The financial news that actually matters
The number on the little white sticker has never been this high. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows the national average price for uncooked beef steak reached $12.74 per pound in February 2026, the most expensive monthly reading in the history of the agency’s tracking series. March barely budged, landing at $12.73. Compare that with…
The S&P 500 hit a new all-time high at 7,230, but your grocery bill, gas tank, and mortgage rate all went up this week too. Somewhere between the closing bell and the grocery checkout, the American economy split in two again this week. The S&P 500 closed above 7,230, a fresh all-time high that fattened…
A family of four grilling burgers this Memorial Day weekend will spend roughly $6.70 for every pound of ground beef they toss on the grate. Driving to the store to buy it costs $4.43 a gallon. And the house they pull into afterward? If they bought it recently with a 30-year fixed mortgage, they’re likely…
The 60-day clock expired on May 1. Congress never voted to authorize military operations against Iran. And the White House says none of that matters because the war is already over. In a letter sent to congressional leaders on the deadline itself, President Trump declared that hostilities with Iran “have terminated,” according to reporting from…
On May 8 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will publish the April 2026 Employment Situation report, and the number economists are bracing for is not a comfortable one. The Reuters consensus survey of private-sector forecasters puts the estimate at roughly 55,000 new nonfarm payroll jobs. If that holds, it would represent…
On March 24, 2026, a barrel of Brent crude oil cost $108.42. Seven days later, it cost $126.69. By the second week of April, it had fallen back below $110. That kind of round-trip, roughly $18 up and then down again in the span of a single week, has only happened a handful of times…
You paid $4.43 a gallon for regular gasoline last week, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s weekly retail tracker for the week ending April 28, 2026. Exxon Mobil, the largest publicly traded oil company in the country, just reported that its own profits got cut nearly in half. Those two facts sound like they…
Jerome Powell will walk out of the Federal Reserve chair’s office for the last time on May 15, 2026, closing a tenure that included the fastest rate-hiking cycle in four decades and a pandemic-era housing market that still has not fully normalized. His likely successor, Kevin Warsh, cleared the Senate Banking Committee on April 29,…
At midnight on May 1, 2026, the 60-day countdown that the War Powers Resolution imposes on unauthorized military operations expired. The clock had started around March 2, 2026, when U.S. forces first entered hostilities with Iran. President Trump’s answer to Congress was not a request for authorization or an order to withdraw. It was a…
Exxon Mobil reported first-quarter profit of $4.2 billion on May 1, 2026, a 45% drop from the $7.7 billion it earned during the same stretch last year. The company disclosed the results in an 8-K filing with the SEC, and the numbers rattled investors. But for the millions of Americans paying a national average of…