The financial news that actually matters
Kobayashi Consumer Products, LLC is offering a full refund on about 77,000 HotHands rechargeable hand warmers after the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a recall on October 1, 2026. The agency says the lithium-ion battery and electrical components can overheat and ignite, posing a risk of serious injury from fire and burn hazards. The…
The S&P 500 closed on Friday, October 2, 2026, at 7,722.72, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 51,176.96, both higher after a September jobs report that showed far fewer new jobs than economists had forecast. The S&P 500 gained 56.27 points, or 0.73 percent, and the Dow gained 250.40 points, or 0.49 percent,…
Sunwest Bank agreed to buy about $476 million of the $736 million in assets that Nano Banc of Irvine, California, reported on June 30, leaving the remaining assets with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to sell. California regulators closed the bank on Friday, September 25, 2026, and the FDIC became its receiver. Nano Banc’s customers…
FedEx will start charging holiday demand surcharges on October 26, 2026, and the largest listed amount is $4.05 per package. That figure applies to one service, FedEx Ground Economy, and only during the later part of the season. The services most households and small sellers use carry smaller surcharges, topping out at 80 cents for…
The National Association of Realtors reported that total existing-home inventory reached 1.62 million units at the end of August 2026, up 3.2 percent from July and 5.9 percent from August 2025. Sales moved the other way: existing-home sales fell 2.0 percent in the month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.98 million. More homes…
Private residential construction ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $882.3 billion in August, Census Bureau data released on October 1 show, up from a revised $872.7 billion in July. The monthly gain is 1.1 percent, but the bureau’s margin of error on it is plus or minus 1.3 percent, so the increase cannot…
Redfin put the median U.S. home sale price at $398,596 for August 2026, up 2.20 percent from August 2025. The figure comes from the brokerage’s monthly housing-market data and covers closed sales of every home type across the full calendar month, so it records what buyers actually paid rather than what sellers asked. It lands…
Pep Boys has told Pennsylvania it will lay off 169 workers at its Bala Cynwyd headquarters, with separations scheduled across a window that runs from December 31, 2026 to February 19, 2027. The entry appears on the Department of Labor and Industry’s WARN notice list as a layoff by Pep Boys Manny Moe & Jack,…
The Federal Housing Finance Agency reported that U.S. house prices rose 0.3 percent in July and 2.6 percent from a year earlier, but the national figures conceal a wide spread across the nine census divisions. The Middle Atlantic division led with a 1.5 percent monthly and 6.3 percent annual gain, while the Mountain division fell…
Filers who take the standard deduction can still deduct qualified tips and qualified overtime pay under the 2025 law, according to the IRS, and itemizing is not a condition of either one. The deductions cover tax years 2025 through 2028, so the same rule applies to returns for 2026, 2027 and 2028 as well as…