The financial news that actually matters
Every time a federal court has told the Trump administration its 10 percent global import tariff is illegal, an appeals court has stepped in within days to keep the money flowing. It happened in 2025 with the first version of the levy. And it happened again in May 2026, when the U.S. Court of International…
Jerome Powell is not leaving the Federal Reserve. Not in May, when his term as chair expires. Not voluntarily, and not quietly. Standing at the lectern in the Fed’s press briefing room on April 29, 2026, Powell told reporters he will remain on the Board of Governors as a sitting member after handing over the…
The 30-year Treasury bond closed at a yield of 5.12 percent on Friday, May 15, 2026, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s daily par yield curve. That marks the highest daily close for the long bond since May 2025, confirmed by the Federal Reserve’s FRED DGS30 series. For homebuyers, corporate borrowers, and taxpayers…
Every day, roughly 21 million barrels of oil pass through a channel barely 21 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point. The Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf to the open ocean, and through it flows about one-fifth of the world’s petroleum supply and a comparable share of its liquefied natural gas trade. In…
A 74-year-old grandmother in Ohio wired $12,000 to a stranger after hearing what sounded exactly like her grandson sobbing on the phone, begging for bail money. A retired teacher in Florida drained her savings account because a caller who mimicked her daughter’s voice said she had been in a car accident. Neither emergency was real….
Three market-moving events are about to land within 48 hours, and Wall Street is not ready for all of them at once. Nvidia reports first-quarter earnings Tuesday after the close. The Federal Reserve publishes minutes from its April policy meeting Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET. And the 10-year Treasury yield is sitting at its highest…
That family road trip to the beach just got more expensive. A gallon of regular gasoline is running about $4.52 nationally heading into Memorial Day weekend 2026, according to GasBuddy and AAA daily tracking data as of late May. A year ago, the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s weekly retail series put the Memorial Day average…
A family shopping for a $400,000 home this week will pay roughly $2,490 a month in principal and interest, about $370 more than the same loan would have cost at the roughly 3.2-to-3.9 percent rates that Freddie Mac recorded in early 2022. The reason showed up on the Treasury Department’s daily yield curve on May…
President Trump reported buying up to $750 million worth of stock during the first three months of 2026, with the vast majority concentrated in Nvidia, Oracle, Palantir, and a handful of other artificial intelligence companies. Those same firms compete for Pentagon cloud contracts, depend on White House chip-export decisions, and operate under data-security rules his…
Britain is sending one of its most powerful warships, a squadron of Typhoon fighter jets, and a flotilla of unmanned patrol boats into the Persian Gulf, joining a multinational force of more than 40 countries assembling to break open the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping. Defence ministers from the participating nations gathered on May…