The financial news that actually matters
Stocks sold off hard on Friday, May 15, 2026, after the 10-year Treasury yield surged to roughly 4.65%, a level that would represent its highest in about a year based on U.S. Treasury Department records, and a rally in crude oil prices revived inflation fears that many investors had been eager to dismiss. The combination…
The number on the pump keeps climbing, and the ceiling is getting close. The national average price of regular gasoline reached $4.53 a gallon in late May 2026, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, leaving American drivers just 49 cents below the all-time record of roughly $5.02 set during the week of June 13,…
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…
The clock is running out for parents who borrowed federal PLUS loans to pay for a child’s college education. On June 30, 2026, a consolidation window closes permanently, and any Parent PLUS borrower who has not acted by then will be locked out of every income-driven repayment plan the federal government offers. No extensions. No…
If you were hoping cheaper borrowing was around the corner, the Senate just made that a lot less likely. On a 54 to 45 vote in late May 2026, senators confirmed Kevin Warsh as chair of the Federal Reserve, handing President Trump’s pick the power to set the pace on interest rates at a moment…
If you’re one of the roughly 8 million people whose federal student loans have been frozen on the SAVE repayment plan since courts blocked it in mid-2024, the pause is about to end. Starting July 1, 2026, loan servicers will begin mailing notices that give each borrower 90 days to choose a different repayment plan….
A taxpayer who paid a $2,400 failure-to-file penalty in August 2024 has until roughly August 2026 to claim a refund. But someone who paid a similar penalty in June 2024 faces a deadline that lands in mid-July 2026, barely two months from now. And once that window closes, the IRS keeps the money for good,…
Two cents off a gallon of gas is not the relief it sounds like. The national average price slipped to $4.50 this week, down from $4.52, according to the Energy Information Administration’s weekly retail survey. But the federal government’s latest inflation report paints a far harsher picture: gasoline prices have climbed 28.4% over the past…