The financial news that actually matters
Workers in Alaska, Cook County, Oregon, Los Angeles, and more than a dozen other jurisdictions will see larger paychecks starting today as minimum wage increases take effect across the country on July 1, 2026. Alaska’s hourly floor jumps from $13 to $14, Chicago-area employers face a new $15.40 baseline in Cook County, and Los Angeles…
More than 330,000 American importers are collectively owed about $166 billion in tariff refunds after the duties they paid were struck down, yet only a fraction of that money has actually reached their accounts. The federal government has disbursed roughly $20 billion to $22 billion so far, leaving tens of billions of dollars in limbo…
A taxpayer who sells stock at a $5,000 loss and buys the same shares back within 30 days will see that entire deduction wiped out on their federal return. The wash-sale rule, codified in Section 1091 of the Internal Revenue Code, operates on a strict 61-day window and leaves no room for timing errors. With…
Scammers posing as government officials, bank representatives, and tech-support agents drained $3.5 billion from Americans in 2025, a nearly 20 percent jump from the prior year. More than one million people filed imposter-scam complaints with the Federal Trade Commission, making this category nearly one in three of all fraud reports the agency received. Older adults…
Hotels, restaurants, and entertainment venues across the United States cut 61,000 jobs in June, wiping out the seasonal hiring surge that typically defines the start of summer. The loss was large enough to drag total nonfarm payroll growth down to just 57,000 for the month, one of the weakest readings of the year. For workers…
Borrowers with low credit scores are falling behind on car payments at a pace not seen in more than three decades, and vehicle repossessions have climbed past 1.73 million. The headline numbers paint a picture of widening stress at the bottom of the auto lending market, but Federal Reserve researchers point to a less obvious…
Anyone who converts money from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA before the end of 2025 will trigger a separate five-year waiting period on that specific batch of dollars. Convert again in 2026, and a second clock starts. Each conversion carries its own countdown before the converted amount can be withdrawn free of the…
Bitcoin traded near $66,301 on Tuesday afternoon, erasing months of gains that followed the October 2025 rally and leaving investors who bought near the peak holding an asset worth roughly half what they paid. The digital currency hit a record $126,210.50 on Oct. 6, 2025, according to Coinbase data. By early February 2026, the broader…
Buyers shopping for a home in the United States are finding prices softer than at any point in the past year, with values down roughly 2.5% compared to twelve months ago. Rising inventory has handed house hunters more choices and more room to negotiate, a shift that reverses years of seller dominance fueled by pandemic-era…
Michael Burry, the investor known for his bet against the housing market before the 2008 financial crisis, has flagged that the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) has stretched further above its long-term trend than at any point since the dot-com peak in 2000. His firm, Scion Asset Management, reported put options on the iShares Semiconductor ETF…