The financial news that actually matters
In January, a buyer putting 20% down on a $400,000 home could lock in a 30-year fixed mortgage near 5.75%, making the monthly principal-and-interest payment about $2,334. Five months later, that same loan costs roughly $2,520 a month. The 30-year fixed rate has climbed to 6.46%, according to Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey, and…
The first Social Security deposits of May 2026 hit bank accounts next week, starting a four-date disbursement cycle that will put money into the hands of 74 million Americans. Retirees, disabled workers, survivors, and Supplemental Security Income recipients will all see payments that include the 2.8 percent cost-of-living adjustment that kicked in this past January….
Friday morning could deliver the weakest jobs number in more than two years. Forecasters surveyed by Bloomberg and Reuters expect the U.S. economy added just 50,000 jobs in April, a steep fall from the 178,000 gain the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported for March. The BLS will publish its April Employment Situation report at 8:30…
Better Home & Finance and Coinbase launched what they call the first conforming mortgage that lets borrowers pledge cryptocurrency as a down payment instead of converting it to cash. The product is designed so that finished loans can be sold to Fannie Mae on the secondary market, just like any other conventional home loan. Only…
Ticket buyers who used StubHub during a three-day stretch last May are about to get money back. The Federal Trade Commission announced in April 2026 that StubHub must pay $10 million in automatic refunds to customers who purchased U.S. live-event tickets between May 12 and May 14, 2025, after the agency charged the company with…
Alphabet added tens of billions of dollars in market value in a single session on April 29, 2026, after first-quarter earnings revealed something Wall Street had been waiting months to see: hard proof that corporate customers are spending real money on artificial intelligence, not just talking about it. Google Cloud revenue jumped 63% from the…
For three straight weeks, mortgage rates had been drifting lower, giving spring homebuyers a reason to feel cautiously optimistic. That streak ended abruptly. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate climbed to 6.30% for the week ending April 30, 2026, up from 6.23% the prior week, according to Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey. The 15-year…
When most people hear “AI stock,” they think Nvidia, Microsoft, maybe a cloud startup. They do not think of a nearly 100-year-old company that sells bulldozers, excavators, and diesel generators. But in late May 2026, Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT) posted a quarterly earnings beat that sent its shares surging roughly 10% in a single trading…
If Brent crude futures were to surge to $126 a barrel during a single session and then reverse by roughly $12 before the close, it would rank among the most violent intraday swings in oil markets since the early weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The following analysis explores what such a scenario…
Roughly 57 million American workers have no access to a 401(k) or any employer-sponsored retirement plan, according to estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For decades, most of them have been left out of the tax breaks that make saving for retirement easier. That is set to change in 2027, when the federal government…