployment rate pinned at 4.3%. By the simplest measure, the labor market is still holding together. But the paychecks attached to those jobs are telling a less reassuring story. Average hourly earnings for private-sector workers rose…
A gallon of gas and a barrel of oil are doing what Congress hasn’t: pushing Social Security checks higher. The Senior Citizens League, a nonpartisan advocacy group that closely tracks inflation data, now projects the 2027 cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) at roughly 3.2%, a meaningful jump from the group’s 2.8% estimate just one month earlier. For…
If you paid a penalty or interest on a federal tax balance at any point between early 2020 and mid-2023, the IRS may owe you money. The National Taxpayer Advocate believes the pool of affected filers could number in the tens of millions, a figure the Advocate treats as an upper-bound projection rather than a…